He has been gone for a very long time.

He is not sure what drives him home, but for the past several weeks there had been a feeling he could not shake. It had taken root inside of his chest, this slight ache for something familiar, and try as he could to ignore it, the feeling would not dissipate. It was not until the root of unease began to blossom into dreams of home that plagued him every night that he finally decided that perhaps he needed to pay heed to whatever it is that is calling him back.

Lautner cannot begin to imagine what that might be; he is sure that most of his family (or at least the family that he knew) is gone. He had been young when he left and had never had any children of his own, and no friends to speak of, either.

Without wings or any other kind of abilities that would make traveling easy he had assumed he would struggle to make his way back, but the magic that had always encompassed the land appeared to still be well intact. There was a particularly dense patch of fog in the forest he was traveling through, and as he slipped through it everything around him seemed to shift.  It was as if he stepped through an invisible veil, the kind that you cannot find if you are specifically looking for it; just one of many reasons that newcomers stumbled into this place and could not find their way out.

He is still not certain that he is indeed home; there is so far nothing that stands out to him. He continues his trek through the gradually thinning trees, the snow muffling the sound of his steps, but he pauses when he hears someone calling out. The trees and the blanket of snow makes it difficult to discern where the voice is coming from and so he comes to a complete stop, calling back, “hello?”

It has been a long time since he last spoke with anyone else, and when he finally meets the bright-eyed gaze of the stranger he feels a flicker of apprehension. He used to be able to get by on small talk and simple pleasantries, but he was sorely out of practice and unsure how easily he could pick it back up.

Before his anxiety can grow into regret he finds himself face-to-face with a young mare, and though she does not give any outright indication that she is distressed he can just make out the slight tightness in her eyes, and he wonders if perhaps she is lost.

“We are in Beqanna. At least, I think this is Beqanna,” he pauses to look around, a slight frown creasing his silver-gray face. One thing he had learned in his travels is many forests managed to look the same, and the longer he stared the more he began to doubt that he had made it back. He would need to go further and search for a landmark — wasn’t there some beach with a strange whale sign or carving on it? — to be sure of it, but even without the scenery being familiar there was just the feel that this is the right place.

She mentions somewhere called the Emerald Sea, and while hearing an unfamiliar name momentarily throws him off (he does not recall there being such a place in Beqanna), he figures that whether they are in Beqanna or not, he is pretty certain they are nowhere near a place by such a name. “I’ve never heard of the Emerald Sea, not even in my most recent travels. My guess would be we are pretty far from it.”

Realizing that he has not yet introduced himself (it’s been awhile since he’s needed to) he says hastily, “My name is Lautner, by the way. Is that where you are headed? To the Emerald Sea?”

He does not know what she means by the word ‘drift’, not realizing the meaning behind it when she says it — that it meant more than just aimlessly ending up somewhere. His answer still more or less works, since he would not say that is how he ended up here but his own definition of ‘drift’. “Not exactly. I was born in Beqanna, and have been gone for a long time. Something told me it was time to come home.”

He realizes he probably sounds like a fool for not being sure of where they are, if he was supposedly born here. But she also does not know where she is, so he likes to think this has left them on even ground. “Beqanna has a habit of…changing. There is an abundance of magic here, and things just…happen.”

He has no idea how true the words are that he speaks.

He missed much of the most altering events that have rocked this land: the Reckoning, the arrival of the ‘new’ kingdoms, the tumultuous period of time when Baltia and Stratos were discovered. Short of running into his own parents it was unlikely he’d find any sure indicators that this was Beqanna without finding someone else to confirm it.

“Well, Nizhonii, I suppose the easiest way to confirm that this is Beqanna is to keep walking. Care to join me? Perhaps while we walk you will see something familiar that can help you get back home,” the gray stallion says as he begins to continue down the path, glancing sideways to see if she is willing to follow.

When she says the idea of so much magic is terrifying it causes him to pause a moment.

Despite having not been back here for a number of years he had never considered what it might be like for someone unfamiliar. To him the magic was just a part of it; it had actually been surprising for him to learn on his journey that not all places had disasters of such a magnitude that they changed the landscape, and they did not frequently follow some glowing orb (or what have you) up a mountain on a fever-dream of an adventure and come out the other side with a new ability — or the loss of one.

That had never happened to him, of course; he liked to think himself too smart to follow strange sights and sounds, but growing up here he knew it was a common occurrence.

“I guess it’s a little unnerving,” he concedes, recognizing that his life outside of Beqanna had actually been quite peaceful without the constant changes. “But somehow you just get used to it.” He has no way of knowing, of course, that the magic here was far more rampant than before.

She asks if he had been born somewhere near here, and he cannot help but to smile at the memory of his childhood. “I was born here, yes,” he starts off, traveling north through the forest. “In a tropical lagoon that I’m afraid no longer exists,” his old home being a victim to the earlier land-changes that he had spoken about. “I remember it being beautiful, though. And we had the place mostly to ourselves — my parents and my siblings, I mean.” He feels an unexpected twinge in his chest at the thought of his family; he had little hope of seeing any of them again, but the hope that did exist flinched at their memory.

“What was your homeland like? Does it have magic, like here?” He asks her, briefly tilting his head towards her before again looking ahead to the deer-worn path he is navigating.