He does not often leave the familiarity of home, the known of the Desert, and when he does it is never without the company of his twin sister. It is in part due to the fact that she pushes him to be brave and unafraid, and part because he really just likes the comfort of being so near to his small family. But today is different. Today he is tired of the sand and the sun and so much bright sameness. Heartfire is gone, probably off on one of her many adventures finding the places she has only seen through the eyes of others, and he couldn’t find Qatar. So it is all alone that he walks and runs and flies low across the ground, all alone when he finds the blue colt laying in a heap on the ground with his bright eyes glued to a sky as blue as eggshells.

At first he pauses, slows, hesitant until he notices the dark, leathery wings wrapped around the boys ribcage. He’s never met anyone else with wings before, he knows the Desert king has great big wings kind of like that, but only because he’s been told so. It might be nice to have a friend he can fly with, a friend who might maybe also dream of how the wind feels when it funnels beneath his wings.

With one final tilt of his small black head, Illum unfurled his feathered wings and leapt, coasting down to the base of the hill where the blue boy lay. With a thump he landed beside him, only now noticing the feathers woven into the tufts of his mane. Illum wasn’t sure what he thought of that, but he quickly pulled his own feathery wings back and pinned them tight against his small ribcage with a look of childish uncertainty painted across the delicate angles of his face.

“Are those yours?” He asks quietly, his green eyes soft and bright against this other boys face. And then with the furrowing of his small brow, “What’re you doing on the ground?”