[open] rising from the east, any

[The Tin Man]

Hearts will never be practical,
until they can be unbreakable.
(But I still want one.)

As one of the few non-powered horses roaming around Beqanna, the Tin Man had learned to keep a healthy distance from the ones with an unusual appearance, even if they didn't seem too hostile. It seemed like everyone managed to sprout some sort of weird color or new appendage after spending enough time here, and sometimes he found himself thinking that he himself looked out-of-place--a plain black coat, with plain white flecks sprinkled across it, and no extra appendages.

Although after this much time, he supposed he'd grown used to the magic by itself: There was a flower on the beach, surrounded by the telltale footprints of... someone that smelled at least partly horse.

"Can I eat this, or not?" The Tin Man mused with a sniff at its petals. "Probably not. I'm just missing grain."

He often got reminded of humans from before he'd washed up on the islands, after eating grass that went to seed or finding a nice patch of clover. People grow a lot of different seeds, he remembered, though their faces and names were starting to get fuzzy.

He wasn't particularly thin--being a nomad, he moved to greener places once the grass started dying off--but he did sometimes miss all the extra things.

Like salt, he thought as he nosed at the sand, heading over to the patches of grass along the shore. The beach grasses were well-used to drinking saltwater and often had spots of glittering white on them after hot days, but it wasn't the same.

The Tin Man