i am a dragon, and i'll eat you whole; any

[extinct]

faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of
everything that melts and fades and dies about us.

Something rumbles; it thinks instantly of cat and predator in a strange tumble of instinct and warning. It squares itself up to look imposing, thick-girthed and impressive in width despite the fact it was on the shorter side of their species, almost diminutive actually. If anything was really imposing about it, it would be the tusks but they were only small sprouts of ivory that would eventually be shed only to come back in permanently and thus, they were not overly imposing - more like curiosities that curved out from it’s cheeks just above the slender equine muzzle since it lacked the mammoth trunk. Actually, it was purely an aberration of nature and by nature’s laws, should be nonexistent but some rampant strand of magic allowed this mutation to take a shuddering breath and seal its fate.

It smells like a male and looks decidedly older than the bone-winged girl, not that it was a good judge of age or character really. It did what it’s mother-master told it, that beautiful overo almost-mare that would press a kiss to its hairy brow as quickly as she would kick it aside when it became too stupidly adoring. Right now though, it doesn’t understand why he (it decides that much on its own) says things to them that make no sense to it - ladies implies females, and it doesn’t know yet that it too, is female. It is fairly newborn and lacks a definitive sense of gender, it’s head tilted upwards in a quizzical manner as it looks between him and her. The bone-winged girl is staring at it and it doesn’t mind, it doesn’t stare back unless to marvel at the bone-wings because the sight of bones are familiar to it and it hasn’t decided yet if the bones are more avian in shape like wings ought to be or not. That would make sense to it, since it has no concept of magic and flying horses.

The bone-wings move beside it and it moves thoughtlessly out of the way, giving the girl more room to stretch them out. It looks like a scare tactic to thwart the he-horse’s approach as it regards the situation indifferently. The girl talks back to him, understanding his language better than the mammoth-horse does, though it understands words are being said that could have some importance to them and the moment, or more likely the manner in which they are being said. It shakes it’s little tusks at the he-horse as the girl bristles with defiance in both tone and stance, challenging him to back off and it takes a step forward (the best way to describe it is a dwarf of a draft horse with a ridiculous hump and tusks and thick hairy fur) as if to menace him further but the threat is somehow lacking as the girl names her (well, it has a name but it thinks this one will do just fine compared to the other because Sinew-mother didn’t seem all that kind some of the time in what she called it) and says they were doing just fine until he came along.

“Shoo.” it says, not sure where the word came from but it seemed to suit the situation.

Extinct

equus mammuthus