I love the way that your heart breaks; any

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

He watches him, for a long time, from atop his stone throne.
Where anyone else might, at first glance, feel pity for his slumped disfigurement, the gift-giver finds it repelling.

At first.

He finds his weakened appearance elicits something feral and cruel in his mind—an ancient boneyard, upturned with mechanic violence, thick with old hauntings.
It is the same way he feels when he sees Famine’s forsaken corpse walking around his kingdom—still walking, to his credit, like a zombie possessed. It is a primordial, base rumble; the song that tells the lizard brain that something like that brings death and ruination, only—that the thing they carry on their bones, heavy and dark and foul, is infectious.

So it must be eradicated.

And then, he began to feel curious;
He relegated survival instinct to the dark place in his mind that had become separated when he fell from the Earth and fancied himself beyond mortal.
Though he despises it, weakness calls to him—but it calls to him like the newborn deer bleating for his mother calls to a wolf.
This man’s darkness, whatever the god-king had woven into his make like some sick and beautiful master craftsman—that calls to him like a brother.

Pollock makes his way down from his cliffside with unparallelled ease, not only because he has been here for so long and he knows every wrung he must march to get down, but because he is made for these rocks. The nimbleness of his cleft hooves; the agility and speed, which propel him like some errant spark down the limestone and onto the waste floor.

He moves to the squalid looking stallion with unearthly speed, a cloud of dust upturned as he comes to an abrupt stop on the other side of the gurgling stream. It is only then that he finds he has seen this man before, his flat, black eyes examining his face, finally. “I don’t remember your name,” he grunts, and he doubts this man remembers his either.

He’d ask him why he thought he was so free to come back, wandering into his kingdom like an over friendly, once-removed family memeber.
But as far as the king is concerned, anyone is welcome to come. And go, if they can manage. 

the gift-giver