Ni'Srilan: The Desert: you forget what already is.

Kinh is calm, disaffected; it has been mistaken as apathy before, but only once, when he found himself in a remote corner of the world - like this one, but less conscientious, less condescending - and they had so forgotten the language of the horse that they could barely understand him. It didn’t matter, not to him, not really, but he remembers it now and wonders if they think of him the same – cold, aloof, ignorant and blithe in his distant assertions. He is not, of course; in truth Kinh is the humblest of creatures, his mud-brown face and dark, placid eyes mirroring his calm persona well. The black stallion to his left, some paces away, seems much the same. Kinh must reach down to somberly scratch at his knee in order to hide a smile; perhaps this one will know what it is like, at least a little. It is not hard to be an outsider, not for Kinh who knows nothing but the earth and her soft trembles and the winds loving caresses anyway, but it can be – well, strange. Lonely, even, though he is not one to pine for the space of heartbeats to elapse with his own airy thoughts, bringing him closer to a tragic, useless demise much worth than death.

“Hm,” is what he says after a moment in quiet reply, meditating somberly on this news. He does not understand the ways of spy – or, rather, in some manner he does; he understands the careless stallion that wanders from his family at the riverbank, and the watchful bachelor with snaking neck to herd them away, but not more than that. But he does not think this is the same kind of spy. He had used the term loosely, laughingly, like a present-day human would refer to a woolly mammoth: they were alive once, perhaps remain in pieces still alive in some vast and foreign vestige of the earth, but it is meaningless to them. Kinh knows the stars, knows sweet, simple beauties and pleasant cares, the gruff way of stallions and the simplicity that was early life, and buttermilk on his lips, and abandonment – but he does not know this, a profession cloaked in shadow. He does not even know his own; he is a self-professed fledgling, knowing little more of these laws than he does of their magics.

“Well,” Kinh muses, “some say a betrayal of the heart is worse than one of the flesh, so to speak.” If he could shrug, he would; a similar expression rolls across the bunched and muscled flesh of his shoulder, bringing some life back to the brown, furry mire. What it really means is that he doesn’t care, if only because he doesn’t understand; he doesn’t know what Andarin is, though he presumes it’s some other uncaring, thoughtless place like this one, and if that is the case maybe fealty here is not something to be dealt out lightly. Goodness knows he has no more connection to this than the snow a particular patch of ground; he could be gone, to another place here or elsewhere, on the first breath of sharp morning wind.

He shifts calmly, still a few paces away from the stranger, gaze locked on the burning horizon. “Phantom,” he intones, preferring the simpler expression; “you are not very subtle, for such a name.” But he smiles – he may like subtlety, may employ it often, but not the way they do here. He doesn’t like that, the conniving, unconvincing lies like a snake’s venomous hiss they push through their front teeth. “I am Kinh.”