Of course his desires were all very naive. A dreamer can never fight his nature, not without breaking. And he was not the type to fight until he broke.
His sweat-soaked attention falls upon a massive track pressed into the earth. It is oddly singed on the edges, like nothing the pegasus has ever seen before. Could it be the monster?
He almost faints.
He doesn't (obviously). After much internal debate, full of lip biting and pacing in circles and unfolding and folding his wings (an old, anxious habit of his) he finally turns back to the tracks and begins to follow them deeper into the forest. It was the monster he sought, and it was the monster he found. He would have to be brave, some would say heroic, and press on.
Now, naturally, Mateo is not a competent tracker (at this point, you may be wondering what he is competent at) but after some time it is clear even to him that he is catching ground on whatever beast left the prints. The singed prints look fresher and fresher, some even containing embers which he dutifully smothers with his own small hooves. But when he noses his way past some particularly large bushes he does not in the slightest expect to find himself in the company of the monster.
He lets out what could best be described as a squeak, and for the second time today he nearly faints. But it isn't a monster before him, just a mind-bogglingly large horse. All the breath leaves him in a massive sigh.
"I thought you were the monster!" he exclaims, minorly disappointed and extremely relieved. He takes a step closer to the stallion, but when it quickly dawns on him how massive the man is, he hesitates once more. "You aren't, are you?" Bravery was not a strength of the lithe black pegasus, but god knows-- if you have no bite, the least you can do is try to bark. Despite the slight waver in his voice and the way he leans back, ready to bolt into the underbrush, there is a certain boldness in the way he raises his chin in challenge.
"Anyway isn't it a little reckless, walking around a forest like that?" He extends a sleek black wing to gesture at the smoldering hoofprints the behemoth left behind. It is terribly uncharacteristic of Mateo to be so brusque, but it was not very long ago that a great fire tore through the Viride (his hair stands on end at the memory of it) and it makes him uncomfortably tense to see so many embers glowing gently in the shadows of the forest floor.
It seemed a day for many things that were not in Mateo's nature. He sighs, tired of not feeling like himself, and his eyes gleam a hard, steely grey as though all the green has fled from them. He wonders what is in store for him next, and hopes it will not be too unpleasant.
- - -
@Sol Bestiam
