Perhaps they were mountain goats once, long ago-- or perhaps they will be. He does not spend much time pondering destiny, but thoughts like these come and go like scents in the breeze, the sort that are gone before you can identify them. Oh, but how they trigger particular feelings, the sort you don't have words for.
(But what are you without words? Are the canyons they stand on comprised of granite alone, or also the empty space that has been carved away?)
Regardless of what was or will be, the clamor of hooves on stone is satisfying here and now. Eik is pleased by the company- no snark nor fire, just quiet companionship to the top. And at the top, he is pleased by the view and the breeze and the sweat on his hide. A very rare sense of contentment settles over him. He cannot remember the last time he felt this way.
"Beautiful, yes, but not so welcoming." But is that not part of the allure?
Looking down across the desert, he feels as if he both does and does not belong here. How different it is from the tundra of his homeland, and yet there are similarities. Most notably, they are both quite inhospitable, though their temperatures are at opposite extremes of the scale. At least in the tundra the plants don't try to stab you. (don't get us started on how he loathes cacti) "How did you come to be here... Solterra." He asks, thoughts drawn back to the man beside him. He suspects the man is a foreigner, as himself. Eik's otherness is inescapable, it reveals itself in the inflection in his speech, the way sentences end like questions and questions like statements. The way he says Sol-ter-a.
