He is most comfortable at the river’s edge.
He has made something of a home there in the current.
He has convinced himself that it is where he belongs and he blames it on the glass stallion who was not his father but who loved his mother anyway. The glass stallion who fashioned water out of thin air to his daughters’ delight and Isakov’s grudging amusement. Isakov understands that he is neither good nor just and that the glass stallion’s influence came only in the form of his love of the water.

He loiters there now, the river lapping greedy at his knees. He lets it soothe him. How he revels in the way it tugs and pulls, beckoning him further into the depths.

But he resists now, sticking close to the shore. Even still, he smells of river water. The stars on his legs shimmer beneath the water’s surface, set it aglow. And he smiles a private, lopsided thing. Because he is happy. Or, at least, something like it. He is young still, naive, still mostly oblivious to the whole range of emotion. There are so many things he does not understand.

He turns from the depths now. Turns to face the shore and finds someone standing there. He does not flinch or cower. He smiles, as if he had been expecting them.

“Ah,” he says, “there you are.”