The playground is not somewhere that he chooses to be often.
Cleave is but a boy, barely coming up on his first year of age, but he has never viewed himself as being young. He has never thought of himself as a child—let alone a baby. He had been born into a world of danger, his mother spiriting him away and placing him with another woman to protect him from his father, and even though he has no real memory of it, it is an event that blossomed in his chest and made him into the hard-edged boy that he is today. It is an event that has formed him without him knowing.
So he is surprised when his wandering takes him here, and even more surprised when it is interrupted so quickly by the bright-eyed, brightly colored filly who makes her way over to him. Cleave angles his heavy head toward her, red eyes entirely blank as he studies her, practically feeding on her innocence.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he says in response, voice still youthful but beginning to take on some of the gravel and the grit that would permeate it during his later years. “Star,” he repeats her name, tasting it on his tongue and then nodding, as if finding it acceptable. “My name is Cleave.”
He has always liked the way that it sounded, the sharp edges of it.
“What are you doing?” he says, suddenly looking at her a little closer. In response to his curiosity, small flames burst into life down his spine, licking at the air and then climbing up the youthful curve of his neck, overtaking his mane so that it becomes a living thing, flickering and crackling in the air.
“Why would you come here all by yourself?”
@[Astarielle]
lol cleave decided he wanted to reply instead :|