Is there something, someone laying in wait for him, ready to erase the stamp of loneliness upon his heart?

He drifts lazily in the saltwater that is his second home. Naturally, they had been raised mostly earthbound, a compromise between sea and sky that respected the limitations of their blended family. Once his own aquatic tendencies had been revealed, he’d spent hours in the water alongside the men that he so admired, the men with whom he shared a singular similarity.

Their color starts as a shimmering grey that gradually transition to pitch black, the tentacles that undulate where his hind legs should be. They are what remain to link him to his dead brother and his missing father. A sharp pang rips through his chest as he remembers them and their parallels to the mighty krakens of the deep. He misses them terribly.

He’d heard tales of ancestors that were very nearly krakens in their own right, fearsome creatures of considerable size and moderate magical power. His father and brother retained only small echoes of such magnificence, but he could only conjure the handsome tentacles he swims with now, and then they only manifested when he was in the water.

As he allows the currents to govern the path he cuts through the brine, he finds himself longing for something that better represented the blood he shared with them. Though he had never coveted the stropped beaks that dissected the prey ensnared by their curling appendages, he wishes for one if only to magnify the physical resemblance. Truthfully, that is all he really wants.. the enchanted qualities, he could do without.

Realistically, he knows that this can only remain a wistful plea to haunt the constraints of his mind. But something tickles his imagination, raises the question of ‘what if?’

The voices of his ancestors do not whisper furtively to him, but their images writhe in his mind’s eye, refusing to let this idea sink into the gloomy depths. Are they suggesting that there is a way to quench this desire? Unconsciously, he surfaces and his Baltian gills automatically transition to draw oxygen directly from the air, just as any normal horse.

Unable to resist the siren song in his heart, he completes his metamorphosis and begins the slow trek over the still unfamiliar lands. He slips quietly through the forest until he finds himself at the base of the large mountain that dominates the background of almost every inch of Beqanna. He does not know why, but he feels compelled to scale its peak. And so he does.

The task takes far longer than he expects and he is nearly spent when he finally reaches the crag’s zenith. A shiver runs down his spine, generated not only by the wintry climate but also by the intangible energy that surrounds him. His bright blue eyes scan the area, revealing that, physically, there is nothing, no one here waiting, but something tells him that this is where he should be. Without knowing if he will receive an answer, he speaks into the void. ”May I have a moment of someone’s time?”