It had been an odd concept for Tarian to understand at first, this world without Knights. It'd been explained to him from such a young age that he hailed from a family that spanned generations in Paraiso, so far back that no horse could recall when Legado had claimed the ancient valley, only that he had. The time had been lost to mortal memory and the golden stallion claimed immortality through the minds of his descendants, shining through the blue eyes of ones like Tarian, so many generations later.
Now when @[Lepis] says she doesn't think there has ever been a Knight in Loess before (and who better to know? Who better to learn from than the Monarch who claims to have known this kingdom since her birth?), the concept is no longer foreign. Tarian had scrapped and brawled through his youth. He'd gone looking for fights, looking for battles because he'd been too young for the one that mattered. He'd been hardly more than a boy when the Magic swallowed his home. And with it, so had gone the Knights and the chivalry and the code of honor that Tarian had known.
He stands and though the expression on his face remains stoic, the gray stallion lets slip, "If your Lady can teach me manners, perhaps I can bring some polish to Loess' guard." The dun pegasus has found her smile as it comes to keep Tarian's often-absent humor company. "And if your son should be amenable," Tarian nods slightly, "I'd be willing to impart what I know." (He'd just leave it to her - and her son - to decide if there was anything remiss in that education). As they walk out of the shallow water and down a path, Lepis takes the time to explain some of the history surrounding them. While they trek between the canyon walls and through Loess, she tells him about the reigns of Arthas and Castile and Wolfbane. Names that don't hold much meaning to him but then he doubted that the names of Ichiro or Valerio or Yoshiro had meant anything to her, either.
Eventually, the trail ends with shade. An overhang of stone draped with roots and leaves. He's grateful to be out of the sun and away from the rising heat of the day and so Tarian settles beneath the cover easily enough. He even relaxes slightly, a softening that starts between his shoulders before it reaches his gaze. "What would you like to know?" Tarian asks, turning his head to better look at the smaller mare. He assumes she knows but, "There are many places in the Beyond." The gray stallion starts where it is easiest; what he knows, the land that he was born in. He tells her that it was an ancient valley where legend claimed the sun had been born (and he even manages to laugh at this because he knows he lacks the eloquence of his storytelling grandmother or the mysticism of his shaman uncle, there is too much practicality in Tarian to believe what he speaks) and that was why the horses born there were so often shades of gold. He tells her of Liridon and the cove that he took up residence while there, a place that was eternally watched and guarded by starlight (and he tries not to think of Orani).
There are horses, like Tarian, that don't feel the pull of wanderlust and so when Lepis says she has only been once to Beyond, he thinks he understands that once might have been enough.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.