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"Do not jump."

The voice emerges seemingly from nowhere, and it is as deep as a quiet lake and just as inscrutable, the rumbling of a stormcloud. But it sounds, for lack of a better word, concerned.

Slender had been aware of the doe's presence for some time: had heard her moving and had smelled her with his nose nearly as sharp as a dog's, had seen the shifting shadows breaking up the patterns of light that were the closest thing he had to sight. And for quite some time he had simply done as he frequently did: remained silent, unnoticeable, an invisible sentry. But until she bunched up to jump--an action he discerns as a shrinking of her shadow, perceives from the sound of the vegetation shifting beneath her--he had not known why she waited.

He still doesn't, as he makes clear. Slender had mistaken the pawing for hesitation, the wait for introspection. He cannot see her face, or the blank, unfocused quality of blind eyes.

"There are far better things. What has gone so far wrong that you would do such a thing? There is truly grief in living, but so much?"

There is a pause, perhaps even long enough for her to fear that she has been abandoned--or that she hallucinated the voice at all. But it is broken by movement, by steps approaching. Slender has picked up a small stone in his mouth.

When the stranger moves nearer it becomes clear that he is--different, somehow. And perhaps her inexperience with other Kin will be enough to hide that strangeness, but then perhaps it will not: perhaps she will recognize that he is far too different from herself. His steps are long and slow and seem to cover far too much ground, and his presence looms far too tall: the sound of his heartbeat, if she can discern it, a heavy thud higher than her own eyes.

He drops the stone at his feet as he arrives next to her, and his voice is throbbingly deep this close, and startlingly high up, as if he perched in a tree. "Listen," he rumbles.

He gives the stone a push over the edge, and it falls down a rocky scree, making a clattering as it does so. The clattering goes on for quite some time--and it is impossible not to think of her own body doing the same, tumbling that long forever distance. When the noise halts it can barely be heard.

"Listen," he says again, before she can possibly react, and there is the sound of bones creaking like tree limbs as he folds himself up to lie on his stomach next to her, and he reaches out his neck over the precipice and he makes a long keening sound: the sort of wordless singing Kimeti excel at, although his voice is bass and frightening and huge, not the thin high noise that most Kimeti produce. The sound ventures away and bounces back from some distant wall: very far away, although muffled in some way, as though perhaps there are trees or other obstructions strewn across the valley between the pair and the far side.

"I do not think," he says, slowly rising again with a ponderous unfolding of limbs, "that you could manage that leap, unless perhaps you had wings. Do you have wings? I thought you meant to end your life. I thought you were perhaps in despair."

He is quiet for a moment. Bloom reminds him--strongly--of a filly just learning to speak, all boundless ideas and relief at an ear to pour them into. But those fillies never stay long. They have no time for him, quiet and stolid and awkward and terrifying and... strange.

"I hope," he rumbles, "that your life is worth something whether I give it value or not." He extends his nose to sniff her--he knows it unsettles people, knows it's not normal, and usually he refrains unless it is a very young foal. But he has the feeling she either won't notice or won't mind. Her reaction has clued him in to her lack of sight. "My name is Slender."