Welcome to Gaia! ::

The air itself felt heavy, deep old and forgotten with the deep moist odor of moss and the just heard sound of tiny fluttering things against the sound of some hidden fall of water that sounded fairly close.
The stones here were enormous, and some were half swollowed by trees that were bigger around than she was. Some so old that their bark was missing, leaving them wide bone like skelitons of trees, half covered in moss and curled and gnarled into strange shapes.


So still was he, as he rested in the knotwork of one such great tree that grew wide and arcing by a burbling stream, that he might be mistaken for part of the tree itself. Surely the gnarls and twists in his hide did little to make him look mobile, nor the moss that had grown improbably in the twists along his spine, or the cobwebs that hung still heavy with dew from his tattery wings, But those wings, so close in shape to her own moved gently without a breese to stir them, in time instead with the rise and fall of his breathing as he slumbered, or seemed to.

It was as though the forest itself sighed... breathing him out into a world that could be seen, instead of just something hovering at the edges of vision. Slowly... slowly wings lifted and stretched out...his hair and beard, dark like damp earth, his eyes strange and dark as they opened and turned to focus on this small intruder.
"Hmmmm?" a rolling noise with the same curious heavy feel to it as the woods around her. "Of course" Dusty almost, like his voice carried cobwebs. "Theirs always -someone- there...." it answered. Shifting slowly to its feet with a fall of leaves and fallen twigs. "Even if its yourself and the forrest"

His dark eyes sparked with amusement in the low light and he tipped his head to one side, not quite the motion of a stalion, but very -nearly- the shape of one but for the curving dual horns that framed his curiously curled features.

"It's not very polite to wake a sleeper either... but, as you -are- a princess"

One hoof raised towards his chest and the other slid forward through the leaves to drop him into a bow... his neck reaching forward till his small beard tickled the ground. "

He straitened slowly like a tree lifting from a heavy wind and nodded most sagely. "One could call it so...It is not an easy place to find, you must indeed be a little wood-sprite to have found your way here, And it's quite alright, I had slept long enough I think..."
He fanned his wings slightly, the cob-webs trailing sleeping from where they had snapped free from where they clung in his slumber.
"Yours is a very expansive kingdom indeed" He said tipping his head to glance up through the heavy leaves, closing his eyes as the wind, high above rustled them into a thin sound like laughter.
"But, where there is a princess, there is also a King, and a Queen... Will they not be worried that their princess is without her guard?"

He glanced at her wings and smiled slightly. "If my lady, would accept, perhaps one might be of assistance, and guide you to more familiar trails. You might, find that you can hear them once we draw closer to the kinder woods, the younger ones where things are less wild and wierd." He bowed again with his offer and a small wind, picked up the leaves to dart about him for a moment like pixies with wings like thier own.

His eyes sparkled again, and he looked as though he were considering what she said... "Fauno..." he said, the accent to it strange, rolling like it were from the language of some other beast, stranger perhaps than even 'Man'.

"They call me Fauno... my lady, and my Lady's? Might I have yours? That I might give it should the stones and trees inquire?"

He rose again and followed her with a small 'nicker' deep in his throat, amused perhaps or just a sound he had made as she lead on from where she had come.
His own gate long and careful behind her exuberant youthful steps.
It had been a very long time indeed since there had been anyone so very deep into the woods.
She very much fit into this strange place, and it was odd to see it, more often than not Horses were better suited to the ligther woods or the wide feilds, such was their nature, however.


"Did you find your kingdom Pleasent Princess? Were you not worried by shaddows and age of it? Many are... even queens, or so I am told..." he said, speaking to her as though she were an adult already.