As Dev led Mahy through the woods toward the pond, it seemed that he was not in fact leading her anywhere, but rather wandering without a destination. He hummed and sang snatches of songs while he moved from one aimless activity to another.
He hurtled down a hill, yelling with his hands in the air, losing his balance and falling and rolling, leaping back up with a joyful "I'm okay! I'm okay." He strolled along slowly, hands clasped behind his back, gazing open-mouthed up at the canopy of leaves through which the pale golden sun drifted. He struggled to climb a tree but could not pull himself up beyond the first branch and hung there, swinging as he writhed around in the attempt to find a place to brace his hooves, then let go and trotted off to something else. He hopped over logs, or climbed over them if they were too big to jump.
He walked backwards in front of Mahy, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds. "Have you ever wondered what the clouds are thinking?" he asked. "I think it would be cool to be a cloud. Then I could see everything in the world."
But in the end, it turned out that he did know where he was going. Through the trees the glittering field of water could be seen. Then the forest ended and a short slope of sand and coarse grass reached to the edge of the pond. Dev's hooves sprayed sand into the air and then suddenly water as he thundered into the shallows. He stopped and turned around, the ripples surging around his ankles, and shouted happily, obliviously, "We're here!"
