While facing the red-eyed monster and the blue-gray Goliath had been scary, it had filled Elijah with a newfound confidence. He no longer hid from his sister, though he avoided her as best he could, and he made a conscious effort to try and be more outgoing. This pleased his mother, and sadness lingered in her every movement still. So while he could not heal her as she had healed so many others, he would do whatever it took to make that unseen wound close. He was too young and too touched to understand the depth of what had occurred with those two strangers. It was, perhaps, better this way.

Large puppy paws trotted along the scuffed floors of the Hotel, carrying him aimlessly through sunlit halls. He had begun looking for his mother, but this had become a null point when the talking bird told him she was out. Elijah found the talking bird funny and often tried to play with him—the bird did not like this, and always hid. So now he was without purpose, and once again, making his way towards those steps that led to the outside world. In the weeks since his first adventure down them, he had become capable of descending in a series of hops without falling midway. Elvira had been able to do this sooner, and often chided him for such a delay.

Blue eyes, as wide and pale as the desert sky, sought out the doorway. His feet carried him through it and into the warmth of the spring sun. With a silent, wide-mouthed grin, the boy leapt into the emerald field and into his own world once more.

The boy had transformed almost as suddenly as he had entered the field. In his place stood a gray stallion, strong and powerful and never hurt by a mean sister. He was the master-king of this emerald world, and the animals below him—the butterflies and bugs and mice—they were his subjects. No one here was mean to him, no one cruel in the way that his sister could be. It was simply Lord Elijah, the boy who could become a stallion, that ruled.

So when a brown face, mixed with dark accents and a red breast, appeared from within the grass, the boy-king was thrilled. He remembered Robin, as he did with her family, because they were people who cared for him and who returned. Unlike so many others, whose names and faces were forgotten, these people were special. The children, especially, because they were his size and his age. The horse reared up onto his hind legs, made a barking-neighing sound, and galloped through the grass towards the girl.

When he neared, he was surprised to find her digging furiously in the earth. Elijah slowed to a halt and tilted his head dramatically to the side, eyes wide. What was she doing? Wordlessly he stared, tail wiggling in his own silent greeting.