the Rift

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otem
You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold
Strangely, the pain of losing her mother had already begun to fade. Instead of feeling vengeful and full of fury, Otem only felt empty and numb. What was more, the girl found she liked the feeling. After all, feeling nothing was better than carrying the weight of her grief around.

And so, as she and Pandora set off to learn what they could about the various flora and fauna of their new home, something like a small smile parted the autumn-child's lips as the pair flew towards the Riptide Isles. 



"I know we shouldn't just eat things. But how else will we know?" Otem muttered more or less rhetorically as she and Pandora stared down at a rather pale looking succulent. "The ones like this back home could help heal. I think they were called AAL-OH." Otem looked to her companion for confirmation, but the owl only shrugged. The pair weren't aware that what they were looking at was actually Malspira, nor had they any idea about its effects. 

Otem looked around, perhaps expecting to see her twin or someone else that she was related to. She squinted her gold and burgundy eyes against the hazy atmosphere that this place always seemed to have. It was near impossible to tell if there was someone actually in the distance, or if it was just a rock or tree or something else casting a shadow. Twitching her tail uncertainly, Otem looked back towards the plant.

She could eat it and find out what it did ... or she could die. 

Hmmmm.




 
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THROUGH SHADOW TO THE EDGE OF NIGHT
UNTIL THE STARS ARE ALL ALIGHT








The physician did not expect to find a potential patient here of all places (that is, should she go ahead and consume the bright, unknown succulent). When it came to the bare bones of his predicament though he found himself noting that nothing was what he had expected in the slightest, and if Kisamoa was Kaos than surely anything in this unchartered realm would be far from the ordinary. For one so wise and whithered as he, the truest challenge of finding himself in such alien territory was simply knowing too little and sensing far too much. It seemed no path was darker than when his eyes were held shut, and it was in times like these that Tilney turned his face toward the sun and hoped, no-- prayed that the Father still watched him from somewhere. Anywhere.

Maude, though - She was out there. Alone and quivering for the first time without her father or mother, nor her aunt and uncle, so it was the want and wish for information that prompted the patriarch from the vines of a colourful jungle and into prximity with the doe of aumun and gold.

If he had known this was the daughter of The Mountain that Knows perhaps once he would have bowed, but no longer. Instead the flaxen man of green eyes and a new-found thorny stare watched her with intrigue as she spoke to the burnt owl who followed her. Peatree was still fast asleep on the rungs of his antlers, basking in the warmth Tilney's lantern provided the hanging fruit bat.
"Would you walk blindfolded across a deep ravine?" the amber one spoke to the girl, approaching with soft and calculated steps. "I can assure you that it would be far safer than taking a bite of that."



rhiaan | neverrmind | Guesswho

MEVERRNINDGUESSWHO +
otem
You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold
Otem, while curious in nature, was not particularly observant of her entire surroundings. She found that when she became focused the world around her seemed to dim and fade away, leaving her mind the mental resources it needed to focus on whatever it was which had caught her interest. In this case, it was the decision about whether or not to eat the succulent; thus, Tilney's arrival didn't so much as receive a twitch of her ear. That is, until he spoke.

His question caught her off guard, and the young autumn-dappled child felt her body tense all over as she spun around to face the antlered man who had seemingly appeared behind her. "Of course not-" She began to answer, failing to make the connection that the first part of his statement was a warning rather than an actual question. As he concluded, indicating that doing so would be just as foolish as the act she was currently considering, Otem could feel herself wanting to shrink away in embarrassment. But while her inward self might have been introverted and self-conscious, the face she presented to the world was bold and confident. So instead of shirking away from his words, Otem merely nodded. "Oh I know." She began with a smile. "I was just thinking about how the first people here would have found out about it-" Otem paused briefly. All she knew about this plant was that eating it likely did something bad, if this antlered-man's metaphor was apt, so she tried to be as vague as possible as she continued to try and imply that she knew more than she actually did. "-its nasty effects. Someone would have to have tried it, right?"

Otem swished her tail, relentlessly trying to appear poised and knowledgable. And so, to try to change the conversation to something she did know about, she pointedly fixed her gaze next to the succulent. "I was trying to see if I could do this-" A small pale shoot began to form next to the mature plant. It poked through the sandy ground, growing a few more pods as it rose a few inches off the ground. It was a rather poor proximity of the actual Malspira plant, but given that she knew nothing about it at all, it was the best that she could do.

Smiling and taking a breath, she looked towards Tilney to see if her ploy was working.
 
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I WAS TOTALLY GOING TO SAY YOU SHOULD BE IN THIS THREAD :D :D


THROUGH SHADOW TO THE EDGE OF NIGHT
UNTIL THE STARS ARE ALL ALIGHT









Without another word of gesture the small bat had awoken, flicking his radiant eyes open with exaggerated blinks as he allowed his wings to unwrap from his gangly torso. With wide upside-down eyes the creature observed the pair before them, their hides withered and burned like the matutine hours of winter. Quite a pair the two made, both complimenting each other in appearance though, still, in Peatree's vastly inexperienced opinion  Otem was not a great beauty like Arah had been but rather a plain jane. Tilney had little in the way of opinion about the young one's beauty or lack-there-of, nor anyone's for that matter - his mind was set and wired to one task and only one; Finding Maude.

The was Otem tensed and flicked herself across her fetlocks was something that caused his to feel a short pang of guilt, one that rang through his chest and caused him to wonder why he had snuck up on a child. It was short lived, however, and soon he was continuing tensed steps of his own to close the gap between himself, the girl, and the plant in question.
It seemed he was vastly underestimating what hunger would do to a young, growing mind such as hers. Perhaps in some cases malnutrition would stunt growth, though this filly seemed as though height was not something she lacked. If she truly wished to test the forbidden fruit he would be there to watch, observe and also provide what he hoped would be an antidote through his power of healing. Mad times called for mad measures, and while resorting to a cactus russian roulette was not on Tilney's list of ideas for survival, it was also not something he could rule out entirely.

As she babbled and tremored over her words tilney allowed his gaze to soften, nodding in agreement over her words. She spoke the truth - everything had to be tested at some stage, how else was one to determine food from toxin or poison from antidote?
"It would be unwise to do so on your own" Tilney spoke scoldingly, allowing his green gaze to cross down to meet her own with a knowing look. "But right you are. It is just one more task that befalls us all".

"If you insist on trying it and it doesn't go as planned," He paused, turning his lantern-lit crown in the girl's direction.  "I may know an antidote". It wasn't an antidote, not exactly.




rhiaan | neverrmind | Guesswho
- ps. let me know if u would be okay with tilney using his mind magic in this thread! also if she wants to poison herself go ahead LMFAO tilney can heal her with his kissy healy magics!

MEVERRNINDGUESSWHO +
otem
You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold

It would be unwise to do so on your own

Otem swallowed. Apparently she hadn't fooled the golden stag with her words and her demeanour. Now, rather than just feeling foolish and young, she felt even more embarrassed than she had previously. She had never been scolded before, not really. Isopia was not one to scold, and her Father? Well, Volterra might be a dangerous warrior, but he was mostly a teddybear when it came to his interactions with her and the rest of his daughters. Despite being annoyed or perhaps mentally stiffening against Tilney's unprovoked paternal council, Otem instead felt comforted by it. Perhaps that was why she was so willing to accept his oversight. She did want to try the plant, and given that the lantern-man hadn't even bothered to mention the magic she worked on the second succulent, she was all the more eager to please and to try and demonstrate her value.

"Alright." Otem answered, her ram-horned head held high to meet Tilney's jade gaze. Confidentally (though she felt anything but), the filly dropped her head to the plant. Her lips opened and without a moment's hesitation, she snapped the one solitary bloom the plant had to offer between her teeth and chewed.

"It's sweet!" She gasped with awe and childish glee. And, because her young mind equated sweet and delicious things with edible things, she lowered her head and proceeded to take the entire plant - roots and all - into her mouth, without waiting for Tilney's approval. As she chewed, she found that the roots and the rest of the plant were not nearly as sweet as the blossom had been. Suddenly the world around her began to spin. Colours swirled and sounds seemed to dance before her eyes as if they were real tangible things. "Oh, I.." She began, her wings splaying from her sides to help her balance on the beach that was suddenly moving far too quickly. Nervously and with panic beginning to fill her gold and burgundy gaze, she looked to Tilney and gasped at what she saw. His lantern had exploded with firelight - and the fire was combining with his mane! The tree on his shoulder was now real, and the bark was going to catch fire!

"Oh.." Otem moaned, though inside her skull the word came out as a scream. "You're ... the fire ... " Then, more energetically she cried, "The water! Get in the water!" Turning around much too fast for her now drug-addled body to manage, Otem promptly fell face-first into the waves. Luckily the succulent allowed her unconscious body to continue to breathe, despite the waves lapping over her neck and chest.
 
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SIR TILBERT MAY DO AS HE WISHES. YAYYYYYY


THROUGH SHADOW TO THE EDGE OF NIGHT
UNTIL THE STARS ARE ALL ALIGHT









Another step forward and Tilney was keenly - almost impatiently - observing the young woman as she buzzed around the ominous plant. The archaic and scholarly mind within his withered skull waited and wished for the first glimpse of answers and knowledge since his entry to this gods-forsaken place, and all thought of the cost was easily slipping. Instead he hungrily watched with wide and observant eyes as she confidently agreed to take it's test and proceeded to crowd her teeth around the fruit.

"It's sweet!" she had chanted, words that remained music to his ears even as he turned and looked for an identical plant to bite into himself, now confident that she had picked out a rarity. Finally, something that didn't glow and ooze or smell foul, and it was edible!
Just as his emerald eyes adjusted upon another succulent only a few paces from where he presently stood, her first murmur of doubt and questioning filled the air.

Slowly the stallion craned his head fearfully in her direction, primarily thinking 'father, what have I done' until she started to screech - that was when all thought escaped his mind and he even began to believe her, twisting his gaze across each shoulder half expecting to find it blanketed in flame.

Soon the gangly eruption of shrieks and tripping legs had made it into the waves, begging him to leap in and extinguish the 'fire' that lapped as his mane. There was no name he could cry out to her for reason as he had no inkling toward what her name might be, though as she swayed dizzily into the surf it was then that the stag found his way through the shock and sprung into action.

The autumnal leaf that swept in the tide was of a similar age to Maude, and as the waves lapped at her neck he was almost taken aback at the similarities in their gangly, growing structure. Raking his antlers toward her spine the stag plotted to shove the filly's head, neck and shoulders out of the tide's reach, feeling Peatree soar away from the water without so much as a squeak.

This antidote he had spoken of was a promise he had given without much thought into how he would execute it, and honestly Tilney didn't even know if his magic still worked in this realm. Desperate, he would try and try again even if it didn't.
Stepping over her tangle of tail hair and hooves, Tilney craned down to meet her face wit his hot and heavy nostrils, blowing her damp forelock off of her face as he pressed his velveteen lips to the whorl in the center of her skull, wishing and hoping that the power he possessed would run forth through the bond he had created once more. The kiss had marked her, and soon to follow was the wave of magic, energy and light searching for any signs of harm within her quaint body to correct.



rhiaan | neverrmind | Guesswho
!!!!

MEVERRNINDGUESSWHO +
otem
You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold

In her dreams, Otem was standing among swirling galaxies and shooting stars with her mother. Isopia was explaining how all life in the world could be boiled down to small atoms - atoms which Isopia proceeded to show her daughter by dispersing a cluster of planets and stars. Otem watched all of this with rapt attention, nodding along with her mother's academic cadence as if this was all second nature. Of course atoms were the building blocks of the universe, how could it be any other way? Isopia smiled down at her daughter and then abruptly looked up as a waterfall of light flooded through the universal darkness within which they stood.

"Think, Otem." Isopia warned. "Learn and be clever." Before the girl could argue, the light turned into a swell of water, which threatened to drown her. Otem gasped and her eyes flashed over but she saw nothing but blue. Her lungs breathed in water, but miraculously they seemed suddenly able to filter out the oxygen that she needed to breathe. The girl felt a hardness prong against her spine and suddenly she was moving. Her large wings, now waterlogged and useless flopped against the sands. As air - real air - pressed against her face, she saw that it was the horned man from the beach who had moved her and was now standing over her. His face was fully engulfed in flame and large batwings had sprouted from his spine. "No please.." Otem begged, her eyes squishing shut as Tilney's mouth lowered towards her suddenly full of shark-like teeth. Otem summoned up the image of her mother among all those stars, holding onto it before she was torn apart by this flaming monst-

A cooling ebb suddenly flowed through the girl, starting from the oak-leaf marking on her forhead and surging throughout the rest of her body. Carefully Otem opened one eye, wondering why she hadn't been eviscerated by Tilney's needle-like teeth, only to find him simply standing above her, looking just as he had before. "Where did the fire go? And your teeth? And Isopia-" Otem craned her head around suddenly in the wet sand, hoping naively that her mother would be standing there. Or maybe it was Otem who had died? Is that why she saw her Mother and could breathe under water and why Tilney looked normal now?

"Am I dead?"
 
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THROUGH SHADOW TO THE EDGE OF NIGHT
UNTIL THE STARS ARE ALL ALIGHT









Confidence was far from the stallion as his green eyes drowned in the sight of a drenched filly, her writhes ceasing upon the sand as he steeeled his lips and paced backwards to survey the catastrophe before him. Desperation had begun to sink it's claws into his heart, and so with a great shake of his water-tipped mane he allowed his thoughts forth and attempted to listen and watch the girl's thoughts - if there were any to find. Met only with confusion and a vision of the Mountain, Tilney lasted only a moment or two before he gritted his teeth and withdrew the power of his mind from that of Otem's.

Still he watched, waited, almost breathlessly waiting for any kind of normal response from the young one. A coherrant word would do, just anything, but luckily he got much more that he had hoped.
Questions of jaws and flame and even Isopia flooded his atmosphere, and he was more than thankful for it. It seemed this antidote had actually reversed, no, cleared the effects of the toxin.

A great nicker of relief escaped his lips as he once again shook his drenched mane, allowing his knees and hsoulders to sink to the sand beside the recovering child. "Do not do that ever again!" He breathed, the slightest of laughs escaping his lips as he flopped backwards with the dizziness of relief. "Are you alright?" he then managed to murmur though lips still quivering. The stallion slunk backwards to rest upon his own spine, pressing his face flush to the sticky sand beneath.
Seconds passed and he continued to soak in the sheer relief that the daughter of trees back home was sound, and perhaps an entire minute passed before he even attempted to move or speak.

"Are you.... Helovian?"
he couldn't help but ask, and it felt so incredibly strange to do so. Ask her if she was from Helovia? He'd never had to do that before. "You knew the Mountain that Knows?"




rhiaan | neverrmind | Guesswho
!!!! on a roll wowie

MEVERRNINDGUESSWHO +
otem
You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold

Tilney's words sounded like he might be scolding her again, but the laugh that left his lips told a different story. Otem grinned dizzily upwards, trying to track Tilney's movements (even though he likely wasn't moving at all). "I think...I think I could breathe under water!" Otem concluded, feeling both satisfied and proud that she had escaped death in the pursuit of science. The would-be botanist struggled to stand, but despite Tilney's healing smooch, moving her limbs still felt like a lot of work.

"Of course!" Otem replied instantly, her euphoria causing her words to sparkle on her tongue. But at the mention of her mother Otem's smile fell away, and instead the muscles of her cheeks took over, trying to hold the curve of her lips in place to hide her sadness.  "Yes." She answered, her voice softer now and distant. Swallowing, Otem nodded her ram-horned head and cleared her throat slightly. "She (don't say is) was my mother."

Not feeling quite as giddy now, Otem forced herself to stand. It didn't seem right to lay and laugh at her near death experience now that she was talking about her mother. Apparently she had said her name out loud. It took a second for the girl's thoughts to click into place, but suddenly she turned her attention back to the horned gentleman who had saved her life. She should thank him for his service, of course, but there was something more pressing on her tongue now; a question that seemed more important.  "Did you know her?" Many knew Isopia by her title...but if Tilney recognized the name Isopia then perhaps he had known her. 

"I am Otem. And this is Pandora." Otem nosed towards the owlet who had taken up residence on her wither once again.
 
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THROUGH SHADOW TO THE EDGE OF NIGHT
UNTIL THE STARS ARE ALL ALIGHT









Squinting through one eye, Tilney noted her comment about breathing underwater with a good measure of scrutiny though it came with a quirky brow and twisted chops. How she came to that conclusion from eating a hallucinogenic cacti was far beyond him, though he could see how perhaps she may have meant it as a figure of speech.
"Hm, I don't know about that" He managed to mumble in response, lurching forward once more to lean upon his shoulder and elbow now stuck in the sand.

What the little one spoke next came as a surprise, though he wasn't totally shocked. Perhaps deep down he had an inkling that she was familiar and reminded him of the others from home, though honestly, he had no clue that the Mountain had any children. And, while Isopia's monolithic appearance clearly influenced that of her daughter, it was certainly not as obvious as to who this filly's father was. Whoever he was, Tilney had little doubt that he would know the man also.

Questioned about his own experience of Isopia, Tilney simply blinked in contemplation. It occurred to him that he did not know her, not at all. A herd-sister she had been for a time, though nothing more. Still he could recall how beloved Ultima preached of the Mountain's wisdom and how the home she built among the waterfalls was so superior to the one he had made for her - perhaps it still stung even today, the parting words of a child by choice who saw more life and truth in a mountain than in a moon.
"I did not" Tilney spoke bluntly, truthfully. "I knew of her. Isopia was, for a time, a prophet of our mother moon in a herd where I governed the healing ranks for many years."

Tilney almost didn't notice the youngin stand as slip away from the sand, and it was only when she introduced herself and the owlet accompanying her that he turned his attention toward her oak-stamped face. Otem and Pandora - names that reminded him of home.
"I am Tilney of the Wor-" He paused, lowering his saddened gaze "Formerly of the World's Edge". Without another moment the stag had risen from the sand himself and shook the salt from his coat.  "It's a relief to meet someone from home. I hope my daughter has met with other Helovians... wherever she is."



rhiaan | neverrmind | Guesswho
!!!!

MEVERRNINDGUESSWHO +
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