This is why we can't have nice things.

there are no markings on her country roads no signs that show the way back home Otem watched impassively as Sheba moved deeper into the water. Although the girl couldn't see what it was the pearly mare was trying to wash off (or cleanse), the strained look on her features seemed to suggest that she had been about as successful as Otem had. The girl was filled with a momentarily flare of confidence and success; it would have been awfully embarrassing to say that the water did nothing, only to be shown that she was wrong. And Otem hated being wrong. The sunlight and soil dappled child began to formulate an answer to Sheba's question until the mare noted that they hadn't been formally introduced. Unlike her mother, Otem had no problem offering up her name. What she did have a problem with, was how she had been referred to. Otem didn't know french, but she was no idiot and was pretty sure that the etymology of infant, and mon enfant were probably the same. Otem couldn't wait to grow up. "I am Otem. And that's Pandora-" Otem nodded her ram-horned skull towards where her owl was perched on the shoreline.  "As for this place ... I've seen plants that let you breathe underwater..trees that glow, and moss that screams if you step on it. And those things of course-" Otem nosed out towards the ocean where a handful of Velella floated above the waves. "I hear if you touch them, they get HUGE." Otem had never tried this herself (at least not without a doctor present - she remembered how badly things went wrong last time), but she was still happy to pass along the information.

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