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
To be fair, there really wasn't any way to actually tell what had been a hallucination and what had not. Looking at Tilney now it did seem sort of absurd that he would have been on fire, with bat wings and a mouth full of sharks teeth. Obviously that wasn't real. But at the time she'd been so certain that her life was about to end. She could smell his horrible breath and see the saliva glistening off of his fangs...So even though she knew that there was a pretty good chance that she hadn't actually been able to breathe underwater, she was slightly put off by Tilney's lack of credence in her words.
"Oh...yeah ... my Father wanted her to move when she was pregnant with us...But I think she always preferred the Edge and the Moon Goddess to the Throat and the Sun God." Although Otem was disappointed that Tilney didn't actually know her mother and so had no interesting first-hand anecdotes of the Mountain, it did fill her with a warm sense of pride to here him so readily declare that he knew of her, as if she was someone important. Which in Otem's mind, she was.
Now, Otem wasn't the quickest to make deductive leaps like Isopia had been, and she didn't possess her twin's ability to see patterns. This, combined with the fact that she'd recently been knocked unconscious seemed to justify why it took the girl so long to realize what should have been obvious: "Your daughter? Does she have curly hair? And ... an aunt called Aelf...aelf-e-wine?" The name had been so foreign (and Otem's mind had been on other things when Maude spoke it), that she could barely remember how it sounded. Her burgundy and gold gaze stared up at Tilney, face twisted in a confused but hopeful smile as if willing him to fill in the missing sounds and syllables. Otem thought of Maude and their meeting on the cliffs, crying about their lost parents and then Maude singing to Otem a song she had written for the Gods back in Helovia.
To the throat and the Sun God...
He knew only of a few from the Throat, and she didn't look like she could be the young of the likes of Cera. Volterra perhaps, though Tilney had met a few of his countless ilk in the past and they all bore the mark of baldness upon their face - not an oak leaf. Then again, Isopia was one marked with snarling jaws and they were not apparent on this earthly doe either. For now he would assume it was a gentleman he didn't know nor had heard of.
"The Throat is not a safe place for the young. Sand colic... it's not ideal" the physician warned, forgetting momentarily that his warning's were meaningless now that there was no Dragon's Throat left to return to. It was a place he had intended to make his home eventually despite the sand and lack of forest and drinkable water, for it was there that father sun truly watched over his most faithful. No longer.
What otem spoke next drew the gent's mind from the air and directly upon her. She had seen Maude? spoken to her even! "Yes!" the stag cried, flipping his front feet over the sand with a hindered excitement, the kind tainted with overwhelming worry but also a small amount of relief. "Yes, yes...Yes" Why couldn't he stop saying yes? "Yes! That is Maude, that's my Maude! Where did you see her? is she unhurt?".
Without a moment to spare the stallion pressed on past the filly in order to begin the trek to find his daughter, only stopping to listen to the answers to his questions when he was a great number of yards past. "Are you coming with?" He then proceeded to ask, brows knitting with worry for the oak-stamped girl should she be left to face more hallucinogenic cacti or worse on her lonesome.
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
Sand colic? What was that? Otem made a mental note that if she ever decided to reside in a place that resembled the Throat, she would have to ask Tilney about it. Now however it didn't seem entirely prudent given that these lands seemed so vastly different from any in Helovia (other than the Riptide Isles of course).
Before she could do anything else, Tilney was suddenly prancing like a child upon the sands. Startled by his sudden reaction (he had been so calm before that Otem had mentally likened him to some sort of wizened old tree), that his sudden movement caused her narrow frame to instinctively move backwards. As she did so, a not-so small puff of air exited her backside. That is, Otem tooted. The sound was wet and disgraceful and embarrassing. Otem immediately felt her cheeks begin to colour, and in an effort to try and hide the sound (and the smell), she coughed loudly and spread her wings. She tried to nonchalantly fan the foul air backwards, while acting as though she was merely joining in with Tilney's excitement.
"We were on the cliffs..." Otem began, thinking of Ultima but of course not knowing what it was called. She trotted towards Tilney, having to take multiple steps in order to keep up with his. "I don't know what it was called, but it's not too far from here. And yeah, she's okay. Just sad I think. She didn't know where you were, or her mom. She didn't even know if she was alive or not."
All too soon Tilney found himself envious not just of Otem's innocence and youth but also the great pennons upon her back that could provide her with the wingbeats to take her somewhere else. Everywhere he had to toil and travel upon split, cracked hooves. Forever he would wish and dream to feel what it was like to fly.
It was as he turned his crown toward the sun and bounded down the beach that he heard a familiar, youthful toot from his new travelling companion trailing behind him. Rather than disgust him or cause him to giggle like a colt, Tilney would remain as unresponsive to it as he could - surely the little doe was embarrassed (unless, of course, she was the type to let it rip and be proud). He could remember when Maude was a newborn and how she'd pop around when she was excited.
And, although their hoofbeats took them thundering for where Maude had last been seen, Tilney refused to think about her. The pain was already far too much to bare. He had to find her.
Riptide Isles
