in my thoughts i have seen rings of smoke through the trees, & the voices of those who stand looking.
Otem's eyes continue to grow wide as the mare confirms the suspicion she'd only just voiced. Morrigan wasn't the first native Riftian that the young girl had met, but even so, she suddenly seemed like a rare and wonderous thing. She appeared so normal (more or less) and yet now Otem knew that she wasn't. She'd been born here! Cradled and raised by the rift! Morrigan's warnings go relatively unnoticed. As Otem had already said, she'd encountered the Rift at its worst (at least what she thought was its worst) and had survived. Her short-life allowed her to therefore conclude that she could handle herself in this place. And, because of the few gifts the Rift had given her, she also thought that it sort of liked her.
How foolish.
As the question of time is raised, Otem's expression dulls from bright curiosity to a dull confusion. How long had she been here? Not long enough for the wound she sustained on her second night to heal, and yet already so much had happened. How was that possible? Blinking, the filly tried to enumerate the number of times she'd fallen asleep, or the number of sunrises she had seen. Although she could pick out specific instances, they all seemed to vanish in her mind, making it difficult to get a good grasp on just how long ago it had been that the portal had pulled them through.
Her heart still ached for her lost mother..but was that any indication of time? How long did it take for a child's heart to stop yearning for a lost parent?
"A bit.." Otem offered hesitantly, a genuine look of apologetic unknowing spreading across her dirt-coloured features. "This season, though. It was like this when we got here. Are the seasons even the same here? Frostfall, Orangemoon, Tallsun, and Birdsong? This seems like Orangemoon to me..even though it wasn't orangemoon when we left Helovia.." Would it blow the little filly's mind to know that the Rift only had three seasons instead of four? Would Morrigan scoff at her inability to articulate how long they'd been living here, or would she agree that time was a bit slippery, especially in the Rift?
Siren's Summit
