another mind, another soul, another body to grow old. it's not complicated.
Although the question is rhetorical, Otem nods her head slowly. She'd never had the chance to meet her uncle, but she'd heard lots about him. How he was large, and blue, and kind, and had a magical harp that followed him around. He was the reason her mother had sought a bronze dragon - because that was what Hototo always wanted. Or at least that was what she had been told.
"Aurelia!" Otem murmured instantly. "You-" Memories fogged in front of the girl's eyes. She had a terrible memory, but the name ... she knew it. She'd been told it. But .. but how did the blonde mare fit in? Stumbling over the memories, Otem began, "Kahlua was my grandmother ... I remember ... there was a snake, wasn't there?" Otem's brows narrowed uncertainly, seeing only a snake in her mind associated with her grandmother, but nothing else. "And ... my father is Volterra. You and he ... he knew you, didn't he?"
Otem's twin had always been much more studious than she, especially when it came to retaining information, but Otem had tried to listen and to remember. But after everything that had happened her life in Helovia, and its history, seemed so distant as to be unreachable.
But there was something there, wasn't there?
As Aurelia pointed out that leaving would make questioning the thing impossible, Otem staunchly wanted to disagree. Questioning the thing to get information was a worthwhile thing if one didn't have anything to lose. Although nothing had happened to the girl thus far when she'd come back here, that was no guarantee that nothing would ever happen to her. Nibbling on her lip, she dutifully nodded, but looked around uncertainly.
"I think ... I think whatever comes is part of the sickness." Otem began, trying to fill the silence. "I think it eats powers for nourishment, and takes things away for fun. I've seen items get broken for no reason, and powers corrupted. Sometimes it's just little things - I have a friend who farts everytime he uses his magic now - but I think sometimes it's more serious. Like it doesn't work at all, or it hurts you instead." Otem hadn't seen all of this first-hand, but she could extrapolate from the stories that she had heard. "I think that's part of why Kisamoa wants us to help heal the land ... some of it has been taken over by darkness, but other parts of it are just sick. Like this part, maybe."
The girl had no way to know whether or not this was true, but it was her current working theory. And while they were waiting to probably have their magic taken away by the invisible portal-thing, they might as well at least discuss the possibility.
The Portal
