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 Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 8:49 pm
 Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea.
Oh, she still wanted to go to Sunhedge, make no mistake there. Her passion and curiosity for the life the missionary had spoken of still burned within her chest, and it would take more than some sore muscles to turn her away from that. Besides, there was no point in going home now.
Still, she hadn't thought things through very well, and flying off half-cocked had definitely been a bad idea. She should have packed something, at least. A snack. Some clothes. A pillow. Something.
But, then, she didn't really own anything, anyway.
She was hungry. For another, it was daytime, and the sun was hot and bright and she was exhausted. She'd never really stopped to think that Sunhedge might be a few nights' flight away from her home, and now she was in the middle of a desert with no place to stop for sleep. All this time, seeing the mountains in the distance...she'd never realized how far away they were. And that there was a big expanse of sandy desert between here and there. There were no trees, no caves, no houses....only sand. Endless expanses of sand.
Sand and....a little red and orange bird?
Tabitha blinked, not sure if she'd seen that right. Curious, she folded her wings, diving down to be on-level with the bird, who lay crumpled in the sand. She landed a bit awkwardly, sinking down into the ground a bit, and hop-wobbled over. He almost looked familiar, somehow....
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Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:49 pm
 Roland had been passed out for quite a while by the time that the bat noticed him and landed in order to investigate. He was still pretty out of it, but he heard her land and let out a groan as a signal that he was still alive. Extremely worn-out and thirsty, but alive. He hoped the sound he had heard was someone who could help instead of another exhausted critter falling to the sand as he had done earlier or some sand monster come to eat him as a snack because he was obviously too small to be a decent meal. If the sand monster thought he was a good meal, he was a very unhealthy monster... or starving.
Sand monster or no sand monster, there was one thing he was sure of even while delirious. He had not been the least bit prepared for this trip. He wasn't laying there because it had been a hotter day than normal and everyone had left without him knowing, though that would make a lot of sense to him at the present time. No, he was in this condition because he hadn't been ready for the heat or the lengthy trip. And now he was going to be eaten... maybe. If he was, it was going to be by a pretty slow sand monster.
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:27 am
Tabitha crawled her way toward him, moving uncomfortably over the sand. Bats were not built to crawl over sand, that much was clearly evident to her right now. "Hello?" She asked, tentatively, and glanced around, uneasily. Now that she was here, she honestly didn't know what to do. She was every bit as lost as he was, and didn't know her way around a desert any more than she knew how to swim.
Still, her compassionate heart compelled her to do something, and so she gently nudged the little bird with a wingtip. "...Hey. Are you okay?"
She couldn't deny the feeling that the bird was extremely familiar. Hadn't she seen something like him, once, not so long ago? Back at the orphanage, hadn't there been a little orange bird...."Roland?" She asked, actually stumbling back with the shock of recognition. Oblivious of the fact that the half-conscious bird probably couldn't answer him, "How in the world did you get here?"
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2011 2:23 am
Roland groaned as he tried to push himself over onto his side and heard a 'Hello?'. The sand monster sounded a lot like a girl... a lot like a girl whose voice he'd heard before, but as he wasn't thinking properly he told himself that was silly because he'd never met a sand monster before. He felt a small nudge and then another question, though the first hadn't really been a question. '...Hey. Are you okay?'
Nope! Roland thought, But perfect for munching on... well, probably... Shouldn't say that, though.
He lay there on his side, forcing his eyes open, staring at the very blurry sand monster and then blinking to make it less blurry. When his vision finally cleared, he watched Tabitha realize that he was Roland and stumble backward, then asking how he'd gotten there. He stared at her for a moment before opening his beak to speak. His voice didn't come at first, his throat being kind of dry, but it did after a couple moments. When it did, he said, "You look like a bat..."
It wasn't until a few moments later that he recognized her. He would've looked and sounded much more surprised if he wasn't so tired, but his eyebrows did lift slightly and his eyes did widen as he said, "You look like Tabitha..." He'd completely forgotten her question by now and just stared at her, surprised and a bit confused. Why was Tabitha there? Was she actually there or was he seeing things? And if he was seeing things... why her? He barely knew her. He just remembered seeing her from time to time and hearing 'Oh, tree! Tabitha's coming.' every so often. She had never bothered him as much as she seemed to bother the others, but they weren't close or anything, so it still didn't make any sense.
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2011 9:57 pm
"Well of course I look like a bat," she said, staring at him uneasily. "Oh, and you just go on and on...you must be delirious."
How a little bat had come upon a ten-cent word like 'delirious' was a mystery. Clearly, someone had been reading the book and picking up terms along the way.
"You didn't bring anything to drink with you, did you?" She asked, ignoring the probable dumb idea of asking a dehydrated and half-conscious bird that sort of question. Tabitha rolled back onto her haunch, raising her wings up above her head like very awkward shade umbrellas for the two of them. It didn't work very well. What to do? The bird clearly was overheated and could probably use some water, but how was she going to help?
She looked around, frenziedly. How do animals find water in the desert? She searched for a hole, a plant, anything that might be able to help. Why hadn't she thought to pack a canteen? Oh dear, now she was going to die out in the desert with him!
"Great tree!" She said, quietly but fervently, "Help us...."
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 12:18 am
Roland tried his best to pay attention as she spoke. His thoughts got sidetracked, though, when he heard her say delirious. He didn't know that word. It sounded like gibberish to him. He wondered for a moment if she made it up, but he didn't think she did. Tabitha was a smart bat, so it made sense for her to know big words.
His thoughts weren't brought back on track until he heard her speak again, asking if he had brought anything to drink with him. He replied by saying, "Did you?" in a slightly hopeful tone. He was so thirsty. He watched as she tried to help by using her wings to shade them and then began to look around for something, though there wasn't much besides sand. When she asked the great tree for help, he imagined it uprooting itself and walking over to them to shade them from the hot sun. A small smile appeared on his face as he thought about it. Cool shade would feel nice.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:14 am
"Well, no," she admitted, in regards to the water. A lesson sorely learned now!
She thought back over everything she knew, and realized she didn't know much at all about deserts. She had never intended to be in one, after all. Not longer than a few hours at any rate.
But her optimism hardly wavered. She had complete faith that, somehow, the tree would provide. In fact....what was that?
There, half-buried in the sand, was a strange shape. Her brow furrowed, and she hopped-flapped forward, curious. What...was...that?
A water flask! The strap broken, probably dropped from the pack of some or another traveling beast, forgotten here in the sand. She picked it up, hooking the strap over a wing-claw, and was relieved to realize that it still had water in it.
"I knew it!" She cried, delightedly. She ran -- very awkwardly, nearly falling over -- in the sand, back to Roland. "Look what the Tree provided us!" she called, excitedly, trying to figure out how to work the plug on it to get it open. She could tell the water inside was warm, but it was better than nothing. "Here, open up," she said, her tone a little bossy as she tried to tip the water toward his beak.
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Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 5:24 pm
Roland was disappointed when he heard that she hadn't brought any water. It seemed they had both underestimated the difficulty of traveling in the desert. She seemed to be better off than he was, though. As he wondered why she wasn't as exhausted, the thought that she may be half sand monster came to mind. He knew it wasn't true, but it made him smile for a moment.
Then he heard her cry out in a tone that didn't seem to fit their situation, at least not until he pushed himself up into a sitting position and looked over to see her awkwardly running to him holding a flask. His eyes went wide for a moment in surprise. The next thing she said made him say, "The tree?" quietly. He had heard stories about the tree, everyone had, but he hadn't been a firm believer, really. He felt that if a creature lived then it was because they had done something to make it so, not because they prayed and the tree magically fixed things. This situation seemed like a miracle, to him, though.
Then again, he had given up and she hadn't, so maybe he was still correct? He wasn't sure and right then wasn't the time to worry about it. Watching as she opened the flask, he did as she said, opening his mouth and letting her pour the water. It was warm, but he was dehydrated so he didn't care. He was tempted to grab the flask and drink all of the water, but he knew that she needed some too, so he soon lifted a wing and pushed the flask back up so that it no longer poured. He swallowed the water and then said, "Thank you."
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:04 pm
"Well, of course the Tree provided," she said, a little distractedly. "The Tree provides all things."
She swished it around in the bottle when he was done, then contemplatively took a drink herself. There was just a bit left at the end -- with something floating in it, bits of rust maybe from the inside, or grains of sand that had slipped inside -- and she handed him the flask. It occurred to her, in a small blasphemous part of her mind, that someone may have dropped this here and could be very annoyed to discover it now empty.
Blessings of the tree or not, Tabitha didn't want to stick around longer than they needed to.
"How long have you been out here?" She asked, concernedly looking him over, then looking around to see if there was any sign of anything around them. All she could make out was sand, and some unappetizing weeds, and some cactus. This was ridiculous. She knew that animals lived here. But how? Where? "Good thing I came when I did, huh?" She said, then, perhaps a little over-eager. "Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't been laid on this path by arboreal providence!"
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Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 6:39 pm
Roland didn't argue with her about the Tree providing for them. He didn't have the strength to, for one, but he also didn't see a point in doing so. Tabitha was obviously set firmly in her beliefs and who was he to tell her they were wrong? Her 'Tree provided' canteen had probably saved his life.
Speaking of which, when she handed him the canteen he moved to put it on, only to find that the strap was broken. No wonder it was out here, he thought as he set it back down and used his talons and beak to tie it back together. Once he was done, he pulled the strap over his shoulder and stood up, saying, "I.. I think I left this morning, but... I'm not sure how long I was passed out." Surely he hadn't been out for an entire day.
When she went on to say that it was a good thing that she came when she did, Roland nodded, but then she continued, saying something about being laid on this path by arboreal providence. Roland looked at her with a confused expression, not sure what she meant. Those were either just two really big words or a name and since they weren't any two words he had heard, he thought it made more sense as a name and said, "Whoever that is."
He then took a few hops away from Tabitha, looking at the sand to see if his steps, or maybe her steps, were still visible in the sand. He had a feeling that he was hopping in the right direction to head back to Mossflower, but he wanted to check, just in case. It took him a moment, but he eventually found one of his foot prints and smiled before turning back to the bat and saying, "I'm heading back to Mossflower. You coming too?" He was tempted to ask if she thought the tree would help her the rest of the way across the desert, but he didn't, thinking it might cause her to keep going. He didn't want her to end up dying because he said something stupid. Plus, he kind of wanted the company.
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:22 am
"Arboreal providence!" She repeated, insistently. "The will of the Great Tree!"
She gave him a very stern look, then, eyes narrowed almost dangerously. "Back to Mossflower?" She demanded. She folded up her wings, setting her talons on her hips. "After you sacrificed all that to come out there? You had a great adventure laid out before you and now you just want to turn back and abandon it?" Her voice grew more and more shrill as she kept going, thoroughly working herself up into a tizzy over all this. "Isn't your mother out here, Roland? You can't go home until you've found her!"
All this lecturing was starting to make her realize how hungry and thirsty and dizzy she was. She flopped down, propping herself up on her wings, and tried to look like she wasn't exhausted.
"Besides. I have to get to Sunhedge."
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:38 am
Roland didn't often get angry, but he also wasn't often talked to how Tabitha was suddenly talking to him. At first he just stood there, his back turned to her, until she mentioned his mother. He never even knew her, but he desperately wanted to find her. He didn't remember telling Tabatha, but he had made a small fuss about it when he found out. She easily could've heard for herself and assumed that was why he had left. Either way, she was striking him with her words in the most vulnerable of places. Tears began to form in his eyes as he turned around to face her and said, "I never said I was giving up! I will find her!" He looked down at the sand, a few tears falling from his eyes. He wiped them away with his wing before saying, "I would have died... If I don't go back, I will die..." He lifted his gaze to look at her again then and said, "I can't find her if I'm dead."
He then looked out toward the desert and, a few moments later, said, "Besides, Mossflower isn't my 'home'." He knew she'd at least understand that. She was running away too, after all. He stared for a moment or two, just thinking. When he turned back to Tabatha he let out a small sigh and said, "Look, you can do whatever you want, but you look tired. Do you really think you can make it all the way to the mountain?" Looking over at it, it seemed so very far away. He really doubted that she could, but then again she seemed decent at flying. Maybe it would be easier for her. He tried not to care if anything happened to her. If she wanted to continue hoping the tree would toss her another canteen, then that was her choice. Hopefully it would.
He didn't wait for her reply, as it was a rhetorical question anyway, before saying, "Well, thanks for helping me. I guess... bye?" He hesitated for a moment, part of him still hoping she'd come with him even after what she'd said just so he would know she was safe, but he eventually turned fully around and began to hop away.
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Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2011 11:05 am
"Wait - wait," she struggled after him. "Don't be like that." She sighed. It was hard to get the high, nagging edge out of her voice, but she struggled with it. "I only mean that if you go back now you might never get up the courage to leave again."
She scratched at the dirt with one foot, looking around thoughtfully at the area. "Creatures live here. I know they do. There's just got to be a secret as to how they do it. As soon as we can find one, we can learn how, and then we can stay here for awhile. Doesn't that make more sense?"
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