The Sentinels our battles they may find us, no choice may ours to be

@Casmir

the babe awoke at twilight, and moved lazily toward the Otherworld. she had yet to truly go to that place, to breach the doors that led in and out, but she sometimes stood at the edge of it for a few moments. nothing had ever held her in thrall that kept her there, and the cold was enough to make her step away after a few short moments. so, why did she return each time?

day in and day out, her mother or father would take their turns in removing themselves from their cincture and would be gone for a time longer than was yet comprehensible to the babe. sometimes they would return with items that the Otherworld had conceived, and sometimes they returned with simply themselves, and even with the words deirdre and emaleth now listened to and understood deirdre could not interpret why it was they left, or what it was that made the Otherworld irresistible to them! in the trinkets they brought, deirdre felt she could see, felt that she, too, might want to be part of that world... but when the Otherworld breathed upon her, it was cold, terribly cold, and deirdre reconsidered her stance. the cold was unbearable to the cub... so what she was left to do was understand what made it to compelling to The Giver and The Source that made them leave time and time again.

one of the two stirred in hearing the pitter-patter of her movements, ready to bring her to them if she moved out of the boundary they had set. never had she done such a thing, nor had she been compelled to; deirdre only looked for all of a minute, hardly enough time to see anything out there that would make her wish to depart (having never been awake, or else having been distracted, when her parents returned from their sojourn to the Otherworld). but this evening, deirdre stared at a potpourri of colors, a refraction of the suns rays creating such colors that melted into one another, past, through, and around the fleece clouds!

she could not speak, so beautiful it was, and that beauty touched her heart, her soul. deirdre's captivation only broke when she thought, my sister must see this!, so she scampered toward emaleth giddily, wanting her to see what the Otherworld had given...

but, the gift from her brother caught in her blurred peripheral, and deirdre's young brain took this to be a sudden priority—why, what she had been wanting to do moments ago was forgotten!—so that her course redirected to it. deirdre moved toward it at a fast clip, and threw herself at it! the result was quite a mess, deirdre was caught in a tangle that surely looked uncomfortable but felt alright to her. the little witch began to lick at the velveteen texture of a tine, before her teeth scraped against it.

nightfall presented itself in an unassuming manner, but deirdre was not yet tired. she slipped from the antlers grip and slid onto her belly, nostrils wrinkling. her family snoozed (though she was aware that her parents would soon switch shifts), and deirdre watched them for a moment, jaw to the earth, before readjusting and turning her head to watch the Otherworld, eager for the moment one came, though not longing for the instant the other left. true, they always came back! but why must they go at all? this, she still did not understand.