Totoka River Seidsongen, lint den lokkar hug or ham.

Another thought occurred to her on the heels of wishing this stranger knew Ptero. Could she move her lips as if she was speaking, even if no sound came out? She prepared to ask when the young woman suddenly began mimicking some of the signing. Towhee even saw crude version of a few words: “talk” and “hear,” ironically.

-“Can you speak silently?”- Towhee pressed, explaining, -“I’m very good at reading lips. It doesn’t matter one bit if you make any sound, not to me.”-

Something moved at the corner of her eye. Towhee turned distractedly in the direction of the open ocean beyond the delta. There was nothing there but endless blue gray waters beyond the whitecaps rolling nearer to shore. She squinted, prepared to turn back to face her new acquaintance, when something—a great silver fish, by the look of it—abruptly burst out of the water, arcing before disappearing back into the deeps with a soundless splash.