Chimney

Osprey seemed to like her contribution to the story, for which Tytonidae was grateful. It seemed so hard to please adults most of the time, so seeing her aunt actually incorporate her little bit of imagination into the story made the girl rather proud of herself. Not in an egotistical way, but more of a, "Look at me; I actually did something!" sort of way. Tytonidae was far from being too proud, considering she was much more meek than her other siblings (sans Pura, who had always been the odd man out—quite literally, considering he was the only male their age at the plateau).

The giant—the one in the story—asked Hawkeye how she could possibly help, and Ty immediately tried to predict the next part of the story. Would her mother use her super-vision to bring down the sun? Maybe, by being a little bit deaf, she could actually hear things that others could not. Tytonidae tried to imagine how that would help bring the sun down to the giant, but she couldn't quite figure out how. Instead, she waited for Osprey to continue speaking, eager to hear the next part of the story.

It sounded as though Hawkeye was going to wing it (at least in this tale), and Tytonidae could certainly see her mother doing that. Perhaps the only part that bothered Ty a little bit was the bit about Hawkeye not breaking promises. From what she understood, becoming mates with somebody was a promise to stay with them forever. Having not known the nitty gritty of her parents' separation, it didn't make sense that they had not stayed together. If Hawkeye really did keep promises... perhaps her father had not. It filled her head with all kinds of questions, but she allowed Aunt Osprey to continue talking.

When the giant was asked about why he wanted to bring the sun down from the sky, he answered by saying that he wished to make a mini-sun just for himself. To Tytonidae, this seemed awfully selfish, considering he would be stealing away the sun from everybody else for awhile just so he could have a mini version all to himself. That was hardly fair to the rest of the world, and Ty shivered at the thought of going without the sun for more than a night.

Whatever Hawkeye's thoughts were, the witness to the tale did not know them. Pretty soon, the pair—the giant and Ty's mother—were bounding toward some giant body of water. Tytonidae figured that this would be the ocean, and that they would somehow use that to bring the sun down... but she still wished that the sun did not have to be stolen away from everybody else.

But instead, Hawkeye—or rather, Osprey—began to explain that the sun simply took naps each evening way out on an island. Ty cocked her head at this information, only because it was a concept she had not heard of before. She knew the sun and moon switched places at dusk (and once more at dawn), but she had never thought that they got any rest. Did that mean that the moon slept in the evening, along with the stars? She could only assume that they did.

Tytonidae giggled at the mental image of her mother riding atop a giant's head, but she quickly quieted to allow Osprey to continue the story. The duo was heading (at an apparently mind-numbing speed) toward the island where the sun was about to take a nap. Her aunt then introduced a new, magical sounding place: the Land at the Horizon. Ty's face was full of wonder, picturing a place where the sun and moon would shake hands on their way to "work" each morning and again when they returned.

Another question was posed, this time about what had happened during their journey to the Land at the Horizon, and Ty furrowed her brow. She knew little of large bodies of water, and even less about the ocean, so that question was a little bit trickier for her. “Another giant was racing them to get there!” she proclaimed, thinking this would make a great twist to the story. In fact, this was the most fun Tytonidae had had since her friends had disappeared from her.