Ocean's Breath Plateau tagadal

There was an influx of information, and Nantahala took her time in digesting it all. There’d been an accident—upon examining Valiant she knew that this was the truth—and that’d been the reason for their delay.

She took a deep breath as she processed this, and tried to put the sting of hurt to rest. His reason for being away for so long made sense, but sound logic didn’t have much effect on the feelings that’d come about because of his absence. At times, it’d almost been too much to bear, and so she had pushed all those feelings down … until now.

Thankfully, his questions distracted her for a moment.

She’s been sick, she said simply, meeting his eyes for the first time that meeting. Lightfoot and Yuralria helped me take care of her, there’d been some guilt she’d felt about leaving, but she knew that her mother was in capable hands.

Salaksartok and Ipiktok are gone—out on an adventure.