While she could see Delphine looking around out of the corner of her eye, Tillie's gaze remained fixed, the vast wonderment of the world lost to the fear of simply existing in the first place. Delphine urged her to look anyway, the Shadow unencumbered by the burden of doubt. Warily, Tillie peaked down over her shoulder into one of the shallow pools. Inside, a gentle current swirled and two small fish, as they were apparently called, circled one another in constant motion. Caught by a sudden curiosity, Tillie lifted her head. "Why they here? Why they different?" Then she paused, eyeing her Shadow. "Why we different?"

Rather than to say she could see the doubt rolling off of the child in waves, it more inherent in its nature. An awareness that would not be quelled as Tillie dared a glance to the pool she'd indicated which, much to Delphine's pleasure, had its intended effect. She had not been prepared though for the bombardment of questions, all of which bore with them an existential undercurrent which left her equally as fascinated as she was baffled. It was peculiar that the child was inclined to post such inquiries when many others far older than she thought infinitely less on the matter. For Delphine, it was a point of pride to know that her mind worked in such ways.

"Hmm... Well, everyone's different and you'll see that soon enough. There are horses like myself, fishes like them, birds even that can fly. We all have our homes and habitats, what we prefer, where we like to be. For fishes, they need and enjoy the water, for you and I, perhaps we are more suited for land." Again she knew her answer only barely grazed the surface of the depths which Tillie sought to explore but she also knew that it was all that she could offer. "Our world is one filled with strange wonders and for the first few moments, you'll encounter very many things that are frightening, thrilling, beautiful and ugly even. But as time passes, you'll come to see that everything is unique in its own way, as for why, well that's the question isn't it?" As she spoke, she moved forward, passing other pools and slowing whenever they neared.

The Shadow spoke, though her words danced elaborately around what she was looking for. Opening her mouth to say so, she was silenced when Delphine finally addressed her inquiry. Well, sort of. Cocking her head, she snorted. "It is question. Why there no answer?" Horse. That was what the Shadow called herself. Horse, fish, birds. All these creatures with names yet no known reason for living. "What am I?" Tillie asked, hoping her Shadow would at least know of her label, the name meant to give her a better foothold in regards to her place in the world.

Again and again the pair engaged in an intellectual stand-off that was more a series of Tillie asking questions and Delphine batting them away with words meant to misdirect more than fulfill. Rather than to say it was intentional on the mare's part, it was that she did not know the answer herself. She was sincere in her attempts in answering the questions posed but if she failed to sate the child's thirst for knowledge, it was attributed to her own lack thereof. "Because none of us know, there are questions all around us with no answers to fill them." She paused her gaze flitting to the large ceiling above them, "I suppose it is up to us to figure these things out."

Her attention shot down once more and her brows furrowed, this time left-fielded with something she was certain she should know on a subconscious level yet could not summon no matter how much she mauled over it. "Ah... Well..." Her tongue curled, the beginnings of the word finding its way in a firm 'oh' that drifted between them but it was to no avail. "Oo... Ok—" They hobbled onward, her words trailing with her thoughts until she could think no more. "It's there but I can't seem to recall what it is, perhaps you could try? Much of what I learned and know came overtime without anyone to tell me what it was. All it takes is a little jogging of your memory." Delphine admitted though she knew the child would be immensely dissatisfied that she had so little in the ways of experience.

Again the infant was given what was but a placeholder for knowledge not yet learned, by her or by the Shadow. Sighing discontentedly, Tillie fell quiet. There was no point in talking if it didn't get her anywhere. But then a question came that she couldn't ignore. So she asked, hoping the Shadow would redeem herself. She didn't. "You not know many things." Tillie said in a huff. "I new. You not new. You should know. But you don't."

The sable beast knew she was unlearned in many ways. She discovered this overtime when met with the many Gembounds, both new and ancient, who imparted parcels of knowledge upon her but never enough and certainly without the specific answers she sought. The same thing was happening now except she was on the wrong end of things. Made to feel rather inadequate in more ways than one, Delphine's lips finally pursed in a minute betrayal of her fraying patience. She felt it in the silence that stretched between them and would have dismissed it if not for the comment that honed in on what she now considered a fairly bruised spot, much of which she had Tillie to thank.

A slow, long sigh seeped from past closed lips before she dared to speak but even with all her attempts to douse her rising temper, it would not stop the slightest of venom finding passage along her tongue. "That's not true." Delphine said defensively, a frown very imperceptibly finding its way along her delicate features "I am still considered very young here and have much to learn from this world. To be fair, your questions are also difficult to answer because they are similar to the one's that I share. So no, I don't know nor do I think that I should but if I did, I would tell you what you wanted to hear." She didn't mean to snap, truly, it'd simply happened and once her words were left to hang between them, she instantly regretted it.

Delphine was a creature of peace, she took no pleasure in her rare bouts of frustration and anger. "I'm sorry, I did not mean to lose my temper." She whispered but the tension that had settled into her muscles would not uncoil, even after her apology.

There was a sudden shift in demeanor, a chill that infested the air. As if possessed by some new, cruel spirit, the Shadow turned on her, and the mouth once used to sooth now spat out a defiant retort. Tillie recoiled, reacting to the words like a physical blow, and though an apology trailed after the snap, it did little to assuage the damage. "You mean! This world bad! No! I no like you! Go away!" Her tantrum reached a climax and she wrenched herself from the horse's side, snorting wildly. "GO AWAY!"

The young mare expected the okapi to be shocked by her retort else wise she would not have apologized but even this backlash was more than she could have fathomed. The term extreme seemed an understatement as the child lashed out in a verbal tirade, deeming Delphine a bad creature for her momentary lapse in judgment. She went so far as to jerk violently away from her to which the sable steed could only watch on in wide-eyed horror. She was wrong for losing her patience but surely it had not been severe enough to warrant a reaction of such extremes and all too suddenly, she was at a loss for what to do. What could be said or done to ameliorate the situation? Knowing the volatile nature of her young friend, there was no means of predicting what her next reaction would be.

Mortified by all that'd come to past, the mare found herself unable to look at the child. Unable even, to find words when it was most needed. Delphine was unmoving as her mouth open and closed, she had to say something, anything. "I'm sorry..." She muttered dumbly, feeling less apologetic than slighted by this whole situation but she could not find it in herself to reprimand the child. So it was, she would bear the brunt of her anger.

Why would she do something like this? Give her hope that this world could be beautiful before shattering that vision right before her eyes. The Shadow, her Shadow....why? To be betrayed so quickly, so unceremoniously meant that Tillie's well-being was of little value to her -- this, the creature who could have been such a paragon of compassion. Delphine looked visibly shaken herself and she apologized again, softer this time, her voice cracking with authenticity. Tillie trembled, too upset to think. She'd wanted no part of this life, and the one who'd meant to show her the way was throwing her back into a pit of unimaginable despair. Her legs grew too weak to support her and she crumpled to the ground. "Just go away..."

Time begot his anxieties, which pounded in heart and settled in stomach — tepid, shy, the world but a fever dream of haunts and visions. Everything seemed a shadow, whose shape changed in relativity to his understandings; comfort seldom came to him, for everything was so strange. In Delphine his securities would always lay, and in loneliness he found a kind of melodramatic solace... yet among all this inflicted despair, even tender souls, the first breaths of life, were quite eerie to him. They triggered instincts brought upon only by apparent predation, and made him wild, dumb, and colour-blind, or so it seemed, for he always lingered whilst his companion slew the distance between herself and newborn geneses. In sooth, it shamed him: to be so vested in one creature that even her own forged connections produced only starts and skitters... and, tide-locked though he were to his earthen kith, he knew himself to be as affixed to dramatics and fears as he was to she. It was a cyclical thing, and the black beast knew of cycles more than most anything else, for what was he but a being born to two pulls, sea and shore?

Still, he was perhaps either brave or naive enough to not let the epinephrine halt his desires; delay, yes, and in some degrees tremble (and he was certainly intelligent enough to not inform Delphine of that particular symptom); but he was a curious thing, and his wonderment oft calmed the unrest that nature had instilled into him. So bracing himself, he slipped forward, keeping to the shade and the rock. Pisces, at least, was the place of his own escape, and he found himself there when he desired the comfort of waters and halls, or to practice and turn himself to grace. He wandered there often, and it was in that wandering that he had found Delphine in the first place; she, and some other thing, that lay upon the floor as though it might never move again. The sight gave him pause, and he peeled himself from dark and obscurity to move closer to the pair, concern fueling the gas-light of his eyes.

"Erm... pardon me, are you all right?" he asked to the crumpled creature, keeping his tone a respectful hush, flicking awkward gazes to his slighted companion. Such was the weight of the thing that he allowed himself to close the gap between himself and the newborn, attempting to gently nudge his head into her side — the act filled him with some trepidation, for the boy feared rejection, nigh as much as he began to fear for this child, whose apparent grief filled him with such perplexity that all other uncertainties fled from him, at least for the moment.

@Tillie @Delphine