Creatures Of Sonaria: Sands Of Time

Part 23: Reunion

        Arche leaped forward, reaching one forearm as if to stop her thoughts right then and there, and it worked. "They're okay!" he reassured. "They're actually near oasis waiting for you after hearing of the war! They're waiting near the river border for you."

       Dune was silent for a few moments. Finally, she said something. "They're... waiting for me?"

       "They were very persistent in knowing your whereabouts," Armolten pointed out, shrugging. "They recognized Arche and kept dumping questions on us both. 'Where is she?' and 'Is she ok?' and also 'Why didn't she fight with you guys? Aren't you her friends' and blah blah." Armolten rolled her eyes and let out an over dramatic sigh. "I mean they acted as if you had ran away from them and were trying to get back into contact!"

       "Well, I didn't run away," Dune pointed out. "I was merely kicked out from the pack because they didn't need an extra mouth to feed. Besides, it happens all the time with eggs that hatch in a full pack, we're fine on our own as babies too, and us nomads come together to create our own packs." She thought for a moment, wondering why they were trying so hard to find her now, of all times. It's weird...

       She just stood up and looked at the sky. Streaks of pink clouds in a beautiful rose red sky, with the sun rising slowly over the Uncharted Icelands. "I suppose there's still time till Aire and the Sarh'Hingaro leader reach an agreement," Dune muttered to herself, but still seemingly loud enough for both her friends to hear. "I'll go and see them and see what they want. Maybe they want to reconcile for something, but I'm not sure what."

       Arche nodded while Armolten stood up after seeing her little 'friend' acting strangely and stumbling around near larger creatures. Dune almost laughed when Armolten compared him to a blind swimming kendyll. 

       "Alright well while that happens I'll be off. See ya!" Dune said before bounding off to find her parents, easily navigating and dodging creatures big and small till she reached the end of the crowd and ran over sand dunes. Dune started to have a weird sense of Déjà vu, remembering  that she was running in this same direction, over the same dunes to fing Gher. Now she was running them to find her parents. 

       For some reason, she was both giddy and skeptical. Mixed feelings of both. 

       On the one claw, her parents! She was about to meet them after nine whole years! And maybe even the rest of her pack too. She only vaguely remembered her mother, and even less so, her father. All she remembered was her being abandoned. And she knew now that was natural.

       On the other claw, why would they just suddenly want to reach out to her after so long? It had to be suspicious. Full SandSwept knalrikies naturally abandon their kids because they can't care for them. It was weird to say the least.

       After almost thirteen minutes of running, the sunrise had started to turn the sky a pastel yellow and blue. And up ahead, Dune could see the plains across the river. And sitting on the crosswalk connecting the two lands, sat her parents. They were sharing what seemed to be an elder kriffin. Dune knew kriffins didn't normally live in the desert, so she wondered how they knew how to catch it.

       Once Dune's running slowed down to a pace, her mother looked up and smiled. Dune couldn't be rude and smiled back.

      "Dunebug!" Her mother shouted gleefully, standing up and running over to throw her forearms around Dune. 

       Confused, Dune shifted her neck back to look at her mother. "Dunebug?" She asked. "

       "It's the nickname me and your father had come up with before we... realized we couldn't keep you," her mother said. She let go of Dune and gave her some distance. Dune's father had now walked up to the both of them.