Darin led the way towards the small hut, “I know what it means. You told me once.” She tapped her injured arm, “I figured it was fitting.”

What Darin didn’t tell Ridahne was that she thought the bird should have an Elf name of some sort. Talbot was a land creature and as such had a human, or Child of the Stones, name. This creature of the air, or yet another Child of the Skies, needed a name that matched. The problem was that the only Elf words Darin knew were Azurei words, and she didn’t know many of those either. She knew maybe three. She supposed if she was going to do this trip around Astra she might want to learn as many languages as possible. It might now make the job easy, but it would at least showed anybody who cared that she was trying.

Aa they approached the hut the human asked her steed, “What do you think Talbot. Is our new friend behaving.” Talbot bobbed his head in an approximation of a yes as Darin smiled, “That’s good. Why don’t you go get something to eat? The Tree knows you’ve earned it.”

Talbot nodded again before heading off. Darin lead the way into the darken hut to see the hawk perched on the same perch she left him on. Darin was not surprised to see the bird open his eyes to glare at her with suspicious eyes. She would be suspicious too if something bigger than her took her to a place she didn’t understand. She carefully unwrapped the bundle of rabbit and place it in front of the hawk.

She spoke quietly, “There you go. You must be hungry.”

Now that the bird wasn’t freaking out Darin had a chance to look at him properly. He was most certainly a he, but that was alright. He was a mostly a light brown colored that reminded Darin of lightly toasted bread with darker brown spots that reminded her of brunt bread scattered throughout. He also had some white spots and a white chest. His eyes were a deep amber color. He was eyeing the small bites of food warily, and Darin was starting to worry that she was going to have to hold him down to feed him. Suddenly, his head darted out to snag some of it, and Darin let out the breath she hadn’t realized that she had been holding.

She turned back to her conversation with Ridahne, “I suppose I could name him Toast. He looks like he could be named Toast, but that just doesn’t feel right.” She gave her head a shake, “I’m not sure. I really like Taja. For lots of reasons.” She tapped at her own chest, “Anyways that’s a good story. I suppose the only way we know if that if becomes a when is if we head towards Azurei. Is that where we are headed? Are there spots in between here and there that we can stop at. I don’t really want to take a direct route to anywhere given the nature of this trip.”

Darin knew that they had to leave The Farm soon. They couldn’t stay here forever or nothing important would get done. She was thinking one more day in order to resupply and stock up. Hopefully, Ridahne would be good with starting her knife lessons tonight. Darin was tired of being the hopeless one of the two of them. Taja let our a shriek and the human turned to see that all of the rabbit was gone. She smiled as she slowly held out a few fingers. Taja pressed his head against the fingers for just a few seconds before tucking his had under his good wing.

Darin whispered, “Good night Pretty Bird.” She turned to Ridahne, “We should start getting ready to leave The Farm. I would like to leave bright and early not tomorrow morning, unless you want to leave then, but the next morning.” She was leading the way out of the hut, “What do you think?”