The entire trip had possessed about it a sense of unreality. From the moment Tanvi had been pulled from her life, nudged forward by the somewhat... cryptic words Tarina had spoken. Hell, if she weren't a grandniece of some stripe or another—she never had found out exactly how the lineage had worked—she would have suspected the crone was simply trying to get her out of the way for someone else.<br/><br/>That it was apparently a genuine bit of prophecy had not changed matters at all. There was the festivities afterwards, with no end of people coming to clap her on the back for being so honoured, and a few smug expressions and two-faced well-wishes, giving explicit details of the things, they assured her, they hoped would not happen. And then there was the desert. Seemingly endless dunes, land likely scorched, it was said, by some ancient war, and almost entirely barren ever since.<br/><br/>She had been half dozing when it finally happened, despite being standing and nominally scanning the horizon. She wasn't even tired, the shimmering expanse before them was simply hypnotic, dulling her senses until Cogg spun about in triumph, the beast knowing apparently as well as they did what their quarry was.<br/><br/>Her eyes weren't the sharpest in the tribe, and the heat of the desert made it hard to see at a distance, blurring everything with the waves rising up from the sand. But for all that, she could tell immediately they had found what they were after. The proportions of the figures were all wrong to be men, much too bulky and full-figured, tall and broad, and in such armour!<br/><br/>She felt her heart beat faster. The mirages, illusions, cryptic words, all of the things that made her feel as though she were living a dream shattering in the face of the stumbling figures, more real in her eyes than she herself felt at that moment. One hand went up to keep her hat from flying off, the broad-brimmed and battered red felt whipping about in the wind Cogg's passing kicked up.<br/><br/>Unable to help herself, she threw a grin over at Dauskin. What else could this be, but the giants spoken of? She did not believe in coincidence, after all. Even so, she loosened the ties on her sword as she hopped nimbly down Cogg's flank. Not that that would do much good against the tremendous figures that lay on the sand, she suspected. Well-trained instinct still won out though, and she approached with some trepidation, her eyes taking in the massive armoured figures with no little awe.<br/><br/>They were<em>huge</em>she realised as she circled. She probably could comfortable ride on one's shoulder, and her slight frame would have no chance of moving them more than a few centimeters. She looked back up at Dauskin, holding her brim of her hat to keep the sun out of her eyes. "Toss down a skin! I think we'll have to see if we can get them moving on their own," she said, wrinkling her nose at the image of the two of them trying to drag the minature titans up onto their lizard's back. Best to get them hydrated and hope that was enough to perk up the exhausted giants.