People who live on water know that voices carry, they can distinguish the sound of the lark from the wren, and know when to venture further out, or come closer to shore and pull back in. They live a life that ebbs and flows.
Mountain people have secrets they hold close and keep deep inside, you have to dig to get to know them. Dark woods swallow sound, pulling everything in and down. They live a life that is close to the ground.
Plains people see far and wide, they can calculate the distance to the horizon. They were the first to fly and the future know. They live life in the open and reap what they sow.
Like a fish out of water Thadeus—Tadd—passed his time on the plains flopping around and gasping for air. Used to a fluid environment, he felt parched and anchored. His ocean-blue eyes—deep and changing—constantly sought focus in the expanded vista but found only a slight color shift, an inconsequential blurring between earth and sky, leaving one indistinguishable from the other. And with nothing for his eyes to grab onto between here and there except Mary, that is where his eyes stayed, and happily so, as Mary was lovely and her voice melodic.