In the time it took me to pick up and bag the crab, the bright-white figure had faded in the vog. When I flicked my tongue, there was her scent, minty grapes. The smell found her somewhere???—??not far???—??to my left. A leap and a short glide brought me along the scent gradient???—??some strides behind her, if I had to guess.


    I had! It smelled better than my honey chamomile, at any rate.


    pleasant, not the way it had been with my brother. She didn’t make it so, and I wasn’t waiting for it. But I had to stop and stare at how silent and scowly she was this evening. Maybe she was shedding?


    knew she was glaring, even with her curling frills half-shrouded.


    wasn’t a manifestation of the serpentine lake, prepared to swallow me completely; it was my friend.


    didn’t almost bump into her again. In fact, I backed up several paces, so you could never mistake that.


    proper.


    toward what was tearing open the lake skin, but the wiver didn’t seem worried; and she’d never given me a choice besides trusting her.


    Did you do something wrong?”


    that mad at me, then.


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    At last, there came a final crack???—??followed by even more humming.


    smiled, but the absence of a frown was starting to look like a smile, after so much time alone with Hinte.


    seen this; I knew from seeing it a half-dozen times before.


    slither for all the difference it would make!


    tried to, though she wouldn’t try not too, either. I had slowed down, and she hadn’t noticed.


    Why can’t we be friends?


    doing things again, moving. It was okay.


    stench of this place. Or how her frills still adjusted as she walked along, even though I could hear nothing. I extended my own frills just to check again. Nothing! The lake skin rattled, our footsteps cracked the dustone, and my heart tapped in my breast???—??except I didn’t need frills to feel that last one.


    point of it, what she listened for. It felt like I had all of the pieces in my wings, I just needed to put them together.


    huge. I folded mine back, pressed mine back until they might as well have merged with my scales.


    That difference fledged a smile, my wings twitching and half-spreading, my hindlegs digging a little deeper into the ground.


    should. My wings could move me faster, take me farther, than my legs ever would. But… I came here with Hinte. She wasn’t flying, and I would get lost in the lake without her.


    flying again! That’s what mattered. I bounced in the air a little. And I might have done it twice, if the motion hadn’t sent an awful throb through my skull. Now that I focused, there gnawed a weary ache on the fringes of my mind. It quivered with every flap of my wings. Ignore it.


    I fly, at least? Please?” I held out my forefeet.


    * * *