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Chapter 2

Peregrine spent years thinking, trying to recall a time that some miner had stopped being a miner. There was no legend wisdom to guide him now, no neat-laid hank of instructions. If such a tale existed, Peregrine couldn't imagine who would tell it to him.

He spent more years hesitating. He noticed lips moving; he found whole phrases mushrooming into his mind before Tillian could repeat them. Perhaps Peregrine had the faculties to interpret for himself, mine-worn though he was - but he still a miner and this was true as a honed blade. Touching Tillian's foot too often - asking her to be silent - discarded the fact that she lived by Peregrine's side.

One dawning month, while Peregrine struck chisel with hammer, he decided to change. He had chosen to be a miner and he could damned well choose otherwise. He roosted on that fact, with fear tight-strung down his back and amethyst ore breaking under his hands.

And on the day he had chosen, he wrapped the brightcasting stone in his hand, swarming his tunnel with shadows. He blew a thread of smoke to touch the quartz surface; the brightcasting spark inside faded according to his will. Standing in black depths now, this was the last he would ever see of his mines. Hammerstrokes still tolled inside his head, burying all other sound. It was time now to unmake himself.

The spark-centered quartz stone went into his carrying pouch, followed by the familiar weights of his hammer and chisel. He removed his dust-grimy goggles, settling them high on his head. And for the last time, he walked the path he had carved himself. Serviceable amethyst still laid in this bed of granite; its support timbers held sure, even where Peregrine had carved them higher to let his own horns pass. Someone else might take up this mine. He couldn't imagine who, and supposed that it didn't matter.

Light cut across his path where ventilation holes allowed it in - dust danced yellow in the beams of daybright. His feet knew the way, and his tailtip traced the ground even though his footing was sure - some fool sentiment made him want to touch the rock. He didn't suppose the mountainside would miss one miner. The sky might feel differently, when it was reunited with one of its dragon kin.

Whatever Peregrine had done with himself thus far, however much ore his arms successfully hauled, he was still a korvi. Air and wind and freedom might do him some good, vital as those things tended to be. He would have a needle-bright voice in his ear to encourage him - and as he thought of Tillian, his pace quickened.

Evening-gold gemlight seeped into the mine tunnel; a breeze carried in the fresh savour of grass. The mine's mouth came into blinding view and a slender weasel silhouette waited in the center. Tillian sat on her haunches, tall with anticipation, ears high and brush-tipped tail waving.

Hammerstrokes rang in Peregrine's ears still. Another eightmoment needed to pass before he could hear past the reverberations in his own head - and even then, the ear din of eighty years' mining would swallow up voices, footsteps, all the sounds Peregrine couldn't think of offhand because they were silent and useless now. He needed more of Tillian's aid. That much was clear. He couldn't bring himself to guess how much more time he would need to ask of her.

He stepped out into the daylight, shading his eyes with a hand, the Great Gem's warmth sliding over his back. Tillian stretched to full attention, her head reaching the height of Peregrine's knees. Her dove-grey fur was sleek, groomed with a meticulousness born of having nothing else to do.

Ready?

Her trained-crisp movements of mouth and tongue showed the words. Even Tillian's voice evaded Peregrine when he was fresh out of the mine.

He wrinkled his snout. Feeling ready didn't matter. Feelings mattered when they drove actions, and no one had ever proven themselves by walking home on a usual path. The sensation of lost direction crowded around Peregrine's heart; these western tunnels and plains weren't going to be his usual path, not after today.

"I suppose I'm finished," he said.

I got the markers. Tillian opened her hands, letting the row of copper pegs flash.

They would melt down into something useful. Peregrine knelt, mantling his wings around his shoulders for balance, holding the feathered length of his tail level to the ground. "And you've got the stone with Fyrian's snake on it?"

The ... Oh, yes! Tillian's ears twitched higher as she realized; she looked at the ties lining her sarong, and back up at Peregrine. I won't untie it, I've got it in here.

Peregrine must have explained the ways to her before, the traditions behind every marker and charm and trinket. Taught small Tillian by telling her a yarn, perhaps, while her eyes were still gummed closed and her ears already worked fine. Or perhaps he had waited a fourday and taken her to see the ways for herself. No, he had done that with Tillian's mother, he was moderately sure. With each new earferrin Peregrine taught, his memories bled together. Tillian would be the last. He had told himself that until his mind wore threadbare in the spot, and he told himself again now: he would oblige no more ferrin to spend their brief lives on his shoulder.

Tillian poured the marker pegs into Peregrine's open hand. All we need to do is get rid of your mine markers?

"Folk will know what it means if they find a mine with no one's claim around the entrance."

"All right." Tillian looked at the bare mine opening, squinting to hone her eyes. "And you have your tools?"

"They're all here."

Tillian turned a smile toward him. So, if your mining is done, you don't have a reason not to fly.

"I'll need a little fire, first."

Tillian put a hand to the bare hide of Peregrine's calf. She felt cool, despite furkind being the ones born at a lively temperature. You're plenty warm enough! You've been working.

"Let me walk a little," Peregrine said, "and muster the fire in my shrivelled old heart."

"Oh, of course. The heat will unshrivel it. Right?"

"Like a raisin. Stewed in the sweetest brandy."

She laughed, a chirping lilt. "Peregrine, you wouldn't use a sweet brandy. Are your ears better?"

Ordinary ear din filled Peregrine's head now, the constant rumbling that overlaid his life. There was no distinct hammerstroke to be heard; Tillian's voice cut through the noise like wire through wax.

"I'll manage."

They followed the worn smudge of pathway cleaving the prairie grass. Tillian tottered on her back feet, a steady-bobbing presence beside Peregrine, five of her steps matching Peregrine's long-striding one.

She looked up at him - she had something to say and didn't give it voice yet.

Peregrine had enough years to spend waiting. He ruffled his short-cropped mane feathers with both hands; the mine dust on his skin and feathers, Tillian had told him once, made him look like a hot orange coal caked with ash. He hoped that the dust all swept away on the wind, well distanced from her breathway.

"You don't need to give up mining," she said, "if flying is that hard for you to muster up."

She knew him better than that. Peregrine harrumphed, frowning at the clouds strung across the gold evening sky. "Mining is the problem."

If Peregrine hadn't ventured into close-looming tunnels - the way any flighted creature feared to - his strength wouldn't have drained from wings to arms. But he had done it. He entered mine caves, pressing deeper each day, until his flinch reaction stilled and died. How simple it had been to make that choice. Bartering his wings and ears bought a lifetime of honest work. And how simple to ask a clear-eyed young ferrin to do his listening for him, always. Promising to look after Zitan's bloodline was a layered promise but it hadn't seemed immediately so.

"You'll be fine at flying," Tillian said. "You just need practice!"

She dragged him back to the present moment, back to this path and this daylight and the smell of grass stalks in open air. A korvi and a ferrin walking, only walking.

"Flight will come back to me if I give it more than a half hour each day." Living a few moments' flight away from his mine was a pittance.

"You just need to use your lizard half."

A smirk yanked Peregrine's mouth uneven. "If only I had an entire half." Dragonkind were more like a drop of lizard in a full cup of bird: they were feathers, squawking, flapping, and the occasional, sensible instance of sloughing off their skin to grow.

Tillian chirped a word of agreement. They kept on. Plains grass swelled and bobbed with the breeze.

"The grassbugs are singing," Tillian said. She fell to all fours to lollop; Peregrine hadn't noticed his pace quickening. "They've been steady all evening."

That meant it wouldn't rain. Insectkind had a sense for such things, and only singing when they knew the air around them to be safe. Peregrine's memory filled in the creaking voices of grasshoppers and crickets. He nodded.

"And it doesn't smell like rain, either, so I think we'll have fine weather for a while. Can you fly now?"

Sure as stone, Peregrine wasn't going to get a moment's peace until he flew. He stopped and knelt, one knee squared in offering. It was all the signal Tillian needed; she bounded to him, up onto his shoulder with a sudden press of toes on his clothed thigh.

She wouldn't need to come when Peregrine beckoned, someday, sometime. If only he knew how many steps the journey would take. He hadn't a clue which one to take first.

He built firecasting, summoning his own life-strength in his chest, gathering a steady blaze and letting it soak outward through his muscles. Peregrine spread his wings and felt them tentatively sure. Breeze tugged at his quills and instinct made him flap, the urge for air as basic as that of his lungs. Leaping upward with all his legs and tail had to give, Peregrine clawed into the sky.

The wind soothed him some, carding through his feathers, whipping Tillian's fur against his skin. Well-stoked firecasting filled Peregrine with strength borrowed from himself. Flight was all the things a korvi was built to fare well at: fire and strength were fire god Fyrian's traits. Peregrine flew barely enough to remember that.

He was beginning to enjoy the wind when the cramping began. An innocuous burn between his wingshoulders, hardly different from the firecasting before it spread to consume his back. He stiffened, knotting tight. His wings slowed, each beat torn ragged; the earth's pull returned. Peregrine watched the prairie grass slide past continually slower, and knew that his flight had been fine while it lasted. He let the ground rush to meet them.

Landing was a white sting through his ankles, a sudden state of heaviness crushing his momentum. Then he stood calm, looking past the seed-heavy grass tops at Skyfield village roofs. Tillian uncurled her white tail brush from around her paws; Peregrine opened his grip the moment she squirmed. She clambered onto his shoulder, settling with a brush of whiskers and sarong cotton.

"It's because the hour is late, I guess. There aren't any thermals for you."

She didn't need to make excuses for Peregrine's failings. Flying all the way to anywhere wasn't a task he had bothered himself with in all forty-eight years of the past elden. He walked through the grass cracking silent under his feet, onto the cart-wheel grooves of the dusty road. Lilac-coloured dusk settled over the land now, the gods' changing of guard, brightcasting light giving way to darkcasting. Peregrine regarded the Great Gem's steady-glowing speck in the sky, gauging its exact hue.

"I hope Giala doesn't worry," he said.

"Really, finishing a mine is a big enough job. She must know why you're late." Touch brushed Peregrine's temple, the arc of a ferrin ear sweeping thoughtfully back. "She did go to East Hotrock today. I'd wager that she's busy with a project."

Peregrine sighed. "Wager the whole house on that."

Bards could discuss love all they wanted - Peregrine knew what it truly meant. Love was living with with Giala of Heriette, and living calm in the middle of an eager, fluttering windstorm. Love was hours of fussing with gem scraps and clay dust and marble slab, because Giala took a moment to smile over it and kept smiling for days.

"Come on," Tillian said. "It might be a simple project!"

Peregrine huffed a laugh. Perhaps the Cold and the endtimes bore down on them and his dear mate had decided to work in half measures. He walked, carrying earferrin and pouch and his abraded old wings, as Skyfield's roofs crept closer.

They passed Skyfield's crops, the neat-edged fields of corn and barley; then farming sheds, their boards and grass thatch bound with precisely spaced rope; then the main street spread full of neighbours. Skyfield folk were mostly aemets, the skinny, forest-coloured people moving smooth so as not to joggle their antennae. Korvi and ferrin walked among them, glimpses of fire-coloured feathers and grey fur. Everyone moved with purpose at this hour, leading horses away, gathering sales blankets, returning to their homes the way leaves drifted gratefully to earth.

Peregrine passed the mage home, a thatch building far too large for one bachelor; Maythwind would fill it with family someday, theory held. Folk lingered around it, talking and waving explanatory hands; one fellow eyed the wide tin surface of the chromepiece by Maythwind's door, as though each purple-deepening moment was one she regretted spending on weightless talk.

"Maythwind is charging stones," Tillian said. Casting must have caught her nose, a trace in the air like crushed spice.

"Is he, now."

"Not bright or darkcasting, though. It's his plantcasting. Lots of it." Tillian's voice turned to an intrigued hiss. "He's strong enough to last an ordinary day of healing on his own, isn't he? Why would he stockpile?"

Gossip chafed Peregrine's nerves. He didn't need to know why aemets fretted at any given moment; they sensed changes in the air far less distinct than the weather. Insect intuition kept them drawn drum-skin tight and Maythwind was an especially taut case.

"He worries, I suppose. The sky might come crashing down."

"He's been muttering under his breath a lot, people say," Tillian said. "Something about a bad dampness in the air."

"Ask him tomorrow, if you're curious." There would be time to figure out what Maythwind was fussing about while Peregrine got his treatment - not that the whole village wouldn't know Maythwind's predictions shortly.

Vibration ran through Tillian's weight. She was splaying her ears and humming dubious, Peregrine saw clear in his mind's eye. But she said nothing.

The main street led Peregrine much like the mine path had, winding dusty under his feet and tailtip. Tillian shifted back and forth over his shoulders, calling out returned greetings to neighbours; conversations slipped away from Peregrine before they even began. Occasionally, Tillian tapped a paw on one of his shoulders - Peregrine at least knew whether to aim a cordial nod to the left or the right.

"How is the mining," Tillian repeated, and then carried on talking to the Steltons' daughter as though Peregrine had answered.

In a sense, the mining was faring wonderfully - he would never carry more out of a mine than what he had filled his pouch with today. Peregrine wanted to smirk and found the expression false. This quiet-chattering village would figure out his plans eventually, and hopefully Peregrine would figure them out for himself before then.

The ground sloped downward as they neared the river groves. Neighbours passed by with buckets of water, moving stiff with effort. Houses' door curtains hung closed now, with moving shadows and fire light escaping underneath to fan out into the street dust. The thatch home painted clay-red, however, had its curtain tied wide open: Peregrine's own Redessence Clan threw light like a guiding torch.

"Hearth fire roaring, this late in the day," he said. "Do I want to know why?"

"It doesn't matter if you want to know. You'll find out anyway," Tillian said lightly. Suddenly, stretching taller, she added, "Somebody's coming. Left side. They're ferrin-sized."

Peregrine imagined crunching movement, a clumsy mental sketch of whatever Tillian was hearing. The bushes waggled and someone emerged, basket clamped in their teeth. No one but Della had such an uneven, twitching lollop; she looked to them, eyes shining orange with the firelight.

Della said a greeting, muddled into the ear din. She hopped a step closer, ears suddenly limp against her neck, her voice forced quiveringly high - as though her natural speaking pitch was her own fault. "Sorry, Peregrine. Um, hi, welcome home! We're almost done for today."

"Can I help," Tillian asked. Her weight slid forward, hands spread braced on Peregrine's chest.

"Oh, no, I'm fine, we're fine," Della cried. She chewed on her hand, ears splaying. "Sorry. It's kind of a mess in there, I'll clean it up. But wait 'til you see what Giala's doing!"

She darted into the Redessence Clan home. Peregrine followed, the heat slamming around him before the door curtain had even brushed his horn. He could imagine the bustle that had gone into the work today, all the wood and coal and clay and water and excitement; he thanked fortune that he had missed it. Distracting as thinking was, he narrowly avoided a slimy clay puddle, by placing his foot in a different slimy clay puddle.

Giala made the mayhem look right. She sat bent over her potter's wheel with rapt attention, shadowed deep by the fire. Glancing up, she smiled for him.

"Hello, my light." Her smile spread wider, stretching her crisp-shaped words, creeping into the high edges of her voice. "Long day, isn't it?"

"This clan," Peregrine said, righting a bucket even though its contents had long since spilled and crusted, "should have been called Redearth."

"Marshsplatter sounds nicer, I think." Giala got to her feet, flicked her hands clean of wet clay, and jaunted closer. "How are your wings?"

Once Tillian leaped to the floor, Peregrine straightened, in time to meet his better half in his arms. "They've been better."

"That's not what I asked, though."

"Feh." Peregrine laced fingers through her blonde feathers, where dense wing muscles curved down her back. "I flew most of the way home."

"Good." Giala pulled back to grin at him, her horn ornaments jangled a fanfare. The two of them were equally powdered with the dust of their work, although Giala was fire-warm enough to be giddy about it. "Flying will get easier, truly, it will. It's like practicing a dance."

Korvi didn't hatch with a need to dance. They hatched waiting for their feathers to grow, looking skyward and wanting. Although Peregrine couldn't speak for Giala on that front; she said she danced out of her eggshells and that wasn't the least likely story Peregrine had ever heard.

"I've got good news!" Pulling from Peregrine's arms, turning so her every mica-jewelled bauble flashed, Giala returned to her potter's wheel. "Aside from remembering to move the carpets before mixing clay."

"That's kind of you."

She poked her tongue between her teeth at him. "Now, I'm sure you've gathered as much, but I have a project."

Peregrine settled by the wash basin, sitting against his braced tail as he towelled off dust. And he listened to Giala's account of the day's unremarkable gossip.

He minded Tillian, too, while she sat crumbling clay hunks with Della, her ears and whiskers punctuating her speech. Perhaps she could make a trade of helping Giala with craftwork, the way Della and Wellis and Keevi did. Or perhaps not - Tillian wasn't the sort to fuss with objects if she had people to fuss with instead. She drank in her earferrin training, at an age where most ferrin kits couldn't pin their attention to one subject any more than they could pin down water. Tillian took to the work like she was born for it.

Peregrine watched Tillian's spider-spread fingers working the clay; he tried to imagine Kelria living as a potter, or any of the ferrin before her. The possibilities barely mattered when Peregrine stood there, deaf and riveted, in the middle of each life.

"-Well, long story snipped short," Giala continued, "the Weavers had a hi-and-how-are-you message they wanted me to fly with, and they offered some sweet onions for my trouble. So I went to East Hotrock today."

East Hotrock, the portion of the volcano riddled with town-tunnels, was two hundred furlongs away - close enough for any typical korvi to fly there on a half hour and a whim. If Peregrine had ventured out of his mine earlier, he might have seen Giala pass bird-distant through the clouds. Tillian quirked her ears higher: she had been sitting outside when Giala passed overhead that day, but ferrin eyes couldn't see a blessed thing from so far away.

Giala roosted at her potter's wheel, sitting on her shins. "It was sheer fortune, thank Bright and Dark, but I ran into the East Hotrock leader. You remember Tijo, don't you? It turns out he's thinking of getting a set of new Legend Creatures for their aemets' Middling Circle." She waved a dust-caked hand. "They're picky about their celebration articles, you know. It seems their statues have a rust about them and great Verdana wouldn't approve. So I told Tijo I'd make new statues for him! Clay isn't likely to rust, after all."

Peregrine muttered a thinking sound. "You know the Middling is twelve days away, don't you?"

"No, it's-" Giala blinked, the numbers clicking together behind her eyes. "Oh, embers. The Middling is the same day every month, isn't it?" She turned the wheel, eyeing the clay as a lump of potential. "Well, twelve days? I'll have a day to spend on each Creature. That's lucky."

For her sake, Peregrine hoped luck would matter. All the coincidence in the land couldn't make paints and sealants dry quicker. "Well? What do you need?"

"Mostly clay, for the moment." Giala carved the wet clay with her claws' edges, squinting, considering. "Wellis and Keevi have that well under control, the dear things love that new two-ferrin basket of theirs. I have plenty of paint hues, and your gem bin has most of the colours I'll need. Oh, except for green stones. Mandragora needs to have a shine on his leaves, to catch the eye, you know? Maybe peridots."

"Peridots," Peregrine muttered.

"They'd be lovely! I heard Valeover town is finding peridots on anthills again, the barley-grain-sized ones." Giala paused, fixing him with soft eyes. "It isn't too far to fly. Would you go for me? I'd wager you can be there and back tomorrow before it gets dark."

Any ordinary korvi could be finished the trip by midday. Measurements kept clearing Peregrine's vision. He was one hundred and sixty-nine years old; he hadn't flown casually in half that long; he had five clan members to keep in comfort, plus any more children Zitan's descendants gave him, from Tillian or Wellis or both. Peregrine was no leader of a proud, dozens-strong korvi house - but great Fyrian help him, his responsibilities sat here, plain in the hearth firelight. This was what he had to support, with all the might in his mine-wasted wings.

"I'll bring your peridots," Peregrine said, dropping his dust-grey towel aside. "Just don't wager on when I'll return."

"Do what you can, light. I'll save the Mandragora for last."

"This will be a good first leap, however you do it," Tillian said.

Della spoke, too low to grasp.

"She said this is more like Dirtymess Clan."

"Sorry!"

Peregrine rolled his gaze upward. "Hopelessmudpit Clan has a fine ring to it. At any pace, I'll leave at first bright light tomorrow. That's best if I want a spoonful of Maythwind's attention."

Tillian chirped agreement. Giala beamed a little more, and asked Della something about the clay. And with that decided, Peregrine sank into his own din-walled quiet.

He hadn't brought his mining hammer and chisel home in a decade; they looked forlorn in his hands, too scuffed and too veteran to match any furnishing in the lively Redessence household. These tools would need a home other than a mine floor. Peregrine stood them beside the door, and hoped to stop noticing them. Tempered in mining fire as they were, melting them unrecognizable would be a chore.

Wellis and Keevi returned. They trotted with boundless ferrin energy, sharing the weight of their basket the single-minded way they shared everything, chattering as soon as their jaws were free. Peregrine saw to the ferrin's night meal - a hash of breakfast leftovers they said tasted best when he cooked it - and then began his last night of cleaning ore.

Piles formed in front of Peregrine as he worked. He gave wry thanks to the smothering fire heat in the home; it soothed his wingshoulders, at least, while he bent concentrating. The effort got him a generous handful of gem gravel, the chips of amethyst and quartz that already resembled beads; he also pried threads of iron out to form a metal mouse-nest, although not enough to smelt. The real merit was in the cleaned gems, the three points of purple-clear amethyst crystal as long as Peregrine's hand. Each one was unmarred and large enough for a mage to pack casting energy into. Peregrine made himself content with the amethyst, a stone that was what it was. Clear quartz fetched a better price in trade - it welcomed all elements of casting in a way coloured gems didn't - but flawless amethyst would serve some darkcaster perfectly well.

"Peregrine?"

Tillian's voice. He hummed and picked a last speck of dull stone off a crystal facet, to finish the job. When he looked to Tillian, he found her grooming a clay-red smear out of her fur.

"Don't swallow dust."

"I washed off most of it," she replied. "That was only a spot I missed."

Dust hurt furkind lungs. They were such sensitive creatures, quivering all over with whiskers and hair, delicate like barely-set jelly. Peregrine felt the caked presence of dust he had already washed away.

"You're almost done, right?" Tillian eyed his work. "When you've got a moment, would you fix something for me?"

"What is it?"

"Just my necklace." She reached between her shoulders and the knot dissolved for her. "The cord is wearing through, and I don't want to lose it by accident."

She offered it in cupped hands, the hawk-eye stone gleaming smooth and blue as iron. Perhaps Peregrine never noticed it anymore because it hid in Tillian's fur - or because he had looked at that stone so many times, he stopped bothering to see. The colour had suited Kelria, too.

"Leave it here, by the amethyst," he said. "I'll look after it."

"Thank you!"

Tillian left on slower-lolloping steps than usual. Reverence overtook her whenever she thought particularly about her necklace. Perhaps she heard its story again in her mind's ear. Possibly, she thought about the entirety of things Redessence earferrin passed down to their children - a stone and some skills and a deaf old man for company. Peregrine didn't imagine that she thought about her work in that particular tone; she had never cared for bitter flavours.

He sorted the clean gems and metals into their storage baskets, as trading fodder for the future. A few granite hunks still glinted with iron but his stomach for the work was gone; the ore fell back into its box with a clatter he could feel, not hear.

It took him only a few clicks to cut a new thong from a deerskin scrap. He slid the hawk-eye bead into place, and turned it between his callused fingers. He had been lucky, finding this pretty trinket in the ore. Hawk-eye stones were said to make a person's mind as sharp as talons. But Peregrine should have traded this one, and hoped it ended up on the other side of the land.

There was nothing to fix about the stone itself. He returned it to Tillian; she smiled her thanks. The pendant was just a family keepsake again, one that slipped into her chest fur and persuaded her blue eyes to look even bluer.

Stones wouldn't mean a thing to Peregrine, someday. His clan's gem stores would dwindle to a milky quartz at the bottom of a storage bin, the sort everyone suddenly remembered they had. Perhaps Redessence Clan would take a bargain on raw ore because Peregrine happened to know how to refine it. Minerals would be coincidences, nothing more. Peregrine's primary quills would moult and regrow, and fray happily with use, and his old ways would fade like crumbling sandstone; there was only the question of what would remain. It would need to be light enough to fly with.

He laid in bed and the heat held him above sleep, speeding his lizard heart more than he could ignore. Peregrine stared at the wall thatch. His family's voices faded, and the hearth sizzled angrily at its dousing water, and then he heard nothing but ear din. Not true quiet, but a fair substitute. The mattress shifted as Giala joined him; dry-stale grass smell leaped into the air.

She murmured something high-edged. Perhaps sorry, light.

"I wasn't asleep." He couldn't fathom how a career potter could get any rest, waiting for their fire heat to disperse. But then, most korvi couldn't imagine feeling calm inside a smothering mine tunnel -- and they would never trade their wings or their hearing to understand.

Gentle touch traced Peregrine's shoulder, smoothing his feathers. The last of the coals' light draped Giala and turned her dark eyes bottomless. For all the accessories she wreathed herself with, Peregrine liked her best like this: her skin all bare; her horns plain except for the etchings; her mane feathers loose, with nothing to catch between his fingers.

Ready for the new job? She spoke low, lips shaping careful. They had no reason to disturb the nest of sleeping ferrin across the room.

"I suppose. If you change your job every eightday, it can't be so hard."

He got a grin for that. Giala's hand lifted and resettled on his shoulder, a swat she couldn't manage to mean. Look here, it's more like every two eightdays. My muses don't live well in a cage.

Peregrine imagined creative urges to be like feather lice, full of little fidgeting legs fit to drive a person mad. Or perhaps the sensation wasn't limited to art and craft. The thought of declaring himself a messenger made him his skin prickle, too. Job changes, he decided, were all difficult itches to scratch.

Giala settled, folding her free arm under her chin. It's like dancing, though, truly. You just need to practice until it all comes back for you. Last time I tried the Waverbreeze, it was hard to make the steps come out right. My House wouldn't like it one whit.

Heriette House would likely support their daughter if she decided to sit in a tree and become a squirrel.

But take it one flap at a time, all right? Giala's claws threading through Peregrine's feathers, a slow suggestion. If a youth just learning his wings can fly an errand, you can surely make just as good an effort of it. I haven't told anyone, so you won't get errands until you ask for them.

Peregrine wrinkled his snout. "I'm surprised Maythwind hasn't told the whole land."

If he did tell folk, he wouldn't mean any harm by it. You know that.

Perhaps Peregrine would know if he concentrated on Maythwind's chatter instead of leaving it for his earferrin to sift. He couldn't make sense of himself, planning to ask folk for errands when he couldn't even hear the requests they made.

"I'm bringing Tillian to Valeover," he said. Tillian would be glad to help him until he figured something out; she would never think to say no.

Good. Giala smiled glowing. She'll love the sights.

They paused in the muted dark. If Tillian saw more, she might choose to wander, drawn away by scent and sound and curiosity. She could discover a life of her own, find a mate, and define herself by something other than Redessence Clan. Ferrin weren't made to be tied down. Not without family names to pride themselves with. Not when they had such breeze-quick lives and open hearts.

Peregrine faced the wall, laying his throat and chin flat on the mattress to rest. He was fortunate that Zitan's family line had lingered in Redessence this long. A kit or two from each generation had stayed with the clan for nearly two eldens - no one with sense would have bet on that.

"We'll see what comes of it," he said.

A hum ran through Giala. "It'll turn out all right. We'll see." Her touch lightened to nothing, and she squirmed to a comfortable stillness.

With that, Peregrine mulled again in his ears' hum and the fire's heat. It was about banished time he took Tillian travelling: none of the other ferrin in Skyfield caught her eye and moreover, half of them were her cousins. She was twelve precious years old: childlessness wasn't a choice to be made for lack of thought on the matter. She might find a new life around some corner, during any intake of breath.

Once, half a lifetime ago, Zitan had suddenly sat taller on Peregrine's shoulder.

Over there, he said, craning to see past village folk.

It felt stiflingly important and Peregrine went toward the over there, searching blind in the middle of daybright. It had turned out to be a plain stretch of town street, with milling people of all kinds, with vendors sitting behind rainbow blankets.

Yes, here, Zitan had said. The vendor to their left was selling cider; Zitan heard liquid splashing and Peregrine had mentioned something about wetting his throat, hadn't he?

How talented his earferrin friend was, Peregrine had thought. Full of intuition, responding as bodily as a strummed harpstring.

He bartered for two cups of drink. It was fresh, tart cider, and Peregrine had sat on his tail savouring his portion while Zitan talked with the cup-washing assistant - a fine-boned ferrin polite enough to stifle her occasional cough. She joined Redessence soon enough.

If dear Zitan's spirit could think of the clan now - if he could visit from the thunder goddess's clouds and see Peregrine and Giala with only ferrin children - he would grin. Then he would prod Peregrine for worrying too much. Thinking of Zitan always hurt. Tillian wore her ancestor's white tip markings and his smile; she lived with the same unending need to mind others.

Such trepidation over a simple errand flight. Peregrine was an old dog worrying a bone; he blew a sigh through his nose and began counting thatch squares. His journey would be taken wingbeat by wingbeat, because there was no other way to fly. Tillian could stay or leave - Peregrine would figure out later which was worse.