IN THE EARLY EVENING before sunset, Yaarah and Allory took a walk together outside the Pixie caverns. Bundled up in several extra layers hastily converted from someone’s spare scarf, she still gasped and exclaimed at the chill. Meant to be good for the constitution and an aid to recovery? This Scintillant begged to differ.

The clouds overhead hung low, a grey somehow more ominous than she remembered from any jungle storm – speaking as someone who had never spent any actual quality time skygazing or cloud-watching or whatever. She clucked crossly at the untruths a mind loved to fabricate.

Hopelessly muddled. Now she doubted her own memories, her own existence?

How should she feel otherwise? Her soul locket did not exist, yet she felt it by the hollow of her neck the instant she thought upon it. No-one else saw it. So weary of the – bone-chilling cold, the place of desolation, the never-ending visions – a glacial frisson ran through her body as hellish memories gripped her, even though the onset was brief. So weary of life.

Allory had a ghastly premonition that any potential hiding places were daily being removed by the workings of … what? Circumstance? Fate? Or something more sinister, a force infinitely more powerful? She had never believed in a cosmic force of evil before. Must that change?

Her companion cleared his throat.

“Yaarah?” she asked.

Without preamble, the Felidragon twisted his neck right around to regard the rider atop his shoulders and said, “We wrote down all that was retrieved from the record in question, mrrr-frrr. However, you intimated there might be more?”

“Just before the attack, that commentator –” she sucked in a deep, calming breath, as if anything could ever calm her again “– he was starting to speculate about the wilder theories about what we Scintillant Fae might be capable of. He spoke about a potential for unlimited restoration of physical wholeness, which is one issue, but after that – this is the part I didn’t relate earlier – he began to say, ‘– a power akin to resurr –’ and cut off right there. That’s what triggered the attack.”

Yaarah’s brow drew down into a fierce scowl, which in his case, appeared to intimate mental constipation. “What was that – what do you mean? Reason? Resurgence? Restoration? Did I mishear?” He pinned her with his fiercest fake glare. “Mrrr-pssst! Be a good little Sparkles and spit it out, would you?”

“I believe the word in question was … ‘resurrection.’ ”

“Mrrwll!”

Every last inch of his fur stood on end. Suddenly twice the size with his talons involuntarily splayed and his tail standing bolt-upright, Allory could not help but imagine that Yaarah had just been fried by a lightning bolt.

Away, inappropriate image! Almost did that earlier, via a dust-bolt. Focus through the fear, Allory. Make this moment count.

“Quite,” she agreed, in a voice like a baby bird fearing to raise her call above a peep. “Who would not stoop to kidnapping a few Scintillant Fae for the power of eternal life?”

He flinched and licked his forepaws vigorously.

Something flicked her nose.

“Oh,” she gasped. “What’s drifting – that – oh Yaarah, it’s so beautiful! Is this what I think it is?”

“It’s snow,” he confirmed.

Thick white flakes sifted down from the leaden sky as if shaken free by magic. Allory could not understand how clouds could hold such delicate filigree flakes. One landed upon the back of her hand, covering it entirely. Feather-light, perfect spires radiated from a central hexagon, as complex as the veins of a leaf, detail upon exquisite detail that suddenly melted at her body heat and dripped away. Several more caught upon her upraised wingtips, her hair, her left shoulder.

The air filled with silent flurries of white.

The Scintillant craned her neck in wonder. So much snow! Thicker and thicker, faster and faster the snowflakes came, like a great leaf-fall turning the ground white, some falling like ethereal blankets upon her head and shoulders, others drifting past her nose, entrancing in their transient beauty.

“Oh,” she squeaked. “Oh … oh, Yaarah! It’s amazing!”

Flipping down from his back even though she was under strict orders not to attempt any more flying for the day, she landed and tried to curl her toes into the snow. “It’s cold! So cold! Brr.”

“Murrr-hurrr-hurrr, frozen water tends to be,” he snorted mildly.

For the first time since she could remember, she essayed a dance-step of unalloyed delight.

Half a second later, a shard of ice crashed down about a foot from where she stood. Allory pulled up in shock. Ice shattered off to her left. Another, rounder piece clobbered the point of her left elbow. “Ouch!”

“Allory!”

“Yaarah, what do I –”

With a roar, the Felidragon pounced upon her! Snatching her up by the terrifying dint of sinking his fangs into the back of her extra warm layers of clothing, he whirled about on three paws – the fourth cupped defensively around her head and upper body, she realised belatedly, along with a wing awkwardly crooked overhead – and scooted for the cover they had just left with speed born of fright.

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Survival fright.

The sky roared, or was it the ground? Ice sheeted down, shattering around his paws as the Golden Purrmaine dived into the entryway of the Pixie caverns. Allory dangled from his jaw. Needle-sharp points stung her bare legs. Scattering flecks of ice in every direction, Yaarah turned about once more. He dipped his muzzle to set her down carefully. Her knees threatened to buckle, while she was not sure his fared a great deal better.

They stared out at a hail of destruction. Some of the pieces were larger than her entire body. They pelted down so violently, the ice exploded up from each impact in an unending, cataclysmic roar.

Death by laceration was all they would have found out there.

“Silly me, thinking the snow’s so beautiful,” Allory breathed at last.

“Winter up here is beautiful, but it’s also very dangerous, frrr-hsst,” Yaarah replied soberly. “However, I’m not sure the Pixies had an ice storm in mind, especially not in this season. Certainly, I’ve never seen anything to compare. Something about this makes this Felidragon’s whiskers twitch.”

She could not resist. “Beware the fearsome twitch of the Dragon’s whiskers?”

“Mrrr-what?” he blurted out.

“Well, you sure whiskered me out of danger just now, Yaarah. Thanks!”

“Scoundrel! Murrr-harrr-HARRGH! You perfect pint-sized rogue –” he made a playful ‘I’ll be watching you’ gesture with his paw toward his eyes “– understood?”

Allory cooed, “Perfectly, o mighty Felidragon.”

Yaarah made a sound as if he were choking on a hairball.

* * * *

Several days of not being snuffed out by vicious semi-sentient dust storms or slain by flying ice shards was just what the Healer Sage had ordered. Allory rested, ate, ate some more, took light recuperative exercise aimed at strengthening her wing muscles without doing further damage, just had to nibble on another irresistible Chefturi creation, and enjoyed an intensive theoretical and practical introduction to Pixie healing techniques. They had many patients, including Minotaurs, magnificent Esuazi Eagles and a smattering of light green and yellow-skinned Plains Fae. She found the Seko Swamp Fae a touch creepy. Moist frog-like skin, anyone?

All this Pixie-led training left her feeling somewhat dusty between the earholes.

I now know what I don’t know, which is pretty much everything.

Having established that she, like any medical practitioner of any other race, was fairly much useless at controlling Pixie dust, her training majored on what Scintillant Fae were meant to be able to do. Emphasis on meant.

“Because if I’m not about to be eaten alive, nothing actually works!” Allory whined, late in the afternoon on their ninth day in Healers’ Reach. They had been working together in an attractive study grotto given over to the Fae’s education in all matters medical and magical. She suspected the Pixies had chosen it for her because the colouration of the long, spiral-shaped crystal blossoms that festooned the entire ceiling was a sapphire closely matched to her own hair, eyelashes and wing structures.

“Grrr-frrrt, apart from reanimating dust, that is –”

She threw up her hands. “Case in point.”

“Happens to be impossible,” the Felidragon pointed out.

“Well, the residual imprint of his being still happened to be detectable, Mister Clever Paws, so all I did was ask it to reassemble itself and that’s what the jolly dust went and did,” she said, folding her arms crossly. “Confounded stupid dust. Who would have thought?”

He stared at her.

“What?”

He stared at her.

“Er …”

“You merely beheld the dust-halo of a Pixie’s soul, batted your sweet eyelashes and asked it pretty please to pull itself together and behave as it ought?” he muttered sullenly, bending his neck to wash one paw in a gesture as timeless and fastidious as any cat had ever made.

“Well, I suppose. What of it?”

In rising tones, Yaarah yowled, “Allory Fae! In the throes of an explosive insanity-induced dust-tempest which had festered for at least a hundred years, or whatever they called it – mrrr-GNARRR! With a pert flick of your tiny transparent wings, you sorted through billions of random dust particles to find those which ought to reconstitute our friend Garobixi and cheerfully whipped them back together again, in perfect, he’s-alive-again, not a smidgen is missing order? What by a madcat’s curling whiskers are you complaining about? You think that ability doesn’t scare the living fleas off a Felidragon?”

Her turn to stare back. “Eep! I’m … uh, I’m awfully sorry –”

“So you should be!”

“Sorry about your fleas,” she heard pop out of her mouth. “Oh, suggids!”

His lips quirked apart. The whiskers shook violently.

“PRRR-HARRR-HARR!!” he roared at last, unable to withhold. “GRRR-HURRR-GRRAAAR! Always the quietest ones, mmprr-harr-harrr! We grow sassy, I see, most sassy and im-purr-tinent.” One gorgeous fiery eye winked slowly at her. She realised that he had returned to his fully golden colour once more. How had she not noticed? “One thing about the fleas.”

“The fleas?”

“Aye. Fleas are not dust, frrr-hsst, so when you send them packing, I do not want them back, understood?”

She bowed gracefully. “As you command, o mighty Felidragon, Fourteenth of your Dynasty and all that.”

“Oh, excellent work on the titles there, minion,” he approved in his snootiest tones. “Now, I have it on good authority that the weather has finally broken. Furthermore, mrrr-hrrr, inveterately wicked draconic chuckles and all that, I hereby inform you that I have been authorised by the Pixie powers that be to whisk you away on a brief recreational excursion to the top of this volcano, from which summit we might take a long look at the big, wide world. Are you game?”

“Sounds fabulous.” She knew his sharp eye did not miss the way she rubbed her arms. Qualms. What else? She dropped her hands with an annoyed shrug. “No storms in the offing?”

“Not a cloud in Centresky.”

“No escort for you?”

He made a face. “Henzaroseflash will accompany us. I truly and most memorably put my worst paw in it last time I was here, Allory, ssst-frrt!” Thankfully, he aimed a fire-filled hiss politely away from her wings. Jolly thoughtful of him. “I am not proud of the Dragon I was. Nor am I proud of what my kin seem to have become.” He gazed unseeing at a wall, reliving memories he chose to keep private. “I promise you upon all I hold sacred that I am true.”

“I believe you,” she replied, even though she wondered immediately why it was that he chose to make such a strong oath.

Why reinforce this claim unless he doubted himself?

With a pang of inner sadness, she realised that the naïve little Faerie of just a few weeks back no longer existed. How could she learn to trust again? Her home had been violated, family and friends killed or abducted, and she had been hunted like an animal. Her world’s roots had not merely been shaken, but burned. Now her closest friend was a Felidragon. Even he did not seem wholly faithful. To give trust struck her as a greater risk even than running outside in that ice storm. It cut to the core of who she was.

Allory knew self-doubt better than most emotions.

She knew how it clung, how it quietly burned at the root and sap of her being like caustic, eating a person alive and never giving anything but misery in return.

No. I will never live that way again. I will honour my fallen – as he did.

Could a Fae change their sap? She would.