Though the Gären house stood one story high, it had an attic. Reached through a ladder at the very end of the hallway, Hinte had used it quite a bit in the past, for the roof could be reached through the attic. She had gone to the roof a lot when she learned to fly again.

How fitting that where she once faced the prospect of flying again, she now faced another specter from her past.

The floorboards of the Gären house did not creak as Hinte slinked to the hatch. The dim light from the fixtures did not waver. Her heart lay calm in her breast, and her breath flowed in regular draughts. The conversation back in the dining room was small and phatic behind her.

Hinte knocked on the hatch to the attic, but there was no response. Already standing on her hindlegs, she unlatched the hatch and pushed it up, the door flipping before sliding to a soft stop by some unseen mechanism. Hinte leapt into the attic, not even glancing at the ladder.

“Monsun?”

A weak, trilled, “Kouou,” was the response, just two notes repeated a few times. Hinte looked around. The attic was the blind darkness of night, so Hinte retrieved her milkmoth lantern from her bag. The light cast glairy white light.

A corner of the attic lay shielded by colorful drapes, embroidered with blooming trees. The drapes were taffy pink and baby blue. She could not have forgotten the shades. She had a whole drawer full of dresses colored just so.

Another halting, “Kouou,” from the parrot. Hinte licked away the sour venom on her fangs.

Behind the blooming drapes sat a tiny bed. On the left sat a shelf of wood and glass toys. On the right, a shelf of colorful scrolls. A parrot-sized jacket of knitted schizon hung above the bed.

All of these had a thin coating of dust. Except, Hinte noted, a single double scroll near the front. Unlike all the others, it had some length of the scroll rolled into its top roller.

Hinte breathed, and looked to the figure in the bed. She did not recognize the parrot. Monsun’s feathers, once a dazzle of whites and grays, were mottled, some broken or lost. Her beak was flaky, and she trembled in her bed, under the pink blanket.

“Haune?”

Hinte’s fangs soured. She did not lick them.

“Haune.” The parrot droned again, weak notes. “Is that you, Haune?”

“No–no. It’s Hinte.”

“Hinte, Hinte, Hinte.” Monsun croaked, and turned over in the bed. She pulled the covers down to see the wiver beyond the foot of her bed. Hinte stepped closer. “Ha”⁠ ⁠—⁠ Monsun croaked again⁠ ⁠—⁠ “Hi, Frau Hinte. Has Haune-sofran awoken yet?”

“Awoken?”

“Yes. Haune-sofran is brumating, sleeping out the winter. When the spring comes she will awaken, and Monsun will be there greet her and everything will be okay again.”

“Monsun…”

“Has the spring come, Hinte-ychy? Has Sofrani awoken?”

“No, Monsun. Haune still–still sleeps.”

Hinte now stood beside Monsun’s bed and climbed onto the raised mat there. It was cushioned like the mats downstairs, but rose as high as a stool.

“Then Monsun will wait for her. Spring will come and everything will be okay again.”

The voice of a lacuna was an aching silence. A lacuna was a hole that never filled. It could only be forgotten. Hinte did not want to forget.

“Do you remember her, Monsun?”

“Haune-sofran?”

“No. Yes. Haune and Sonnesche. Do you remember them?”

“Why would Monsun forget Haune-sofran or beautiful Sonnesche, why why why.” Monsun trilled, discordant and offended. “Sofrani is the limest green with frills like dark stormclouds and wings like a canopy. She always has a smile and one fang out, and can hit a moving target at ten throws, and when she yells it’s like,” the words gave way to into a blaring trill. The dark-green wiver hissed a halting laugh, but some of her venom dripped onto the floor below. The sour scent was overpowering now, and Monsun finally noticed.

“Do you miss Sofrani, Ychyr?” Hinte lowered her head. “Spring will come, won’t it? You came.” Hinte tried to smile, but could not shake the feeling that something was wrong with it.

“Where is Sonnesche, Hinte? She is always on your shoulder.”

Hinte jerked her head down, staring at the floor. The sourness on her fangs was a trickle now, and she could not wipe all of it with her tongue, so she used the sleeve of her leg. Hinte sobbed a halting half-growl, half-hiss, but drew her wings to her body before looking back to the gray parrot. “She sleeps with Haune.”

“Spring will —” Monsun croaked.

“Do you remember Sonnesche, Monsun?”

“Ahah, yes, why why why would I forget? She’s a little song-parrot, her singing makes the whole room stop to listen. She likes to poke her head around, gets you into trouble a lot.”

Hinte gave another sob.

“Everything will be okay, Hinte-ychy.” Hinte continued to sob, and Monsun closed her eyes after a few beats. When Hinte looked up again, Monsun had opened them, but they were half-lidded.

“Haune?”

“Monsun…”

The gray parrot’s voice had become a squeak. “Is that you, Haune?”

“Hinte.”

“Hinte, Hinte, Hinte.” Monsun brought a wing near her face. “Has the spring come yet, Hinte?”

“No, Monsun. Haune is… Haune still sleeps.”

“Monsun will wait. She’ll be there to greet her, to welcome her.”

Hinte wiped more venom from her fangs, and thankfully the flow seemed to have lessened.

“The winter is so cold, Sofrani.” Monsun’s voice was distant, and she did not seem to be looking at the forest-dweller. “So cold, cold, cold. Why won’t the spring come, Sofrani?” Monsun continued to tremble in her bed. She was shivering.

Hinte climbed into the small parrot bed, sliding under the covers with Monsun. She enveloped the parrot in her wings, and felt herself growing very warm with affection. The parrot’s shivering might have eased a fraction, but Hinte did not trust her judgment.

“Hinte?” the parrot asked.

“Yes.” Hinte’s voice had grown soft. As she looked at the gray parrot and heard her warm trill of response, she felt a kind of hope blossom in her breast and flow to her fangs. It flowed out as sweet venom that the parrot smelled, and she eased into Hinte’s embrace. Hinte remembered this feeling, the same feeling she felt when she stood on the edge of the house, when she flew for the first time since leaving the forests. She kissed the parrot’s forehead, and her voice was a wisp.

“I will be your spring, Monsun.”

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Footsteps came from the hatch. Hinte stirred, not quite sleeping, but not fully aware. She did not know how long she held Monsun, but her lantern had dimmed, shining paltry light and almost dead. A wrinkled face appeared by her side, a purple parrot perched beside them.

“Enkelin,” Gronte said.

Hinte released the sleeping Monsun. “I should have come here sooner.”

“You needed time. We didn’t rush you to fly again, for the same reason. She didn’t like to be pushed, either.”

“I am not that much like my mother.”

“Yet you remind me of her so much. I don’t think she thought herself very much like me, either.”

“She would have been right.”

The lantern’s shadows hide Gronte’s reaction; she only stepped to the side, to let Hinte climb out the bed. When the young wiver was on her feet, Gronte wrapped a wing around her anyway. They walked to the hatch like this.

Hinte jumped through the hatch, lighting on the ground floor first, and Versta was fluttering after her.

“Why are we being so quiet?” he asked.

“It’s about respect, Versta,” Gronte said as she jumped down, closing the hatch behind her.

“Respect for whom?” Versta mimicked Gronte’s voice.

Hinte clicked a soft laugh at that. “For Monsun.”

“But she’s coocoo. She even know what respect is anymore?”

“She is hurt.” Hinte scratched her cheek while her tongue wriggled in her mouth, hunting for the right words. “Imagine if you lost Gronte, would you be in a good place?”

Versta trilled low.

“Remember Brennun/Gewolbe?”⁠ ⁠—⁠ Gronte folded her frills⁠ ⁠—⁠ “Remember how Gronte made enemies that day? Imagine then being left with ‘family’ who do not care about you or your lost.” Her voice came loud enough she paused a moment, and spoke again at half the volume. “And the only dragons who do care thought you were dead.” Hinte made a chopping motion with her wing. Salt scented the air.

Versta cawed, returning to Gronte’s withers. “He gets it, Enkelin. Calm down, please.”

“Fine. I need to talk to Ushra before I go to sleep.” To finally ask him.

As Hinte started off, she added, “No Verbogentraube when Kinri comes tomorrow, please?”

“Oh, Ushra will be cooking in the morning. My price for letting him away from the dining slab so soon. Ask him about it.”

Hinte walked away, toward Ushra’s workshop. Versta called, “Nighty night, nesty nestling.”

She tossed her head, saying, “See you in the morning, Gronte.”

Versta squawked at this, but Hinte only walked on. Gronte called out to her, but the dark-green wiver had already made the turn out of sight.

The workshop door stood sturdier than others in the house, the sort of hallow stone door common in homes of those who could afford them. Hinte pulled it, and stepped inside. Ushra stood in his black work robes as he measured the progress of some long-running reactions occurring in the large cauldrons arrayed on the left wall of the room.

Straight lines, rows upon rows and labels defined the room. Ushra would spend the first and last rings of most days organizing and reorganizing the workshop, making it bleed a sort of order that stuck with you, infected you.

In a word, the room was meticulous. Precisely how, Ushra would say, any respectable alchemist kept his workshop.

Hinte slowed to gaze at those projects of Ushra’s that were visible. Her eyes were drawn most to the tank with a bubbling hog corpse, the one she had smelled from the hall. The flesh of the hog looked to be devouring itself from the inside, while the outside roiled with bubbles and boils. If Hinte had to describe it, the word she’d reach for was polyps, and that was telling enough. Hinte shook her head, and walked further into the workshop.

Staune was trilling at Hinte’s appearance, and Ushra waved a wing without looking up. “Hello, Enkelin. If you need your good nights, I left a few written over by the door. Cross yours out.”

“No, it’s not about that, I —”

“Hinte! You dropped this in the dining room, I was trying to give it to you.”

It was the metal loop Kinri found in the Berwem. Hinte examined it again, holding it in two toes. “Thank you, Gronte,” she said, almost smiling.

Hinte stared at the loop. The exile had said it reminded her of Hinte. Was it the barbs? The way the metal twisted around itself? Was the meaningless, worth-nothing nature of the ring? She clenched it in her foot. No, Kinri was too nice for that. But would she mean it without realizing?

It was a joke, not a veiled insult. She was acting like Ushra`. Kinri meant well.

Kinri, Hinte’s new friend. Kinri, with so many injuries, because her new friend hadn’t been good enough.

Hinte had to do this. Turning back to Ushra, she took a deep breath. She could not alter her course again. “Opa, I⁠ ⁠—” yes, Ushra was already suspicious, but, Hinte knew, and loathed to admit, that Ushra was keener than her, and her deflections were pathetic; he already knew something was up “—⁠ want dragonfire.”

“What?” It was Gronte who asked; Ushra understood immediately.

“I want dragonfire.”

The parrots stood still, Staune on her perch, and Versta on Gronte’s withers, both looking around at the dragons, watching at their reactions. Hinte couldn’t see Gronte’s face, but she heard the concern in her voice. Ushra, with both frills arched, just looked bemused and suspicious.

But the light-green drake did not turn around. “Dragonfire,” he muttered, finding something awfully frilly and disgusting about the word. “Unhatched dragonfire. I wish the academies would stop filling students’ heads with such fledgling, tongueless nonsense.”

“Nonsense?” Hinte said. “Wars have been fought and won with dragonfire —”

“It would be better if they had been fought and won without it. It is redundant, dangerous, and you don’t need it. Yes, warriors might have won a battle or two with alchemical venom⁠ ⁠—⁠ but what of the damage to their fangs? What of the damage to their glands? What of the feeble-tongued aspiring soldier who opts for a dragonfire operation, and the feebler-tongued alchemist who cripples their glands permanently or gives them a defective mixture?”

“But that is irrelevant,” replied Hinte. “You perfected die Wundervernarbung⁠ ⁠—⁠ dragonfire is beneath you.”

“Flattery should be subtler than that. To work, that is. You cannot outright lie. I’ve hardly perfected die Wunder.”

“What he means is,” it was Gronte starting, “he was an adventurer too, once⁠ ⁠—⁠ with Dwylla (may he fly forever) and Rhyfel the elder, and none of them needed dragonfire.” Versta trilled, punctuating Gronte’s words. “Shush,” she murmured.

“And we did more than slither around the Berwem. Yes, this business with the humans and the wraithen is unpleasant, but hardly enough to justify dragonfire. Unless you have some ulterior purpose, dearest Enkelin?”

“I am in danger, I need the protection.” From the contraction of drake’s frills, Hinte knew it was the wrong thing to say. Hinte stepped back a fraction. “There⁠ ⁠—”

“Why do you need this protection, Hinte-ann?” Gronte said. “You can stay away from the lake, isn’t that protection enough?”

“Rhyfel offered me a position on the Frinan guard.”

“Are you planning to stop barfights and catch diller thieves with dragonflame?” He snapped his tongue. “Why even leave the shop? You have no battle experience outside the academy drills, and that was gyras ago. You are an alchemist, not a warrior.”

“The faer thinks this might cause war with the humans.”

“So you want to be the heroic fire-spitting dragon who saves the day? Wars do not work that way.”

“If I could defend myself, I could be a medic there, I could make a difference. Instead of whiling away time on research no one will use or maybe seeing to whatever patient you deign to help.”

“I still have correspondents in the forest. My research is being used.”

The dark-green wiver glanced down, then glanced back. “Would you have discovered die Wundervernarbung cooped up in a shop like this?”

Gronte cut in before Ushra could respond. “Why are you so adamant about this?”

She thought of her Dozent’s words.

It all begins.

She thought of Monsun, and how much the bird needed⁠ ⁠—⁠ something.

I will be your spring.

She thought of Kinri, the squalled.

“I am not a warrior, but an alchemist. How else shall I fight, but with my fangs?”

It felt frilly in her throat and sounded frillier off her tongue. But her trip into the Berwem had stirred something within her. Something that wasn’t satisfied with dry, sterile lectures and experiments, be them from her Opa or her Dozentin.

No, she wanted to heal. To taste the sweetness of staring off decay, of giving life its chance. But to do that, she had to make her own peace, to put things in order her way. To finish what had started in the firey lake, and the fires of the forest all those gyras ago. To light her silence with the roar of flames.

And if she ended like Jammra herself, grounded by her compassion, to heal her final foe instead of blazing forth with anger and vengeance?

It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

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Ushra had shooed the wivers from his workshop. Versta followed Gronte without question, and Staune trailed behind them. She revealed her ulterior when she flew to the almost-empty bowl on the dining slab. While Staune finished off the leftover food, Gronte collected dinner plates.

Versta perched high on a light fixture and waved his wings wildly in front of it. The moving shadows provoked a flinch from Staune, and the red and blue parrot leapt and swiped at the purple parrot and an, “Ueheh, minnow.” Swiped, the purple parrot now had some of the feathers of his ridge crooked.

When Gronte had cleared the slab, she stood by Hinte, watching her, frills working in thought. An alula ran up and down the chain of her necklace before settling on the locket. Hinte watched Versta play in the light, but kept Gronte at the edge of her vision.

“Versta,” Gronte suddenly said. “I left a boning knife in my work room. I’ll need to clean it before the night’s close. Can you be a dear and get it for me?"

Versta trilled and waved his wings in the lamp a few more times before he hopped into the air and flew out of the dining room.

“Hinte-ann, Enkelin, did Monsun tell you she wanted you to look after her hatch?”

Hinte turned to grandmother with a flare of her frills, eyes clearing in an instant. After a few beats, she lifted her head, humming a ‘no.’

“Would you? I’ll understand if you don’t want another parrot after…”

After Sonnesche. The day stood clear in Hinte’s mindeye. The spicy wood floor of the compound, the wavering kakaros light, the colorful walls of the basement where she hid. The certainty that this was the last day she’d experience any of this. The last, saccharine-sweet song Sonnesche had chirped for her, before she had given Hinte the slimmest chance of escape. The mad flight away, away, away. The half-frilled, unsmiling merchant with a hat that had thrust her toward her grandmother, out in the canyons.

She had flown, so high and hard, the fluttering, humming flight only a small fledgling could manage. Afterward, it had felt like her wings were broken. The world became silent.

Sometimes she still brandished her alula, waiting for a perch. Sometimes she still twitched her frills, waiting for some mellifluous trill.

But because of Sonnesche, Hinte now lived. Because of Sonnesche, Hinte did not end up like Monsun.

“I…” How could she get over that? How could any other parrot compare to lovely Sonnesche? “I have to think about it.”

Gronte wrapped a wing around her granddaughter, and for a moment they sat like this. Then Versta squawked his way back into the room, clanking a bloody boning knife down on the slab. He lighted down in front of the two dark-green dragons.

“Hye. Why it smell so sour in here?”

Hinte looked at the parrot. “Because you look ridiculous with those crooked feathers.” Hinte patted the parrot down its head, righting the feathers, while he protested with dissonant warbles.

“You dragons are weird. You don’t make any sense.”

Gronte drew her wing back to her side, and smiled. “You’ve had a long day, Enkelin. Rest for the night.”

Hinte did not smile, but her frills waved. “Silent night to you, Gronte.”

Versta flew at Hinte’s face, pecking a frill.

“What was that for?”

“Because you look ridiculous with those frills sticking out.” Versta mimicked Hinte’s voice. “I can’t do anything about them, but now you know.”

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The floorboards of the Gären house thudded as Hinte slinked to her room. The dim light from the fixtures faded as Gronte put them out. Hinte’s heart fluttered in her breast, and her breath came in staccato pulls. The conversation in the dining room came sparse and dwindling behind her.

She sat the loop Kinri had give her on her nightstand, where she would see it in the morning. After putting out the few light fixtures in her room, Hinte climbed in her bad, and curled under a thin blanket. She brandished her alulae at the lacuna, and she fanned her frills, listening to its voice.

Hinte did not sigh. But her breaths came a little deeper as her mind macerated in the day’s events. With sleep crawling to her head from her aching limbs and protesting wounds, it gave her no time to ruminate. But she had time for one clear thought.

Hinte was so glad this day was finally over.

Her next thoughts fumbled as sleep claimed her, waving and floating away into a sleepy mess.

She dreamed of the winds.

* * *