For Rian, dreams all have a sense of unreality to him.

He’s sort of lucky, he could always tell when he’s dreaming, he just couldn’t always wake up from them.

But when he bit into an apple when he dreamed that night, the taste was too fresh, too tart, the texture to crisp to be a dream and he woke up.

He sat up in his bed as the fresh taste evolved into the taste of good apple cider and frowned.

It couldn’t be a Magic sensing, could it? For those particularly sensitive to Magic, it could manifest as one of the five senses.

Sight was the easiest and most common, smell the least, and taste came in second. The Magical signature would have to be potent for him to sense it…

He closed his eyes, spreading his senses out in the compound. Perhaps one of the children had a breakthrough, somehow becoming almost as powerful as Darrogh when he was a child.

Nothing.

Whoever this was was powerful if he was manifesting taste at such a distance.

He stood up, walking over to the desk in his bedroom. He wanted to keep an eye out for whoever this was.

He was well aware of the Magical signatures of every powerful figure on the Continent, and this signature didn’t match any of them. A new player just entered the field.

He pulled out his map, deciding to entertain himself with his little game of finding the Heartling Tree.

His mind wandered in the meantime, and suddenly he was tasting and smelling sweet smoke and he grimaced. He always managed to find the damned crow, didn’t he?

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He was about to move his focus when he suddenly tasted… roasted apples? Perhaps? And he sat straight up.

The two tastes, apple cider and smoke, blurred into one delicacy on his tongue.

The apple person and The Tengu were in the same place.

Were they fighting? No, their Magical signatures tasted good. It wasn’t a clash, it was like… harmonizing.

He flushed and scrambled to shut the sensing part of his brain off. He perhaps became a momentary voyeur in something he didn’t want to voyeur in.

He buried his face in his hands and groaned.

Demanding himself to focus on anything else and not whatever that was, he stared intently at the map.

…His eyes wandered to the place where he felt the two signature mingle. Dammit.

He frowned, suddenly, noting the location. Very, very in the center of the circle he had made depicting where he guessed the Heartling Tree to be in.

Surely not, right?

But, well, Rian was always the superstitious type.

He fumbled with the drawers in his desk and pulled out a compass and ruler, marking out the location.

It was withing a seven mile radius of the center of the circle, which in turn was pretty solidly in the middle of the Maiden’s Forest.

What on Earth were they doing there?

Suddenly, he felt oddly warm. Like someone was embracing him.

Sleep his mind demanded, and it almost felt like someone was kissing his cheek.

What…? His head thunked to the desk and he was out like a candle.

----------------------------------------

When he woke up again, it was slowly and with the light shining directly on his face.

He groaned, sitting upright, rather blinking at the state of himself. He… didn’t have a crick in his neck. And felt oddly refreshed.

He inhaled sharply when he saw the water bowl in his room was empty, but didn’t cough.

He felt… very fine. Excellent for him, but just… normal for other people, he knew.

He rubbed his cheek absently, then glanced down on his map. The mark stood out to him in bright red and he stood up suddenly.

He needed to explore this.

He rushed out of his room, throwing a mental packing list together in his head.

Darrogh was in their shared living room, brushing his teeth absently. He stopped and stared at the manic look in Rian’s eye.

“Ree-ran?” He asked over toothpaste foam. Rian’s head snapped to him.

“I’m going to kill the Tengu.” He rasped. “Where’s Mary?”