I wake up on the floor of the basket. My head hurts again… And then, the ceiling tapestry opens with Seela coming in, with a large plate of fruit.

“It’s about time you woke up!” Seela laughs, sitting down next to me on the floor, placing the plate between us.

“Dude,” I grumble, “I had such a weird dream…”

“Did it happen to involve motorcycles, chain laces, leather vests, and dancing?” she interrupts me.

“Oh… so that all happened.”

“Yep!” she laughs again, “pretty arrogant of you to think you could’ve made all that up!”

She’s probably right about that.

“When I found you,” she begins, “Guara was seriously putting the moves on you. If I hadn’t brought you home, I might’ve lost you!”

“Lost me?” I’m confused. Is Guara the boss cat lady? I remember her teaching me how to dance…

“And look, I know it’s not my business what you’re into, it’s just… you were pretty wasted, and she seems… like she’d be into weird stuff,” Seela starts to frown.

“Weird stuff?” I’m still confused.

“I don’t know. She has a weird smile, I guess. More importantly,” she straightens back up, “breakfast. Eat.”

She pushes the plate towards me, so I get up, and eat. The fruit seems to help with my headache, and is surprisingly juicy. Something tells me that Seela is overreacting to what she saw last night, especially considering how easily I could overtake Guara, but I’m not about to tell her that. I do appreciate the concern.

“So did you win the races?” I ask Seela.

“Not even close!” she laughs, “I’m totally useless as a driver without you.”

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She practically glows as she tells me the details about the races. How she accidently drove straight off of the track, fell off her bike, and ate dirt. And how she overcorrected and dove into the ring of people, and how someone else drove their bike into her bike to stop her before she could hit anyone, wrecking both bikes. They chased her, yelling and throwing food at her, and she flew away to escape the consequences of her actions. That’s about the time she came and found me dancing with Guara.

“So, yeah. Can’t drive without a passenger I guess. Or maybe I just shouldn’t drink first,” she laughs again.

“You really had to go and make enemies with the people Guara’s probably going to have take us to the world tree,” I laugh too. I’m so glad she had a good time.

“Oh shit!” she stops laughing for a second, then continues laughing, “yeah I guess I did. Couldn’t help it, honestly.”

“I mean, worst case scenario, they’ll put us both in carts and not let you drive. We won, so it’s not like they’ll kill us.”

“But what if,” Seela’s eyes go wide as she leans over the plate of fruit, gripping my shoulders with her wings, causing my heart to stop beating for just a second, “it’s all a ploy, and they’re going to take us out in the middle of the desert and leave us stranded.”

“Wouldn’t they have done that before giving us fancy clothes?”

“It’s obviously a ritual sacrifice,” Seela says matter-of-factly, letting go of my shoulders and tossing her hair out of her face.

“Then wouldn’t they have done it while we were wearing the fancy clothes?”

Seela’s changed back into her sarong and wrap top. I’m wearing a green, knee-length dress that Seela must’ve helped me change into before I passed out.

“Then it’s to win our trust!” she points a wing at me.

She’s so cute when she’s catastrophizing.

“Either way, is it like, immediately that we need to go or is it just whenever we feel like it?”

“She told me whenever we feel like it,” I shrug, “so I assume we just go tell her when we wanna go.”

Seela thinks for a second.

“You need more rest first. You must be tired, or have a headache,” Seela orders me.

“You say that,” I accuse, “but you’re the one who fell off of motorcycles multiple times.”

“Shh!” she puts a wing over my face, and I now have a mouthful of fluffy feathers, “this isn’t about me. Just sit back and relax.”

She removes the wing from my face, gets up, and takes a jar of teeth out of her crate. She then sits down, opens the jar, and begins drilling holes in the teeth with her talons, putting them on her jackalope-skull necklace when she finishes each one.

We just hang out in the basket, bantering for a while. Seela won’t admit it, but she definitely got beat up quite a bit during the races. Since she’s the one who really needs the rest, I figure we can go whenever she’s ready.

Finally, now that her necklace is completely full of teeth from the jar, she speaks up.

“I think you seem rested enough,” she announces, “you ready to go?”

“I’ve been ready to go this whole time,” I tease, “the real question is, are you ready to go face your enemies again?”

She scoffs.

“Every enemy is just another bead for my jar! Now come, let's go!”