Selen found Bluemoon tending to the inn customers on the ground floor. She fidgeted and grabbed him at the first opportunity to say, "I've got to go south to Shieldpoint tomorrow."

Sunflare and Newroot had followed her home. Bluemoon looked the three over and said, "You look spooked. What happened?"

Newroot said, "She heard someone telling stories like hers, and started jumping on tables and interrogating a guy."

"It was only one table," said Selen.

"Okay, but why?"

She covered her eyes with her hands and took a few deep breaths. "These things I remember, the vision I had this spring. I'm not the only one. Not alone in this. I have to find the storyteller."

"And do what?"

Selen wrung her hands. "Bluemoon... Dad... I've been wondering ever since the spring, why I'm alive and living here. I have to know if there's someone else out there who had the same thing happen. The same shared dream, let's say. So let me fly south and find out."

Bluemoon said, "Silly owlet, there's no need to panic. Whatever the gods may have wanted with you, you're safe here. We can chase down this rumor when it's safer to travel."

"What if whoever it is, leaves town?"

Sunflare stepped forward. "I'll go, then. I can travel faster, and there's mail due to go south soon."

Bluemoon clapped Sunflare on the shoulder. "If you're willing, then find this storyteller if you can. Hopefully it'll help settle Selen down."

Sunflare turned to Selen. "Is that good enough? You shouldn't rush off to a place you've never been, to find somebody you don't know, when you're this flustered."

She sighed, wanting to argue. "You're right. Thank you. Let me write a letter before you go."

"You didn't think I was going to leave right this minute, did you?"

She blinked. Bluemoon ruffled her head-feathers and answered for her. "She wouldn't be that demanding, I'm sure. Let's all get some rest."

#

Selen couldn't sleep. She paced in her room, looking at a blank sheet of paper. What did you say to somebody in her position? If there were someone else from Earth, that changed everything! She wouldn't forever be thought crazy for knowing these strange outside things. And she'd had a burden on her all this time to decide how to use that knowledge. Was it all pointless, not some plan of God but a whim of whatever force called itself the System? It seemed that there was some rhyme and reason to it after all, even if she still didn't know quite what. She wouldn't be alone. Not the only one with the potential to invent and reconstruct things from home.

She looked at the painted design on her door, which she'd never been able to adequately explain to her new family. Even the heart design wasn't a standard icon around here.

Maybe the exact reason she'd been chosen, didn't matter. The idea that there was more than one person like her, was its own kind of message. It was an opportunity to start working together and seeing what they could build.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Selen started writing, scowled, and scratched it out but saved the paper. She started with a fresh page, and this time she wrote in English. She'd used it sometimes for her more private notes. Now, the mysterious alien language was not just a way of hiding her feelings, but a way to share them with someone.

"You might call me a Moonlit Messenger. If you can read this, I'm betting that you had a really bad day and got invited by a gloved guy to stand in for someone. We should talk..."

And who was this guy? There were those other lives she'd been offered as options. The princess? The Kobold? Someone else entirely? And what kind of person on Earth had been plucked out of that life to come here? "Please, God, let it be someone good."

She wrote a little about her skills, her family, her Earthly chemistry studies. What else could she say? She babbled a bit and finally wrote, "God be with you."

No. She was being presumptuous. This might be somebody who'd hate and fear her, call her a crazy bigot or something just for being a believer. No need to start off on the wrong foot with a total stranger. She scratched the message out and just wrote, "Good luck!"

Only then was she able to sleep, fitfully, several times waking to look out at the moons. Just how many worlds were there, and how many people had been flung from one to another to cross-pollinate this greater kingdom of Heaven?

And how hard would it be to get pizza delivered at this hour?

Selen giggled, chirping. There was someone in the world who might appreciate a stupid idea like that.

#

She saw Sunflare off with a hug the next morning, and with a little joke to go with the letter. "He or she will probably want to throttle me. But then I'm making assumptions about who it is, where he's from. Has to know some of the same tales."

Her messenger pulled on a wing-compatible sweater. He rubbed his beak against hers, making her blush. "Don't wear yourself out speculating. I'll find out what I can, and then you'll have answers about whatever's going on."

"Thanks again."

#

Selen felt she was lurching along. Sometimes pacing uselessly, sometimes intent in study. Anything she knew might be useful, after all. A single educated person from Earth might not do much, but maybe two could. If this other was science-trained too, and if he cared and if they became friends.

And what about those other prospective lives; had there been other cases like an Elf princess mysteriously having a narrow escape from death? She asked around with more enthusiasm than she'd ever had before, but couldn't get clear answers. There was a wizard who'd been blown up in the eastern lands, for instance, but whether he survived, nobody knew.

She tried to make herself useful with mail filing and short delivery runs. She didn't dare leave town and miss Sunflare's return. And there were spells to study, alchemy ideas to think about, and books to browse in the Society library.

One frigid morning around a week later, Sunflare returned and whistled outside Selen's door. She rushed to open it, saying, "What happened?"

He laughed. "Can't you buy me a drink first?"

"Oh come on! Quit stalling!"

"All right. In short, there's a Vulin boy about your age who made those stories up. He seemed just as shocked as you were, to hear someone like him existed." He handed over a letter.

She read it, the first words in English she'd seen in anyone else's hand in far too long. "Vonn," she said, greedily absorbing details about a young inventor who mentioned things like 'the Net' and who wanted lenses and rubber and a hundred other widgets for his work. This was someone who knew of a world with many wonders and who felt motivated to try sharing them.

"Thank you," Selen said, shutting her eyes. To this unknown friend, to God, and to the Aves who'd been watching her. "I'm not alone."

"You never were," said Sunflare.

"I definitely owe you that drink," she said. "Let's go."

They took off from the balcony together into the morning light. She had a hundred little things to do, but they might be multiplied now into something that really mattered. And these wings that carried her over the city, this new life and the friends and family she'd been given, were a gift she wanted to repay. Fly. Explore. Create. Bring the best of your old world to the new. Not exactly a clear divine command, but it was a meaning she was happy with.

Selen and Sunflare circled the tavern a few times for fun before landing, worn out and full of things to talk about.

The End