you can throw me if you want

[truthwright]

It turns out that there was really not much point to making a schedule. Kas and Helen visit the witch clan whenever Helen feels like it, and stay as long as she wants, and go when she wants to be somewhere else, and it all adds up to plenty more time spent with the clan than away.

After the aquarium jaunt with Ranata, it's a little more than a month before they visit the clan again.

Comments

[truthwright]

Kas supervises.

[carillons]

So does Helen.

[alicornucopia]

The queen slits their throats. The associated birds dissolve into gold and vanish.

[carillons]

Helen turns to Kas and hugs him tight, hiding her face against his chest. Kalavar curls up in Petaal's arms as a blue-grey dragon with soft pebbled skin.

[alicornucopia]

The queen sends someone to burn the bodies, clasps hands with Ranata in a sort of ceremonial acknowledgment that the damage to her family has been avenged, and departs.

[carillons]

"What does 'interference spell' mean?" says Helen to Ranata.

[alicornucopia]

"That is how we think they found you. It's a complicated kind of spell that makes little chances add up over a long time to get something - like making you cross their path so they could take you home," says Ranata quietly.

[carillons]

Helen shivers.

[truthwright]

So does Kas.

[alicornucopia]

"Hardly anyone does them."

[truthwright]

"Yeah," murmurs Kas.

[alicornucopia]

"It's all over," Ranata says reassuringly. "If they hadn't acted alone, the Ontario queen wouldn't have turned them over so quickly."

[truthwright]

Kas nods and pets Helen's hair.

[alicornucopia]

It's not too long before this mess is well in the past and it is time for Helen to go up to the cloudpine forest and cut her first branch and learn to fly.

[carillons]

Well in the past but not entirely in the past; Helen has been more serious, more withdrawn, and even more dedicated to studying magic.

None of which makes her any less enthusiastic about her very first cloudpine.

[alicornucopia]

That's good! It is a time to be excited. Ranata flies her up to help her pick one out.

[carillons]

She spends some time looking at all the trees - they are beautiful trees, and worth looking at - before she finally starts inspecting the branches, and then picks one that is pretty and looks right, and cuts it from its tree.

[alicornucopia]

It will float for her, because she cut it herself, in the way that Ranata's or Petaal's won't.

[carillons]

Eeeee! Helen hugs it.

[alicornucopia]

"Try flying!" beams Ranata, taking a picture.

[carillons]

Helen tries flying.

Flying works.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeee," she says, zooming around Ranata in an only slightly wobbly circle.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata grins and zooms as well.

[carillons]

Helen chases her!

"This is better than rollercoasters!" she shouts.

[alicornucopia]

"It is!" agrees Ranata.

She leads Helen around in a series of maneuvers that will let her surreptitiously check for balance or steering issues.

[carillons]

No such problems manifest themselves.

"Wheee!"