I should have realised when we first took off that we were looking for a needle in a haystack. Even if a dragon amongst the flat lands of the moor would be easy to pick out, it was still far, far more than a hundred square miles to cover. And the trail was more than a day old, at this point, so given the speed dragons flew at, they could be anywhere north of the Fountainheads by now if they had given up on—or finished off—the bandits.

  The sun dipped lower, kissing the western horizon as I took us in slow back-and-forth motions in the air, trying to maximise the area we could cover. I could feel Grace slump in the saddle as exhaustion set in. I couldn’t say that I was fully alert, either. The heat of the constant sunlight on my face was starting to make my brain feel feverish.

  I was the one who spotted the hamlet first. Little more than a collection of eight or nine homes clustered in the crease of a valley, all surrounded by a thick, patchwork shroud of small shrubs and south arctic heathers that spread out along the somewhat flatter land that encircled it. The only road that ran through it was the path that came from Bryn Corben, which transitioned into loose gravel at the perimeter, and it terminated at the western edge of the hamlet. There weren’t any street lamps either, not even candles or lamps hung from doorways or a fire pit to provide light. From the air, the village seemed like a morgue, silent and lifeless.

  ?That old bird said the bandits and dragoon were going to a “trappers’ hamlet”, right?? I asked. ?Hath Church End, or something??

  “She did,” said Grace, finally sitting up and coming to alertness again. “Is that it?”

  ?I think so,? I said, slowly circling over the buildings as I angled us downward towards a nearby hill. ?Doesn’t look like there’s any dragons here, though.?

  “Well, we can at least ask,” said Grace. As I alighted on the hillside, she hopped to the ground, her boots making a mushy sound as they landed in the acidic, damp earth. “Maybe they’ll know where they went, if they passed through here.”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t like we had any tracks to follow, anyway.

  Grace took the lead as we walked down into the cluster of buildings. Here in the lee of the surrounding hills, the wind that rushed unimpeded across the moor came to a halt, and the air had a musty, stagnant quality to it. The litter strewn about from recent rains had collected in still puddles and begun to rot, and I could hear the buzzing of small insects rising up almost out of the ground itself.

  The buildings here were all pretty old-fashioned, generally quite small and made of grey brick with thin slate roofs. Only a couple had any light spilling from their windows, one of which was the church, sitting up on a small ridge with a wooden steeple jutting upwards from its north end, creaking gently as it received the whisper of a breeze that its height earned it. Most of the rest at least seemed occupied, but had their shutters drawn closed so that their inhabitants couldn’t be seen.

  Grace approached the first home we neared, the clunk of her boots as she stepped up onto the the stone foundation below the entryway. She gave two solid knocks on the door. The sound echoed loudly through the valley.

  There was a rustling from the other side, and the drapes behind the window flicked open just enough for a bloodshot eye to peer through from the other side, then closed again.

  “Ach!” called a muffled, angry voice from inside. “Who goes there this evening-time? Don’t you know not to go out past dark?

  “My name is Grace Lawcrest,” Grace called back, putting on a plaintive voice. “I’m with the Dragoon Corps. We’re looking for someone. A lady in town told us that another dragoon flew out this way, towards this settlement. Have you seen them?”

  “Heh heh heh…” the man inside chuckled snidely. “Dragons in Hath Church End! Reckon I’d remember something like that.”

  “So, you haven’t, then?” Grace clarified.

  “Not a glimpse of hide nor scale!” said the man. “Not at all, not at all. Now, if you’re done badgering me, you can trot along, stranger.”

  There was a bang from the other side that made me flinch, followed by a metallic clinking as the lock rattled when the man checked it. Grace sighed and stepped away from the house.

  ?That was…aggressive,? I said to Grace as I followed her onward towards the next home. ?A lot more than expected.?

  “I’d say that was pretty close to expected, actually,” Grace said with a grimace. “A lot of people aren’t fond of dragoons, especially in tiny little hamlets like this. Plus we came in at dusk, and even on top of that, they might have had some trouble with those bandits recently that’s got them on edge.”

  ?I suppose that makes sense,? I said. ?I still don’t think most people in Vandermaine would have been that rude about it, though.?

  “Vandermaine is something of a special case, I think you’ll find,” said Grace. “Pretty much the only thing we got from the rest of the province was their grain and vegetables. We had more in common with the Fountainhead mountain-folk than we did with most of the people who live down here in the Vale. Hospitality isn’t really the norm here unless you go somewhere big, like Yorving or Kirkwall, and even then it’s only if you’re somewhere they want outsiders to be, like an inn or a market.”

  I flicked a rock on the gravel road. ?That sounds awful,? I said. ?How have you managed all this time??

  “You get used to it,” answered Grace. “Most folks aren’t that rude about it. Mrs. Cutler was fine, right? Normally it’s more of a sense of distrust than any outright insults or accusations. It’s fine.”

  I pressed my mouth into a thin line at that. It didn’t sound fine; in fact, it sounded distinctly dreadful to deal with for any amount of time. I couldn’t really imagine Grace actually thinking that, but it wasn’t the time to argue.

  The next house was much more distressed than the first. Squat and sagging on its left side, it had dry vines creeping up the walls and a flower box outside one of its windows full of pricey yellow tulips that were wilted from overwatering.

  The door audibly clunked against its frame when Grace knocked on it. A few seconds later, it opened, held mostly shut by a latched chain, and half a young woman’s face peeked through from the other side. Her eyes were red, as though she’d been crying, but she held a disinterested frown all the same.

  “Who’re you?” she asked. She gave me a thorny glance. “Did the Lord-Protector send you?”

  “No, sorry,” said Grace. “We’re looking for someone, a dragoon. We heard that one came by here, and would like to know if you’ve seen anything.”

  The woman pulled the door a little closer. “I haven’t seen any,” she said. “Folk like you don’t pay much mind to little places like us.”

  ?Are you sure?? I pressed. She jumped and locked eyes with me. ?It’s very important that we find them soon.?

  “W-Well, I…” the woman said, her voice wavering a bit before she collected herself. “I really haven’t seen nothing that I could tell you. There’s no dragons or dragon-riders around here, save you lot. Swear on my life.”

  Grace let out a disappointed sigh. “That’s alright. Thanks anyway.”

  She turned to leave, but the door latch clacked as the woman pushed it as open as it would go again. “You shouldn’t stay out past sundown,” she said. “There’s been foul sounds coming up from the moors, and folks have gone missing. It’s not safe. If you need somewhere to stay, Saint Bernhard’s Church up on the hill should have room in the attic for folks passing through.”

  “Thank you,” said Grace. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Oh, but if you do go out looking for your friend,” the woman continued, a desperate tone creeping into her voice, “could you please keep a lookout for a young man named Arthur Coslett? He’s a good lad, and I haven’t seen him all day. I worry he’s got himself into trouble somehow, especially now that he’s not back by evening.”

  ?We’ll keep that in mind, too,? I assured her. The woman startled again at my words, but seemed reluctant to shut the door until we had already turned around and walked towards the tiny, overgrown dirt trail that led off the main path towards the church.

  ?The people here are really losing it,? I mumbled as we drew near.

  “They’re definitely on edge,” agreed Grace. “I doubt our lead’s here, though. A dragoon wouldn’t be able to pass within three miles of a place this small and this anxious without everyone in the hillside knowing it the next day.”

  ?Unless they’re lying,? I suggested.

  “I don’t think they are,” said Grace. “They’re nervous and mistrustful, but I don’t see why they’d lie about something like that.”

  ?Just a thought to keep in mind,? I said with a shrug.

  Once again, Grace knocked on the doors of the church before heaving them open. The building wasn’t much more than a single hall with two shrines in the wings and several wooden benches that had been pushed up against the walls. A wide trap door was set into the ceiling in the back, attached to a long string that hung freely down to the ground. A blocky stone altar sat five paces away from the rear wall, covered in a simple brown cloth and bearing a brass chalice and two mostly-melted candles that were still lit, filling the hall with warm firelight.

  Grace and I walked softly inside, mindful of the loud creaks the floorboards let out at every step. Still, that and the breeze that blew through the steeple above and echoed around inside until it became a distant banshee wail were the only sounds in the church.

  “I don’t think that you can get into the attic,” murmured Grace. “But it doesn’t seem like anyone’s here, anyway, so we should be able to bed down in the sanctum, at least for the night.”

  ?Well, someone’s here, or else who lit those candles?? I jerked my head towards the flames.

  Grace stared at them for a moment and raise a conciliatory finger. “Fair,” she said. “I’ll check the attic, just in case.”

  She walked to the back and pulled on the string, letting a folding wooden ladder fall with a clamour from the trapdoor. She winced at the sound and hurried up. Soon I could hear her boots clomping around above me.

  While she was doing that, I began to gently untie the rope holding our saddle in place. I had gotten used to having it fastened around my chest, and hadn’t realised just how much it was pushing against my scales until I took it off and remembered what it was like to be able to breathe deeply without worrying about accidentally undoing the knot. Not that I planned on making it any looser in the future; I could handle the discomfort to make sure that Grace had a place to sit without injuring herself and Juni could come along with us.

  Speaking of which, I pulled the mattress off my back and carefully set it down on the floor underneath one of the windows. Juniper was fast asleep, twitching her feet and face as she dreamed. I would have given her a few scratches under the chin to make up for having brought her flying in the first place if I didn’t want to let her get her well-earned rest.

  A minute later, Grace came down the ladder again, practically jumping the last few rungs. “It’s sleeping quarters up there,” she said. “Two cots, but no one’s here.”

  ?Huh,? I said. ?Maybe they lit the candles before they left, then.?

  “Obviously,” Grace said as she rolled her eyes. “Unless you’re telling me a ghost lit them. We should probably put them out before we go, though, especially if you’re going to be leaving Juniper here. Old, dry wooden floors and unattended candles do not make a good mix.”

  ?Go…?? I prompted as Grace pinched the candles’ flames out.

  “Go out looking again,” she finished. “We’ve still got half an hour, maybe a bit more, before we lose sunlight completely. Might as well make good use of it.” She ushered me towards the door, and I hesitantly followed. “Besides, that lady said that someone’s missing. We’re better equipped than anyone here to fight off anything that might be troubling him.”

  I huffed. ?That seems like such an unnecessary risk,? I said. ?There’s a good chance that all that’s left to find of him is his corpse.?

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  “And, if that’s the case, then the people here will want some closure,” said Grace.

  I looked away with a grimace, and Grace threw her hands up in the air. “Belfry, I can’t believe you right now. I know you’re always the cautious and careful one, but someone’s life is at stake here! We’re the ones with the ability to help him, we can’t just sit here all night twiddling our thumbs.”

  ?I’m not saying that I won’t take you,? I said, kneeling down to let her climb on to punctuate my point. ?I just want you to have…realistic expectations. You can’t help everybody.?

  “I know,” said Grace, her voice suddenly turning heavy. “I’ve been a travelling mercenary for five years, I’m not an idiot. I’ve had to let people down and charge desperate people to make sure I can eat.” She gave me two taps on my shoulder, and I read her signal and lifted off into the air. “But right now, we’ve got an opportunity, and those don’t happen all the time, so we shouldn’t waste it.”

  I hummed a low, neutral growl at that. I still wasn’t sure this was a good idea, but there wasn’t any convincing Grace now. She was stubborn, that way.

  Once we were aloft and soaring, she carefully let go of her grip on my shoulders and sat up, retrieving her binoculars. “You focus on steering, I’ll keep watch,” she called.

  Given that her night vision probably wasn’t as good as mine now, I resolved to do both. Still, even to me, the endless expanse of grass below us was difficult for my eyes to sift through as the sun dipped fully below the western horizon. All the colours of the land muted almost until they were solely shades of dark grey as the light faded, and the boundaries between hills became even harder for me to decipher. Finally, the last vestiges of orange glow faded from the sky leaving only a palette of dark blues as the twilight came to an end, and I wheeled around to take us back towards the hamlet.

  ?I don’t think that we’re going to find anything,? I said.

  Grace slumped against my back. “Yeah, you’re probably–wait!” She suddenly jumped to attention, pulling herself forward as close to my face as possible. “Look there!”

  I glanced back to see where she was pointing. Sure enough, when I followed her gaze, I saw a spark of light nestled against a jutting tor. Oddly enough, my better night vision almost made it harder to discern the presence of the light, even if I was also starting to struggle to make out the landscape in the pitch black. I rolled a mite to the side, bringing us a little closer for a better view.

  The light was actually two lights, one small and one large. The small one looked like a torch, held high above the ground and illuminating the silhouette of a person, while the large one looked like a campfire. Three more people were seated around it, bent over like they were in prayer. There was a single tent pitched several feet away, leaning partially against the rock.

  ?I see it,? I said. ?Four people, it looks like.?

  “Do you think one of them is that Arthur bloke?” wondered Grace.

  I fully shifted direction, flying towards the campsite. ?Only one way to find out,? I said. ?Not sure what we’ll do about it if he is, though. I don’t think I can carry five people all the way back to the village.?

  “We’ll figure something out,” Grace assured me.

  I set down in the field nearby, letting Grace down beside me. The person with the torch definitely noticed us as we approached, turning to face us directly.

  ?You should do the talking, Grace,? I said. ?I don’t think they’ll receive us very well if a large scaly creature starts talking in their heads, especially with those monster bandits and whatever else roaming about.?

  Grace flashed a wide smile as she stepped into the torchlight. “Hello, there!” she called. “We were wondering if any of you have seen someone named Arthur…Coslett….”

  She stopped suddenly when we finally got close enough to the man to make out many details about him under the harsh light of his torch. He was dressed in typical men’s fashion, wearing a brown vest with a white shirt and brown trousers. He had a battered, brown leather hat that tipped down, shading his face from the light and keeping us from meeting his eyes. But I could still see the edges of his jaw, where his skin had turned scaly and sagged as though sloughing off his face. His mouth was surrounded by wiry, greyish whiskers, and his teeth were sharp, like a wolf’s.

  Worst was his arm. The hand holding the torch high looked mostly normal, save the patches of reddish, scaly skin pulled tight over the man’s bones, but his left arm was outstretched towards the ground, half again as long as his right. His hand was splayed wide, showing off his long, spidery fingers that were each tipped with a curved claw a foot long. The man, or what was once a man, walked towards us falteringly, holding the torch out and growling. As it did, the other three figures rose from where they were by the campfire, blood dripping from their faces. This close, I could see the bodies of the two people that they had been leaning over, large chunks of flesh missing.

  As the monsters approached, Juniper reacted faster than me, suddenly springing to life to bark and yelp at the creatures. ?Grace, watch out!? I cried.

  She didn’t seem to listen to me. Instead, she reached down to her side and pulled her spear from its holster. The closest creature held its torch out threateningly and raised its long, clawed hand for a strike, but Grace was faster. She bellowed a battle cry and rushed forward, swinging her spear around to slash into the creature’s knee from the side. There was a crunch as it howled and collapsed to the ground. Still, it flailed its claws around wildly, searching for purchase on Grace’s flesh, but they were deflected by her metal breastplate and only managed to score a few tears in the cloth covering of her gambeson. She raised her spear high and stabbed it down on the creature’s head, like she was driving a stake. The weapon pierced straight through its skull, and it immediately dropped the torch and ceased its growling, lying still on the grass.

  Grace pried her weapon out of her first victim, giving me a stern glare. “Don’t just stand there gawking!” she shouted. “Help me!”

  I jumped to alertness and looked down at my own clawed hands. ?I-I don’t know how to fight like this!? I stammered as I struggled to undo the mattress. Even with panic rising, I at least remembered that I had to get Juni out of there.

  “Use your fire!” cried Grace. “Claw them, bite them! Saint’s blood, ram them if you can’t figure anything else out. You weigh enough for that to at least hurt them!” She took a few steps backward from the other three monsters, wary of her disadvantage of numbers.

  Got to at least try! I declared in my mind and charged, bounding right past Grace and towards the line of monsters. I did exactly as she suggested. Just before I reached the group, I lowered my head just like I had when we broke out of the monastery last night, and hoped that my horns would take the brunt of the impact.

  The creatures weren’t nearly as sturdy as the stone I had smashed before. I felt something crack under my blow before contact was abruptly broken as the thing was hurled several feet back, rolling across the ground until it came to a stop on its back, limply grasping at its chest with its normal hand.

  As I stood there, taking in the impact, I felt something sharp cut across my right flank. I roared a real, honest roar that resounded across the moor and turned to see one of the remaining creatures holding a sword in its good hand, the edge dripping fresh blood. I should have been able to dodge that strike, but the ram against the first creature felt like it was still reverberating through my head, amplifying a headache I didn’t know I had and ruining my reaction time. I definitely gave myself a concussion breaking that stone last night.

  I no longer had time to think. So I didn’t. My body felt like it was halfway moving on its own as I thrashed my head to the side, catching the offending monster on my horns and throwing it to the ground beside me. Before it could get up, I darted to its side, letting its claws glide off my thick scales, and lifted up a hand before stamping down on its neck and twisting. There was a snap that recalled the times we’d had to put down deathly ill sheep when I was a kid, and the thing laid still. As I pulled my hand back, blood began to spray from a tiny incision I’d made on the creature’s throat with my claws on accident, gushing forth with a bizarre amount of force.

  I was briefly overcome with a euphoric, rapturous feeling as blood sprayed across my face and claws. I felt something grab my tail and instinctively lashed it hard from side to side to try and shake the creature loose, but its grip was far stronger than I expected. Claws flailed against my scales from all sides, not sharp enough to pierce my scales, but every strike was borne by a hammer of force that battered and bruised the muscles underneath.

  There was a flash of intuition in my head, and I instinctively acted on it, whipping my tail back. The weight on my tail disappeared as Grace’s spear caught the clinging creature, impaling it through its chest and sending it falling back until the blade stuck into the ground. A wet squelch and the sound of cracking bone signalled its certain demise.

  Grace yanked her weapon free and dashed up beside me, placing a hand on my side where I’d gotten cut. “Are you okay?” she asked through hurried breaths.

  My tail free, I snapped my wings out and use them to jump back away from the remaining creature with a spin, pivoting around a foreleg. I swung my tail around as I spun, slamming it into the creature’s side and sending it hurtling to the ground. It got up slowly, still looking towards us with malice and an unsettling hunger despite two dents in its chest from which blood freely flowed, soaking its torn clothes.

  It drooled blood from its open mouth and snarled, a personal affront I couldn’t let go unanswered, and I snarled right back, louder and more impressively. ?It’s bleeding!? I roared in my head. ?KILL IT!?

  Grace gave me a nervous glance. I felt a pressure inside my head, and the haze of battle that had flooded my mind started to clear. My snarls faltered and faded.

  “They’re tenacious, I’ll give them that,” said Grace.

  ?Yeah,? I said, suddenly feeling weak and unsure again. ?Uh…you go right, I’ll go left??

  Grace nodded. “Right!” She steadied herself, and I tensed my own muscles, readying myself to pounce. “Ready, and—”

  She was cut off before we could make our move by a roar and a blast of fire from above, which lanced down through the darkness and engulfed the monster in front of us. It wasn’t the orange of ordinary fire, or even a similar colour like red or yellow. It was pure white, with pale blue at the fringes of the flames. The creature could not bear it, and it howled as the flames washed over it, cooking its skin until it fell to the ground, motionless and covered in fire that kept burning and eating through its clothes.

  I didn’t want to believe it at first, but looking up, my eyes confirmed the truth. There was a dragon hovering above us. It took a few deep breaths as its mouth expelled a cloud of still-burning sparks before angling down and landing by the campfire. It was about my size, maybe half a foot shorter in height but a full two or three foot longer. It was mostly a dark grey with a tinge of blue across its back, and a paler grey tinted beige on its underside. Its wings were divided into three leaf-shaped flaps and probably had a span a few feet wider than mine. It had two blue horns, or maybe antennae, that extended from its temples, a short, narrow snout, and a small black spike that protruded from its chin. Its tail was long and whip-thin, split at the end into two halves with a wide membrane between them. Despite its formidable appearance, it had a concerned look in its distinctly orange eyes that prevented it from being intimidating.

  Almost as intriguing, however, was the woman that jumped down from its back. She wasn’t wearing any armour, and only bore a long, bladeless sword at her side. She was wearing much nicer clothes than I had ever that the fortune to buy, with a scarlet jacket, white undershirt, and dark grey trousers. She had long, ashy-brown hair, all kept in a single dense braid, and warm sepia skin that almost glowed in the firelight. The light also glinted off of an iron torc inset with gold that wrapped around her neck, a piece that ignited some forgotten trivia fact in my head, but I couldn’t recall precisely what it indicated.

  “Sorry to intrude like that,” the woman said. Her voice matched her face; solemn and assertive, like many people I’d seen and heard who were used to being leaders, but with a warmth and humanity to it that most authorities I knew had to put on a mask to get. “But it seemed decent to at least give a little bit of aid.”

  Grace suddenly dropped her fighting stance, letting out a relieved breath and leaning on her spear like it was a staff while she gave a kind of awkward smile. “I think we had it covered, but the assist is appreciated regardless,” she said.

  “Of course,” said the woman with a slight bow of the head.

  We stood there in uncomfortable silence for a few moments, each waiting for the other party to start. Grace loudly cleared her throat. I took the opportunity to move away from the three creatures’ corpses and clear the vestiges of the reverie of the fight from my head. Those things had been people, or they looked like they had. I hadn’t ever killed people before, so I wasn’t sure if feeling nothing afterward was normal. I felt like it wasn’t. I didn’t want it to be.

  “Well…I should at least introduce us, I suppose,” the woman said. She gave a more proper bow this time. “My name is Rosalie Lecerf. I’m a member of the House of Lecerf.” She gestured to the dragon. “This is my friend Arthur.”

  I sprang to attention at that, my ears swivelled forward. ?Arthur?? I said without bothering to filter who I let in on my “dragonspeech” anymore. ?Like “Arthur Coslett”??

  The dragon, Arthur, tilted his head. ?Yes, that’s me!? I heard a resonant, silvery voice say. It was just like how Grace described my voice; it wasn’t put directly in my head, but it came from everywhere and nowhere at once, and like someone was talking in my ear and shouting from half a mile away at the same time.

  ?How do you know my name?? Arthur continued.

  ?Someone in Hath Church End wanted us to look for you while we were out here,? I said. I looked him up and down. ?Though, based on the way they talked, I kind of thought that you’d be a human??

  Arthur pawed at the ground, a morose expression overcoming his features. ?I am,? he said. ?Or, I was. It’s kind of a long story.?

  My heart beat thrummed like a fiddle string at that. No way, I thought, there’s just no way. He can’t be…the same as me?

  Rosalie turned halfway back, waving her hands. “Arthur!” she hissed. “You can’t just say that to whoever we meet!”

  ?But they’re dragoons!? Arthur protested. ?Maybe they can help us!?

  “Whoa, hold on now,” said Grace. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Let me get something straight first.” She put a hand to her chest. “I’m Grace, Grace Lawcrest. And this is my sister, Belfry.”

  I gave a short wave. ?Hello,? I said. ?I…also used to be human.?

  Arthur’s eyes widened, and a hopeful smile crept up his face. He let out a low chirp, like a giant songbird.

  “We’re not dragoons,” Grace continued. “We were actually out here looking because we heard a dragoon helped chase some bandits out of Bryn Corben the other day, and we were hoping that they might be able to help us with Belfry’s…problem.” She shrugged. “It wouldn’t happen to be that you two were the ones that did the bandit-chasing, would it?”

  Arthur and Rosalie shared a glance. ?We were,? said Arthur.

  “There aren’t any real dragoons that have been through here in the past month, at least,” agreed Rosalie. “When we saw you out here, we had some hope, but….”

  “Well, maybe we can still help each other, anyway!” said Grace, holding a hand out towards Rosalie for a shake. “Seems like we’re all in the same boat.”

  Rosalie warily accepted Grace’s excessively vigorous handshake. Just as they let go, we all heard a loud whooping sound echo over the moors, definitely the cry of a large animal. Everyone jumped except for Arthur.

  ?It’s pretty dangerous out here at night,? he said. ?Do you two have a place to stay??

  ?We were planning on spending the night in the church at the hamlet,? I said.

  ?Oh, perfect!? Arthur said with an earnest smile. ?That’s where me and Rosalie have been staying, too. We can talk more there, right??

  Grace shivered. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s getting cold, and I really don’t want to know what made that noise.” She turned towards me. “Belfry?”

  I hummed and knelt down. Arthur did the same, and once the humans were seated and ready, we gave each other a nod before taking off into the cloud-shrouded sky.

  As we trailed behind, letting Arthur lead the way back, I gave Grace a suspicious look. ?Do you think we can trust them?? I whispered directly to her. ?This feels like too good for us to be a coincidence.?

  Grace bit her lip in thought. I had expected her to return a cheery “yes” and move on, but she seemed to be thinking hard about the question.

  “Probably,” she said. “They seem pretty honest to me. It is a strange coincidence, but good things do happen sometimes.” She leaned forward, holding tighter to my neck as the winds picked up. “Just keep your wits about you.”

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about that answer, but it would have to be good enough for now. We pressed on, following our new “friends” into the night.

  bit since I've written an actual, full fight scene, and I am happy to jump back into that chaotic mess.