The shriek of a bird split the air. Thia yelped as a mass of gray feathers descended for her head. She threw hands in front of her face, but to her immense surprise, the bird came to rest gently on her knee. Its thick talons were almost undetectable through the material of her borrowed dress; she felt feathers brush her arm and opened her eyes.
“Well, hello there,” she said, and the bird gave an emphatic shake of its silvery head.
“Our resident falcon, Mavrel,” Dess said by way of introduction.
Mavrel hopped up onto her arm, head tilted inquisitively. His beak shot upward, and she winced, thinking she was about to lose an eye, but instead he ran it through her hair.
It tickled. “Is he always this friendly?”
Dess shrugged. “Not usually.”
“He seems to like me.”
“You’re easy to like.”
Thia smiled. “So is he.” Tentatively, she reached up and placed a hand lightly on his feathers. When he didn’t immediately fly away, she ran her fingers down his back. “This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever done,” she commented.
Dess relaxed on the log so that he was lying down with his head toward her, peering up at her from his back. “What’s Kansas like?” he asked.
It was so like a child preparing for a bedtime story that Thia stifled a chuckle. “Nothing like here,” she answered.
“Oh?” He closed his eyes, expectant.
Thia yelped as the bird hopped down her arm, his talons prickling. “Stop that.” Mavrel fluffed his wings, but settled. “For one thing,” Thia said, turning back to Dess, “there is no magic.”
Dess cracked an eye. “No magic?” He said it like he didn’t believe her.
“Well, there’s science,” she said, a little wistfully.
“We have science,” Dess protested. “Magicians use it to practice alchemy.”
Thia snorted. “That’s not what I…. On second thought, I suppose you would call it magic after all.”
“Like what?” Dess asked.
The falcon leaned against her hair as if he too was listening.
“There are lights that you can turn on and off with a switch,” she said. “And water that runs from taps. And computers, which can instantly tell you anything you want to know. With the Internet.” God, she missed the Internet. Her socials. She wondered what global chaos she was missing, what personal drama was going on with Riley. He always had some grand story to make her laugh.
She broke off at Dess’s smile, knowing he was probably terribly confused.
“It sounds like a magical place to me,” he commented.
It wasn’t, but it was home.
Dess wiped his forehead. “Thia?” he asked gently.
She was crying again. Silently, but her tears were dripping on him, which was why his face was wet. “Sorry,” she muttered.
He sat up. “Don’t be. You’re allowed to be homesick. I’m sure I would be, too, if I had a home to be sick for.”
They looked at each other. “We’ll find the Mage King,” Thia said, after a moment.
He nodded. “And he will send you home and restore my memories.”
It was a fool’s hope, Thia was sure, but it felt good to speak it out loud anyway.
“And then,” she added just to lighten the mood, never mind that it made no sense if she was gone, “we kill him.”
