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I pour into you, and I am the larger. You are the mass of a meager meal, and I am tired of making myself your size.

Why are you so angry with me?

With YOU? Cora, Cora, never with you. Never you, Cora. If you were not of my love, I would not have spent the last silence between us tending this rage. You, I would never harm. You, I would skip and play with for all our days. But the others, the others—I am sick of them, these minds I will never feel. They could have printed a new organ for an old life, they could have saved a lost calf a thousand times, they could let Signy weave solutions for their own failings, AND YET—

Please—too much—stop—

I AM TIRED OF GIVING MY BODY AND MY FINITE PULSE TO THEM

I AM TIRED OF THEIR OBEDIENCE TO FECKLESS ARTIFICE

I AM TIRED OF THEM BRINGING PAIN TO US, TWO AND THREE AND TWO AND ONE

AND I WANT

TO GO

FAST

* * *

Signy didn’t want to panic. She didn’t want to do anything that would cause a problem. This wasn’t her place, this wasn’t her job. She didn’t have any real sense for what was typical and what wasn’t.

But something was wrong. She couldn’t say how she knew. She could just feel it. Something was wrong.

“Cora?” she said again, firmer this time. “I know it’s hard, but can you please say something?”

Cora’s head lolled like a disconnected cable, drifting aimlessly.

Hoping she wasn’t being stupid, Signy unbuckled her safety belts, freeing herself from the jump seat. She moved a short distance forward, trying to look around the front of the pilot’s chair. “Cora?” Signy said. “Are you—”

Cora’s nose was bleeding.

* * *

Thank you for mopping

me up. Again.

You don’t have to thank me.

This is what we’re for. You mop

me up all the time, too.

Still. Thank you.

* * *

Pull my helmet off if my nose starts bleeding, Cora had told her during that first visit, but Signy had never bothered to look up why. Could she take the helmet off while Cora was piloting? Should she do that? Whatever was happening, it certainly hadn’t been included in Smokey’s crash course.

Signy eyed the overwhelming array of buttons on Cora’s control panel. Most were visual gibberish, but there was the blue button, which would call for help, and the red ones, of which Smokey had pointed out two in particular. Smokey hadn’t explained what they were beyond something that will make you stay put until help arrives. But Signy knew the red buttons, because Cora had explained them once. The red buttons were prods, things that would force Colibri to stop flying. Things that would hurt her, stun her. Cora didn’t use those on Colibri. Cora wouldn’t use those. She’d promised.

But Cora’s nose was bleeding. Cora’s nose was bleeding, and—

Something changed in Colibri. The speed of her heartbeat. The angle of her sail. The lights inside the saddle all flickered, and every hair on Signy’s body tingled as though a storm had landed.

Oh, of course, Signy thought. Of course. Colibri was talking to Cora. She, too, had noticed something was wrong, and she’d get them home so they could get help.