"Don't land on the chickens," Jin said, leaning anxiously over the back of the seat between Johannes, who was flying the lift van, and Miles, occupying the passenger side.

Johannes grimaced and eased the lift van forward under the canopy of Jin's rooftop refuge, then paused again while Jin leaped out to pull the café table out of the way, glance underneath the van, look relieved, and motion Johannes forward.  As Johannes gingerly set them down atop the roof, a woman at the back of the tent-room stood hands-on-hips, watching them in suspicion, though she smiled briefly as Jin danced up to her.  The whine of the van's engines went silent.

"Ah, Ako, good, she's been faithful," said Miles, and slid open his door.  "The rest of you wait here till I signal," he added over his shoulder.  "We don't want to stampede the poor woman."  Or look like a clown car, he did not add aloud.  Johannes and Raven nodded silently; Roic's disapproving frown at Miles seizing point-man position might as well have been audible.

Ako was evidently attempting to feed Gyre; she wore heavy oven mitts and brandished a long fork with a fragment of raw meat fluttering from it.  As she gestured to Jin, the bird stretched forward and snatched the slithery morsel, twisting its head and gulping it down.  Ako jumped.  "He bites, you know," she said to Jin, almost apologetically.

"Not very hard," said Jin.

"I needed antibiotic salve and plastic bandages the first time, thank you very much.  I'll allow the bird didn't actually take off a finger."  She put her hands on her hips again and stared hard at Miles.  "So you're back!  You gave me quite a turn, sneaking up in that van."

Miles hoped their sneaking had been successful.  Though not hidden from more sophisticated scanners, at least the tent roof concealed their activities from casual observation, in this level morning light.  Discreet, if not secret.

"I was beginning to think you weren't coming back, and was wondering what to do with all these animals.  But you found Jin after all!"  She had nearly decided, Miles read in her eyes, that he'd dodged off without any intention of finding Jin.

"We were both unavoidably delayed," Miles said.  "Jin actually found me, but in any case, we're reunited.  Thank you so much for looking after his creatures.  They mean the world to him."

She sniffed, not displeased with some recognition of her efforts.  "I know."

Jin returned from taking a rapid inventory of his menagerie, including counting his chickens.  "Miles-san is going to take me and all my creatures away to, to his place.  For a while," he told Ako.

Her brows tightened.  "Yah?"