The images swirled into one story: The rocks next to the stream. The ships with no purpose. Allowing no one to swim. The volcano sucking her ship down. The fish at the river. The inadvertent fearful whoop when her talons had plucked Thisbe from the sea. Around and around these thoughts churned as the magical medicine began to do its work.

Fifer needed to talk to Thisbe. She tried to, in her mind. Tried to send a message. A single word over and over again. Was it going through?

The weight of Fifer’s body was stifling. Suffocating. The weight of her thoughts even more so. She struggled against it, feeling trapped. Needing to escape. The pain was secondary to everything as she wriggled and pushed and slid out from the heavy unconsciousness. Her eyes fluttered and opened, and she gasped. “Water.”

In an instant, Florence was there. She lifted Fifer gently around the shoulders and held the canteen to her lips.

Fifer was too weak to push it away. “Water,” she whispered again, and closed her eyes as the suffocating weight returned.

At Last, a Moment

Thisbe and Rohan could see Quince plain as day, but they knew the Revinir could only see rolling fog. And though she’d figured out that the ghost dragons could hide like fog, they hoped she was too distracted by their plans to notice this patch.

From the dragon-woman’s back, Thisbe strained to see if anyone was riding him. She detected two bodies nestled into the pillowy softness, but there was no telling who they were. In the distance, many other ghost dragons saw the Revinir and her riders coming and started toward them.

The Revinir landed in the strip of desert between the forest and the cavelands. Thisbe and Rohan got down and stood with her as the ghost dragons approached.

“Obviously we were right, that nothing changed,” the Revinir muttered to Thisbe. “The ghost dragons are all still here. Let’s see what they have to say.”

Thisbe walked with her. “I hope they have more knowledge than Rohan does, and can fill us in so we can get this partnership rolling.”

The Revinir glanced at the girl. “I’ll do all the talking,” she said, reminding Thisbe of how greedy she was.

“That’s fine,” said Thisbe icily.

The Revinir noticed the rolling fog had stopped moving and was just sort of stuck in one place nearby. She narrowed her eyes at it. “Is that one of the ghost dragons doing that same weird thing it did when Rohan was on board outside the castle?”

“I don’t know,” said Thisbe.

“Let’s see which of your friends is hiding this time.”

“I’m curious to know as well,” said Thisbe. “We know you’re a ghost dragon,” she called out. “Reveal yourself, please.”

Seeing no reason to keep up the pretense, Aaron told Quince to materialize. Aaron and Ishibashi raised their heads and sat up.