Miranda lay half-asleep in the hospital bed. He had traveled days ahead, he was sure of it. The bruises had begun to heal, and the traction apparatus looked less complicated. Imperiously impatient, he did not wait for her to wake up but quickly called up a shadow, wrapped a hand around her wrist, and pulled her sharply out of her body, her room, and her dreams. She snarled and began to struggle.

“Don’t waste my sleep time,” she complained. “Real sleep is a rare and precious thing for me now. Why don’t you come around when I’m staring at the ceiling and the nurse has that stupid radio drama on that makes me want to murder her with a bedpan?”

The Trickster raised his eyebrows at her, pausing in the passage between-worlds to look at her properly in the dim light of moonglow mist. “Did the pain barrier not work?” he asked her mildly.

“Pain is only one of my problems, can’t you understand that? I’m tied down to that bed, literally, but I’m not really quarreling about that because if I tried to move I’d probably put a bone splinter through my intestines or something.” She stopped, frowned, and tried to look at her hands. “Wait a minute. What shape am I in now?”

“Oh. I’ve made you into a desert cat, the miniature breed. So, you’re telling me you’re bored?” He moved on, drawing them both out of the cloud and into a new landscape of overcast sky and grassed-over sand dunes.

“I’m worse than bored. I feel like a boxed-up doll.”

“And yet still eloquent,” murmured the Trickster.

“Don’t laugh at me. I’m this close to calling Patience.”

“Why don’t you?”

She started to snap, paused, and huffed at herself instead. “I suppose I want to know.”

It was such a trickster’s answer that he could not hold back his laughter. It was difficult to take her pique seriously. Out of convenience, he had made her new shadow kitten-small and able to fit in the palm of his hand. She made an attempt to slap him, which turned into a playful-looking bat at his wrist. “Stop laughing at me! Why are you here?”

“I’m here because I know exactly how you feel,” said the Trickster soothingly. “I too have gone in the blink of an eye from talking to Patience to waking up in a body I couldn’t control.”

He bent and put her on the ground, then sprawled out comfortably, flat on his back, tilting slightly up the low-rising side of a dune. He twiddled his bare toes, laced his fingers behind his head, and let out a sigh of contentment.

“What do you mean?” she asked, padding up the scraggly grass of the dune to the level of his ear.

He turned his head and smirked at her. “Bored enough to be curious now?”