I was on my own because Jilly still wasn’t back, Honey hadn’t returned, and Lizzie and the doonie had gone to fetch my fiddle from that fog-bound seashore where he and I’d first met. When I was pulled into Jilly’s world, it had happened so quickly that I hadn’t been able to bring it with me. I didn’t even know I was going anywhere until I was already there. Later, when we came to the mesa, Timony hadn’t thought to bring it along with us and it wasn’t exactly a priority for me, considering I was nothing more than some changeling creature made up of seaweed and flotsam at the time.

It was a very odd feeling, when I realized that I’d left the fiddle behind. Considering how I’ve been pretty much inseparable from the instrument for as long as I can remember, you’d think it would have occurred to me much sooner, but I hadn’t even missed it.

I was that worried about Jilly.

It had taken Lizzie’s mentioning that it was too bad we didn’t have our fiddles for me to remember my own, and even then it didn’t seem nearly as important as Jilly’s continued absence.

I wasn’t going to say no when Timony offered to get it for me, but neither was I about to leave the mesa until Jilly got back. Lizzie went along to keep him company—though I’m sure it was as much from her wanting a change of scenery.

So off they went.

While they were gone, I tried to focus on my surroundings in an attempt to shut up the panicked voice of worry yammering away in the back of my head. It should have been easy. The landscape around me was stark, but incredibly beautiful. No matter where I turned, ranges of mountains lifted from each horizon, with a gorgeous light show starting up in the west as the sun began to dip below those distant peaks.

All I could do was worry.

And when I wasn’t worrying about Jilly being away for so long, I worried about what would happen when she got back.

We’d made promises to each other before she left. I know we said we had to talk, but we both knew it meant more than that. Now I couldn’t help but wonder: did we do the right thing? If it was going to work with us, wouldn’t we already have been together by now?

What if it had only been something born out of the heat of the moment? She’d thought I was dead. People say things—feel things—in times of crisis that don’t necessarily hold when the real world comes back into focus.