We catch smoke on the air one night in one of the towns hung with bones. Outside our first-floor room, fire dances and the wails of an unfortunate Sentient make the air ring. I catch opalescent cloth, dark masks, and hear chanting--Gabriel's funny little chant is a lot harder to scoff off by firelight, or perhaps the claws of the organization are better armed than the teeth. Altair and I imagine a body in the flames, dazed by the enormity of our imperfect bodies, and as if directly out of my imagination, I see horns against Canira ears. A familiar body hangs in the heat, the mismatched features kin of my own (in spirit if not in flesh), and my heart seizes up and begins beating at an incredible rate. My whole body shakes with the chant.

Altair and I are the only two Sentients in the room. "Illuet," I whisper beneath my breath.

We are out of the room in heartbeats, bags angrily clattering on our backs. I tear down the hall, catch a glimpse of light already disappearing into the main venue for the small town, and I react out of instinct that is not mine, gripping her around the horn with telekinesis. She cries out, a sound muffled by the thump as we both land in the back alleys. Someone barks orders and fabric fanned by firelight shimmers before us, its wearer little more than a streak of fuel for the flame, like Cinnabar. The Heaven's Jaw member doesn't even open his mouth before Illuet knocks him against the wall with magical force. His horns scrape wood and pierce through one of the boards, sparking with uncontrollable power. Illuet throws him away, hard enough to spark him off again, but the damage is done. Other barks sound off in the distance.

Beneath my breath, I ask, "Do you want to die?"

Illuet shivers. I can feel her fur against mine, every hair brushing my own...

"It's too late." Altair says.

The distant flame flickers out, and Illuet's bands tense around her ears.

"We need to get out." I say, flickering out with it. "Leave him alone. We can't save him."

I am an observer in my body as I hear the air fill with the insistent thrum of paws, heavy as the rain. We at least have the collective common sense to bolt around the corner, disappearing into the woods quickly as we entered the town, and all the bones on all the rafters clatter behind us. Take us with you. Let us be free. They bang desperately as we cross the threshold, the eye sockets of a skull staring directly into my own, and then everything stops.

The group proceeds through the woods. The trees are dry and the foliage rustles with every step, drier than the dead leaves that coat the forest during the long spells of the starving moons before the snows come. The darkness collapses into an empurpled fever dream, and we walk through woods I've never seen on an ever-declining slope. A feline shape with two dark wings is before me, pacing at such a rate that I'm nearly running to keep up, but something insistent tells me to keep to a walk. At the front, a voice asks, "Did you do what we asked?"

"It's done," I say. Familiar smoke assails my nose.

Two eyes, midnight blue with bright centers, turn back to mine. I can tell by the lilt of her voice she is unconvinced. "We weren't sure if you had it in you."

"That's your first mistake. I would give anything for this." I promise her.

I smell carrion in the air. Andulas says, in a voice colder than death, "I don't make mistakes."

I awake in a den deep in the woods. Illuet and Altair are pretending to sleep.

"Did I say anything?" I ask the night.

No one answers. Someone has bitten my tongue and when I go for the back, I realize one of the Sorrows has been nudged further out of its pocket, even though I record doing no such thing with or without magic. I slowly close the bag again, as if something from deep within might emerge and bite me, and drift back off into dreamless sleep.

---

When we wake up, Illuet stands over me covered in blood.

"Shoot. Never would have expected you to be the first one to kill someone," I tell her.

"Oh hush up. You were the one who passed out early on the run out of town and then cried in your sleep all night," she says, "You can make jokes when you start being useful. Anyways, I didn't kill anyone. Altair and I just went hunting."

I nod slowly.

"That said, there are a lot of hungry, resentful spirits out here. This... is a bad place for a traveller to be." Illuet says.

"Anywhere is a bad place for travellers. There are no good places for us, save for maybe Weltva, and I dare you to go to Weltva now."

"Huh. I'll pass." Illuet looks back to Altair, who is rubbing his one healthy antler against a tree.

"What does the tree say?" I yell.

His tail bolts upright. He yells back, "That there's no magic in my body, hasn't been, and won't be. I'm cracked."

"You've been cracked for years."

"More cracked. Where are we heading?" Altair looks to Illuet, who pulls one of the maps out of his bag. The action is still disconcerting, and it doesn't help that having someone rifle through our valuables doesn't faze him in the slightest.

Holding the wrinkled paper up to the light, Illuet says, "There's a town south of here. Supposedly. I don't know if last night threw us off track or not, and we don't have any indicators of where we might be, but I'm decently sure these thin lines are pine trees, which I've seen more of this morning. This looks like a valley, too, and the hills are growing steeper, so. Fairly certain we're on the right track?"

"We should be cutting east if we ever want to make it back to the homestead." Altair flicks his ears dismissively.

"We can go east later. We still need to go a liiittle south--" Illuet begs.

"No, we're going to have to go much further south if we want to cut around the worst of Yaan. It would be so much easier to turn now and make it through the mountains. There are even some small towns on the way--"

"No!" Illuet barks. "I mean, no, the mountains are awful and full of ferals. Let's just go all the way South and pull up before the deserts."

"That's going to take twice as long," Altair warns.

"It's... safer," Illuet says.

Altair dryly looks from Illuet to me, then back. "Alright. I get it. You can lie right to my face. I'm used to it. I live with Hawk. Let's just make our pointless detour quickly."

"What-- I didn't--" complains Illuet, but just as she can't come up with a coherent excuse, Altair isn't listening. The road continues to crunch beneath us, resenting our youth and the way the world has thus far failed to faze us. The grasses are dry where we find them. Small animals hang around the river, licking greedily at the receding shorelines, unafraid of us. We are just another kind of death. They've seen plenty.

"What did you two talk about?" I ask, padding up to Altair.

"Leaving Garuda City. Life on the road." Altair says.

"Cinnabar," adds Illuet. The word is smoke on the air. We are suspended in those last awful seconds together, breathing in ash and grief as a unit, but this fades behind us as we walk.

"Right," I say. "You're not mad at me for last night? Sorry I passed out."

"We survived," Illuet says, "so it's fine."

"Not everything is about you, Hawk." warns Altair.

"Excuse me for being moderately concerned about my two best friends talking about me behind my back." I snipe.

"I'm one of your best friends?" asks Illuet.

"It's not that hard to get on the list." Altair teases.

"I could figure that much. I've hardly been here... well, about the supposed and the actual length of the Dog Days, depending on how we're counting!"

I exhale deeply. There are buildings nestled between two dry, brown hills on the horizon, the dark wooden structures emerging like sharp stones on a smooth floor. There's a river that cuts the land across, near dry now, and a deep brown hole in the center of the town. The buildings spread around it in disorganized roads. "I think we're almost here." Thank goodness.

We hasten down the hill and into town, which is small and reeks of driftwood. The few Canira who venture between houses are various blues and browns, many of whom are pale or sickly. Scales slice across some of their necks, along with slit gills, but all of them share a general air of weariness. No one speaks.

The center of town is four or so buildings, arranged in surprisingly precise order (at least compared to the chaos around us) in the four directions, facing the lake. All of their facades are white and hung with dozens of skeletons. Entire travellers lay out on display.

"We're not part of this," Altair promises.

That's what you think.

Illuet squints, her eyes almost closed with pain.

"Is there an issue?" I ask.

"I can hear them," she says.

We stand clustered against each other, my mouth itching for the roundgard. The air is dry and the sunlight here is so bright that it makes me parched. "We should go inside. Get a drink." I offer.

Illuet nods, her big brown eyes welling with tears. "Okay."

Altair opens the door to the building nearest us, recognizable as a tavern by the thick stench of spirits on the air, and we seat ourselves at the bar. There are no seats to speak of, of course, and the tables elsewhere are likewise lacking. Furthermore, the wood is full of splinters. I raise myself back into a standing position. Altair does the same, searching the empty room for a server. One Canira in the corner waves her finned tail. She stands besides the only other party, who are only audible due to the dead silence of the room. Two Canii and a Canira, all of whom are cloaked, turn our way.

"Upstarts!" laughs Vade, easing the cloak out from around his head and horns by telepathy to reveal a thin ring of teeth across his neck, similar to Andulas's. Ruby and Mallow are similarly adorned, but all three of them look like non-Sentient predators during the starving moons. Their auras flicker around them, less the light of the citydwellers and more of an omnipresent, suffocating smog. Vade's sallow eyes fix Illuet, "And associates, or so it would appear."

"Who?" Illuet looks to Altair and I, startled.
"Zeke's dad." I respond, close to her ear as I can get. "Don't mention him unless I give the word. Tread. Carefully."

Illuet nods, still focused on the awful appearance of the Sentients I am unfortunate enough to call acquaintances.

"Sit down, have a drink." Vade offers.

"I don't know," I say, sauntering over to the table. "Are you going to try to pass me grapes again?"

Vade laughs. Mallow and Ruby echo the noise, but they're fixed on my chest and teeth. Mallow's knives are lodged in the table, their handles overgrown with sediment. Ruby's fur is singed all over, as if she'd been through several fires, and part of her side is burned clear of hair altogether. With every breath, I can see her lungs flare with light, her entire ribcage alight with her own fire. Illuet and Altair watch on, the thought passing through all of our heads in unison, and I struggle to return my gaze to Vade. "Let bygones be bygones, Hawk! You and your companions need something to drink. It's always great to see old friends, isn't it? It looks like you've picked up someone along the way, too... looks a little legal for thievery. Those light elementals are always so fickle."

Illuet smiles. "I'm not a con."

Vade looks to us, then back to her, then back again, and he continues, "I see you've been busy selling off wares."

Illuet's eyes narrow. In most social circles, sparring for authority with any kind of male, let alone a traveller, would be beneath her, but her 'circle' so happens to be us.

Altair, gazing sidelong at her rapidly growing lights the whole time, mutters hastily, "There was a fire. Assuredly, the weapons bag is still full to bursting. You're free to contact us anytime you'd like to be speared in the arse."

"Naturally, naturally." agrees Vade.

"Given your affiliations, as I can presume from your decor, you might deserve a spear up the arse. Now, where's the rest of your lot?" Illuet bares her teeth.
"Blasted Tooth? Elsewhere. No need to start running yet." he says with an altogether uncomfortable laugh. "Yet."

We look at each other.

My quest continues.

"What's the look? Did you think we didn't all know about your little mishap with her? Shame, I liked you, too. Unfortunately, not only is she not dead, but your 'accomplice' may have shouted some explicit things at her, because currently I do believe him and 'any vagabonds who may be accompanying him, though particularly those of good edible quality' are on the top of her hit list."

"I'm going to gore her with my remaining horn." Altair says, his voice shaking. His hoof scuffs the ground. I stare him down, my jaw dropped, but between him and Illuet's rapidly increasing light I'm dealing with two lit pyres (and for once I happen not to be one of them). Altair stiffly jabs his hoof into the ground again, to emphasize the point, and takes a long breath. "Right. Temper, temper..." he says, his voice shaking with something that might be a laugh, "is it even possible to kill her?"

Ruby shakes her head. "Not unless you kill them all at once. Simultaneous decapitation, I believe, though about anything should suffice. They don't have regeneration, though, so they're walking corpses. Some of her stupider 'recruits' believe it's a deliberate fear tactic. Those of us who have been in the game longer now that it's not a tactic, but it's certainly a reason to fear her."

"You're kidding." I sigh.

"You wouldn't believe the kind of morons organized crime attracts." Mallow says. "No one would ever deliberately maim themselves far as she has just to look scaaaary when pillaging a city."

"No, no, not about that. You can only kill them all at once? What gives?" I ask.

"Dark magic." Ruby says.

Mallow adds, "You'll never believe this, but the secret component is love."

"Most powerful magic requires powerful bonds. Between worlds, between hearts, between the parts of the self... there are those that exploit them, and those that destroy them, but power is power. You don't really believe that 'thick as thieves' didn't come about for a reason, do you?" explains Vade.

"Ruptures my faith in the goodwill of our society a little, but sure." Illuet says.

"If I had known I'd be immortal if I made myself a more romantically inclined guild, I would have skipped the formalities and started paying out for desperate, attractive male travellers." I joke to utter silence. As I face down the dry stares of the whole assembly, the server brings us a fresh round of drinks. It doesn't smell like grapes, at least not this time, but the liquid is awfully brackish and therefore meriting my suspicion.

"You call that love?" Illuet asks as soon as the server leaves.

"I'd call it unnecessary, along with disturbing." Ruby responds, pausing to take a massive gulp of the drink. Her jaw covered in water dark as ichor, she continues, "Love is a component. Most of it is still off-world contraband dark magic. Trust me, there are worlds more desperate than ours to live indefinitely. Universes dedicated to the stuff. Find yourself the right off-world dealer and you might have the keys to immortality itself."

"Are you searching for such an item?" Altair asks.

"There are cons like you and Hawk, if few of them, and then there are cons like Mallow, Ruby, and I. If you take another step up, then another, perhaps a few more... you get the kind of cons willing to sacrifice enough of themselves to pull off stunts like that." Vade gets to his paws. "If damnation is on a spectrum, I like to believe we'll be saved for that, but the more I see the more sure I am it's a simple duality. One way or the other. Pick your side."

"You believe in a post-death judgement of the mind, then?" Illuet asks.

"Well, good on him for believing anything at a time like this." I say breath my breath, tilting the bowl this and that way. Brackish drink spills across my left paw.

Vade says solemnly, "It would be ridiculous not to believe in the three parts of the spirit, and I suppose I believe Verhamera shaped the world, that Aislyn and all following Auspicias are her heir... but I don't know what to believe about where the mind goes when we die. It's easy to say there's some fantastical place of light for us all, but if it's just us again? We'd tear each other to pieces, infinitely."

"There has to be a point of reconciliation." says Altair.

"No, I'm with Vade," I say. "Unless you lose everything which made you yourself upon death, in which case it doesn't matter, there's nothing that could stop at least some kind of crime. It's within our nature."

"How can you be so sure?" Altair asks.

"We're still here." I say, getting to my paws. Hackles raised, I say, "If anyone here was capable of change, even in the slightest, this could be over. Instead, the prophecy is little more than whispers even the Defenders won't act on and we're all still out here, clustered in cities so desperate not to die that all of them, even the ones filled with Sentients far better than us, have the dead strung up on all their walls for protection. Outside, everything is rotting as the sun burns the world to ash and society falls apart around us. I'm sure that at some point this'll all be over, but that's not because the Dog Days will end. It's because eventually everything will burn, and then it'll subside and the world will go on without us."

"Hawk!" Altair's hoof hits my tail.

"You know I'm right," I say, Cass's voice just below mine, a husky, harsh noise. My heart beats with the frenzied need to tear things down. "That's why it hurts, doesn't it?"

"That's enough." Altair turns to Vade. "We know where your son is."

Vade's eyes teem with desperation. "Finally paying us back for every time we've almost gotten you killed, are you, now?"

"You've tried very, very hard," Altair says, "but I'm being entirely honest with you. Your son is in Garuda City, on the legal side. He is affiliated with Heaven's Jaw, but I suggest you speak with him before making any rash assumptions."

Mallow and Ruby whisper to him, their words just shy of audible. The air tenses up around us and Vade responds, "It's something. I'd take any shot."

"I don't want to walk directly into a trap. That's all." responds Ruby, smoothly.

"I'm trying to do one good thing here," Altair says. "I'm sick of seeing families split apart and I'm even more sick of being a bystander while the world runs us over. You need to reconcile with your son and we need to look out for each other, regardless of species or affiliation, or we'll... well, Hawk said it better than I could."

Vade nods. "I see. Thank you for telling me. Take care of yourselves." He stretches out as he gets up, joints cracking, and he laps up the rest of the drink. Painfully, he swallows as if ingesting fire, and then pads towards the door.

"And please, if you're lying, inform us now, because we'd prefer not to have to kill you." Ruby adds.

None of us respond to this.

"As a final tip between friends," Mallow says, smirking at the accursed word, "Head south. Suvi's in the area, she's been making a wide sweep of the countryside. Hasn't done much worth a damn, but we all want to be saved for some infinitesimal second, don't we?"

"Suvi," breathes Illuet.

"We're going to be saved. We don't need Suvi to do that for us." Vade says. His usual facade has long since fallen, and the Canis heading out the door is different in some unmeasurable manner. Altair stands in Illuet's light, looking after him with his neck craned.

"Vade," I ask, "Do you think he'll forgive you?"

Mallow and Ruby flash us dangerous glares, but Vade just nods. "I think there's still hope for us, yes."

Vade lopes out, Ruby supporting him on his right. One of Mallow's knives soars through the air and I duck to the side. As it withdraws itself from the wall, he yells to us, "Stay sharp," and the door closes, leaving us inside.

Altair pushes his drink as far away from him as he can manage, the sickly smell of it seeming to linger on the air for moments too long. He waits for several moments before quietly bending his neck down and messing with the bag, eventually managing to pull out a golden trinket from far before any of this started. It is useless in function, a merchant's toy, but at the time gold had a high enough value that it was worth swiping.

"A little extravagant for a tip for waiters, don't you think?" I ask.

Altair raises his head towards the bartender. "There are places that will lend out the services of water-based Canira Defenders in return for earnest pleas and a fair bit of gold. That said, this is entirely in return for your services and you have no obligation to use it in any given way. This is not a charity." He leaves. Illuet and I spy the Canira in the corner flicking her tail with impatience and decide to follow.

Vade and his crew are long gone. A necklace of bone is hung upon a large, jutting piece of wood near the edge of town, which is not more than a few bodylengths away from us. The town itself is low-lying enough that the buildings don't enclose on you, but it is still prevaded by claustrophobia. Canira lie around large, emptied open kegs and breathe smog into the air, watching the water trail from their bodies in distaste. Illuet grips the necklace in her teeth and tears it clean away from the wood, splintering the architecture, and begins digging up the arid ground. Her ears fall back, the long fur of her ears swinging as her paws descend into the hole, and when she's finished, she throws the dirt back over and breathes heavily, her whole body shaking with indignation. Her eyes flash to the Canira watching her from every angle and pats the dirt down with a back paw, walking forwards through the town.

We pass by a large, arched building across the waters from us, complete with ragged weaves of the first Auspicia and her six wings on the left side and the Auspicia's steadfast companion, Natrina, on the right. The fabric is unsettled by wind as we move, Illuet's light seeming to lift the features of both Sentients from their place in myth. Illuet spares them only a single glance, breathing in as harshly as if in pain, and continues. The valleys continue with us, the grass growing more sparing as the sun sets. On the horizon is a dark pool of indistinguishable features, silhouetted by a halo of light.

"Are you sure they deserved that kind of pity?" asks Illuet.

"No," Altair admits. "But the last city did, and I'm tired of perpetuating hurt."

We walk in silence until Illuet stops atop a hill. "Destination's up ahead." Illuet says, settling down in a particularly high patch of brittle grass. "Too far off to walk in one night, but if we set up some sigil circles I think we could stay the night without fear. Sorry for walking us out of that town, by the way..." she begins fidgeting with some sticks, managing to spark kindling, but it is just as soon gone on the wind. "It was so loud. I've never been anywhere so awful."

We've seen worse. Still, Altair messes with the bag, trying to undo one of the strings, and I unfasten it for him with a paw. "Map?" he asks.

I dig into one of the closest pockets and pass it over, where it unfurls and hits him in the chest. He smooths the paper out, which crinkles with indignance, and stares down at the fading light. "We're off course," Altair says. "Very off course. Even from the bastardized course you've been setting..."

"I want to see Suvi," Illuet says.

"To be saved?" I ask.

Illuet snorts, "No. Sort of. I just have this conviction..."

"You think your magic might have something to do with the Auspicia?" I finish for her.

Bashfully, she says, "Something like that, yes. I think it might have to do with my heartline."

"Ah, yes, your heartline. One of the dozens of things you've failed to extrapolate on." I bump her side.

She hits me back, the freckled line of spots across her nose gleaming in her light. "You've been so-o-o-o clear about your origins, yourself."
"How much do you want to know?" I ask.

"What?" Her head tilts and she lets out a little nervous sputter of laughter. "You're really just..."
"Oh, sure. Nothing to hide. Altair?"

Altair shakes his head. "I have nothing I'd be considerably concerned about you finding out."

"O-oh." Illuet says, and (very obviously) feigning calm, continues, "Well, tell me about your childhood, then. Or whatever brought you up to our first meeting."

"I'm a Moonwalker-Canira Forhaga," I say, the identifier frustratingly vague off my own tongue. It is a thing that has not belonged to me in years, if only because I did my best to shake it off, but now, in the dark at the dead of the Dog Days, I hold it close to me, like fabric bearing my parents' scent. "I was born to a large, happy family. I was their eldest, and I was about as good at that as I am at conning."
"Very?" teases Illuet.

I laugh dryly. "I'm joking. I was horrendous. They tried their best to accommodate me, but I was fidgety and it became more obvious with every passing year that I was going to be lacking in the magic department. I may have... gotten into some arguments with them about it. I said a lot of things I couldn't take back, and by the time Altair stumbled out of the woods--"

"I got into a fight over the value of other Sentients to our... shall we say lifestyle? I argued there were better ways to find sight and peace with ourselves than taking teeth and claws, they argued we had no other way to defend ourselves, I called them spineless cowards... it was a mess. Anyways, the glade held me down, broke one of my antlers, and condemned me to exile in the woods. I was a young, feisty idealist who hated everyone at this juncture and was about to turn right around in how I felt about the word 'taking'. You can blame this one, right here... who's about to continue, isn't he?" Altair bumps me to the side. I smirk at him, shoving him back, and we enter a pushing match that is only truncated by Illuet's gentle cough. Looking at each other with more goodwill than I've seen out of him in who knows how long, I shuffle my paws back beneath me as if it'll spare my dignity. "Get out with it." Altair warns.

"So, my family thought Altair might 'fix' me in some way, given his ideals, and they were... entirely wrong. Altair and I became fast friends, made up the Quickstep Code together, and within a few seasons of him entering our little home, we were leaving together. It's been years of me dragging him around by the ear."

"You're diminishing my agency here, aren't you? I asked for this. I wrote most of those rules..."

"Because you didn't want me doing something abjectly stupid?"
"Absolutely. You are prone to doing stupid things. More prone than anyone I have ever met. In fact, I'm fairly certain that how stupid any given action is factors directly towards how willing you are to do it."

Illuet snorts. My fur suddenly spikes, thinking about the Sorrows (what else), and I brush it off with an uneasy laugh. "Guess you have me. Anyways, we got into progressively more dangerous regimes as our prestigious as cons grew, but for the most part I'd say our job has remained the same."
"We like to stay consistent. Dependably poor at our jobs, dependably irresponsible..." Altair is fixing me with what is either a playful expression or a death glare. I have no idea what to make of it, so I just open my mouth for a response, think the better of it, and shut it again. Mirthfully, he asks, "and you, Illuet?"

"Light." Illuet responds. She shuffles her lyta. "Even before I was physically glowing, I came from light."

"That's not an answer." I say.

"That is the opposite of an answer." affirms Altair.

Illuet mutters, "Well, sorry, but I really don't want to talk about it any terms less broad than that." She begins rummaging through the trinkets bag, which immediately has me on my paws, and then she groans, "You two really bought no protection magic whatsoever, didn't you?"

"You don't know how to navigate the bag correctly." I growl. When she casts me an inquisitive glance, I admit, "But no, no protection magic. We've never really needed any."

She settles back into the grass. "Incredible. If we don't wake up tomorrow morning, I'm blaming both of you."

Altair huffs. The three of us try to find comfortable positions on the brittle grass, which is like sleeping on the raw earth with a few extra needles poked up our pelts, but fatigue takes me anyways, the stars swimming overhead in my watery eyes.

"Have you ever personally seen the Auspicia?" I ask hoarsely.

Illuet jolts up, concerned. "I-I mean, in a manner of speaking..."

"That's real helpful." I yawn.

"Go to sleep." Altair begs.

"Do you ever get this feeling, like you- you've known someone before?" Illuet asks. "Before you were born, I mean. In a past life. Every time I see a depiction of her, every time her name passes over my ears, I'm certain deep in my bones that we've met."

"Everyone feels that way about the Auspicia. She's..." Altair's eyes fix the sky overhead. "You've been under a roof most of your life, haven't you? You looked like it, when we first met. Flustered. The moons have never seen you, never spoken with you, and to them you're little more than all this dry grass. Less than it. But to us? Sirius and Procyon are our friends through myth. We all remember time we've spent beneath the moons, a day we stood on the edge of some body of water and gave thanks for the tides, a night where one of them guided us through the night or brought us strength. That's what it's like with Suvi. She doesn't know us, can barely even tell we're there, but we rely on her. She's a celestial body."

"It's not that," Illuet says. "We were friends."
"Illuet's got a celestial body herself. I don't doubt it." I offer.

Illuet slams a paw into my face. "Hawk."

I roll over onto my stomach, tail waving through the dry grass and bowling loose strands over. As she leaps up, holding me down beneath her paws, I whine playfully, "I'm not flirting! Honest. Con's word."

She holds her muzzle close to mine. "Con's word? What kind of good is the word of a con?"

"Both of you. Sleep or I'm going into the herb bag and pulling out the sleeping powder." Altair warns.

I jolt to the side, knocking Illuet's leg over. She collapses atop me and rolls off to the side, the two of us locked in an awkward jumble of limbs and poor decisions, and I yelp, "I'm fine. Sleeping. Right now."

"Y-yep." Illuet mutters, trying to submerge herself in the grass. The two of us make unconvincing sighing noises as we pretend to be fast asleep and I move so that between my head and tail, I'm touching both of them. Even sitting unprotected beneath a vast sky in the smothering heat, I feel protected. My paws stir, the breeze of the last few days whistling in my ears as it sweeps the field, crescendoing into a howling, desperate torrent of noise, and I curl tighter about myself and fall asleep.