“A minor detail,” he countered as he made to walk off my hand again. I quickly set my palms on the floor, and he marched onto the boards. He spread his wings and flicked his tail. “Now then, let’s be off.”
He pumped so fast I could hardly follow, and in a trice he shot out of my bedroom and disappeared over the windowsill. I jumped to my feet and raced over, grasping the sill as I leaned into the void. The little bird darted across the winding stone paths, colorful bushes, and myriad of flower beds, and landed on a nearby tree.
Or tried to. He overshot the branch, but managed to catch the next one, though not without some scrabbling.
“Good morning!”
I turned my attention to a stone path on my left. Marc stood there with Ramaro at his side.
I waved to them before I pointed at the bird. “Is he okay?”
The bird answered me. “Nothing a little feed wouldn’t fix!”
“There’s food in the kitchen. You can grab something and bring it out here,” Marc called to me.
I gave him a lazy salute and ducked back inside. In a jiffy, I had slipped on my clothes, scurried downstairs, and grabbed a bread from the island in the kitchen. Eldric sat at the low table with a mug of some hot drink in his hand and a paper in the other.
“Good morning,” he greeted me as I gathered a meal. “I hope you slept well.”
“Perfectly,” I assured him before I stuffed a warm cinnamon roll-type bread into my mouth. “Thanks for the food!”
“Thank Marc,” he corrected me as he took another sip. “He cooked it for you.”
My heart fluttered, and I hurried to the rear door that led out into the large garden. The backyard occupied even more space than the spacious house, and stone paths meandered their way around the place. Moss covered the ground between the smooth rocks and climbed up the low stone walls that surrounded the bushes and flower beds.
“Eldric must really like plants,” I mused as I admired the dozens of different flowers and even vines that crept everywhere.
“He needs all he can get for his studies,” Marc told me as I reached the pair.
I lifted my eyes to the tree in which the strange bird had landed. “Is that bird really alright?”
Ramaro wrinkled his snout. “That thing will be just fine.”
“I heard that!” The thing in question hopped out from underneath a clump of leaves on the branch and glared at Ramaro. “I am not a thing! I am Rumlerche Schnattervogel the Fourth, heir to the mighty dynasty of birds who have flown these breezes since time immemorial!”
“Like you know how to fly properly. . .” Ramaro grumbled.
The bird stabbed the end of one wing at Ramaro. “How dare you, you soiled lizard! What would a creature of the ground know of the skies?”
“Enough to know you have a bad habit of dropping out of them,” the agama snapped.
“Rum here offered to help with your training,” Marc spoke up as he gave a sharp look at his scaly companion. Ramaro turned his face away and huffed, but said nothing.
I tilted my head back to study the strange bird. “That’s very nice of you, um, Rum.”
He stretched his wings on either side of him and flapped them a few times. “Not at all. It’s been many nestings since a witch of your caliber came to the city, or so Marc told me. Probably not since Lady Blackbrew was here.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know I’m that powerful?”
Rum nodded at Marc. “He explained to me what you did last night, and it perfectly matched the tingling in my cadmus.”
I blinked at him. “Your what?”
He lifted his wings again and flapped a few times. “My wings, you silly fool. Have you no education?”
“I’m a little rusty in the area of avians,” I admitted as my eyes darted over to Marc. “So, um, what do I need to do?”
Rum hopped to the end of his limb, where he stood two feet above our heads. “You need to prevent my friends from popping your little water bubbles.”
