Acorn lay belly-up in a patch of sun beside me, all four paws and his tail splayed out. His eyes were closed. His whiskers twitched. He was probably dreaming about food.
I turned back to my work, using a small flame spell to heat the base of vial five. The compound inside began to separate, luminescent particles rising through the liquid like tiny stars.
My pen traced a small arc in the air as I prepared to dictate the next observation.
The motion triggered the memory of Feral’s finger moving across the map this morning. Pack seal sites, he’d said. Ancient boundary magic. Two dozen scattered across the territory.
I went still mid-reach for the fifth vial.
The pen wrote “Sample five demonstrates…” and waited.
I didn’t finish the sentence.
The duskburst locations. The seal sites. I hadn’t compared them yet, but a pattern was forming in my mind. The way the plants had clustered near specific points along the creek, deliberate rather than random.
I lowered my hand.
“Lady Victoria?” Robin’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Are those vials safe to have out here in the open?”
I blinked, refocusing. “Of course. The compound is stable at ambient temperature. There’s no risk of contamination or combustion.”
“They’re beautiful,” he said, moving a step closer. “Like captured fireflies.”
“The luminescence operates on a similar principle, actually. Bioluminescent organisms use—” I stopped myself. Robin didn’t need a lecture on chemical reactions. “They’re harmless. Just pretty.”
He nodded and went back to his weeding, though his gaze kept drifting to me.
I finished the extraction with less focus than I’d started with, my movements automatic. The correlation sat in my head, demanding attention I couldn’t give here.
When I’d sealed the last vial and made my final notation, I packed everything into my carrying case.
Robin glanced over as I stood. “Heading in already?”
“I need to cross-reference these results with previous data.” It was true enough. Just not the data he was thinking of.
I headed for the stairs, Acorn scrambling to catch up.
It took me longer than I liked to reach the top floor. Where was my ride when I needed him?
My snort of laughter rang out, drawing a frown from Acorn.
The laboratory door clicked shut behind me.
Acorn hopped onto the windowsill where I’d placed his basket to catch the sun, and I placed my notebooks and case on my main work table.
I pulled out the duskburst field sketches with the location diagrams I’d made at the creek, each plant marked with careful notation about soil composition, sun exposure, and proximity to water. Five specimens total, distributed in a pattern that had felt deliberate even then.
Next came the hard part.
Feral’s map existed only in my memory, but I was good at remembering things when I needed to. I sat at my desk and drew, recreating the territory outline and the small symbols he’d marked. Pack seal sites. Two dozen overall, he’d said, though only a portion of them were located in the northern section.
I placed each marker where I remembered seeing it. When I finished, I laid both sheets beside each other on the desk. Then I stood back.
The correlation was too clean.
Every duskburst plant I’d found appeared to sit within close proximity to a seal. Not near one or two, but all of them. The distance varied, but the pattern held. Plant, seal, plant, seal, mapped across the northern tributaries in a way that couldn’t be coincidence.
My enchanted pen lifted off the desk without being told and began taking notes in rapid script.
