the air grew chiller and drier as brasher cousins of the normal slyphs made their pilgrimmage. It was not the first time Chimbeeriun had had to deal with this sort of weather but it might as well have been; the stuff sheared him ragged, as easily as if he had only just set his wings to the air the day before, so that when he finally made it to Skaffwory's favorite perch higher up he looked like a mess.

Skaffwory tilted her head and eyed him. She had grown stricter with him of recent, but to Chimbeeriun's frustration now she smiled at him, amused. "Did you crash into something, you silly thing?"

"No," he grumbled at her, and slung down his bag, holding out the gape for her to see. "Here."

The inside was filled with feathersticks and jars. Skaffwory craned up to look in.

"You have surpassed me in c-creating those, I think," she said, and her voice knocked about a little wrongly in Chimbeeriun's ear; he looked at her, blinking. Had her voice just cracked?

Surely not. Skaffwory tried hard to keep her voice crisp. He began to form some sort of jeer, "What was that, you old bird, even I don't click anymore when I speak," but Skaffwory had already settled back down onto her branch, her feathers fluffed and eyes half-open, crouched on the branch. She had always been a fat old thing but abruptly Chimbeeriun realized that her wings (presently unfolding, folding again) were rather small, as if shorn too by the wind.

But this couldn't be right, Chimbeeriun thought. Why would they be shorn by the wind? Lazy buzzard. He hadn't seen her in the sky since the brasher sylphs had arrived. She had sent him on errands to retrieve her food for her, even, and he'd been the one carrying on sales at walkers' Quartzal, gingerly handling jars and fire-proofed pouches bulging with her salamanders.

"I should hope I got better at making them," he told her instead, "since that's all I ever do."

She snorted at him. But didn't say anything back, only reached out to take a featherstick and stick it beneath her talons. It jutted out and fire began to curl the softened fibers.

She never let his comments about the uselessness of her training go.

This time there was a chill against the back of his neck, and he slapped it, trying to scare away the slyph that was niggling beneath his nape-feathers.

It had to be a slyph.

"I hope you're not going to make me get food for you again today," Chimbeeriun ventured, and Skaffwory didn't reply. He waited, for a while, and realized that she had fallen asleep, though her eyes were slightly open.

This too was a first. Chimbeeriun gripped and ungripped his branch. Had she just dozed off? She must have been exhausted. What did she even do anymore that would tire her? And she left the featherstick smouldering, the idiot.

She really was sleeping.

Chimbeeriun huffed, but waited a little longer; then looped the bag's straps on a nearby branch and spread his wings. As he did, however, he saw that the featherstick was burning -- not just smouldering, but burning, a candle-sized flame set right against Skaffwory's scaly ankle. Skaffwory had never been burned by her beloved salamanders that he had ever seen in his life, but as he stared, the fire began to creep and blacken the tips of her gray feathers.

"What --" He started in surprise, and then squawked in panic -- fire -- feathers burning! He launched himself from his branch and grasped the featherstick with his talons, but as his claws wrapped around it the fire abruptly grew, with a purr like an opening wing; he shrieked his surprise and fear and began to beat the stick against the loftree branch until it shattered and disintegrated, and then he threw it into the sky. The slyphs buffeted it back and forth with some curiosity before letting it go.

"Skaffwory!" he shouted furiously, and she started from her sleep in shock, all her feathers sticking out on their ends. "What are you doing?"

"What happened?"

"What happened? You were almost consumed by your own sky-forsaken salamanders, that's what happened!"

"C-consumed...?"

She looked at him with confusion. "Surely not, Chimbeeriun," she said, and then looked angry. "Did you do something to anger them?"

"Did -- I --"

So she blamed him? When he had saved her? His wings clapped open with anger and without further word he threw himself from her branch, not trusting himself to explain kindly to her, and frightened of the prospect of it.

Why was she acting his way? It was unlike her. She better get back to normal soon.

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