I watch Ayre walk away with a bit of concern, having noticed her mood lowering over the last couple of days once we started talking about leaving. “Should we go after her, Lilly?” I pose to the fairy who is currently struggling with crumbs everywhere that have stuck to any number of places on her hands and arms because of the honey, with an entirely full mouth of muffin.

  “Mhhhmphmm.” The noises she emits are definitely not language, but after a ridiculous performance of chewing and swallowing she clarifies, “Nah, don’t think so. She does this every day, and she made me promise to never go down there.” The fairy’s grin turns serious for a moment, “Oh! She still owes me! She promised she’d tell me why she tried to stab you while you were knocked out!”

  “She…tried to stab me? Why?” I ask, not realizing the futility of the question until it’s already left my mouth.

  Lilly, being much more adept at wordplay, notices, and responds immediately, “I don’t know, I just said she owes me an explanation. Olly, are you paying attention?” She grabs another handful of muffin and I realize just how much of the muffin she’s managed to go through with awe. Being all of four inches tall, she has made it easily eighty percent of the way through a muffin that surely weighed ten times more than her. “Olly, why are you staring at me?”

  Shaking my head as she looks up at me indignantly, and I raise my hands in apology, “Sorry, It’s just…where did the muffin go?”

  There’s a long pause that hangs in the air between us as Lilly stares at me.

  “Olly.” The way she’s looking at me, with a deadly calm face, is oddly intimidating coming from someone as tall as one of my fingers.

  “… Yeah?” I lean back a little ways, feeling a threat in the air.

  There's a sudden burst of motion and Lilly is about two inches away from my face, wings fluttering and casting once-gold and now-red dust around. “What is wrong with you?!” She pokes my nose as hard as she can with a shower of dust spraying from the touch, and I fall backwards out of surprise, landing flat on my back. She pursues immediately and lands on my chest, pointing at me in accusation, “Who just asks a question like that?! I should…. I should curse you! Yeah, that’s what I should do!”

  “Lilly… I really didn’t mean anythi-”

  She shushes me with a sharp noise as she turns away and hops into the air. As she flutters just above my chest, her wings beating frantically with sprays of dust. She points at me with a look of concentration on her face, “I can’t believe you, Olly! I expected better!” The incensed fae begins speaking in a voice I can only really describe as “unnecessarily dramatic”, “By my will, I curse thee with-” Her voice trembles with theatrical malice as she begins her spell, but halfway through I spy her wing flutters faltering. “…with the burden…” Her voice starts to fade, and I watch closely, trying to guess at what she’s playing at. “…of…” Her eyes begin to blink slowly, leaving her looking dazed. “… Uh…” She makes a final weak sound, her words trailing off completely as she seems to struggle to stay aloft.

  A wave of essence pulses through me as though it’s under pressure, and everywhere it travels, I feel a similar sensation to when I use the elks talents. But unlike with that particular memory, this one comes with a wave of nausea and confusion that lasts a few moments as I try and fail to process the huge amount of essence Lilly clearly just cast upon me. But no matter what I try to do to break it down logically, it evades me, distracting me thoroughly.

  Before I can react, she goes limp, her gilded wings ceasing beating, and plummets a couple of feet into my chest with a tiny thud. I blink a couple of times trying to process everything. Her wings settle over her, curling around her now unconscious form like a protective blanket. “Lilly?” She looks very peaceful as I watch the slight rising and falling of her chest. Entirely unresponsive, though, clearly out cold from…whatever she was about to do.

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  I move to rise, cupping my left hand over Lilly so she doesn’t fall. But when I try to sit up, I realize I can’t, like there’s something pinning me to the floor. I try rolling to the side, but am similarly thwarted.

  “Great. So the “burden” got through, I guess.” I give up trying, hoping that her aborted spell will wear off before long. There’s a blanket nearby that I reach for -- just something to put under my head -- but it is, by a cruel twist of fate, only a few spare inches out of my reach. Defeated, I just rest my head on the floor while keeping Lilly held loosely so she doesn’t fall and hurt herself. Looking up at the table edge, I see the remainder of the muffin and sigh, “Didn’t even get my question answered…”

  After what feels like forever, but is actually exactly 28 boring minutes of staring at the ceiling, I hear Ayre’s footsteps coming. At a guess, they feel a bit lighter, less like she’s trudging than she usually would be. In short order, her horned head pops around the corner wearing the brightest smile I’ve yet seen on her and decidedly sooty blackening around her mouth, ash blacking on her exposed skin and scales, and serious charring on the fringes of her casual garb. All told, she looks as if she jumped in a camp bonfire for a couple of seconds before coming out the other side unharmed but scorched.

  “Hey, Ayre. Everything okay? You look…well done.” I hazard with a smile, “Did the shrine fight back or something?”

  Her fire-bright smile is unwavering as she looks down at the position Lilly and I are in, “Something like that. I’ll tell you both at the same time.” She steps fully inside, and looks us both over, gesturing to the fallen chair and some cups that fell over alongside me doing the same. “What happened? You guys just decided to take a nap or something?”

  I grimace and make an effort to sit up. I’m able to, but only with extreme effort that leaves me feeling like I’d spent the last thirty minutes doing sit-ups. Breathing heavy, and making sure to keep the little dozing fairy from falling forward onto the floor. She raises the ridge of scales serving as an eyebrow with interest. “I think I offended Lilly and, being who she is, she decided to play a little prank. Cast some sort of burdening spell on me. It was strange.” I hesitate, recalling the specifics of how magic is supposed to work that Ayre has told me over the weeks. “She only got a little ways into the incantation before I saw her starting to struggle, and before I could really react she had passed out, and I had to catch her so she didn’t hurt herself.” My surely confused look is mirrored on Ayre’s face as she thinks.

  “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of Lilly failing to cast a spell.” She scratches her chin with a clawed digit, bracing her arm across her chest. “She said she wouldn’t be able to use her magic as much anymore, so that would make sense as the culprit. I suppose magic overuse for her knocks her out rather than having the normal side effects we would suffer from essence poisoning.” She bobs her head, thinking through the problem. “Or, at least, how the normal kyn would. As I say it now, really, none of us actually do things the ‘normal’ way with any sort of regularity.”

  “Makes sense to me. Can you help me up the rest of the way? I don’t think I’ve got it in me to go much farther while this is still active.” I extend my left hand and set Lilly on the table edge on an orange cloth napkin. She clasps it with her own—this exact scene having played out a lot recently during our sparring sessions—my “getting my butt kicked” sessions. Her hands always feel comfortably warm and the scales that cover her hands are pleasantly smooth to the touch, but when I touch her, I almost have to let go.

  Instead, I suck in a sharp breath of pain as she hefts me up and as soon as we let go, I step away, blowing on my hand before dunking it in a nearby water barrel, which brings instant relief. I sigh pleasantly, “You’re pretty damn hot, Ayre. I think you actually burnt me.” I say, nursing my reddening hand.

  She cocks her head, hair bouncing as she does. “I guess I must have overdone it. That’s probably an effect of essentia overexposure.” She shrugs at the idea, “Sorry, it’s not something I can really feel. Ignia is something my line is closely associated with, so its effects are minimal on us.”

  Accepting the explanation, I nod. “Fair enough—I hadn’t thought it was deliberate. More of a warning before you touch Lilly or something flammable.” I warn as I take a few more experimental steps. The spell seems to have more or less dissipated, so I feel a bit better about the movement. I reach down and awkwardly scoop the sleeping girl into my hand, cradling her in my palm. “Figured I’d keep her with me in case she’s out of it when she gets up. I read in that medical book that falling unconscious can be pretty similar to suffering a head wound in terms of leaving someone confused when they get up again.”

  Looking down at Lilly, she looks very peaceful as her wings slowly move around of their own accord, casting a lazy dusting of rapidly evaporating gilded powder in my palm. She stirs a little bit as Ayre speaks up, “I will be ready to head out today or tomorrow.” She hesitates, looking pensive. “Probably should go sooner, rather than later. I would rather not give myself the option to back out.”