Emily follows after Blue ponderously, her concentration narrowed on the fluffy butt bobbing in front of her. For a maddening moment, she entertains the idea of just reaching out and stroking some of those long, definitely-soft feathers with her hand and enjoying the feel of them. But she knows that if she did that, Blue would take off her fingers without mercy. And even worse, he might actually stop leading her to what she’s certain now is water. And she won’t let anything stop her from reaching that coveted resource. Her hands are already glowing painfully, every drop of mana available to her ready to be fired in the face of anything that would dare stand in their way.

  Blue twists his head back and forth and adjusts his meandering walk to the left a little bit, confidently walking with a gait that tells Emily that he knows exactly where he’s going. He seems to really be taking her request seriously. In fact, he hasn’t once crouched down in his usual “Stalker Pose” that he goes into before he hunts. Emily would normally be more curious about what just happened, if she actually had the capacity to care. She’s been struggling with thirst ever since she was plucked by those darn monkeys, and right now, her mind only has the capacity to care about quenching it.

  Her stomach suddenly growls like two angry walruses fighting furiously over territory, and her mind finds the capacity to care about two things simultaneously once again. Unfortunately, it’s two things that she literally cannot change at the moment.

  Eventually, even her pathetic human nose picks up something that gets her heart racing and her hopes soaring:

  Dampness.

  Delicious, sweet, thirst-sating dampness hangs in the air all around her, the foliage becoming noticeably more vibrant and noticeably more earthy as they walk. She spots the telltale ferns that like to grow near bodies of water, she thinks? Maybe? Or so she assumes and hopes dearly, having never really studied plants beyond the edible kind that grows out of neat rows on a farm or from the branches of trees. But there’s no mistaking that earthy, loamy and heavy smell.

  And the best part is that it’s getting heavier and heavier, the air growing loamier and ever-full of water with each step. Emily frantically looks around herself, her head splitting from the violent movements, but fails to spot the life-giving body of water anywhere. She takes a deep breath, trying to calm her impatience. Blue’s leading them true, and it’s easy to get lost in a forest. She just needs to be a little more patient.

  She hears the trickle of water and forgets all about that patience, stumbling as fast as she can in a desperate hope to get to the life-giving water just that little bit sooner. She can hear her heart pounding in her ears, as the sound grows louder and louder and louder. She can hear the rush of water falling onto a pile of rocks, and the trickle of it joining a larger pool. She licks her cracked lips in anticipation and excitement, as she finally spots it in the distance.

  A small stream trickles slowly across a narrow channel, larger ferns and cattails growing off of the banks of it and providing the perfect homes to all sorts of water critters. The stream meanders off of a small rock formation, dropping down from one large rock to another, before landing with a soft trickle into a medium-sized catchment pool dotted with lilypads and reeds. It then trickles out into a wider stream, racing downhill towards the distance.

  Emily runs faster, forcing her legs to obey her will and keep herself upright. She passes by Blue who watches her go carefully, not giving the little guy a single thought as she zeroes in on the one thing she wanted the most these last two days.

  Unfortunately for her, as she stumbles past the ostrich, she activates his prey drive. And Blue is not one to deny his instincts.

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  Letting out an excited cry, he pounces on Emily, taking her by surprise and knocking her to the ground. He digs his claws into her shoulder, piercing her clothing and drawing blood. Emily’s dazed and confused for a moment, not expecting an attack, especially from her own ostrich. She turns to look at him in surprise and fear, seeing him rear his head back in that tell-tale “Ice pick to a coconut” way that he likes to finish off his foes.

  But after spending weeks in this forest, Emily is ready, and she does what she always does when faced with an unexpected foe:

  She takes aim and fires, her mana already primed and ready for it.

  Sending her mana through slightly different channels than she normally does, she blasts Blue with a wide pillar of air, sending the ostrich flying into the air but not harming him with the dangerous wind. He flaps his little wings in an attempt to land on his feet and slow his fall, but unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have enough time to do either. He lands hard on his backside, before losing his balance and falling onto his side with a surprised cry.

  Emily gets up and lets out an irritated huff, placing a hand on the wound that Blue gave her and pulling it back to find it only slightly bleeding. It stings, but not too badly. She’s more irritated about the tear in her nice shirt than the actual scratch itself. She grew up on a farm. She can handle a little maiming.

  She stands there with one hand on her hip as she watches the maimer himself scramble his feet in the air for a moment before finally getting them underneath him. He stands up and turns towards Emily, an unreadable expression on his face.

  Emily cocks an eyebrow at Blue.

  “Are you going to try that again?”

  They stand there and stare at each other for a moment, each second feeling like an eternity to the parched Emily. But she knows that this is important. She can’t be the one to break first.

  “I can always send you flying higher.”

  Blue replies with a screech, puffing out his wings, and Emily nods in understanding.

  “Good. I’m glad we sorted that out.”

  She squints her eyes at him and gives him a serious look.

  “I’m in a really, really bad mood right now, and the way to fix that is literally right over there. So unless you want a tornado in your face, can you please be on your best behaviour?”

  Blue looks around for a moment, cocking his head from side to side, before chittering his beak and running into the foliage. Taking that as an agreement, Emily turns back towards the magical stream, taking a deep breath and deciding to walk slowly towards it.

  That lasts a moment before she’s running as fast as she can again, picking up more and more speed until she’s right at the edge of the pool. She kicks off her shoes and sprints into its embrace, falling face-first into its welcoming waters.

  She floats on its surface face-down, feeling her pores drink in the cool, cold moisture around her. She opens her mouth wide, gulping down great mouthfuls of the magical liquid, feeling her splitting migraine lose its edge and retreat just that little bit. For a while she floats there, just gulping as much as she can down, entertaining the thought of never leaving its welcoming embrace. But then, the lack of oxygen forces her hand, and she sits up in the shoulder-deep water and takes a deep gasp.

  She luxuriates in the feeling of being quenched for a moment, closing her eyes and running her fingers through her hair. She spends some time humming pleasantly to herself, picking out leaves and twigs and other forest detritus from her blonde tangles. She remembers swimming in a lake once or twice before, once with her Uncle the day that he left, and once with Alastair when they were young teens. She tries to remember if it felt as heavenly as it does now, and thinks to herself that it surely didn’t.

  “Blue, you beautiful thing you… You saved my life, I swear.”

  She floats on her back and stares up at the canopy above her, occasionally sipping the water in an attempt to silence the groaning of her stomach and get rid of the lingering bits of her headache. She manages to succeed in one, silencing her stomach by filling it to the brim with delicious water. But as for the other, it seems that the abuse she put her body through still has some lingering effects that she needs to heal from.

  Emily considers whether she should take her clothes off and finally, finally take a bath, when she suddenly hears something moving towards her. She stands up again, the water dripping down from her hair and clothes and into the waters around herself, when she hears it:

  The sounds of footsteps, coming towards the stream at an unhurried pace.