The footsteps put-put-put faster and faster towards her, and Emily gets up to her feet quickly, her eyes narrowing on the stretch of forest that she hears it coming from. She prepares what little mana she has for what’s about to happen, glad that she left herself the little that she has. Her hand starts glowing dully, and in response, an angry squawk comes from the rapidly-approaching mass that has her shoulders relaxing and the worry in her chest easing just a bit, even though she’s still going to prepare the heck out of her mana now.

  Suddenly, Blue bursts out from the bushes, his long legs a blur beneath him as he holds out his wickedly sharp claws towards Emily. Emily feels a drop of sweat fall down her forehead and drip down her chin, as she swings her hand to point at the playful ostrich. Emily hopes that this spell won’t take too much mana, since if Blue dodges the first one, she’s not certain if she has enough in the tank to do it twice. It’s one of her less-lethal ones, so she’s barely used it the last few years, the pathways having grown narrower and less saturated as time goes on.

  But just as she’s about to fire, Blue’s eyes narrow just the slightest bit, and he does the most bizarre thing that Emily has ever seen.

  He changes direction, running parallel to her while squawking victoriously to himself.

  Emily smiles, watching as he slowly but surely moves towards her while spinning around her, keeping her spinning in place as he does so. “Clever boy… But you didn’t think I could do this, now did you?”

  Emily tracks Blue for a moment, following the ostrich with her hand, before leading just a little bit and letting the spell go off. A massive cushion of wind blasts out from Emily, whipping her hair wildly before crashing into Blue. It lifts the ostrich up into the air, his feet scurrying wildly and his wings flapping furiously, trying to right himself or gain some measure of control over his flight, before he lands on the floor with a crash, skidding a few feet and coming to a rest on his side.

  For a moment, nothing happens, as Blue just lies on his side in silence. The baby takes a deep breath, his side rising up, before he lets out a loud, frustrated skree.

  Emily lets out a relieved huff, dusting her hands off and standing proudly with her hands on her hips. “Got you this time, Blue!”

  The baby keeps skreeing, scratching in the dirt as he lifts himself back up on his feet.

  “Now, now.” Emily says, as she walks towards him. “Nobody likes a sore loser. Maybe you’ll get me next time.”

  As Blue stands up to his full height again, looking down at Emily, she rethinks that statement.

  “N-nevermind. Just keep losing, please.”

  She stares up at Blue with a surprised look on her face. She knew that Blue was growing quickly - quicker than she expected, really - but she never really stopped to think about what that meant. Until now, when he’s easily half a head taller than her already.

  Either he’s going to stop being a baby very, very quickly, becoming a mature ostrich with a whole host of behaviour and training issues…

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  Or he’s going to get really, really big. Which means he’s going to get really, really dangerous.

  Emily shrugs, deciding that while she probably needs to do something about this before it’s too late… She also has a lot more to deal with at the moment. It can be put off just that little bit longer. But there’s one thing that can’t.

  Emily pulls out a chunk of salted meat and lays it carefully on the ground for Blue to snatch up, while she reaches into her pack and pulls out the precious map and compass. She opens it up quickly, unfolding it to reveal its detailed surface in all its glory while Blue stops sulking and starts quickly devouring the meat with abandon.

  Emily holds up the map in front of her, squinting her eyes as she stares at its surface, trying to match up what she’s seeing on it with what she sees around her.

  “So we were here yesterday… And I skipped allll the way this way… So that means I’m… Here?”

  She taps a spot on the map and double checks the compass in her hands, deciding that she’s probably right.

  “And I need to get all the way down… Here?”

  She tries to calculate the distance roughly in her head, and finds that it’d probably be a week or more before she’s out of there, if it only took her a day to get to where she is right now.

  “I mean… That doesn’t seem so far away, when it’s all laid out like this in front of me.”

  Her eyes drift to the right, lingering on the circle that the Furious Five drew and all of the implications behind that. An entire army of scouts lie within that little circle, clearing a path for an even bigger army to roll through and invade her country.

  And she wants absolutely nothing to do with them. The less people she encounters in this forest, the better. She can feel her chest clenching just at the thought of having to fight another person, and if she can avoid that? Good. Give her all of the red-eyed or whatever they were called Lemurs if it means she can avoid people.

  Unless those people are Alastair and Nora, of course.

  She looks up nervously at the treetops, worried that maybe the universe will hear her and call her bluff. Seeing no red eyes staring back down at her, she lets out a nervous breath and then prepares herself for what she was about to do next.

  She turns to look at Blue, who’s still gobbling down the hunk of meat with a look of pure bliss on his feathery face. Emily slowly walks towards him, her every step careful and quiet and deliberate in order to not clue Blue in to what she’s doing.

  And when she gets close enough to finally reach out a hand and touch him, she does it.

  She jumps onto his back, grabbing onto his beak before he could turn around and peck her.

  For a moment, Blue panics, swallowing his hunk of meat as quickly as possible before scurrying backwards, trying to move his head back and forth in an attempt to shake off whatever’s on him.

  “Sorry, boy! But we’ve got a long way to go!”

  Blue shuffles to the side, trying his hardest to wrestle his head away. Emily shoves his head to the side, and his legs scurry to move in the same direction.

  One step becomes two. Then three. Then four and five. Blue starts picking up speed, his legs blurring beneath him as he does the only other thing that he can think to do:

  Run.

  Emily points him towards the direction she already picked, and they rocket off, laughing the entire time.