Lively jazz drifted out from well-lit streets, colorful paper lanterns hanging across the roads on strings to give the town of Dead Herman a festive, peppy life. Ponies swaggered as they walked, some daring to wear full-body clothes despite the lower districts' infernal climate. Shoddy construction and recycled scrap made up the buildings of a society on the edge of society, and yet it felt more rebellious than impoverished. And we were talking to a pegasus who had just introduced himself as the Howenator.
"A dark and lustrous evening to you," he said with a tip of his bowler hat, showing that his evilly-dyed mane job extended under it as well... and also that it was at odds with a cheery countenance. "And ol' Howe greets you too. How's the night treating you, ladies?"
"Nothing special one way or the other," I replied, having gotten myself into this and now entirely unsure what I wanted out of it. "Err, why? You?"
"Business as usual, my leafy-eared understudy," Howe said, standing straight and proud. "The Howenator, you see, is a pegasus on a mission. Wander the streets, offer a friendly little smile to those in need, and ask two little questions of any and all comers." He leaned in with a wink. "Any chance you might grace ol' Howe with an answer?"
"Only if I can ask what your name is first," I replied, earning a chuckle from Corsica. "Howe, Howenator, make up your mind?"
Howe laughed a faux-evil laugh. "The Howenator goes by Howe. As I like to say, Howe do you do?"
Corsica frowned and tilted her head. "So is it Howie or How? The joke doesn't work if you have to change your own pronunciation..."
Howe waved a wing. "The Howenator schmooves in mysterious ways, babydoll. But don't let him waste your time while you're on the clock!" He bowed to me. "Has ol' Howe's answer filled the void of curiosity that yawns in your soul?"
Actually, he was making me more curious than ever, though mostly as to whether or not he was sane. I decided not to say that. "Alright, what do you wanna ask?"
Howe lowered his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper. "Do you like... cults?"
"Cults?" I blinked in surprise. "You mean tiny religious groups focused on things not many know about? Yeah, if they're legitimate. As long as they're not up to anything sinister."
Howe winked. "Good answer! Second question: do you like... ways to get rich quick?"
Corsica and I looked at each other. I swallowed. "You're not about to ask us to do anything illegal, are you?"
Howe chuckled, once again with a faux-evil air. "Perish the thought, milady! After all, ol' Howe only asked for two questions, not three." He whistled innocently. "Though if he were into telling things rather than asking, he'd probably have a word or two to say about a group he's totally not being paid to shill for that could be just up your alley. You ever hear about the alicorn princess of love?"
Alicorns? I blinked, my attention thoroughly grabbed. Before I could say anything, though, Corsica beat me to it: "Only two questions, remember?" she pointed out smugly.
Howe gave her a strange look and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Touche..."
"What's this about alicorns?" I interrupted, leaning forward.
"Ah, has the young mare's attention been ensnared?" Howe started chuckling again. "Princess Coda, the alicorn of love! She and her followers travel the world via their airship, soliciting the adoring prayers of the faithful. And mind you, when Howe says soliciting, he means it. A few words of genuine adoration professed where she can hear, and a jingle in your pocket in return."
Corsica frowned in confusion. "This goddess-princess-whatever is so desperate for attention, she pays you money to sing her praises?"
"Oh, that's one way to see it," Howe said, waggling a feather. "But all her fancy priests would tell you it's a noble premonition of a future ruled by mutually-beneficial love. Less of a transaction and more of a utopia. You ken?"
My mind was very torn between the apparent existence of a real alicorn, the prospect of free money, the common-sense idea that money was never truly free, and the common-sense idea that it was probably easier to fake having an alicorn than to have a real one. "Err..."
"Sounds like a front for criminal enterprise," Corsica remarked. "What are they trying to do, get rid of a windfall that's bringing too much government attention?"
Howe drew a wing across his heart. "The Howenator thoroughly vets his employers, thank you very much. Believe it or not, the coins he's seen ponies walk away with are very much real." He hesitated. "Although being in griffon currency does devalue them somewhat. But money's still money!"
Corsica looked unconvinced. She raised an eyebrow.
Howe raised one back. "For someone in your line of employ, you seem awfully eager to cry about illegal activity in the no-laws zone."
Now Corsica was confused. "What's my job got to do with this?"
"Neither of us are working here," I added, remembering a remark earlier about him thinking we were on the clock. "We're just tourists."
Howe closed his eyes and waggled a feather. "Quaint, but your garb says otherwise, O unemployed one."
"My garb?" Corsica glanced back at her tiny saddle and flanks-only dress. "What's this have to do with anything?"
Howe resumed his evil laugh.
"What?" Corsica started to redden. "What are you not telling me?"
"Fuhuhaha!" Howe chortled. "Does the damsel not know?"
"Hey, watch it, buddy," I warned, taking a stance.
Corsica nodded. "We're buffer than we look. You wanna mess?"
"Uhh, I mean..." Now it was Howe's turn to hesitate. "You're telling ol' Howe you're a normal, innocuous civilian dressing like a pleasure mare just because?"
My ears twitched. Corsica started to turn beet red. "Is that what these mean?"
Howe whistled innocently. "As savage a prank as that would be, the Howenator tells no fibs. Ain't his fault you got that and didn't know." He glanced sideways at us. "How did you get a thing like that and not know?"
Corsica was staring at her clothes in horror. "I guess that's why Jamjars found this on the black market..." She started disrobing then and there, her hidden talent suddenly a much lesser priority. "Next time I see her, I'm sticking her head in a dishwasher and...!"
I was still trying to figure out what a pleasure mare was that would be such a bad thing. Excluding the obvious answers, because I didn't feel like grossing myself out too much.
"Oho?" Howe perked up. "You know Jamjars?"
"What's it to you?" I asked, covering for Corsica as she stomped off toward the nearest trash can.
"Nice gal," Howe said. "Loyal, good sense of fashion, real rags-to-riches success story. Also tops ol' Howe's list of mortals who might try to take over the world, but everyone needs some character flaw or another."
I tried to think of something to say that explicitly wouldn't acknowledge his remark about taking over the world, and drew a blank. In the ensuing silence, I noticed Corsica had gotten into an argument.
A very familiar one.
"I don't want it!" she was insisting, trying to stuff her apparently-lecherous dress inside. "It's not my fault Jamjars didn't do her research!"
"And I told you, much as I usually relish donations, this time I've decided I don't like the implications," Egdelwonk was arguing, lurking in the can and trying to push it back out. "It's a fine dress, very noble, I'm sure there's no need to throw it away."
I actually laughed. Good to know I wasn't the only pony he haunted like that.
"Oh, you can laugh," Howe warned, apparently completely missing Corsica. "But that mare has a mountain of ambition and knows how to make the rules dance to her whims."
"Really?" I frowned, remembering Gerardo's warning. This was the first unaffiliated pony I had ever actually talked to about Jamjars... "Why, what does she do?"
Corsica returned in defeat, carrying her dress in a tightly-rolled ball in her aura. "Hi, what did I miss...?" she droned.
"Oh, hey." Howe waved her over. "The Howenator was just telling about how everyone speculates Jamjars has-" His eyes bugged out. "Yo, that's an interesting brand you've got. Mind if ol' Howe asks what it does?"
He tried to look at Corsica's flank. Corsica briefly froze, then tried to move so he couldn't.
"Yes," she said stiffly, "I mind. Ever heard of privacy?"
"Ehhh..." Howe backed off, waving a wing disarmingly. "Okay. Touchy subject. You keep your fell secrets, and the Howenator will keep his. Pretend this never happened."
"You've seen this talent before?" Corsica pressed. I backed away, feeling awkward from the sudden tension.
Howe raised an eyebrow. "We changing the subject or not, here?"
"...Fine," Corsica relented with a sigh. "It's a talent in architecture. Geometry, building things, load balancing, that stuff. Where have you seen it before?"
"Well," Howe said, adding a slight evil chuckle, "brace yourselves for the eldritch... Ol' Howe might have once spied it on a filly who had just come back from the dead."
My breath caught in my throat. It was an outlandish assertion, except...
Corsica met my eyes, and I knew we were thinking the same: hers had appeared while she was unconscious, after a long, long coma. And it wouldn't be too hard for a showboat like Howe to conflate that with coming back from the dead.
"How so?" I asked. "Back from the dead? Like, literally?"
Howe scratched his head. "Well, maybe not literally, but there was a spirit world and some magic machines and a cursed sword or two and a whole lot else involved, so close enough. And maybe the Howenator's misremembering. He was a little more worried about not getting eaten by a cyclops at the time than fillies getting their brands."
Corsica and I gave him a flat look.
"See?" Howe shrugged. "Don't take it too seriously, marefriends. Although, come to think of it..." He rubbed his chin. "That was actually the same time ol' Howe met Jamjars. She would'a been there too. She doesn't tell you things like this herself?"
Corsica punched the ground. "I knew she recognized... I mean... Look, never mind! It's probably a coincidence. What did that kid's talent even do?"
Howe shrugged. "Parted ways with her less than a day after. Couldn't say."
I, however, was thinking along a different track. "Say, this filly's name wouldn't happen to be Starlight, right?"
"Oho, so you've heard about her?" Howe raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, that's the one. Lotta folk stories about that gal. Depending who you ask, she's either some child superhero, or a made-up pony who's there to take credit for some really good things done by some controversial ponies certain other ponies don't want to ascribe any good things to. Pop culture is messy. Now, between you and the Howenator, she really did exist, and she might have even taken a name or two... but she definitely wouldn't want you making a big deal about it. Real troubled kid. Hated attention. Pretty sure she was under a sinister curse. OoOoOoOoOo..."
Every metric imaginable told me Howe was an unreliable source, but still, my curiosity got the better of me. "You knew her, then?"
"'Knew' is a pretty strong word, little bat," Howe said, waving a wing. "But the Howenator knew a friend or three of hers. Her mom hired yours truly as a bodyguard, and there was this griffon-" He froze, looking sharply around the plaza.
Corsica raised an eyebrow.
"Hate to barge out on you ladies like this," Howe whispered, "but ol' Howe is technically on the job, and his Howe sense is telling him that stallion right there would be spookily receptive to the tales of Lady Coda and her good cult Izvaldi." He pointed a wing at a tall, monocle-wearing stallion with a top hat, who appeared to be minding his own business as he strolled through the plaza. "May destiny cross our paths again, and remember, if you ever need a public speaker for hire who will shill for anything and everything your coins tell him to, the Howenator is your dude. Later, dudettes!"
"Hey, wait!" I held out a wing to stop him, and he glanced over his shoulder. "Coda. This cult... Izvaldi? If we wanted to find them, where would they be?"
Howe gave a winning wink. "Fly up to the ruins!" He pointed at the metal sky. "Or just take the lift, if you're lazy like yours truly. Big airship, spooky pink-black light over the top that looks like a shooting star. Pretty sure they've set sail for the morning already, but they'll be back every night. Can't miss 'em!"
And with that, he was gone, off to harass someone different for a change.
Corsica looked deeply shaken. "What did you ask that for?" she whispered, standing so that one of her flanks was in shadow and the other was mostly blocked by me. "You obviously can't trust a thing he said. Why would you want to go looking for this cult?"
"Just keeping my options open." I shrugged. "Aren't you curious? He called them Izvaldi. That's a province in the Griffon Empire. And the last time we found a friendly ship of griffish expats..." I nodded to the west. "They turned out to be Aldebaran. All I'm saying is, what if these guys are related and we've just gotten a major lead?"
Silently, I added, and it would be really cool if they were legit and I actually got to meet a goddess.
Corsica hesitated. "I... Yeah. Sure. Can we get out of here?"
It didn't take a genius to see how badly frayed she was. "Right. Let's get out of here."
We didn't make it all the way to the staircase before our pace slackened, no longer spurred by the noisy jubilance of Dead Herman. Once we were surrounded by silence, Corsica's step faltered, and it didn't take long before we stopped altogether.
I climbed onto a particularly tall crag by the road to rest, yet still keep an eye on the world around us. Corsica soon followed suit. She didn't say anything.
Neither did I.
We stayed like that for a few minutes, the stars glowing brightly in an unobstructed field overhead. City light rose like a blurry pillar from the nearby Ironridge crater, casting a faint spot on the heavens, and behind us to the south the horizon was higher than normal, the telltale outline of the Aldenfold blocking out stars in the distance. A light breeze blew. The weather was cool. The moon inched towards the ground.
"I probably look like a real mess," Corsica eventually said. "Freaking out about something trivial for no reason. So my talent looks like an unusual one someone special once had. So what, right?"
"Doesn't seem like much of a so-what to me," I said with a shrug. "Howe told us the pony who had a talent like that before was Starlight. Jamjars talks about Starlight all the time, so she must have seen it if there was a resemblance. I bet you that's where Gerardo saw it too, and why he thought she'd remember it. If it felt like everyone knew something about my own talent and no one was telling me what it was, I'd..." I glanced at my own, covered flanks, where an upside-down crown sat, bearing a function I had never told anyone. "Well, I don't just wear this coat for show."
"And what if it wasn't just a resemblance?" Corsica whispered. "What if your talent did something you couldn't explain, that a normal talent shouldn't be able to do?"
"Then..." I chose my words carefully, the sky beginning to lighten to the east. "I suppose I'd be pretty afraid, and pretty careful who I told about it. And, maybe I'd want to draw as little attention to it as possible, and I'd probably strike a weird balance of making excuses for the times I do use it while also using it as little as possible. And I'd definitely always imagine what it would be like to tell someone about it, but never actually do it, and..."
Corsica looked away. "My talent's not a talent in architecture. It does something else. I don't know how I got it. It just... appeared, while I was unconscious."
Something fuzzed in my memory as I listened, the telltale sign of my mask getting in the way. I wondered if I had learned what she was about to say before, and made myself forget.
"I'm not going to tell you what it does," she went on. "I can't believe I'm saying this already. If you want to know, prove you can keep this much a secret first. But, one thing about it is... it has a cost. When I use it, sometimes deliberately and sometimes accidentally, I feel... drained. Like my capacity to care about things has just been sucked away."
I listened.
"I told you about that earlier," Corsica admitted. "Said it was just the way I was, that it happens when I care about something too hard. I was lying. That only ever started when I got this talent, and it happens whenever I use it. The more times I use it, the harder I use it, the bigger of things I use it for, the harder it happens and the longer it lasts."
I stared.
"Remember that funk I was in when I first got out of the hospital?" Corsica asked. "When we first made friends for real? That happened because I hadn't realized yet how my talent worked or what it did to me. I didn't get better until I stopped and figured it out. When Aldebaran happened? I overused it there, too. When I passed out from 'heatstroke' when we first got here? I was trying to hide the symptoms because Gerardo made me think Jamjars knew enough about this talent to know what it did. I didn't want to look like... look like I was using it, for someone who knew what to look for."
She hung her head. "I don't know if I've talked myself into believing there's a connection where none exists, or if I somehow have the exact same talent as this Starlight, but I'm scared. I'm worried someone will figure out what it can do, and try to exploit it somehow. I'm worried I don't know everything it can do myself, and that I might learn something about it that might make it more tempting to use it. I'm terrified, Halcyon."
I took off my coat and offered it to her. My talent just looked disturbing. Any theoretical downsides to using it, I had made peace with six months ago... and there definitely weren't any immediate, physical ones. If anything, Corsica's talent sounded less like my own secret talent and more like Mother's bracelet.
"Thanks." She wrapped it around her hindquarters, not properly putting it on.
"So..." I hesitated. "I dunno if I'm the most authoritative source on what to do, but do you want to go talk to Jamjars? Learn exactly what she knows?"
"No," Corsica grunted. "I told you that."
I nodded. "You think not knowing what she knows and having that hanging over your head will make you feel better than having it over with? I think Jamjars is on our side. If she knew a pony who had the same talent, what if she learned things from her about how to live with it?"
"Maybe," Corsica said. "If I do, I'm doing it on my own. If she knows that, she'll already know what it can do, too. And I... don't want you knowing that."
I didn't understand, but I slowly nodded anyway.
"I'm sorry," Corsica said. "It would change things between us in a way I don't want them to change. Just... forget about it, okay?"
"I won't mention it again," I promised. "Until you need someone to confide in. Feeling any better?"
"...Let's get back home." Corsica nodded, giving me my coat back. "Sun's rising. Don't want to travel the Day District when it's any hotter than it needs to be."
"Yeah." I slid down the crag, slipping into my coat as I did so. Corsica landed roughly behind me. "Let's go."
We set off, a slight tension having lifted between us. I felt... glad, that Corsica had trusted me with one of her own secrets.
If only I could bring myself to return the favor.
Hours passed. I slept soundly, worn out from a day of working followed by a trip to the Sky District. Somewhere, Corsica probably had a talk with Jamjars, both about her talent and about those clothes. I tried to imagine Jamjars' response. Something about the importance of being willing to debase yourself for the sake of a good disguise... Or maybe that's what I would have said. But Jamjars might have thought the same.
The next night, I had been told, I would be meeting my new co-workers properly so we could get to know each other as a team and I could be shown the ropes of everything else required for my job. Common sense told me to make a good first impression and be at my best. Get plenty of rest before, psych myself up a little, that sort of thing.
But I, being me, had decided the smart thing to do in the hours before my initiation would be to return to the Sky District and seek out that cult.
It made perfect sense, I told myself as I completed the grueling climb through the elevator shaft and marched across the rocky mountaintop, sunset still dim on the horizon. If there was ever a time to do something risky, it was right before Jamjars expected me to show up somewhere, which meant nothing could happen to me without drawing plenty of attention from the powers that be. Also, my mind was buzzing with the possibility that this Coda could maybe be a real, legit alicorn, and as much as I tried to tamp down my expectations, focusing and being productive might be difficult with them sitting unfulfilled inside me.
Dead Herman was just as lively as it had been the previous night, only now I was on my own and ponies seemed to pay a more normal amount of attention to me. A lift, Howe had told me. Find a lift up to the ruins.
I scoured the town, feeling precious minutes slipping away from me as I shadow swam through alleys and stepped lightly across roofs, searching for any telltale dangling cables that might take me where I wanted. Cables, cables... There!
What I found, tragically, wasn't a lift. What seemed to be a severed steel-fiber support cable hung down from above, the end buried in a mound of debris that ended an alley between a tiny saloon and a massage parlor. But it was a cable, and it did extend up into the ruins.
Right, then. Time to do a thing only cool ponies were able to do. I straddled the cable and began to climb.
It wasn't a very comfortable grip, the fibers rough and slippery at the same time, making it hard for me to tell when my boots had purchase and when I was about to slip, but I persevered, moving methodically and consistently. Inch by inch, I crawled my way upward, the town shrinking below me until I could see from wall to wall without moving my head. And then I reached the top.
The cable let off onto an iron crossbeam that seemed to have been twisted downward by an incredible force. I couldn't fathom what had happened to the skyport to leave it still standing, yet as disfigured as it was. It was like a pony the size of a mountain had just picked it up and... twisted it a little. That sure was an image.
I wasn't quite on top of the ruins, but rather in a network of support beams and lattices that hugged the bottom of the main metal disk. Time to search them for a way up... The far edges and the central pillar were my best bet, I decided. The latter was closer, so I moved to search that first.
A few good jumps and a lot of shadow sneaking along walls later, the cable had already vanished in the dusk. I wiped my brow and continued.
I navigated the maze for what could just as easily have been five minutes as an hour, eventually finding a maintenance catwalk that was still intact and didn't seem likely to collapse any time soon. Keeping my wits about me, I followed it towards the central pillar, which was both much more massive and substantially smaller than I had imagined at a distance: it had a thin internal core surrounded by a ring of reinforced scaffolding, letting stars occasionally shine through when seen at an angle, yet stabilizing and balancing the platform above. It also looked very climbable. Maybe I was a dummy for not heading there on the ground first.
Either way, when I was nearly to it, I found the lift. A hefty hole had been punched through several layers of metal in the ceiling nearby, four cables evenly descending through them all the way to a spot on the ground that did, indeed, resemble a lift. I glanced at the cables, sized them up, and jumped, grabbing on and hauling myself the rest of the way up.
This was exhausting, especially after climbing the stairs from the Day District. And exhilarating, doing things my own way instead of the way most ponies had to do it. I reached the top, and jumped off onto solid ground.
The room I was standing in had probably once been an atrium, several tiers of ringed mezzanine decks surrounding the bottom, central platform, with a destroyed fountain standing next to me and cracked checkerboard tiles forming the black-and-white floor. About half of the total mezzanine space had collapsed, but in the places that were still standing, I saw lights. And ponies. Barriers had been erected to convert some of the space between each balcony into private-ish cubicles, most decked out as slightly more lavish shops than their surface counterparts.
Also, there was a lift attendant stallion looking at me as though he had just seen a ghost.
I saluted, wandering away, and he didn't seem inclined to press. It was surprisingly cold up here, I realized, as if each step away from the blistering sauna in the crater brought me a full mile closer to proper wintry mountains. Good thing I was used to that.
Not that I was here to enjoy the weather, though. I had a target, and a time limit: go meet Princess Coda, and then not be late to my new job. Now where would anyone park an airship around here...?
I climbed a few mezzanine levels, and actually found an old sign pointing me through a tunnel to an old airship terminal. The tunnel itself had collapsed, but someone had thoughtfully built a bridge, and it looked sturdier than most of the blown-out skyport's original construction. Thankful, I took it.
The terminal room itself was ring-shaped, wrapping around the inner atrium, and a few of its massive steel roof arches still had glass in them - mostly the ones pointing inward, back to the center. Everything else had been blown out, and I found myself face to face with an empty, wide-open panorama of the northern view. Even at night, it was beautiful.
I stepped between rows of ruined chairs until I was at the very edge. Seen from here, the Aldenfold was much more visible, a distant monolith that rose twice as high as any mountain chain had a right to... and that was before considering that we were already on top of a mountain ridge. The moon shone against the distant mountains, and I could see the wall rising with sheer, vertical majesty, an impassable initial barrier on top of which were stacked range upon range of even bigger mountains, climbing up toward the heavens. It was beautiful. It was breathtaking. And across it was a place I wanted to go.
There was snow as well, I saw, beginning in a ring not far from the reaches of the skyport and stretching all the way around the crater. So close to that immense heat, snow... There had to be something magical causing Ironridge's temperature to flare. It wasn't just Corsica's hatred of heat, I could tell for sure from here. It was unnatural. Like the sun had fallen from the sky and melted a hole in the snow around where it fell, and the snow had never returned...
Focus, Halcyon. Find that airship! I looked left and right, and saw a hint of pink shimmering far to the right, matching both Howe's description and the airship I had spotted the night before. Excellent. Time to go.
I hugged the inner wall as I jogged, beelining as close as I could to my destination. There were supposedly alicorns across the Aldenfold, right? What was to say this one wasn't legit as well? I would be careful, of course, but not to the extent that I didn't-
There were several staircases extending from the inner wall, and I nearly ran headfirst into a pair of ponies walking out of one. One of them was Jamjars.
"Ah! Halcyon!" She brightened when she saw me. "Taking your exploration seriously, I see?"
"Err..." I hesitated. What could I say that would neither raise suspicion nor get me carted off with her on our way to work? I was fast, I could catch up...
"Friend of yours?" asked the mustachioed stallion she was accompanying, a short, orange fellow in an elaborate suit whom I guessed was in his mid-thirties.
"Indeed." Jamjars bowed. "Halcyon, I'd like you to meet Junior Karma, CEO of Cold Karma. Karma, this is Halcyon, my newest employee. Starting today, actually."
I sat back, my protest dying on my tongue. "Err, hi?"
"A pleasure." Junior Karma took and shook my hoof, even though I hadn't offered it.
Jamjars put a hoof around my shoulder and grinned. "Junior Karma's a client," she explained in a voice that suggested she was sucking up to him just as much as she was filling me in. "He's got his own wedding coming up, and we'll be doing the honors. Of course, being tantamount to the leader of the city, it's going to be quite an event, so we've been planning early."
"I... see," I said, still tracking my brain away from what I wanted and back onto what I had to do.
"This seems like an opportune moment for me to leave you to your dealings," Junior Karma said, nodding in acknowledgement and stepping away. "Jamjars, I'll see you again at the time we discussed before. Farewell."
"Byee!" Jamjars sent him off with a toothy grin.
"What are you doing in the skyport?" I asked as soon as he was gone.
Jamjars shrugged. "Conducting business, of course. And believe me, that stallion is the client of a lifetime. So, having fun in Dead Herman?"
Quietly, I let go of the idea of meeting Coda tonight. There was no way I was getting out of responsibilities I myself had sought out, and my limbs were achy enough after the gauntlet I had endured to get here that I probably would regret coming here twice in one day. "Yeah," I said. "Second time, now."
Jamjars looked proud. "Ambitious. Been out to see the snowfields yet?"
I shook my head.
"You should," Jamjars advised, nodding to the north. "During the day, of course, but I bet the reminder of home would do you good. Anyway, that ran longer than I was hoping it would. We've got to pick up the pace to get back to headquarters on time. Coming?"
Sadly, I took one last look to the east, and then nodded. "Yeah. Let's go, err... find out what being a bridesmaid-for-hire is all about."