“Oh, no trouble,” Porphyria responded, in the deadpan tone she had always used for the diricawl, a tone for which Bastien still seemed stupidly and irrevocably fond. “I’m more than a match for him in this state, after all.” At the moment the bird was making an impromptu nest for himself between her feet; Phyri toyed with her skirt hems just to irritate him, but remained where she was – for all the misguided advances she had suffered in her time, Bastien the diricawl was the only one for whom she could say she still had a soft spot, the big daft thing. “But you are very lucky she lets you roam free,” she declared seriously to him.

But Phyri was here to spend time with the birds, after all – from the distance of a couple of years (and an anthology much inspired by that era), all of Porphyria’s annoyance at the Pictish curse had long since drained away. Nowadays, she rather missed the sensation of being a bird. At last, however, she lifted her eyes from the creature to the magizoologist. “And how are you?” She asked, eyeing Eva. Amelia had said she was pregnant again – but that would have been obvious otherwise, just looking at her.

---