"Are you worried abpout bein' a godmother?" Al asked, as he pulled Jace into the surprisingly waltz-like steps of the dance. "well, it seems ta me," he added, without waiting for an answer beyond a nod fo teh head, "th' fact yer worried about it is a good sign that you just might be good at it; I'd be skeptical of your chances, if you were convinced that it'd be easy."
He procured a horn of mead for them, whe they became winded, and shared it with her. "Seems t' me, the best advice you could get'd come from th' otherkin; the kitsunes, and the restof the furry folk. They tend to be wiser than you'd think in such matters." He turned his head back to the crowd as the volume level both went up and stabilized. "Sounds like something new's going on...
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Meri's preternaturally-acute hearing had picked up the sound of wings; not feathered bird's or angel's wings, or even the leathery kind favored by bats or vampires or certain avian reptiles, but rather as if the pinions that treaded the air were made of metal; a sound as of knives being used like feathers.
The Islet of the Grove may have been the top of a seamount, as most such Islands in this part of teh world were, but it was not mountainous. It did, however, have a knob of rock that jutted up adjacent to the grotto's mouth, and there Meri found the being with bluish skin, metallically silver hair - and wings of brass and steel. She had heard from others how he had saved Jace and Al at the very last moment, and then disappeared, no one knew where. As she drew near to him, she gasped, and nearly went for the not-place, and the hellish Ta Chi secured within - but she thought better of it.
"You... It is you, isn't it." Meri's said in a voice so even it was practically razor-sharp - and it was not a question.
"Merovingia... Harper-Chen, ain't it?" The being sighed. "As I live and breathe," said the voice of what had once been a Texian Airshipman, who sounded maddeningly similar to a certain Jace's Ace. "So this is where you fell to. It's a long time since that night battle over the Caucasus, ain't it?"
"Yes." Meri looked the being over. The basic man was still in evidence, even right down to the blue airshipman's uniform, sword, and Paterson revolver. The differences lay in the blue hues of his skin and the metallic silver hair, and the inescapable reality of those absolutely operatic brass-and-blued-steel wings. "You've changed. A lot."
"Heh. Use th' whitefire and discover a Bright One's soul within yerself, and the process is pretty much irreversible."
"I know the feeling from a slightly different source," Meri commiserated, in spite of herself.
"My ex-wife still pines t' see you, refers to ya as 'Ia,' " the being said, after a moment of shared reflection. "We're not exactly friends, still, but we're not tryin' t' kill each other anymore, either."
"When your contract here runs out, you might fly back over to th' Caucasus, about this time o' year, and wait fer a great-grandmother of a lightning storm, right about where you think it ought to be. Herself'll be glad to have you back, no matter how old either of you are."
"That's where I'm goin' now," the being said. "See you around." He spread the glorious wings, and they flashed Gold-and-silvery in the light of the fires and candles below as he flapped powerfully into the evening sky and was gone.
"Fare Well," Meri said. "Dreyfuss." She went back down, then, and rejoined the dance.
