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Leaving a single straight track from the wagon wheel behind her as well as her two lightly-imprinted trail of footprints, Caspa traversed the dusting of snow with relative ease despite the weight of the laden barrow. She had come a long way, but the icy winter ground was easy to push her belongings across, in their simple handcart. Mostly they were props that had been used during the magic show, but she'd left the prize piece, the magician's cloak, with its new owner Terra. The wagon would have been lighter without this, except that she'd replaced it and pieces of her worked leather with an assortment of spirits and bottles she would be giving to Strelein in return for all his hard work.
All in all it was a relief to see the thick trees surrounding the hotel hove into view, and although she'd only been gone a few days Caspa felt a trickle of euphoria at the sight. She needed some time to collect her thoughts: and she'd been awarded plenty of this since the revelations of the festival. She would not need to leave again for a week or two at least. She sped up, heron-legs marching swiftly up the approaching road. There was one other track here, a familiar scent and fresh, but the prints seemed far too large and mature for the smell she recognised. How time flew: she left the wagon by the gate and trailed after the tracks, realising they were circling the hotel towards the coop where she kept her chickens. When the back of the other girl came into sight, Caspa froze in her steps: good grief, little Robin was already the same height as herself if not taller. She had changed in many ways: her optime form almost unrecognisable, her hair and blue headgear as markedly different as the new sleek white plumage on the hen under her arm, where once had been only fine yellow down. Caspa could hardly believe the transformation: apart from the scar lacing her jaw and her new leather hood, she herself was the same mongrel she'd been when they first met.
Caspa opened her jaws to let out a call of greeting, and then stiffened. The door to her coop was swinging off its hinges. She could see the pair of fowls inside, but there was something else... a trail of small but perfectly canine-formed prints leading into the pen. And not coming out again. A fox... and he was somewhere inside. Perhaps under the sleeping platform or in a nesting box... she cursed herself for leaving her throwing knives back at the wagon. If she could alert Robin, maybe that bow she carried would find a use in saving the birds from the small predator. How were they to get him to show himself? "Robin, look," she whispered, pointing at the prints as she stole up behind the girl, coming to rest at her shoulder. "Where do you think he is hiding?" The chickens were huddled together on one side of the cage. Perhaps that meant the fox was somewhere on the other.
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