Chapter 387: A Visit Together

Chapter 387: A Visit Together

Elsa’s message came on Sunday morning, while Jin was still lying in bed deciding whether getting up was worth it.

Pike says I can come Wednesday after school to see the hatchling tank they use. Not my Saturday slot, an extra one. Can you come? You don’t have to. But you could.

He checked his timetable. Crowe’s Wednesday class finished at three, Brand’s log was due Saturday, and Flicker’s course check was on Thursday. He could manage four.

I’ll come, he wrote back. Meet you at the transit at four.

The reply was a row of penguin pictures she had clearly found online. Some of them weren’t penguins.

The week filled up around it the way weeks did now.

On Monday night, in the stall with the door shut, he drew from the partly used large stone for thirty-five minutes and stopped at the first grit that wouldn’t clear. He wrote it in the log.

The stone’s heart had dimmed, but there was plenty left. He wrapped it separately from the nine untouched large stones and the two small Thornwatch ones. He’d done his planned session; wanting another wasn’t a reason to add one.

On Tuesday, Lucian made him run the back-foot drill until he could do it without thinking, and then made him do it while thinking about something else.

"Tell me what you ate for breakfast," Lucian said, coming in with the stave.

"Porridge— ow."

"You leaned."

"You asked me about porridge."

Elsa was at the transit stop at ten to four on Wednesday, with her school bag on one shoulder and Breeze on a lead at her feet.

She had a notebook under her arm. It wasn’t the leaflet anymore. It was a proper notebook with a hard cover, and she’d written BRINECOAT on the front in block capitals.

"You got a new one," Jin said.

"The leaflet was full. And Breeze ate a corner." She looked down at the fox, who was trying to eat a bus ticket. "Again."

She walked ahead of him the whole way to Harlow & Pike. She knew the short cut through the arcade, and she knew to go round the back to the keepers’ entrance instead of the front desk.

When a young assistant in a green coat opened the door, Elsa said, "Hi, Tamsin," and Tamsin said, "Hi, Elsa," and stood aside.

Jin followed his sister into a building she clearly knew better than he did.

The egg was in its cold unit in the back room, exactly as it had been. It was blue-grey with white freckles, and the frosty thumbprint near the blunt end had been turned to face the wall this time.

Elsa crouched in front of it and put her palm on the glass for a moment. She didn’t make a show of it. She just did it, the way someone touches a doorframe on their way into a room.

Then she stood up and opened her notebook.

Mr. Pike came in a minute later carrying a long, low plastic tank, about the size of a suitcase, with a lid full of vents and a small panel on one end.

"This is what we start them in," he said, setting it down on the bench. "Just to look at. You’re not taking it home."

"I know." Elsa bent over it. "It’s smaller than I thought."

"They’re small when they come out."

She turned a page.

"I measured the flat," she said. "With a thermometer. For a week. Morning and night, in four places."

She held the notebook out to him, slightly defensive, as if she expected to be told it was a silly thing to do. "The corner by the north wall in the hallway is always the coldest. I thought that could be where it goes."

Pike read the page carefully, which Jin liked him for.

"That’s useful," he said. "Truly. It’s the right kind of corner for later, when it’s older and its tank’s bigger."

He handed the notebook back. "But I wouldn’t send a hatchling home at all for the first few weeks. Most keepers don’t. They stay here, where we can watch them eat and adjust the water. Then they go home once they’re steady."

Elsa looked at him.

"So it won’t be at home when it hatches."

"Not straight away. You’ll be here, though. As much as you like." He smiled. "Your corner’s still a good corner. It’s just for later."

Elsa’s mouth turned down. She looked at the empty tank, then crossed something out in her notebook and wrote beneath it.

Hatchling: first weeks at H&P. Hallway corner = LATER.

"Then I need to know what it needs to come home," she said. "What it has to be able to do."

"Eating reliably, for a start," Pike said. "We can go through the checks together. You won’t have to guess."

Jin mostly listened after that.

It took some effort. Twice he opened his mouth, once about cost and once about whether Elemental Academy had proper water facilities. Both times Elsa got there first, or decided it didn’t matter yet, and he closed it again.

She didn’t need him to run this. She’d wanted him to see it.

Breeze sat beside her the whole time, pressed against her leg. When she put her hand down, without looking, it found his head.

On the way back to the transit, she walked slower.

"What do you think it’ll be like?" she asked. "When it’s out. As a person. Not as a penguin."

"Penguins aren’t people."

"You know what I mean. Breeze has a personality. Glitch has a personality. Flicker has too much personality."

She thought about it. "I hope it’s quiet. Breeze steals things when I’m trying to study. It could sit with me instead."

"You’ll teach it to steal things too," Jin said.

"I didn’t teach Breeze."

"You laughed the first six times."

She swatted his arm. Breeze, sensing a game, bounced at the end of his lead.

"I’ve got names," she said. "Not deciding. Just names. Pebble. Captain. Slate." She looked at him. "Don’t tell me which one’s best. I want to wait until I’ve met it."

"Then I won’t."

He didn’t tell her that he already liked Captain.

He walked home past the egg shop, without meaning to, and found himself thinking about the number in his notes. Forty thousand saved, toward ten million. He didn’t do the sum again. He’d done it enough.

What he thought about instead was Elsa’s notebook, and the hallway corner she’d measured for a week, and the way she’d turned a disappointment into a question in about four seconds.

He was glad he’d gone. Next time, he wanted to hear whether she’d added anything to that list of names.

Flicker’s course check was on Thursday afternoon.

Verrick ran it in the flight yard, with a scale, a stopwatch and his clipboard. He weighed Flicker, felt along her keel and the muscle over her wing joints, then watched her fly four lengths of the yard.

Flicker finished with a Gale Dash, though nobody had asked for one.

"Weight’s up," Verrick said, writing. "Muscle’s good. She’s holding her flight more steadily. That’s what we want."

He tapped his pen on the clipboard. "Three weeks to go. Keep her eating. She’s ready for more work than you’re giving her, if anything."

"How much more?"

"More." Verrick looked at him over the clipboard. "Not everything. More."

Flicker landed on Jin’s arm, very pleased with herself, and searched his sleeve for a sunberry he didn’t have.

That evening, in the private stall with the door shut, Jin opened the Engine. He brought up her Sync panel beside the development records he’d been reviewing.

[Controlled Sync — Flicker]

[Stored development: substantial]

[Recipient readiness: good]

[Transfer within safe capacity: available]

[Projected result: Rank 1, 5-Star → Rank 1, 7-Star]

He read it slowly.

There was development left from earlier runs, and more earned since her last transfer: the Cocoon Cavern, the Weeping Gallery, the ram. He checked the unused reserve against the proposed transfer. Enough remained for both Stars.

The suggested amount stayed within her estimated capacity. Verrick’s assessment supported what Jin could see in her ordinary flights, but he would still have to watch her response during the transfer.

Two Stars. Not Rank 2. Not an awakening.

But two Stars meant she’d fly further before she tired. It meant her Ember Shot would land harder. It meant that next time something ran from her across a slope, she might stay with it a second longer.

He thought about her on the scree at Hollowmere, shrieking at a crack she couldn’t follow.

You’d like that, he thought, watching her investigate the latch on her feed tin. I’d like seeing it.

He closed the panel without pressing anything and booked the private stall for Saturday morning, early, with nothing else on the schedule.