Minutes passed with me alone, just fiddling with the charcoal bits. It didn’t seem like he would be coming back any time soon, and I had to pee. With a sigh, I stood, still a little unsteady, and made my way out of the tent. 

My tent was toward the back of a circle of snow-covered stone igloos and longhouses with little room between them. Borin wandered from building to building, carrying legs of meat, furs, or heavy baskets. Some of the women carried infants on their back, while others had young children toddling along at their ankles. Every single one of them stopped when they saw me and dropped what they were doing. They all dropped to their knees and pressed all four hands together above their heads—except for the children, of course. Those within reach of the mothers were pulled down to their knees as well, but the handful of free-wandering children acted like any child would act when faced with a new creature. 

Most ran screaming to hide behind their mothers, but a couple brave souls ran toward me. They were both white-furred, with similar brown speckling that made me think they were siblings. Neither could’ve been older than six or seven, at least not if they’d been human. I stayed still and tried to look as inoffensive as I could. 

The smaller child, a little girl with a brown splotch on her cheek, hesitated behind her brother. The brother plunged forward and grabbed a handful of my crest feathers in his fist. He laughed and tugged his sister closer, talking a mile a minute in their language. The girl giggled like he’d told a joke. She patted my nose and giggled some more before moving back to hide behind the boy. 

A shriek from across the circle of homes made me flinch, and I accidentally knocked the kids over. The girl started bawling, and her brother dragged her away, muttering something that sounded like a chastisement. A woman I assumed to be their mother sprinted across to them and practically tackled them to the ground, speed-saying what I took to be tearful groveling. 

I didn’t have a clue how to calm her down. Luckily, Chief Garoth came jogging into the circle. 

He sighed at me. “I heard the screaming and assumed Frozen Tooth was here.”

“I had to pee.” 

“I could have sent someone with the same bucket you’ve been using these last few days.” With a little huff, he added, “But seeing as you’re able to walk now, you’re free to move around. Please relieve yourself outside of the village borders.” He waved past my tent, several rows of buildings, and a cluster of boulders to an open area at the end of a stone-paved ‘road.’

Careful to watch my claws on the cobblestone, I trotted out behind the boulders and took care of business. When I came back, the people in the circle had gotten up and were not-so-naturally going about their business. 

Chief Garoth smirked at me, his gaze obviously fixated on my head crest. “In a hurry to grow old, young goddess?”

I rolled my eyes. “Pair-bonding helped get my magic flowing again, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see.” He nodded wisely. “We have a similar ritual we carry out when the men return from successful hunts. After long days in the snow, they meet their pair-bonds and make their blood flow hot.”

Ugh, I was so glad Aster couldn’t understand Bontair—and that he wasn’t here right now, since he definitely could’ve read my embarrassment on my face. 

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t happen to know where my human friend is, would you?” Guessing Aster had disappeared through one of the narrow doors around the circle, I turned to my half-human form, retaining my feathers to keep warm. 

Garoth clapped his upper hands. “Impressive. I hadn’t known such a youngling could perform such magics.”

The other borins wandering around must’ve felt the same way, because quite a few of them stared so much that they ran into other people or doorways. 

I tried not to cringe. “So, do you?”

“Are you searching for the small human or the big one?”

“The big one, I guess.”

He nodded. “He was sick, and the nurses took him away to the healing house.”

“Right, thanks.” I walked a few steps before realizing I didn’t have a clue where that was. “And the healing house would be…?”

He pointed across the circle from my tent, past a few small houses to a long, squat stone building. “There.”

“Thanks.” I jogged across the circle, trying to ignore the stares from passersby. It was kind of difficult, since there were whispers, too—especially from the kids. I didn’t have a clue what they were saying, but they seemed in awe and afraid of me at the same time. 

Shaking my head as I reached the healing house, I knocked on the door. It seemed to be made of several layers of thick furs, so my knocking didn’t make much noise. Cautious, I pushed through the ‘door’ furs and went inside. 

The healing house had furs lining the floor, several fur mattresses sticking out along the longer two walls, and a fire pit in the middle of it all. A handful of female borin were clustered around a bed in the far left corner. Aster was probably back there. 

As I headed back, I noticed two other beds were occupied, but there weren’t borin in them. Instead, they had two odd-looking people, one female and one male, who looked almost human. Only, their skin was pale green, and their eyes were as big as anime characters’. Both had short greenish hair—the female’s human-like and cut at her chin, the male’s more leaf-like and clustered around the top of his head. He also had insect-like mandibles at the corners of his mouth and leaflike wings at his back, neither of which the female had. Both had bandages covering various limbs, and the female’s right arm was in a sling.

Despite the differences between them, both had similar petite forms and sharp cheekbones that made me think they might’ve been related. Though, I guessed those features could’ve been common for their species. I couldn’t quite remember what they were called, but they seemed familiar. I distinctly remembered that they weren’t native to the Southern Glacier Sector, though. What were they doing here?

“Hey, stop it,” Aster shouted from the back of the room. 

I turned away from the other patients and headed toward him. 

“What’s she supposed to be?” A feminine voice drew my attention back to the two other patients. When she caught me looking, she scowled. 

The male sat up with a groan. “Think she knows Bontair?”

“Not a chance. She’s just another savage with a bad haircut. Furcut, whatever.” She rolled her eyes in a distinctly Izzy-ish way. 

They definitely weren’t from around here. I thought about telling them to shut up, but Aster was still shouting in a worrisome way, so I went to him instead. 

He was on his back on one of the low mattresses, seemingly wearing nothing but a fur wrapped around his waist. The borins were poking at him with odd metal prods, apparently as worried as I was by Aster’s gray skin. 

One of the borins poked him in the arm with the metal prod and let go, chattering as it stuck to his skin. 

Aster swiped it off and scowled at me. “Mars, can you tell them to cut it out? Those things itch like crazy.” 

I picked up the prod from the floor. It was a roughly-hewn stone rod about as long and as thick as two of my thumbs next to each other. What on Earth was it meant to do? Had it turned his skin all gray? 

“Did these things make you change color?”

He shook his head. “I changed color before.” He winced. “After I threw up.” 

Meaning whatever was happening to him had everything to do with my magic. I had to unsync us, to take my magic back. It was supposed to be possible, but I couldn’t remember how to do it. 

 “There’s something else you should know-” Aster started.

Another borin stuck one of the prods to him, this time on his chest, and I grabbed it off. Shaking my head at the borins, I waved for them to back off. They backed away, but none of them went anywhere. They just stood, watching and chattering about how fascinating my boyfriend was. At least, that’s what it sounded like. 

I stopped to mentally correct myself. Aster wasn’t my boyfriend. He was my friend, and if I couldn’t find out how to kiss him without syncing him to my magic, we couldn’t be any more than friends. 

“Okay, I’m going to try and undo the whole magic-syncing thing, okay? J-just stay calm.” I tossed the probes on the floor. They clinked together, sticking to each other in parallel. Weird. I picked them up again and pulled them apart, feeling the familiar tug of magnets. I stuck one to Aster’s arm. 

He hissed and swiped it off. “What’s that for?”

“These are magnetic.”

“So?”

I raised my eyebrows and placed one of the magnets on my arm. It slid off. “I’m not magnetic. How could my magic make you magnetic?”

“How am I supposed to know? You’re the magic expert.” He scratched his arm with a finger that was just as gray as the rest of him. The sound was like rubbing two forks together.