The academy's pickup area was thinning out around her, other students collected by parents, guardians, vehicles she recognised, and the combination of the cooling evening air and the faint awareness that she had been waiting longer than expected was doing specific things to her patience. She was getting anxious.
Ash hovered at her left shoulder, puppy sized and golden in the fading light reflexion even though it's scales are black, his small wings beating in the unhurried rhythm of something that didn't particularly experience impatience but was paying close attention anyway. He had been watching the road with the focused stillness of a creature whose senses operated on a register well above what the situation appeared to require, his head tilting at small intervals, tracking something that hadn't arrived yet.
Then a mana mobile came down the road.
