The thaw came on a Wednesday.
Not a warm thaw — the temperature was still below freezing at night — but the specific quality of the air changed, the weight of deep winter lifting by some small amount that the farm registered before any thermometer would have. The snow on the east field roof began dripping at the corners. The frozen mud at the barn entrance softened for the first time in two months. Edric came in from the morning check and said nothing but stood at the kitchen window for a moment with his cup, looking at the grey sky that had a slightly different grey in it.
Spring was not here. But it had sent word that it was coming.
Saya noticed it too. She had been watching the north since January with the specific quality of watching that was not impatience exactly but was the awareness of something that had been deferred and was approaching its resolution. Arthur had been watching her watching the north. He had been thinking about timelines. The shadow network had been running the search since October and had mapped everything within its range and had found nothing — which meant the tribe was beyond the network's current reach, which meant they needed to go further.
He raised it at supper that evening.
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His mother's first response was no.
Not angry, not loud — just no, with the quality of no that was the complete thought rather than the opening position. Four children into the deep forest for up to a month was not a proposal that Mira Voss was going to receive and immediately approve, and Arthur had known this and had come to the table with the relevant preparation already complete.
He set the two objects on the table.
They were flat and rectangular, the size of a large hand, made from dragon scale for the casing and dragon bone and steel and mana stones for the internal structure. He had been building them in the basement for two weeks, which Lyra had known about and had kept to herself, which had cost her something because Lyra found secrets involving interesting projects genuinely difficult to maintain.
'What are these,' Mira said.
'They connect to each other,' he said. 'Through spatial magic. Voice transmission, clear enough to have a normal conversation. No range limit as long as both devices have mana.' He picked one up. 'You keep this one. I take the other. We talk every day. I will teleport home every two days so you can see us in person. No exceptions.'
Mira looked at the device. She looked at Arthur. She looked at Saya, who was sitting with the specific stillness of someone who was trying very hard not to want something too visibly.
She picked up the device.
She turned it over in her hands — the dragon scale casing, smooth and slightly iridescent, the mana stones set flush in the surface, warm to the touch from the residual enchantment. She held it the way she held things she had decided she was going to accept and was completing the process of accepting.
'Every day,' she said.
'Every day. Same time, just after dinner. If I miss a call for any reason there will be a message on the device explaining why.'
'And home every two days.'
'Every two days. We sleep in our beds. You can see us, check us, verify personally that we are intact.'
She looked at Edric. Edric looked at the device, and then at Arthur, and then at Saya with the expression he had when he had already assessed a situation and was waiting to hear if anyone had thought of the thing he was thinking.
'The teleportation,' Edric said. 'You can come back from anywhere in the forest.'
'From anywhere I have a shadow anchor. I'll set them as we go. If there is any serious emergency, we are home within thirty seconds.'
Edric nodded once. He looked at Mira.
She set the device down on the table. She looked at Saya again for a long moment.
'One month,' she said. 'Not a day more. You call every evening. You come home every two days.' She picked up the device again, as if confirming it was real. 'And you eat properly. Not just travel food. Proper meals.'
'I have three weeks of prepared meals in dimensional storage,' he said. 'Hot, sealed, ready to serve.'
His mother looked at him with the expression she had for situations where she had been thoroughly outmaneuvered by someone she had raised.
'You've been planning this for weeks,' she said.
'Two weeks,' he said.
'And you waited until the thaw to tell me.'
'The timing seemed important.'
She was quiet for a moment. Then she looked at Clara, who had been sitting at the table with the controlled expression of someone sitting on a very large amount of excitement, and at Lyra, who had been sitting with the expression of someone who already knew everything that was about to be decided and was waiting for the rest of the room to catch up.
'Four of you,' Mira said.
'Four of us,' Arthur said. 'Plus Shadow, Tsuki, and Kiiro. Two emergency teleport anchors set before we leave the farm's territory. The comms device. The meal storage. The monthly check-in with you and Dad in person every two days.'
Mira set the device down for the second time.
'If anything goes wrong,' she said.
'We come home.'
'Immediately.'
'Immediately,' he said.
She looked at Saya one more time. Saya was looking at the table and her ears were slightly down and her tail was very still and she was doing the thing she did when she was trying not to feel something too much in front of people.
Mira reached across the table and put her hand over Saya's.
'All right,' she said.
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They left three days later, in the early morning before the household was fully up, which was when the shadows were long and cold and the east field was just beginning to catch the first grey light.
Mira had made breakfast. The entire household was in the kitchen at an hour it did not usually contain the entire household, and the breakfast was the specific kind of breakfast that Mira made when she was managing something by feeding people, which was one of the primary ways she managed things. Edric was at the table with his cup and said nothing particular but was present in the way he was present when something important was happening and he had decided the right contribution was his own presence.
Thomas had come in from the barn early. He stood at the kitchen counter and looked at Maren, who had made the tea, and she looked back at him, and the exchange was the brief specific kind that happened between people who had been having long quiet conversations over the winter and did not need many words to say a thing.
Arthur checked the packs, which were already in dimensional storage and had been checked twice, and confirmed the wing spells were stable on all three — he had spent the previous evening running Lyra and Clara and Saya through the updated version, the one with the spatial acceleration layer, at the reduced speed setting that was appropriate for forest canopy navigation. Not five hundred kilometers per hour in the open air. Something manageable in tight spaces, responsive, with the quick-stop capability that the original version had always had.
Saya had her coat on before anyone told her it was time.
Mira held each of them for a moment before they went outside. She held Clara for slightly longer and Clara let her, which was its own data point. She held Saya last and said something quietly into her hair that Arthur did not hear and that was not meant for him.
They went out into the grey morning and found their shadows and cast their wings.
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