Rory and Mage Canticle spend the night at Crucible Rock, despite the unicorn's evident misgivings about the place. The next morning, the Daughter of Flame announces her willingness to accompany them back to the College. The scrying mage's relief at her decision is promptly tempered when he learns how she intends to travel: on the back of her fire-elemental serpent.

The serpent, as it happens, is a kind of familiar for the girl. She has named the creature Lick, and rather than summoning it anew with each spell, the way Rory does with his shadow-elementals, she maintains it constantly, though typically only as a tiny flame. Creating the giant fire serpent they witnessed in the vision takes considerable preparation on her part, not to mention a great deal of raw fuel, making the elemental somewhat impractical for a long trip.

But the girl proves adamant on the point. The ornate "saddle" she uses to ride the creature is too heavy to be easily transported without the giant serpent to carry it. And Rory gets the impression that she thinks just plain walking is beneath her dignity, or something, though the Daughter hasn't said as much explicitly. She stands outside, chopping wood for the journey, while Canticle seems momentarily at a loss for how to dissuade her.

Rory scratches his head. "Um … what if a grass fire starts up? Maybe we should bring along buckets of water?" He looks around. "Or maybe we could find something else for her to ride? Maybe a really, really big bug?"

The raccoon shudders. "I can only imagine. She must have remarkable control over its burn rate, or she could not have carved the path we saw to the village she destroyed. Still, after several weeks of travel, I wouldn't like to count on her maintaining that control." He drums his fingers against the rock face, watching the Daughter of Flame split logs, and considers Rory's other idea. "Even if we could find a big bug, I don't know how we'd get it to travel in the right direction."

Rory nods. "Well … I guess the best I can do is go ask, and hope that maybe if I ask nicely, she'll agree." He doesn't look very convinced that it will be that easy. "Um … I don't think I'm quite powerful enough to make a shadow elemental that would be solid so it could carry her. And … well … hmm … I'll try to think of something." He trots over toward Daughter of Fire. "Need any help?" he offers.

Thunk. The axe head bites down to the block she chops on, and the girl turns to look at Rory, considering him with bright green eyes. "Yes," she answers. "Do you have an axe, shadow god?"

"Um … no. Back at the cottage, there might be, but I didn't bring one with me," he says, looking sheepish for the lack of foresight. "Um … the best I can do is make a shadow of one, but that wouldn't do you much good, would it? I could take over for a bit, if you're tired, though, and let you rest. But I was also wanting to see if maybe this wasn't even necessary. You know, all the fire. For the big fire serpent. I mean, grass might catch fire, people might get scared, and it might even rain. Maybe. Maybe we could just walk?"

She blinks a few times, resting with her hands on the axe handle. "The rainy season is over," she says, pulling the axe back over her shoulder, and tossing the split pieces onto her sledge. "Set up another log for me," the girl tells him, positioning herself to split another one.

"Oh," Rory says, and tries to set up a log, grunting and straining with the effort. "Ungh … okay, no rain, then. How about walking, though?"

"Why should I walk when my serpent will carry me?" The girl watches, patiently, for a moment as Rory places the log, then reaches forward to adjust its spot. "Like this," she tells him. "Step back."

Rory steps back, not wanting to be parted from any of his appendages. He nods, and watches quietly, at a loss for any compelling arguments. Perhaps it's just inevitable that some disaster will happen on the way. At least the trip won't be boring.

"Are you afraid of fire?" the mage asks him, splitting the big log with one stroke. "Set the pieces up," she tells him.

The little unicorn sets up the pieces, as commanded. "Well, you see, this is a really long trip. I'm sure that won't make you any happier about walking it, but we will be stopping at places along the way. And there are all sorts of strange, dark – er … interesting things to see on the way. I can show you! But I'm afraid that if you keep up your fire-serpent the whole time, you'll get worn out. And, well, it'll take us forever if we have to keep chopping wood! I'm not even sure everywhere we go will have decent firewood."

"Then I will have to bring lots of wood," the human states, chopping the next piece, and then another. She clears the split ones off to the sledge again and waits for Rory to mount a fresh piece. "How many days did it take you to get here?" she asks.

Rory ponders this, and starts counting on his fingers. Then counts on them again. "Um … a lot. I didn't count. About … um … a hemisphere or so?""

The Daughter turns to regard him with unblinking green eyes. "Hemisphere?" she asks.

Rory puffs out his chest proudly, and, as knowledgeably as he can say, "Yes, there are twelve Spheres in a year, and, um, twice as many hemispheres, because a Hemisphere is half of a Sphere, you see. And so each Sphere is thirty days, and each Hemisphere is fifteen. And then there are a few days at the end of the year to make up the difference. It's how the College tells time, you see. A lot better than counting holidays, because those are scattered all over, you know."

"Counting holidays?" She looks equally blank on this concept.

"Oh," Rory says, "well, how do you tell time?"

The Daughter points up. "By the sun and the stars. Put up another log," she tells him.

"Oh," Rory says, and puts up another log, then stands well back. "I guess that makes sense. But I mean, let's say you want to tell someone to come visit in a while. I mean, do you tell him, 'next time the Hunter's Dagger is pointing thirty degrees off of straight up'? Or … um … I just made that up, by the way. Well … oh, never mind all that. We were talking about traveling! You can't just go along with this big fire serpent, burning things up! Twenty days! Have you kept the fire serpent going for that long at a time?"

C-Thunk.

The unicorn waits patiently for an answer.

C-Thunk. Her strike is a little off this time, and she pulls back to repeat it, and finishes splitting the log evenly. Rory notices that her arms are quite well-muscled, and she doesn't seem to find the exercise tiring. "No," she admits. "Not as more than a small flame."

Rory frowns, thinking that it might be hurting her pride to suggest she can't do such a thing. He offers, "You know … he might get tired, you know, keeping up that big for so long."

The girl fusses with the log pieces. "Does your familiar get tired?" she asks.

"My familiar?" Then, the unicorn mouths an "Oh", and nods. "Yes, actually, she does get tired now and then."

The Daughter of Flame continues her work for some minutes, appearing to consider this information. "I need to bring my saddle," she states at length.

"Um, all right," Rory says. "Where is it?"

"Inside." The girl gestures vaguely to the rock she makes her home in.

The unicorn nods at this, and asks, "Should I go get it? I'm hoping I'll be able to recognize a saddle when I see it. But I don't want to go in if you've got, say, a pet hoof-snapping-bite-crunching beast that's just waiting for someone to wander in uninvited, or a nasty conflagra-kaboozle trap set up on the doorway if you don't do the secret knock first."

The girl piles her wood onto the sledge, then looks Rory over. "It is too heavy for you to carry," she tells him. "I will show you."

"All right," Rory says, somewhat relieved at the prospect that this isn't something he'll have to carry.

The fire mage drags her sledge full of wood with her. Inside the rock, the space is warm but dark, lit only by the modest fire at the center of a huge fire pit that occupies almost half the interior space. Furnishings are almost nonexistent – a heap of furs that the girl sleeps on, a massive wood pile, and the saddle. The saddle doesn't look much like Drokar and Dromodon saddles he's seen, but the unicorn can still guess that's what it must be. It's larger than Rory, and looks like it could seat two or three people on its long top. The sides extend for almost three feet on either side, and all along the bottom, they curl up, perhaps to protect the rider from the flames of her mount.

"Darrrrrrk," Rory comments, not quite comprehending before just how large this would be. "Um … how do we take it along?"

"Lick carries it. And me," the girl says simply.

The unicorn inspects it, up and down. "Goodness. You could use this for a tent. Um … maybe with a few sticks or something."

The unicorn smiles brightly. "Can I try it out?"

The fire mage sets her jaw, giving him that unblinking stare for an uncomfortable moment. Before he can retract the request, however, she says, "You may."

Rory is a bit unsettled by that stare, but he quickly recovers, once he realizes he's gotten permission. "All right!" He clambers on top of the saddle – minus a fire serpent to wear it, of course – and takes a guess (quite possibly wrong) about which way is the front. "Hey-ee-hey-oh!" he calls out, in what he imagines is an authentic cry of the Drokar-riders of the Setengi Plains. "Move along, li'l Rughrats!"

The unicorn kicks his hooves.

The saddle dents a little beneath his hooves. It feels as if it's made of some kind of lightly padded leather over a harder, rigid substance, and elaborate designs are carved into it. The Daughter of Flame looks faintly perplexed by his words, and just watches him on top of it. Then she goes to carry some kindling to the tiny fire in the pit, feeding them to the flame almost the way a woman might feed treats to a pet fuff'nar.

The unicorn quickly tires of this game, since it looks like Daughter of Flame is most certainly not interested in playing Rughrat-herders-and-barbarians. He clambers back off. "That's an awfully big saddle. Do you have a pull-cart or something to carry it on?"

"No. Lick carries it," the girl answers. She sets the remaining small pieces of wood around the flame in a careful arrangement, then backs away.

"Oh," Rory says. "So, you're going to have 'Lick' come along, full-size, even what with it being twenty or so days and all?"

"How else will it be moved?" the Daughter of Flame asks, rhetorically.

"Well, it could stay here," Rory suggests, then sighs. "Or else, um, could we built a little pull-cart for it? I mean, a couple of wooden wheels … you could either hack out the wheels, or maybe you could, you know, burn the edges just right, so you make them round and all … and then we could have something to roll the saddle along on. Not that it would be any lighter, but it'd be a bit easier than dragging it. And you wouldn't need to keep Lick going full-size the whole way. Maybe we could do a compromise … let Lick take you part of the way, but only as long as you are absolutely, positively, black-and-white sure you can handle it … and then we'll walk the rest of the way."

"A cart?" She looks dubious. "Show me."

"Sure!" Rory says, perking up. He finds a clear spot and starts digging junk out of his pockets to start arranging to describe just what his imagined cart looks like. "All right … we just need a couple of poles like so … a big flat board here … a couple of wheels … a pole here for the wheels to go on … something to nail it all together… "