Gavin blinked as Lucinda escorted him to the teleportation circle. "So, uh, if you're really 'Cinda, how come you're .. y'know. Blonde?"

"It's really complicated," she said, rubbing at her temples. "Suffice to say that, um, and not to sound egotistical here, Gavin... I made this."

Gavin stared around and let out a long whistle. "Must've taken you quite a long time."

"A couple months," she admitted. "And the cunning use of word play."

"So... 'Cinda. What is it I do here?"

"You grant wishes," she said with a shrug.

"I... what, like a Genie or something?"

She shrugged. "I never got to how it actually works. It's magic or tech that's so great it looks like magic. Suffice to say those trees? Covered in the colors and the silk ribbons? They're wishing trees. Each ribbon represents a wish ungranted. Punjaro review them and grant them as necessary."

He stared at her. "Well how the bleepity am I supposed to know what someone wished for?" he asked.

She smiled distantly. "I think we just know."

"This is soooooo effing ridiculous," he sighed.

She shrugged a little and looked melancholy for a moment. "Hey. 'Cinda. Are you okay?" he asked.

She shook her head, the sad smile on her face. "This all was... It won't last, Gavin. Do what you can, and then... Just be ready for it. Things are going to get really bad really fast."

"Because you..."

"I was setting up the plot when this happened." She nodded. "Can't have a plot without a confrontation. Massive one, Gavin. Good and evil, life-altering kind of deal."

He looked down at his toes. He was taller, older than he had been a mere day before. "I would say this is pretty life-altering." He presented the little colored egg he'd been clutching to her. "And so's this."

"I mean we might not live through it, Gavin. I never wrote anyone but Amity getting a dragon."

He stared at her. "You.... You.... Oh, EXPLITIVE!" he shouted. "I ... this... ARGH!" he declared and snapped tiles from the center table and onto the table under the teleportation circle. He was having a very difficult time articulating his issues. Understatement of the century.

He glanced at Lucinda as the circle around him began to glow. He tried to say something witty, but all he could do was shake his finger at her and yell "GAH!" in a very exasperated tone. She looked heartbroken, but what the GAAAH. Then she was gone, and he was back in his... new home. With his... new dragon.

Sigh, the egg said through his head, and he pat-patted it.

"I hear that, brother," he muttered and wandered off to find something to distract him from feeling like his head was going to explode from being taken advantage of this way.

Not like finding someone was going to stop her head from exploding, Palm knew, but she had to, had to find him.

This was some insane game of global hot-and-cold, she knew it. Every time she started walking the wrong direction, she got a hard yank in her brain that told her no, this was the wrong answer. So she would continue to deliberate until the proper direction was made clear, a rollicking guessing game that she could feel brought some vague amusement to the dragon within the egg.

She was on her hands and knees at points, pushing through the underbrush of the wild gardens around the palace she had found herself in this morning. Dirt was under her fingernails, and wet leaves struck out at her, harmlessly but frustratingly. Her dress, she knew well enough, was likely ruined, but that wasn't important.

The little sun-shaped necklace she had been wearing when she awoke was stuck to her chest from the moisture. The air was thick and heady with mist and new growth and new decay. She remembered this smell of growing things from the trips they had taken in younger years to the botanical gardens, but she'd never imagined that such beauty of the flowers in the gardens, when left to go wild, were as horrible as this.

She brushed her fingers against something wet and slimey and let out a yelp before realizing it was a wild mushroom. She recoiled from it, and tripped over something huge, causing her to land upside down on her back, her feet in their pretty little shoes - ruined - and the rustling skirts she wore - also ruined - in the air. She whimpered a little, and she struggled to right herself.

Panting, she pushed her hair out of her face, and stared down at the massive green egg, too big to carry, really. It was unwieldly. Even if she could lift it, she was certain that it would slip out of her grip, as wet as it was.

The egg, she sensed, was exasperated by this, but would get over it.

She sighed. This was going to be very ... interesting... getting the egg back to the palace at all. She was tired. Exhausted.

Before she even tried to get back to the palace with this thing, she was going to need a rest.

She perched herself on the egg and pulled the tiny little manual the goat-man had thrown at her. It was no bigger than, again, the palm of her hand, and largely written in pictographs. Bunny Dragons for Dummies it was entitled, and its cover was bright yellow with a little black sharpie'd on cartoon of a big giant ... rabbit-dragon-hybrid next to a stick figure, quite small in comparison. Well. That was telling.

"Excuse me, egg, while I find out just what it is I have gotten myself into."

Lucinda watched as Maria tore up the skies behind the aircar. The Lord Chamberlain looked quite happy about all of this, but Lucinda felt a great unease. She watched the city stretch itself between the two palaces - that of the royalty, and that of the Punjaro. The Wishing Tree swelled into view, and she felt Maria become increasingly aware that this was their destination, their new home.

*I could get used to this,* Maria said warmly, and Lucinda smiled in spite of the unease she felt in her very core.

Maria jetted ahead of the car and flew, stretching her wings at last, cutting barrel rolls across the sky. *WHEEEE!* she declared, and Lucinda watched her wistfully while the Lord Chamberlain looked concerned for Lucinda's sudden good humor.

"Is everything alright, Lady Amity?" he asked.

"No," she said warmly, still smiling and watching her new bond. "And I doubt it will be."