"At this pace, we'll sleep one day in the wilds along the way and get there by midnight tomorrow."

"Okay. I hope it doesn't rain."

"Probably won't."

"What do you do when it does?"

"I huddle up under Ebb's wing - there'd be room for you too, I bet - if it's a short downpour. Longer than that and we'd find or build a shelter. If we were out on something serious we'd have brought a tent, but it's hard to carry one that'll fit us all, and these hills are nice for packing light in. Good forage, not much rain."

"I don't know how to forage, what do you find?"

"This time of year, plenty of nuts and berries for you plant-munching folk, a reasonable supply of moths and crickets for me and Snowfall - Ebb ate last week, she's fine - if Starlight's lucky we'll catch a rabbit, otherwise it's crickets for him too - if we're feeling leisurely we roast the crickets. I don't mind rabbit myself if it's going spare, but wild-caught roast cricket, that's my favourite."

"Some humans eat crickets but not me."

"More for me then," Charm says cheerfully. "Do you go in for rabbit, if we find some?"

"I haven't tried it but if it's cooked I would."

"I'm sure Starlight'll save you some, in case you're not impressed with the fruit-and-nut selection and turn out to agree with him about rabbit being a superior sort of food."

"I think I would have expected an owl to mostly eat rodents, not rabbits."

"He's a picky sort. And rodents are a tricky subject - most of them aren't people, but there's exceptions, and it wouldn't do to make a mistake."

"Individuals sometimes are, or some hard to distinguish species are?"

"Mostly the latter. It's easy enough to tell rat-folk from plain rats if you get a good look, but out hunting, peckish and in a hurry... I have a cousin who got in a fight that way once. Bit the wrong frog and 'watch where you're going, mister!' He hasn't touched an amphibian since, even though they're not normally ambiguous, you could go a whole lifetime without running into a surprise like that and most people do."

"Most humans don't hunt our own meat. It's farmed, by and large."

"Farmed? Sounds southern."

"It does sound like humans as a group have some southern tendencies."

"Oh? What else?" she asks curiously.

"Being diurnal, living in buildings, Starlight thought I looked southern when he first saw me..."

"Yeah, you do sort of have that southern-fey look, I'd've said the same if I hadn't known, but once you know 'outworlder' it's obvious, you're sort of - I don't know - off in the details? Not that I know which details, I've barely seen any southern fey, but there's definitely something."

"Humans have a lot more than two ethnic groups. Mine's a minority in my country."

"Oh, there's lots of different kinds of fey on each side, you certainly don't look anything like a dryad or a sunsprite or a riverwalker."

"What kind is Reflect?"

"Shadowsprite. It's fine to just know 'fey', though, there's hundreds of kinds and most people can only name a few dozen of 'em."