"Holy fuck," says Finnah. "She can move and talk at all? How in the hell did they get her to fly?"

"The unique green-group was there and she used her mildly alarming amounts of mind magic," Lazarus explains. "To make her not experience the esu and talk to her telepathically to jump-start her language comprehension and give her enough body-memory to flap her wings with. By the time I left she had figured out how to use her senses of sight and hearing, and learned that large numbers of people exist. She seemed very excited about that. It was adorable except for the part where it was completely horrifying."

"It sounds it," says Mial. "But also: shrens aren't contagious? Shrens are natural-formed shren in the middle of Dragon Island and nobody caught it not contagious? Then hell no I don't want a miracle. Thanks all the same."

"Can we, like, call you back somehow, if Mial changes his mind," says Finnah, "and also holy hell I guess if you want to draw the unique green-group's attention to shrens that's the way to do it, hell of a stunt, poor kid..."

"Communication crystals are deeply inefficient," says Lazarus, but he hands one over anyway.

"What's wrong with 'em?" asks Finnah, pocketing it in case Mial would be disposed to do something dramatic in a fit of emotions about miracles.

"Where I come from, the thing we have that is similar to communication crystals works like this: people have phones, and phones have numbers, and if you know someone's phone number you can call them on their phone. So you do not need yet another pair of communication devices for every two particular people who want to be able to get ahold of one another. When I am done solving all of these very important magical crises I am going to find someone to talk to about inventing a system like that here. But in the meantime, if there isn't anything else, I should probably continue distributing miracles."

"I," snorts Finnah, "have a persistent trouble with the fact that if you know someone's address you can send them a letter. I think I like crystals better. But go miracle people, you're awesome, thank you!"

"It'll go like this: 'Aurin, I turned down a miracle.' 'Holy shit, you are insane.'"

"Probably. I might want, like, half my weight in candy if he unexpectedly decides to be a lizard about it and never wants to talk to me again."

"Aurin?" says Finnah. "I was sort of nervous about your dad, but Aurin? He couldn't muster the inertia."

Aurin is on his couch necking with some girl.

Well, Mial appears on the outside of the house, so it is up to Aurin whether or not to answer the door.

"Yeah, I came to tell him. Also, I heard I'm not contagious anymore, the miracle worker said something about somebody dropping a natural-formed shren into the middle of a council meeting and nobody catching, can you confirm?"

"My representative must not have gotten to me on the list of people to call with news, yet. I haven't heard anything about that."

"Tea?" asks Alys, leading Mial past the necking Aurin-and-girlfriend towards the kitchen. The fireplace has long been replaced with more modern equipment.

Aurin starts coughing, which is a really unfortunate thing to start doing while one is making out with one's girlfriend. The girlfriend splutters.