They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They are clearly aliens; the more normal-looking of the two has brown hair and her companion with the glowy light wings that cast stark black shadows on the pavement below has black hair. They look around and murmur to each other in a language no one around speaks.
She nods and points at herself and says, "Maurabel," and then at her companion, "Penumbra."
Maurabel touches her hair, looks at Penumbra, asks her a question, gets an answer, looks back at Aveline in puzzlement.
Maurabel puts down the pocket everything and starts taking notes; she has a notebook tucked in her outfit. (The outfit looks low-tech. So does the paper. She writes with a stick of charcoal wrapped in more paper so it doesn't get on her hands.)