"Hey! You made it! Join us," Jenny says with a smile, taking another bite of her cookie. Mmm, sugar. "How've you been?"

"I was up really late rescuing my girlfriend from evil Catholic priests with haphazardly invented teleportation spells. I hate to ask, but you wouldn't happen to know anything about evil Catholic priests and why they were paying attention to my girlfriend, would you?"

Everyone gapes at her. Jenny recovers first. "Oh my God, are you okay? Is Isabella okay?! No, I swear! I mean, I told my priest about the magic creation thing in confession, but that was ages ago and he's not evil or anything... I don't think..." her voice gets small. "You've met him, right? It wasn't him, was it?"

"Isabella's okay. Your priest wasn't there in person. I just don't know why else someone would decide she didn't have a soul and needed an exorcism."

"I'm glad you're both okay," Emma murmurs to May, wishing she knew what to do other than just Say Polite Things. But, much as she wishes she wasn't, she's kind of May's side about the likely cause. "...Jenny?" she says uncomfortably.

"I didn't-! I wouldn't-! Not on purpose, I would never! I just asked about the made by magic thing, I swear, oh my God, May, if it was me I'm so sorry. I didn't even know they still did exorcisms, angels and demons mostly just fight with each other. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I've met Isabella, she's awesome!"

Alli gets it together last, and just offers, "Want to set them all on fire? I will totally help with that. They are assholes who deserve it. But actually, what the fuck, seriously."

"I threatened to set them on fire but it didn't come to that, they eventually agreed that having a normal childhood and adolescence for seventeen years didn't seem like demon behavior and I got her untied and let them go."

"We could go back to that. Just saying. Offer's open."

"They hadn't even checked?"

"I don't think they have a way to check, they just had some crap about how only God can make souls and since Isabella's mom made her clearly..."

Jenny puts her head in her arms on the table and moans in horror. "I'm going to kill Father O'Brien, I can't believe he would do this!"

"I'm not Catholic or anything, and I hate demons as much as the next critter, but you'd think her age would have been a hint..."

"I have no theological opinions on the subject, just moral ones."

"Theological opinions aren't all that necessary. It's not like demons and angels stop existing for me just cause I'm Jewish." Alli scowls. "Doesn't mean Impending Bonfires One and Two didn't massively fuck up, though."

"I told Isabella I'd do whatever she wanted with them and she did not ask me to set them on fire. Calm down."

Alli silently thinks that this is getting off awfully lightly for kidnapping but hey, it's May's call. "Okay, sorry, sorry. How is she doing?"

"She's fine. I stayed up with her for a while and her mom made her dumplings and she received many hugs and I teleported home late last night."

"That's sweet," Emma says, smiling a little at 'dumplings'. "I'm glad she's got you guys."

"Okay, good," Alli says, then cocks her head. "Wait, teleported? Teleported teleported?"

"Don't get too excited, it's not a vetted spell and nobody else had better try it, it's probably trying to kill me real hard every time I cast it, I'm just magic like that."

"Killing you really hard? Are you all right? Magic like what?"

"Yeah, I was gonna figure out some good way to go public but I'm really tired and the story doesn't hold together without unless I construct an elaborate timeline in which I had the opportunity to fly to and from California quick enough to interfere with a kidnapping since I can't mass-produce a safe teleport... 'm a dragon."

"What? What? But dragons are extinct!"

"Eeeeeenh," Alli makes a buzzer sound. "Population one. That we know of, I guess."

"Two, my parents are both alive."

"Right, sorry. Plus at least one without a medallion."

Jenny is still stewing in a mix of guilt and priest-directed rage, but manages a confirming nod.

"You guys knew?"

"The only reason to keep it a secret was the concern that there might be somebody somewhere who would start a war over it, but sphinxes actually were extinct and the 'were' is because of how Isabella's mom conjured her up. And I don't think she's going to declare war on me. So I've been gradually rolling out the tidbit and we're going to go properly public at some point."

"Isabella's a-" Words fail Emma entirely and she just gapes.

Alli pokes Emma in the rump a couple times without much of a reaction, save for a tail swish that looks like a reflex. "Did you break her? Man, May, I think you broke her."

"Isabella's mom doesn't like it when things are extinct. So she tried to make a baby sphinx and a dragon to bring up, but the spell only worked on extinct things so Isabella's an only child."

Emma's tail smacks Alli, this time rather more intentionally. Emma herself just stares at May in bemusement. "She, um. Doesn't like extinct things? That's, uh. That's a reason, I guess."

"...have you not met Isabella's mom? Cause this would make perfect sense if you have ever spoken to her for more than a minute about global warming, trust me."

"She's very environmentalist."

"Oh. No, I don't think I met her." She frowns in thought. "Isabella isn't particularly, is she? I don't remember it, at least."

"She - gives the topic more thought than any random passerby probably does but does not feel as strongly about it as her mom."

Jenny lifts her head out of her hands looking both upset and annoyed. "I need to- just gonna- be right back," she mumbles, and heads to the counter to ask to borrow a phone. She's got some very pointed questions to ask her priest.

Emma watches her go in concern, but decides to wait till she's done. Instead, she asks May, "So, uh, if you're not a wyvern, what's different?" She smiles slightly. "Guess I know why I haven't seen you in fullform, but is it just the shape? Um, sorry if it's a weird question, just- dragon."

"Wyvern tails have barbs and mine doesn't. And dragons have a cool magic power. And if I produced wings they wouldn't replace my arms, and I don't know if wyverns actually ever have horns like mine or my color scales."

"...I don't suppose your cool magic power lets you make medallions," Emma says wistfully.

"I would be extremely reluctant to use my cool magic power to do any magic intended for use by anyone but me. It suppresses magic that's on me, personally, which means I can cheat a lot at spellcasting, but I wouldn't make an object with that cheating and hand it to somebody else. Me and Isabella still plan to work on that among other things but don't have a shortcut."

Emma only understands maybe half of what May's talking about, but she gets the gist of 'no such luck.' She hadn't been hoping, exactly, but her face falls a little anyway. "I- yeah, it's okay. I'm just, um," she gestures at her lower half, "kinda tired of being stuck in Avalon."

"I get it. I'm sorry. Maybe someday we can stop hiding altogether."

Alli snorts. "Our grandkids, maybe. I'd rather not turn into a lab rat."

"I'm not sure becoming publicly known is quite on the level of being a lab rat."

"Yeah, but I also don't wanna be the one to find out?"

"There's a huge number of critters. I would want to coordinate something with most or all of us at once."

"It's going to be hard to convince people," Emma predicts. "Most critters I know like the secrecy."

"What is it they like about it?"

"Um, I haven't, uh, asked people in detail or anything, but- most critters don't have a very high opinion of humans I don't think? Or at least not the monsters." She sounds a little bitter at that. "They don't want to share their space, or their magic, or the knowledge of our existence. They're, uh, I guess smug?"

"Hm. We could explain about magic without mentioning critters, but then it looks less like a potentially productive trade relationship and more like 'look, a minority'."

"I don't get it. Wouldn't it go the other way?"

"What do you mean?"

"If you explain magic but not critters, isn't that the trade part without the minority part, not the other way around?"

"It's trade from, like, me and Isabella personally. Not from this entire other culture. And then when the culture inevitably eventually fails to hide it doesn't have anything useful to offer."

"Okayyy, wow. First, I'm awesome all by myself, thanks. Second, Emma, stop making that face, you are also awesome. Third, the hell, May, the sole purpose of critter society is not the magic shop."

"...yeah, okay, fair." Alli shuffles awkwardly. "This should probably wait till you're feeling better. Want more coffee? Food? Go home and go to bed and we can talk later? I dunno."

"I'll just go home."

"Do you need a ride or anything?"

"No."

"I slept okay last night."

Well, that's- maybe a third of an answer. "That's good. You up to talk about your grand trade plans at some point? Or not yet?"

"Well, do you actually think the only good thing about critters is magic? Or was it just an explanation problem? Cause if it's the second thing... whatever? So it takes longer to explain clearly, shit happens."

"I don't think the only good thing about critters is magic and I don't know how you got that from what I said."

"You said critter culture has 'nothing useful to offer except magic'. Less of a leap than a really small step?"

"Not all that different from the next cult, 'cept not as big on the seventy child brides thing," Alli says. "And we have plenty of uses for the government. The cute fluffy lot can go be fantastic PR for some hotshot in a suit. Government, business, charity, whatever. I spend a lot of time hoping I don't get drafted; can you imagine more of me in the army? 'Sides, we have art, and culture, and history, and all that kind of crap. Even if governments don't care about that stuff hopefully some of their residents would."

"Sure. But I wasn't thinking on the individual level and I don't trust the PR thing to be consistent globally. I was thinking on the population, mostly economic level. Art and culture and history have never mattered when there was a population to exploit. Magic is intensely useful and must be learned from critters and the critter-aware, it can't just be stolen or conscripted or ignored. I think that if critters present themselves as 'here we are, we want to do the world stage thing, now, trade you magic powers, by the way we don't recommend trying to kill us because we have powers you don't fully understand', the outlook is a lot better than if magic's already spread around and critters are going 'we're a fluffy minority, you will not be outcompeted by your neighbors if you decide to drive us out or kill us or ignore us, want some art'."

"I'm indestructible. Hell, you breathe fire. 'These critters are fluffy and weak' is not the reaction I worry about, honestly."

"Do you want to need to be indestructible?"

"Do I...? No, but it sure as hell beats the alternative."

"...The alternative is not needing to. The alternative is no one having a motive to try to crush your society because they've got something to gain from trading."

Alli visibly attempts to put words together; it's not her strength. "I don't know how to explain either. You seem to have this one way this could go, in your head? I think it could go better, or it could go worse, or at least go badly differently. And you're usually all about research, and reading all the books, and looking at all the options, and I don't really get it."

"I don't know that it's going to go the way I expect, but deploying information about magic to the general population first and separately loses a card I might want later."

"...huh. That works, actually. My brain accepts this as valid May. Carry on." She pauses, considering her friend. "But hey, also? Maybe you should talk to more critters about this. I mean, Emma was almost totally unhelpful, but she's probably right about people having opinions." She grins. "Plus you've been to what, three Avalons? And been a critter for all of six minutes?"

"Well, Isabella's helping. And we're not planning to rush."

"I think you're allowed to wait until you're old enough to drink."

"You'll delay us longer if you make it until Isabella's allowed to drink."

"Americans are weird, what can you do."

"Yeah." Pause. "I don't like how quickly you assumed the worst possible interpretation of what I said and stuck with it until I happened to find a justification you liked. I know we haven't been hanging out that long but still."

"I'm panicking a little. It makes me freak out sometimes! ...Even if I misunderstood and have no reason to."

"I mean that - explains why you were upset after you came to the conclusion you drew..."

"I mean, I did say that if it was an explanation issue it wasn't a big deal...? I'm bad at thinking about things when I panic, dude. Maybe we just panic differently."

"Maybe."

Before Alli can come up with a response, Jenny shows up. Where she's been for the start of break is presumably fetching the plastic bag she immediately offers to May. "Hey. Er- hey. This is for you."

May blinks and takes the bag. "Thanks...?" She peers inside.

There's a cake and a bag of cookies, and a folded card. "I'd like to send one to Isabella too, if you have her address," she says, mostly to the floor. "From me and Father O'Brien. I just- I'm really sorry. We. Both of us. We didn't mean- he said he actually tried to stop them, once he found out, but it was too late."

"I have her address." She writes it out on a notebook corner and hands it over. "It wasn't your doing."

Jenny tucks the note in her pocket. "You can probably get lifetime cookies out of it anyway," she admits.

"I'm not going to trade on your priest making a mistake to turn you into my cookie servant."

May opens the card.

Careful, cramped writing on both sides of the note detail the things she told her priest, what Father O'Brien has told her of his interactions with the priests, and many more apologies from both her and Father O'Brien. Father O'Brien is not important enough to know much in the church, but as far as he could tell the whole incident chalks up to well-meaning idiocy more so than malice.

Good for the well-meaning idiots, but May kinda doesn't buy abducting a teenage girl from her home to borderline torture her as a zero-malice act. Whatever, she's not going to hassle Jenny on that point.