Mira went to her lover’s side when he bent over in pain, overriding his hissed protest and his halfhearted swats to look at the offending hand.  But while the marking was there to stay, there was nothing to heal.  “You’re a wuss, Trill,” she told him fondly.  The elf grumbled something in reply and returned to cradling his hand.  He wasn’t in the mood for joking, not at that moment.

The pair followed Idris as she lead them through the portal to a wide-open place with a large castle.  Trill regretted the lack of trees, but the place was still lovely.  His hand felt a bit better by then, though he wouldn’t soon forget his dislike for the child sage.  Inside was bright and airy.  The doors drew his eye, particularly the one with the swirl of colors, and he resolved to stay away from that one.  He didn’t like the way it felt at all.

The change to a more wild place surprised Mira, as did the ensuing fight.  Was that normal, she wondered, to attack someone at the drop of a hat?  She tried to follow the battle with her eyes, but the pair moved far faster than anything she was used to tracking.  Trill had promptly put the entire group between himself and the combatants, she noted.  Typical of him.  But his expression was somewhere between horrified and amused.  The way the pair bantered, clearly they were on good terms.  Still, it looked an awful lot like they were trying to kill each other.  More proof that people who liked quests were crazy, he supposed.  The wings surprised him.  Winged elves were few and far between, and he’d encountered only a couple in the past.

And then the fight was abruptly over.  Mira started forward at once, though she slowed a bit when she recognized one of Idris’s actions as putting the old elf’s shoulder back into its socket.  “Are you both alright?” she asked, blue-grey eyes looking the pair over for other injuries that needed attention as she offered the older elf a hand.  “If nothing else, I can ease the pain you two inflicted upon each other."