Jackdaw [i]jumped.[/i] Ears, tail, fur, all of it, standing on high alert. Panic! Shock! Unknown laughter! Unknown joke! Red alert!!!

Was it a bad laugh? No? No, sounded genuine. Good laugh? Good laugh! Probably good laugh. So she probably hadn’t said the stupidest thing imaginable. So she could laugh, confusedly, herself. She got to the real thing when he tried in vain to salvage his poise. Even her tail decided that was a smile worth trusting, and settled back down under her cloak. “Alright. Alright, that sounds good. Yes. Here:” She rummaged about in her pockets, and offered him a folded-up scrap of paper with a nervous grimace. “Trade you for the eggs?”

Unfolded, the paper held a [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5164985]hastily-drawn outline of a plan[/url]. A two-step plan (and a one-step warning) to beating the antisirens. Simple, evidently effective, and captured quick enough before she could forget her own idea. Not too shabby, under the circumstances.

“Flip it over.” Jackdaw’s eyes didn’t leave the mixing bowl. “That...that wasn’t the first thing I wrote down.”

On the other side were another set of pictures. Little more than lightly-sketched figures with minimal features, but there was no mistaking it; it was their little group. There were Ailee’s ears, Coleman’s tail, she even got the smokestacks right on Sasha. Next to each of them, she’d written their names, and some brief notes:

	[i][b]-Ailee:[/b] Friend for life, best at magic, never gives up.
	[b]-Coleman:[/b] Loves Sasha, rock of good sense, patient and kind
	[b]-Sasha:[/b] Good train egg, here's the best spot to perch, likes pats here, here, and here
	[b]-Lucien:[/b] Done everything, been everywhere, good stories, best advice, always happy to talk with you[/i]

In the few, desperate moments of lucidity she’d had left, she’d written a record of their entire group. The things about them she couldn’t bear to forget, the things that made them who they were to her. She’d tried to save a little something precious of everyone.

Everyone, except one.

“...maybe, I got the idea to beat them before I had a chance to finish.” Her voice cracked; she couldn’t even pretend to believe that. “There wasn’t much time, after all.”