“Big roof,” Chaska observed mildly, looking up at the empty twenty-foot fortress shell as the wind set its dorsal plates humming again. “Terrible windows.”
Pip gave a single low rattle of its jaw plates, still keeping one front toe hooked lightly over Ysabet’s boot welt while the mouse settled back into the warm fold against its chest.
Ten paces up the terrace, Ashaun stopped beside a very different husk wedged between two spire-ferns and pointed at it with her translucent stone left forearm.
“Look at this one before you decide the big barn was the only bad trade on the shelf,” Ashaun said.
Ysabet and Pip walked over to look. This husk was no larger than a mountain deer, built long and narrow with four supple, thin-skinned legs and a pair of sweeping, membrane-thin wings folded along its ribs. The translucent casing was as thin and flexible as oiled silk; when Ashaun tapped the shoulder with her right knuckle, the whole flank rippled with delicate sensory ridges that would catch every shift of wind and every warm hand within ten paces.
Pip tilted its lattice antlers, studying the sleek winged casing with obvious interest. In a body like that, it could fly beside Lilt over any canyon and feel every leaf brushing its sides.
