Starflight was working late in the library — or was it early? He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in there, since he no longer needed light to work by. But he thought the sun was not yet up when he heard tiny footsteps coming into the room.

“Hello?” he said. He tried to run through all the students in his head. Small talonsteps, light — but not Kinkajou — with an extra flap sound when they hit the floor. SeaWing talons. “Anemone?” he guessed.

“Yes, it’s me,” said the little SeaWing princess.

“What are you doing awake?” he asked.

“I had a nightmare,” she said, “and then something woke me. Didn’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

He heard her cross to the wall of windows. It sounded as if she put one talon on the translucent leaves and stood for a moment quietly, without speaking.

“Something that shook the earth,” she said at last, so softly that he wondered if he would have been able to hear her before, when he could see.

“I didn’t notice anything,” he said.

A small sound — Anemone’s wings shivering together.

“It felt,” she said, “like someone slithering over my grave.”