Because of a series of events involving wishes and world-hopping silver dragonflies, Kits was used to abrupt and unintentional travel. Because of that, she was used to scavenging. Because she scavenged, she sometimes ran into things that didn’t make any sense. Example: there shouldn’t be a teacup, delicately painted with intricate flowery designs in gold on white porcelain, complete with matching saucer, halfway down the slope of a volcano. Someone had to have put it there, but who had teatime on a landmass ready to erupt?

Kits leaned down and lifted the teacup. She turned it over. Its gold and white design made the blue of her skin more pronounced. Her nails were a paler shade of blue, much like human fingers are a shade or two different than the flesh of a person’s fingers. Finding a teacup standing calmly on its saucer halfway down the igneous slope was ridiculous enough, but the weirdest thing was there was a note inside. With the teacup upturned, the note fluttered to the ground and Kits, who’d had quite the day swimming through lava—unharmed thanks to her immunity to temperature—used her magic to make sure her fingers weren’t hot enough to burn the note. She picked up and unfolded the scrap of paper.

Calligraphic swirls of black ink mocked her illiteracy. Her translation spell didn’t work on written symbols, only spoken language. She pocketed the note, hung onto the teacup, and got pulled into a series of events that forced her to forget all about it.

Until on an unrelated world constructed mostly of crystalline formations, she found another one. Same deal, a teacup with a folded note inside. Same tea set. This time, Kaia was with her. Unlike Kits, Kaia could read. It wasn’t that Kits couldn’t read at all, just that she couldn’t read the note’s particular language. Kaia had apparently spent time on a world that used the note’s language long enough to learn, and served as Kits’ translator.

“I should most probably put this here,” read Kaia. “It’s signed Desiree.”

“I don’t know a Desiree.”

“Me neither.”

“Hey, wait. I found another one of these by a volcano once. Hang on.” Kits dug in her pockets. She’d scavenged a puffy vest and removed its lining for more pocket space, and had to dig for a while to find the other note. “What’s this one say?”

“Same thing.”