Roaming Wren dropped her pack on the floor of the common hall and greeted a depressed-looking Cat Rider, "you look like you ate something sour."

Both Roaming Wren and Cat Rider had gotten taller but the similarity ended there. Roaming Wren took after her father and her second cousin, Sleeping Willow. That was to say she was taller than most elven men. Cat Rider had finally hit his growth spurt, so he was now as tall as most short human women. Roaming Wren was two heads taller. He was just a bit touchy about his lack of height.

"Rough day," he sighed. "I lost ten out of ten magic duels with the pussy cat today and I'm not feeling very adequate right now." His voice had dropped into a pleasant baritone over the last year.

"Do you usually lose that badly?"

"Most days, I can usually get one win or one draw," he dropped his head on the table in front of him with a thunk. "I'm hopeless. Can't run. Can't fight. Can't pull a longbow. Can't climb a tree. Can't beat the pussy cat at spells. I think I'm going to find a Cat Rider-sized hole and not come out for two or three decades."

She laughed as she sat down, "you really are in a great mood." She looked around the mostly empty room. "Where's the kitty cat?"

The forehead was still glued to the tabletop, "out hunting. Said she was getting fat doing nothing but magic all day."

"Have you given any thought to what Cloud Eye and I proposed before I left?"

"Yes, and my answer is no. I'm so incompetent that I'd probably get everybody in my party killed. I should just find a quiet desk job somewhere in a library or some such so I won't get in anybody's way."

"Talked about this at all with Motley Owl?"

"No, I'd just get him killed too."

"Arg. You are just impossible when you get like this," she rolled her eyes. "Why'd I even come home?"

"Because you wanted to get home before the snow fell," he muttered. "You were just in the nick of time." Without picking up his head still attached to the table, he said softly, "εασιλι, μει ἰν λτσε βλιζζαρδ σνιε ὀπ ἁρ ὁλλε ."

A tiny dark grey cloud appeared over Roaming Wren's head which then proceeded to drop snowflakes on her.

"Cat! Cat, stop it." She grabbed the cloak she had just taken off and held it out over her head. "Show off."

He chuckled and picked his head up, grinning. "γενεγ."

"Thanks," she put the cloak down, "I think." She sat back down. "So where is Motley Owl?"

"Skiing," Cat Rider said in disgust. "He wanted to see if he could break his own record of here to the temple glade and back. He needs to arrive before the mark on the water clock."

"He's as bad as you. Perfectionists, both of you," she accused.

Cat Rider was about to say something back when the sound of yelling and screaming started outside. The door banged open with several elves running in and turning immediately for the hallways.

"Wyvern!" One of the King's guards yelled. "There's a wyvern. Get into the hallways away from the windows!" He waited until everyone had entered from outside. Then, he grabbed a bow and quiver off the rack by the door and ran back out. Roaming Wren did the same and followed him. Cat Rider could hear someone shouting orders outside.

He grabbed his stick and walked up the passageway to the surface. He saw Proud Elk with a spear and Motley Owl on his skis with his sword in hand. Both were fighting off the wyvern which was trying to grab them with its talons. Father Garshom was firing fireballs at its head. Several elves were trying to hit the wyvern in the soft targets of its eyes, snout, and mouth, the only places the flying monster was vulnerable.

Cat Rider knew he should go inside but the spectacle of the fight captured his eye. The wyvern was a white snow wyvern, a type that rarely came this far south. It was over five yards long, not counting the cruelly barbed tail which swatted Motley Owl aside. Then the wyvern sank a talon into Proud Elk's shoulder and started to rise to escape with the older elf as its next meal.

"No!" Cat Rider took a breath and dropped into the open-eyed trance state. He held his walking stick in front of him as a focus and pulled words together from his knowledge of the old language. He didn't know if his idea would work, but he needed to craft a new spell to save Proud Elk: "μεμ γοαδιννε εἁρ μ ἰτ ἰις φαν 'ε δjιψτε ἑλ στjοερε ὀμ δε ὁλλε φαν 'ε σνιεερν τε βεφριεζεν!"

He felt a profound cold gather around his hands and yet it didn't touch him. He knew somehow that whatever it did touch would perish immediately. The swirling deadly cold followed the path he carved out with his eyes, a shining white dart of death that smashed into the head of the wyvern before the winged monster gained more than a few yards of altitude.

Its grip on Proud Elk faltered and the elf fell to the ground. Then the wyvern itself lost all motion and fell into the snow-covered field.

Cat Rider felt dizzy and there was a funny hissing in his ears. The passageway to the door of the common hall tilted up and hit his side. The world turned a funny yellow ochre.

He opened his eyes and tried to sit up, only to clutch his head as an unbearable pain descended. He fell back down on the tabletop and curled into a ball of hurt. Someone put a hand on his head and he heard Father Garshom chanting. The pain faded from unbearable to merely terrible. He opened his eyes again to find that he was on one of the tables in the common hall with a cloak wadded up as a pillow.

"Back with us, Cat?" Father Garshom smiled in relief. "Remember my telling you that if you cast a bigger spell than you had the capacity for, you would make yourself sick in the head?"

"So that's why I feel so wonderful," Cat Rider groaned.

"If he can joke like that," Roaming Wren laughed, "then he'll be fine."

"Well, youngster," Storm Eagle walked up, "Sleeping Willow tells me that Proud Elk will be fine in a day or two, so we are in your debt. And now, we are going to place you in one of the guest rooms and Father Garshom will put you to sleep until the day after next so you can sleep off the headache from using too much magic."

"And when you wake up, you will tell me and Sleeping Willow exactly what it was that you cast, youngster," Father Garshom looked like he wanted to chide and praise Cat Rider at the same time. "I'm getting too old for this."