Sunny looked around and spotted a building that hadn’t burned as badly as the rest of them. Two of the walls still stood, forming a corner made of heavy round stones. The walls were as tall as Sunny’s head — too tall for a little scavenger to jump off, unless they were more like frogs than Sunny thought they were.
She deposited the first scavenger on top of the wall, then whipped around, seized the second scavenger, and stuck him up there as well. They both made little yelping sounds and clung to the stones.
“There,” Sunny said. “Now you can’t run away.” She sat down and folded her wings back. “So. Where is the treasure?”
Their big eyes stared back at her. Sunny reached for a branch, set it on fire, and stuck it upright in the ground, so she could see them better.
The scavenger from her dream pointed at Sunny and chattered something at the other scavenger. If she were my pet, I could give her a name, Sunny thought. Maybe something like Holler, for all that noise she was making. And the other one could be Fluffy, for his hair.
She smiled. Holler and Fluffy. Totally cute. But also maybe totally responsible for this whole war, if they were the ones who stole the treasure. They looked a little small to be treasure thieves, but then, all scavengers were too small to be trying something that idiotic.
“The dreamvisitor,” Sunny said, cupping her front talons together as if she were holding a jewel. “The one you had in my dream. Where is it?” She tilted her head.
Holler and Fluffy started arguing, or at least, it certainly looked that way, raising their voices and barking at each other, waving their paws.
Sunny watched this for a moment, then stuck her claw between them and said, “All right, you’re adorable, but that’s enough. Dreamvisitor? Treasure? Now?” She rested her open talons between them.
Holler hesitated, looking at Fluffy, and then reached into a pocket of the fabric that was draped around her. She pulled out the sapphire and dropped it into Sunny’s palm.
“Whoa,” Sunny said. She hadn’t actually expected that to work. She raised the jewel to her eye and studied it. It certainly looked like the animus-touched gems from the scroll.
“Thank you,” Sunny said to Holler. “Where’s the rest?”
Holler blinked at her.
“Um,” Sunny said. She took the jewel and put it on the ground, then drew a large circle around it in the ashes and mimed adding more jewels to the circle. Then she spread her wings around it and waved at the imaginary pile of treasure. “The rest of the treasure. That you stole. Where this came from.” She picked up the dreamvisitor and waved it again.
Fluffy indicated the imaginary treasure and barked something at Holler. Holler ignored him, pointed over Sunny’s shoulder, and said something to her in what really sounded like an imperious tone of voice, if it wasn’t too crazy to think about scavengers trying to order dragons around.
Sunny narrowed her eyes at Holler. Now that she had a moment to think about it, she could see that both scavengers were smaller than Flower. They didn’t seem entirely full-grown. Scavengers reached their full size before twenty years, didn’t they? So if the treasure had been stolen twenty years ago — surely it couldn’t have been these two who took it.
But there was the dreamvisitor, real and heavy in her claws.
Fluffy began chattering vigorously at Sunny. Holler grabbed his shoulder and tried to stop him, but he fended her off. He pointed at the imaginary pile of treasure and then at himself and then at Sunny. That. Me. You. And then he mimed picking something up and giving it to Sunny.
Is he offering to bring me the treasure? Sunny’s hopes rose.
Holler stamped her foot and snapped at him. He put his paws on his hips and yapped back.
“I have an excellent idea,” Sunny announced. She gently scooped her claws around Fluffy and lifted him off the wall onto the ground. He yelled and flapped around a bit until she let him go and stepped back, and then he stopped, watching her warily. “You go get the rest of the treasure, and when you come give it to me, you can have Holler back.” Sunny tapped Holler lightly on the head.
This took a while to sink in. Sunny pointed to the forest, held up the dreamvisitor, pointed to Fluffy and Holler, in several different combinations, until finally Fluffy took a few steps toward the trees, calling up to Holler. She yapped back at him, and he bobbed his fluffy, shaggy head, then hurried off into the darkness.
“I hope this works,” Sunny said to Holler. “I’m not actually going to eat you or anything, even if he doesn’t come back.”
“Yibble yibble yibble,” Holler said to Sunny, or at least, that’s what it sounded like.
“You’re very cute, but you’re all a lot of trouble,” Sunny said.
“Yibble! YIBBLE YIBBLE!” Holler shouted, pointing over Sunny’s shoulder again.
Or maybe she was pointing at Sunny’s shoulder. Where Flower had been sitting in Sunny’s dream.
“Oh,” Sunny said, thinking of Glory’s sloth. “Do you want a ride? Are you sure?” Sunny flicked her tail. “You won’t be scared?”