In the pink evening sky, crows wheeled above the trees, cawing loudly.

"I can pry find some plastic at the scrap place that'll make for the wing surfaces," Hawk said. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the bedroom, looking over a large sheet of paper on which diagrams were drawn. Numair sat on the other side of the plans, hair pushed out of his face with a headband. The fan was on overhead, but it was still warm in the room. "An' you want the bones to be metal?"

"Aluminium, I thought," Numair agreed. "There's a smithy in Escalus where I can have them forged."

"Gotcha."

"So that's the sourcing figured--I suppose we should discuss the spellwork."

Hawk made a face. "Wull I definitely ain't gonna be any help there," he said dryly.

"Hm?" Numair glanced up at him. "I suppose they don't teach basic spellwork in schools here."

"Nope."

"Would you like to learn?"

"To write spells??" Hawk asked, skeptically. "I mentioned the dyslexia, right??"

"Oh, it's not like writing, really. It is more like, er..." Numair paused, rolling his head on his neck thoughtfully. "Drawing, and programming, I am told."

"I can't do either a' those," Hawk said, with a wry smile.

"Well, neither can I," Numair admitted. "I'll bet you can do this, though."

Something in the way he said it--or what he said--made Hawk pause. The dry humor went from his face and he looked at Numair wordlessly. Numair appeared not to notice the change, and was now eagerly flipping to a blank page of his notebook.

"It's very like mending things, in a way, and you can do that," he told Hawk, without looking up. "May I show you the basic concepts? I think you might like this very much."