“You say something, chere?” Jacques said amicably. She didn’t bother responding as he fell into humming another jaunty tune. He was not answering her questions. He always deflected them and refused to say why he was helping her now, leaving her frustrated in her impotence. Slowly, she went through the likely reasons. Kill her? No, he would have done that then and there. With her hind legs out of commission, her magic drained, and her wing sprained, she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Torture? She looked at him over the edge of the crate, the stallion humming away as he continued down the seemingly endless corridors. No, he didn’t strike her as the sort, but she could not be sure. His emotions were still in that steely ball she couldn’t penetrate. Capture then? Possible, but he needed to get out of this ruin and then out of this forest, and for that he needed Handy and Whirlwind. She hoped the human would not allow her to be captured by him, if only to help ensure his own ends. Then she remembered the human warning her against the explicit course of action that had resulted in her current predicament. That wasn’t her fault, however. She was careful and could not have foreseen floating hostile geological formations taking exception to her presence! Not as if the human had any experience with fighting giant rocks so he could just go get bucked.