"Better you spend your time with me than with them," Jesmind said bluntly. "At least you don't leave me in a tizzy like you do when you're around them."

"Mate? Is that a term for a wife?" Janine asked. She would, being so straight-laced.

"Loosely," Jesmind told her. "Me and Tarrin are a couple until we can't stand each other anymore, then we'll part ways. It's a Were-cat peculiarity. We can't settle down with one mate like humans can. We'd wear on each other to the point where we'd be fighting every day." She looked at him. "As long as he's my mate, the other females know to stay away from him. When we part ways, they'll probably start circling him like vultures. Tarrin is very popular among the females."

"Kimmie says he's smart, and he's kind, and he has a nice-"

"That's enough, cub!" Jesmind warned. "No talk like that around the humans!"

Janine looked about ready to have a fit. Jesmind had cut Jasana off, but it was pretty apparent what Jasana was about to say, and it was a word that no two year old child should understand. It was no word that any morally responsible twenty year old human female should understand. There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Janette burst into a fit of giggling that nearly made Janine's eyes pop out of her head. Tarrin realized that Janine was having a tiff in her mind trying frantically to figure out if Janette was giggling because she did understand what that word meant.

"I say, you must have a much different culture," Tomas said to Jesmind with a slight grin, which Janine couldn't see.

"We don't hide things from our children, Tomas," she said evenly. "We're part animal, so that means that we accept all things natural as they are, without assigning the same importances to them that humans do."

"Ah. A very logical explanation," he said. "Would you like more tea?"

"Please," she said, holding up her cup.

Tomas rather artfully steered the conversation to inane, little things, giving his wife the time she needed to regain her composure. Janine managed to engage Jesmind in a talk about music, then she agreed to play her harpsichord for them. Tarrin had heard her play that keyboard instrument before, with its haunting, sharp sounds, and Tarrin used that time to catch up with Janette. He laid on the floor by the fire with her and Jasana, listening to her as she told him all about everything that had happened to her since he'd last seen her, all those things that were important to a child, yet had little meaning to an adult. The time and the talking let him reestablish the strong bond he had with the little human girl, the girl whose love for him had sustained him through many hard times, had caused him to make many of the decisions that had brought him to where he was. The hectic pace of his life didn't often let him lay back and enjoy the simple things in life, or appreciate what he indeed did have. Then again, here lately, he had so many of his friends and family around him that he couldn't seem to find the time to spend as much time with each and every one of them as he should. He always felt like he was neglecting one to pay attention to another.

"And then the kite went wayyyyyyy up," Janette was telling him about her latest excursion to the park, where an older gentleman was flying a kite. "I didn't think anything without feathers could go up so high! He said that it was the wind that held it up there, but I don't see how. Anyway, it went up and up and up, until the old man ran out of string. Then his string broke! And the kite just kept going higher and higher and higher. I think it's still up there."

"It came down," he told her, drawing on his Weave-blessed understanding of how the basic elements operated. "When the string broke, the force causing the wind to lift it higher was taken away. The kite probably went up a little more, then dropped like a stone."

"I don't see how."

"Well, a kite has the string connected to it like so," he said, absently weaving an Illusion of the kites he'd seen before them, but on much smaller scale, that could fit in the palm of his paw. "You see, the string connects right here, and when you're holding the string, it makes the kite lean in such a way that it pushes the wind under it. That makes the wind lift the kite."

"Wow! I knew you could do magic, but nothing like this!" Janette gasped, staring at the Illusion.

"It's a simple trick, little mother," he told her lightly, dissolving the Illusion.

"Do it again!"

"It's unseemly to flaunt magic, little mother," he told her, fully aware that Jasana was right there and listening. "I needed the Illusion to show you how the kite works. I don't do magic for no reason."

"Aww," she said, then she fluttered her eyelashes at him. "Not even for me?"

"I have a little one that does that to me already, Janette," he laughed, jerking a thumb at Jasana. "I'm not as much of a pushover as I used to be."

Janette pouted a short moment, then looked at Jasana. "You ruined him, Jasana," she accused. "He used to do anything I wanted."

"I'm working on him, Janette," Jasana said soberly. "He's harder than mother is."

"I heard that, cub!" Jesmind snapped at her from the harpsichord, where Janine was showing her the inside of it, how it worked. Tarrin remembered that Jesmind had quite a fondness for music.

"Where did you learn about kites, Tarrin?" Janette asked.

"Well, I didn't learn about kites. I just understand how air works," he replied. "I have to know, because of magic."

"I wish I could do magic," she sighed.

"You can't be a Sorcerer, I'm afraid," he said regretfully, "but you could always learn how the Wizards do magic. That kind of magic, anyone can learn."

"Really?" she asked brightly. "I could learn magic?"

"Really," he assured her. "A different kind of magic than mine, but it's still magic."

"Ooh, Mother, can I learn magic?" Janette called loudly.

"Well, it's a bit early yet for you to decide what you want to do, Janette," Janine said artfully from the harpsichord. "You may decide to get married and settle down."

"I could do both," Janette said happily. "I could get married and still learn magic. Or even better, I could get married to a magician!"

"I think we'll have to wait a while to see if that happens," Tarrin told her with a smile. "You've got some growing to do before you start thinking about getting married."

"Do you know any of that Wizard magic?" Janette asked.

"Sorry, cub," he smiled at her. "I've never really thought about learning any."

"Oh. Darn," she said with a pout. "Think we could make a kite, then? We could fly it out in the garden."

"That shouldn't be too hard," he told her.

And so, after inconspicuously Conjuring some of the materials they'd need, Tarrin, Janette, and Jasana built themselves a kite. It wasn't the prettiest kite in the world, made of a pair of old sticks with a cast-off, stained piece of sheet stretched over the frame. They tied it to a long ball of twine, and then rushed out into the garden to see if they could make it fly. Unfortunately, the sea breezes that blew in off the Sea of Storms had died down in the waning afternoon, leaving the air too still to make the attempt. "Oh well," Tarrin shrugged. "You can try tomorrow, Janette. The wind always blows in the morning."

"How did you learn all those things, Tarrin?" Janette asked curiously as they went back into the house. "About magic, and about wind and when the winds blow and stuff."

"Well, I've had alot of people teach me," he replied as they set the kite in the corner of the parlor. "You have to do alot of schooling to learn any kind of magic. Alot of the other things I know I just picked up during my travels."

"Like what?"

"Well, a couple of languages," he told her. "I learned how to speak Sharadi while I was gone. And another language, an ancient language nobody uses anymore."