A black bird flapped its way across Orion, the complete opposite of subtle. Its wingbeats were messy and noisy with excitement, its voice peppered with squawks and squeaks, and ethereal golden light shimmering across its otherwise plain black wings.

"THREE KINGS!!!" it called over and over again as it swooped in a random path across the top of the ruins. It seemed as if it didn't particularly know where it should be going. "THREE KINGS!!! THREEEEEE KIIIIIIINGS!!! I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU! YOU'LL LIKE IT! THREE! KINGS!"

They had been... sleeping? Sort of. Kind of. There were vague memories of gifts and snow, and also burning. But mostly they'd had their heads tucked down, lost in dreams.

The voice roused them, but only after repeated calls, and at once Alnitak was grumpy.

"WHAT do they WANT," he snapped. His brothers, just as weary, were nevertheless more patient. "They must have their reasons. Come. They may need our help."

The great bird spread their wings, the shimmer of stars across the vibrant purple-black a dream of something they had not seen in far too long. That had been what they'd been picturing, as they slept. Wishing for, even.

But they'd long ago learned it was far, far out of reach.

"We are here," they called, their combined voices harmonic. Then they took brief flight, their star-shiver wings gleaming in the dark, a beacon for whoever called them.

@October

The voice that called out in response, and the flash of starry wings, was all October needed to find who it was looking for. It immediately shot toward the larger bird in a mess of flapping wingbeats. "I saw it!!!" it squawked before it'd even landed. "I saw the place you told us about!!! In your story!!!!"

It half-landed, half crashed into the ground before the Three Kings, stumbling forward a few steps and looking up at them with wide golden eyes. "With the 'sky'! And the 'sun'! It was just like this except fifty hundred times brighter!!!" It spread its black wings wide and lifted its bill to the sky, trying to light up its eyes to demonstrate the light of the 'sun'. Perhaps it had envisioned the sun a bit too well. A searingly bright flash flared across its retinas like when it'd tried to look directly at the flaming ball, and it fell backwards right on its butt in shock.

Nevertheless, it did not let this subdue its excitement. The bright white nothingness currently in its field of vision did not deter it from its excited babbling. "It was so so cool! I mean hot! And I flew up as high as I could and I really couldn't see any rocks above! That's crazy!!! And there was a big rock palace just like in Cepheus but pinker and golder and brighter!" Its red-scaled feet kicked wildly at the air for a bit before it finally found the wherewithal to flip itself back over, and it stood up with an embarrassed fluff of its feathers.

The whorl of stars that flickered through the Three Kings' being brightened, as if in response to October's words. Excitement, maybe? Or interest?

But the Kings steeled themselves, all three. Surely the chough could not mean... literally.

"Do you mean... in a dream?" Alnilam hazarded, cautious, speaking for all three of them. They didn't dare to hope.

They did not mention the apparent backfiring of magic... maybe too polite, though a soft snort did emit from the bird overall. Probably from Alnitak.

@October

The soft snort was quickly brushed over and forgotten in the chough's enthusiasm. "Noooo, in real life!" October insisted, hopping a few steps and gesturing wildly with a wing in Pegasus's general direction. "I remember allllll the rooms you have to go through to get there and all of them are real! First Polaris, then the snowy room, then the room with the first palace, and then the forest-and-meadows room except there's a fake wall—and I checked, I definitely didn't dream that up, there's other people in there!—and beyond the fake wall there's a second palace," a quick gasp for air, and it went on—"and right in the back there's a portal, and if you go through it it seems like nothing happens because you're still in the palace, but then when you go out one of the windows again—" being a bird that flew wherever it wanted all the time, it had never occurred to October that it could also use doors—"it's not the same meadow as it is the first time! There's the sky and the SUN out there!"

It paused. Perhaps realizing how outlandish its story was, it insisted again: "I couldn't have been dreaming because I came here right away after coming back out. Unless I'm still dreaming right now!" Blinking, it looked around and found a rock by one of its feet. It kicked this rock and jumped back, crying out. "OW! Really awake!!"

For a long time, the Kings were silent. They stared at October, possibility blooming in their mind, hope daring to rear its ugly head in their glimmering breast.

Then they spoke, softly, as one.

"Will you show us?" they asked.

@October

The Kings were silent for a long time, and October began to worry. Did they not believe it? It carefully thought back over its entire account. Sure, it was a convoluted path, and it had perhaps been overexcited, but it had done its absolute best to express that it was, in fact, real. Perhaps they thought it had gone crazy. But who could see such a thing and not be as excited as it was? THAT would have been the craziest thing to do, October thought.

But then they spoke, and the worry was erased from October's mind. Of course! They had just needed some time to process the story. "Yes!" it trilled happily, eager to share this discovery with its friend. "Follow me!" It crouched, then sprang into the air in a flurry of wingbeats, twisting to make sure that the Three Kings were following.

- exit to Noctua and Let?

The Three Kings took flight without hesitation. So excited were they to see if this were true--if it were real--that they did not bother to stop, to look around.

To say goodbye.

Freedom called, and so they took wing behind October, soaring for Noctua, and perhaps Let's skies and what lay beyond.

@October (feel free to put up a thread in Noctua and GM tag!)