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She's lucky to be on this trip, Émilie thinks. Beyond lucky; hers is a minor part in a much larger film, yes, but when it comes to early twentieth century western expeditions into the mountains of China, especially when those expeditions are written as period-typical in makeup - and makeup, curse all the excess powder they have every woman on set using - even most of the glorified extras have to come in from out of town, so to speak. The entire cast, to say nothing of the crew, has its share of hangers-on, between local officials and plain curious locals, translators (her Mandarin is basic and her Tibetan worse, try though she does) and ubiquitous Party minders. It's to one of those last she turns when, between crowd scene takes amid the honest to God ruins of what must have been a temple once, and how anyone ever got permission to tramp through here, she'll never know, she leans against a few half-connected blocks of tumbledown masonry and the blade edge of her hand slips through a ragged gap she hadn't seen only to land against something small and comparatively loose, even considering what's left of the crumbling walls. Warmer than stone. Polished, maybe--maybe--maybe what? What's this doing here? She turns, pulls back, looks down. Hexagonal, and if she can reach in far enough to get it free--yes. "What in the world?" "Yes, the symbols are local," says the Party functionary, turning the tiny thing in both hands, "but the design means nothing to me. Someone lost a lacquerware box." He shrugs, looking somewhere between unconcerned and smug, about what, at least with the latter emotion, she isn't sure. Tourists visit these ruins every day. Maybe one of them left their jewelry box behind. Turn it in to the lost and found, if you want. You could even try it on yourself, whatever it is. It's probably cheap glass anyway; half the Americans can't tell the difference, and half the English don't care. Here." She waits until the day's shoot is over, until later that night, until she's, for once and amazingly, alone in the trailer she shares with three other women, before she opens the box for the first time. She's admittedly curious, if not a little bit guilty, and thoughts of absent-minded visitors and the local equivalent of a lost property department are still chasing themselves through the back of her--"Oh!" She's dazzled. The light fades. The feeling lasts. "Wo jie de--you, you found me! You found me!" Someone is sobbing with joy. Someone isn't her. Someone is-- "Oh, dear lord in heaven, you're..." Feathers. Blue. The tiniest, brightest little mouse-ortolan she's ever seen, except--no, those are colors normally displayed on the manor lawns of England, aren't they? And a face as expressive and aware as any human's. The dearest little magical, miniature... Émilie never did stop believing in magic. Not entirely, between her grandfather's Normandy hedgerow stories and her parents reading fairy tales, every night, from books thicker than all her tiny fingers held together, to say nothing of the spark that had earned her the free spirit label decades earlier, the spark that had lingered, the candle flame, the blaze of it, the light-- "Have I gone mad, or is this abominable jet lag finally getting to me?" She's trying for levity and failing as she starts, talking to no one--yes, yes she is talking to someone, yes she is, because the creature's gazing at her with joyful, still overflowing eyes and edging closer by trembling millimeters all the while, hesitating, as if balking at its own daring. "Am I mad? Are you real? You just appeared and you're like nothing--like... no one I've ever seen before, and you're... beautiful, and lord knows if I'm having a conversation with thin air or--" she bats what's gathering on her lashes away with the hand that still sports a thicket of stonework grazes. "Are you real, or am I dreaming again?" "If you're dreaming," whimpers the creature, and Émilie's had enough hard practicality drummed into her over time that the sharp pinch--ouch! she gives her opposite bicep isn't quite an afterthought, "then I'm dreaming too, and it's been years and years and I really hope we're not...!" Émilie wants to caress the tiny thing's feathers with a fingertip. Émilie wants to dry his? her? their? tears. Émilie feels a little like flat-out sobbing herself - she's gone out with Gabriel three times, and he's already teased her about being dramatic twice, but he's not here and this beautiful little being is so obviously grateful to be found, so ecstatic at the suggestion of being wanted, and how the hell are they, they, going to get back through two continents' worth of customs, and she doesn't even know what sort of creature this is and she's saying they, plural, about travel plans, oh lord, and and-- "I--I don't think we're dreaming? I don't think we're--I, oh my goodness, I think we found each other? I--I think we're awake." Now she really is crying too. "What's your--do you have a name? What's your name?" She sniffs, doesn't care. "Mine is Émilie. J'mapelle Émilie." Dazzle, dazzle. Why does this feel momentous? Why has someone suddenly made cliff's edges friendly? The creature breaks its own hesitation in one, leaps, perfect feathers fanned wide, and clings to the front of her well-loved off-camera-only sweater with golden kitten's claw talons. Oh. Maybe that's why. "Duusu," he almost wails, beaming up at her all the while, "my name is Duusu."