“Do you like eels?” she asks me. She knows full well that I do, and that she remembered makes my skin bloom warm underneath my feathers. Selkies are not like gryphons at all – they’re considerate and thoughtful, unlike my kin, lost to the whipping winds of their own minds, always darting to and fro.

I realised quickly that we may be mage and familiar. Everything about our first meeting seemed destined, yet delicate, as though the slightest odd move or wrong word could throw us miles apart. Here, in our fourth encounter, I can sense a friendly calm settling where once unsettled tempests flashed in the bright gold and yellow of joy and excitement. She senses it too, I think.

I will have to find her some sunflowers, she said she loves those.