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Of course we need a little background, and perhaps a crossover story.

So, we know what the lightwalker does.  He teaches comparative magical theory as a visiting professor of anthropology. His classes are rigorous and a little esoteric, but they seem to have a large attendance of "special scholars" (persons of diverse background enrolled at the university for a single session or perhaps just a single class), paying full tuition or more.

His wife is a geophysicist, specializing in volcanos.  She has what has been called "an almost magical" awareness of where tests and studies will show activity and teams she has led have had miraculous escapes and warnings of volcanic activity that no one else was able to predict.  The fact that she is a fire creature, one of the several types of creatures we think of as phoenix and can see fire and heat energy probably is what gives her such an edge, but she has the higher math down cold (so to speak) as well.

On nights when there is no moon and the city is covered by low lieing clouds, they sometimes take to the air and fly, hidden by glamours, above the cloud cover.  There they play tag, her in bird firm, that of the rukh, and he surrounded by light.  She gets to play tag not only by tagging him with a wing, but with blasts of fire as well, since he is extremely agile. Her form is large -- the ruk feed on elephants the way a falcon feeds on field mice, whereas his halo only fills up an area of two or three meters from his body.

The city is Vancouver, British Columbia.

The little girl's parents are American, but they teach at the University as well.  Her father teaches conflict resolution in the International Management Studies program in the Business School.  Her mother is a forensic biochemist specializing in unusual allergies and blood types.  She teaches graduate students chemistry and biochemistry.

The little girl had to decide where to put the ice falcon when it wasn't living in the back bathroom.  That couldn't last for long, and it did not have to.  Up in the eaves there was a marvelous stained glass window.  Behind it was a small room with the only access being the window.  Why or how the room was built into the house (rather than a vent being there) no one knows, but it made a great place to put the window.

The girl would extend the rope and the ice falcon would walk up to the window, peck at the button that opened it, and slide in and out.  Each day the girl would come and feed it ice cubes and cat food from the cat food left behind when her brother left for college and took the cat with him.

After a while the falcon discovered that it could walk through the stain glass window without opening it.  The window was magical.  That made the room safer for the falcon as it did not have to leave the window open and could lock the button closed.

The little girl and the falcon got closer and closer.  At times she thought she could almost hear it think and its cries and chirps seemed to be like words.  They were getting closer and one day the little girl realized that she could see through the falcon's eyes and it realized it could hear through her ears and smell through her nose.

When she would go to bed, the falcon would fly and coast on the winds of the night.  On cloud covered nights it would fly just above the clouds, as if on an endless sea of softness.

It was on one of those nights it saw what seemed like an incredible fight.  What looked like a huge fire demon was fighting with a wizard wrapped in light.  Again and again the demon would bat blasts of fire at the man, which he would dodge.  In return lances of light would streak out from the wizard, seemingly paralizing the demon.  The falcon veered away, keeping low and hidden, somewhat by both distance and the cloud mists.

The two fought for hours, every-so-often a blast of fire connecting and every-so-often the wizard striking back with some magic he delivered by touch and the demon seemed anxious to avoid.  Then they tired.  It was at that time the falcon realized they were not fighting, but playing -- the lances of light were tickling the ruk, who was a phoenix, not a demon -- and the blasts of fire were apparently not bothering the man at all.  The ruk transformed into a woman wreathed in fire, then the two held on together and descended through the clouds, wrapped in a mist illusion that made them seem like just a part of the clouds.

The ice falcon marked the house they dropped to and watched it.  The little girl fell asleep.

The next day she was woken by the falcon seeing a young girl leaving the house.  The girl, a babysitter, was walking towards the school the little girl went to.

The little girl stretched to see the other girl.  She had weak eyes and wore glasses because she could not see things at a distance.  Suddenly the other girl jumped into sharp relief as if she were only five or six feet away.  The little girl was seeing with the same vision that the falcon had.  She no longer needed to look through its eyes to see that way, she could look through her own.

The bell rang and she took off to class.

And that is how everyone almost met.