As much as I would have liked the night before to be a dream (or a nightmare I guess), when morning came I found the pegasus right where I left her. Her chest was still rising and falling in a slow rhythm, so that was good.

After I finished breakfast, I went to change Rainbow's bandages. When I took off the first bandage, I gasped. Instead of the raw or scabbed skin I had expected, there was perfectly unblemished skin underneath. Apart from noticeably shorter fur there was no way to tell that there had been a cut there in the first place. Did pegasi have accelerated healing?

I closely examined the rest of her. Short fur and small feathers coated the areas that had been injured yesterday. Where glass and splinters had dug into her hide, only scabs remained. The only part of her that remained visibly injured was her back, where blood continued to slowly ooze out from the much reduced wound.

I removed the unnecessary bandages and placed my penultimate band aid on the remaining wound. Then I paused for a moment and took a deep breath.

"Hey Rainbow?" I prompted.

Her eyes opened, and I could feel the weight of her gaze press down on me.

"This is going to hurt." I warned.

The eyes closed, and I relaxed a little. I placed my hands on one of the now unnecessary band aids. The new fur had grown enough to push them off of the no-longer wounds and allowed me to easily peek under them. Unfortunately this meant that the band aids were now firmly attached to the pegasus's fur, and weren't far enough off the skin to cut with scissors. I yanked the first band aid off.

One of Rainbow's legs pistoned right past my head, moving faster than I could see. I yelped out a curse in ancient Greek, (something I'd rather not translate) and fell on my rear. For a moment all I could hear was the beating of my heart, and what I thought for a moment was an apology from Rainbow. But that would be silly, pegasi don't talk.

My heartbeat slowed down and Rainbow's leg slowly retracted.

"I did warn you." I said with a half-hearted laugh.

I repositioned myself so that I wasn't in danger of being kicked to death and ripped off the next band aid. This time Rainbow's only reaction was to twitch a little bit. For the rest of the band aids she didn't move at all.

"There, done!" I said as I threw the last of them into the garbage bag that contained both the bandages and band aids from this morning and the debris from last night. The dried blood smelled pretty rank, I probably should have thrown it out last night.

While I munched on some cereal I ponded Rainbow's healing. It seemed abnormally fast in my completely uneducated opinion. Was this normal or a sign that something was wrong? What would happen once she healed fully? Would I part the bedsheet from the window and watch her fly off into the sunset? Did I need to call Camp Half-Blood and tell them I had one of their pegasi?

I really needed to get a second opinion to help answer these questions. Maybe I could…

Ugh. As distasteful as the prospect was, I would have to call Dogbreath.

Dogbreath and I are not friends. The idiot Telekhine did, however, help me out of a tight spot in Boston a while back. While normally being saved from certain death could help form the basis of a life-long friendship, Dogbreath doesn't have enough brain cells to comprehend a concept as deep and meaningful as that.

His main redeeming feature was that he was a social creature. He probably knew every monster in Manhattan by reputation if not personally. If you needed to find something or someone, Dogbreath would know which direction to point you. And right now I needed to find out how to not fail care of magical pegasi. I probably should have called him yesterday, but in my surprise and panic I'd forgotten I could phone a not-friend.

I picked up the phone and dialed him.

"Hello?" A nasally voice answered. Good, he'd remembered to charge his phone today.

"Hey Dogbreath! It's Doris, I need your help."

I could almost feel his hackles rise. "How many times do I have to tell you that's not my name?"

"As many times as it takes to get you to start using proper hygiene. Do you know anything about pegasi? I have an injured one and I need to talk to someone who actually knows a thing or two about them."

There was silence for a moment. "Doris, how'd you come across a pegasus?"

I looked towards my broken door. "It was more of a she found me kind of thing."

Dogbreath muttered to himself before speaking up. "Well, Enrico did tell me about the time he got stuck on a deserted island with a wounded pegasus… I'll do it."

"Thanks! Now she's be-"

"IF," Dogbreath interrupted, "you give me some of its feathers."

I paused. There were certainly enough feathers that had come loose to spare, so I guess I could do that. "Um, okay?"

Dogbreath made a high pitched yipping noise. "Great! Meet me at Fredward's place, he's showing me these cool new weapons he's got. You remember Fredward right?"

I coughed. "Ah yes… my good friend Fredward, uhhh..."

Dogbreath sighed. "You're not good with names are you?" He then gave me Fredward's address. It wasn't too far, I could easily get there within an hour.

"I'll head over there shortly." I said. "Bye Dogbreath!"

"My name's not-" I hung up.

I dug through the trash and pulled out a handful of the more intact feathers for Dogbreath, then closed the bag and prepared to leave.

"Hey Rainbow!" I called out as I headed for the door. "I'm going out for an hour or two. See you when I get back."

From across the room, Rainbow stared at the hand that held some of her feathers. I began to sweat. "Oh! These are for Dogbreath, he's going to tell me more about pegasi in exchange so that I can make sure you're alright and figure out what to do with you."

Rainbow's eyes narrowed.

"Well I'm going now, don't crash into any apartmentswhileI'mgoneokaybye." I bolted from the apartment.


After I threw the garbage bag down the trash chute, I made a pit stop by my landlord's room on the bottom floor.

"I need to get my balcony door replaced, a bird hit it." I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. So the glass is cracked and needs replacing?" He asked.

"No, the glass and the door are both shattered."

My landlord stared at me for a moment. "Doris, if you tripped or otherwise broke the door, it's fine. I have insurance that covers things like this."

I shook my head. "It was a very large bird." I assured him.

He stared at me some more. "Well, I can have some people come by to replace it within a few days. What times would be good for you?"

"Anytime would be great! Thanks!"