Hot Crow told Paper Lion his shining things were plenty, sure, but not enough. He lowered the rim of his top hat over his eyes and nestled his black fiery back against his throne of dazzlers. Didn't mind what those dazzlers were, long as they shone silver in sunlight, in his own flame light, or in the big old moon's light. So long as they glimmered nice and bright.
       "You'll never be satisfied with what you got," Paper Lion said, rustling her delicate body against the bark of a cedar.
       "When I got them ones up there--" He pushed the top hat up from his beak with a flaming wingtip to glance at those glittering constellations. "When I got them ones, I'll be satisfied."
       "You don't love what you already got right here," Paper Lion stated, peering at Hot Crow with a cut-out eyelet.
       "Not true. I love all these things," Hot Crow said, scratching his sparking back against the jumble of trinkets: a pin, a key and ring, a die-cast soldier, a shiny dollar, and all the other things found or plundered through uncounted years.
       Paper Lion curled her head round, turning her folded jaws away from him. "You don't know love."
       "Mm, my fiery heart tells it wrong."
       "And desire?" Paper Lion's tongue shivered out. "Does that stoke your heart?"
       "Desire..." He looked at his combustible wings. Nudged a flameproof silver spoon. "That's a painful query."
       Paper Lion stood up, stretched, yawned. She circled a tree, then another, and came back to sit in the grassless burned patch at the base of Hot Crow's throne. She pawed a trinket near the bottom of the heap. It rolled out of its nest to the ground--a metal box with a flip-top lid.
       "Remember when I got you this?" Paper Lion said, nudging the bijou with her flimsy muzzle.
       Hot Crow pushed his top hat out of his eyes and stretched his neck out to see.
       "Ah!" He laughed. "A favourite of mine."
       "Why?"
       "Flip the lid, scratch that dial, and see."
       "I know it makes fire. You know it does, Crow."
       "No mischief intended," Hot Crow said, tucking his top hat under his wing to take a bow.
       "And I don't bite," Paper Lion said with a hollow eye she couldn't wink.
       They both laughed.
       "You bite plenty when it suits. That's how I got that firebox, recall it?"
       "True, you say. If it weren't for me" --Paper Lion stopped, sniffed the cool night's breeze, as if catching a scent of prey-- "you wouldn't have this beloved thing. You wouldn't have half your hoard now."
       "And I owe you plenty for it."
       "Ain't nothing owed that I want. Don't you know what it is I want?"
       "Something from this pile, I'd bet. Pick anything. Go ahead. Or..." Hot Crow bounced up from his silver-jumble perch, flipped a fiery wing to the sky. "Yes, I'll fetch you one of them dazzlers up there. One for you, one for me."
       "One special thing from this heap's what I'm wanting, Crow. It's all I ever did."
       "Then take it. Anything," Hot Crow said, spreading his burning wings to the unquenchable night's wind. He flapped once, twice, and took off an inch. Then he tucked his wings in and fell back to his seat. "I can only fly up so far. My wings get tired. The wind, it blows a fearsome cold howler up there. But they seem so close, them winking, teasing dazzlers."
       Paper Lion yawned her fluttering maw, and she pawed at the pile as if to make it tumble apart. But she stopped short of all those shining things avalanching from beneath the bird.
       "What can I do for you?" she asked him, as she so often had since Hot Crow plummeted from the Veil into this clearing, his wings torn up and smouldering.
       They thought on it a while. Then a memory wriggled out of Hot Crow's mind. A silver bird, loud and frightful, he recounted it, but gliding all majestic and true up there, passing into the Veil one side and disappearing out the other. It had the biggest wings he ever did see.
       "Then I'll make you new wings," Paper Lion said. "Bigger wings."
       "And how, says you?"
       "I saw those two-legged skin bags fighting with flames that were gobbling up one of their shelters. Eating at its frame. Insatiable. But the fire left the top part be. That top part's made of silvery sheets. Sniffed and licked round them, was all that fire did. I reckon if fire doesn't have a taste for silver things, we could make you better wings from those big sheets."
       "Silver! Why, I must be made all up of the same stuff!" Hot Crow cawed with excitement. He displayed his wings, all proud flame and cinders. "That fire, it licks, it sniffs, it clings on, but my wings are never gobbled none."
       "Perhaps," Paper Lion said. "Except your wings are black, not shining silver."
       Still, Hot Crow was too enthused to hesitate. "Come now," he begged Paper Lion, and off they went to pilfer these splendid new wings.
       They waited and watched near the village, at the outskirts of the forest. The two-legged skin bags went hiding in their shelters before long, cowering from the ponderous moon. Paper Lion slinked into the village with Hot Crow on her trail, skipping, hopping and fluttering a few inches above the dirt. Here was the razed shelter. All ashen wood now, except for those two charred beauties that Paper Lion had promised.
       "We take them one at a time," Paper Lion said, lugging a sturdy sheet out of the pile. It screeched something terrible.
       "Let me give this here end a hike." Hot Crow ducked under to lift the end that threatened to betray them with its noise. "It's heavy. Real heavy."
       "You won't lift it."
       "I will," Hot Crow said. But his flapping was futile.
       "You can't lift it, you won't ever," Paper Lion said, letting go. She panted. "These sheets strapped to your wings would pin you down, not lift you up."
       "Nonsense. You tell it wrong," Hot Crow cawed from under the sheet, hollow and echoing. "I will lift it. I will."
       "Fool."
       Paper Lion slid a thin paw beneath the fireproof sheet and hooked Hot Crow with a claw. She pulled him out. Shook her paw to snuff the flame that caught her, but it left more of her edges ragged and charred.
       "Put this idea to rest," she said.
       Hot Crow winged himself back under the heavy sheet. He begged Paper Lion to help him. But the village stirred. Lights flickered on in the shelters. Voices mumbled and jumbled together. Wasn't too long before those two-legged skin bags were coming for that Paper Lion and Hot Crow, brandishing paper-slicing knives and feather-plucking gadgets.
       "Get out from there. Quick!"
       Paper Lion muzzled the sheet and wanted to pull Hot Crow out from under it with her delicate jaw, but she knew that would spell her slow-burning end. What good would she be to him then?
       "Come now or die," Paper Lion mumbled around a mouthful of sooty sheet.
       Hot Crow dragged his aching body out. He fluttered his clapped-out wings.
       Those skin bags were gaining.
       "Your beak doesn't burn. Grab on with it." Paper Lion swooshed her corrugated tail into reach.
       Hot Crow clamped down and held on to his top hat, and Paper Lion ran and ran, dragging Hot Crow behind. The mob ran, too. But those two-legged skin bags would not follow into the darkness of the woods.
       "Saved you again," Paper Lion said, once they were settled back in the clearing and Hot Crow had struggled back on top of his silver throne.
       "Most grateful."
       Paper Lion hmphed. "About time you listen more."
       "What next, say you?"
       "Next?"
       "I still got an eye for those glimmers up there."
       "Shame that's all your eye does see."
       Hot Crow folded an offended wing across his chest. "Not all, I tell it true. But my heart flares up something bright when I see those things I cannot touch," he said, waving a wing to the sky.
       "Foolish me." She sighed. "I'll help and you know it."
       They schemed for a night and another day, but couldn't agree on a plan to get Hot Crow up to those celestial jewels. When the sun fell and spilled its red tonic across the treetops, and the moon got its first glimpse into the forest, Paper Lion told Hot Crow to settle down. Let his mind wander free from such burdens. Listen -- listen close -- to the offerings of his heart.
       His smouldering head sank into the cleft of a platinum ring, listening to the soft forest's tongue enunciating: rrsshh rrrrsssshh. Dozing. Almost doing what Paper Lion said. Drifting into his usual dreamless void.
       Then something boomed. Paper Lion trembled, but Hot Crow cawed excitedly.
       "Them glimmers are falling. Look." He pointed at the sky, where bright shimmer-specks rained down.
       A sparking thing with a glittering tail shot up from the skin bags' village, with a delirious songbird's whistle. It burst into a fountain of falling dazzlers then boomed.
       "Did they shoot them first shimmers up there?" Hot Crow asked. "Them ones that teased me so long?"
       "Those skin bags have some power," Paper Lion said, as another glitter-thing aimed for the sky. "But they keep missing. Those new trinkets don't stay put."
       "Maybe we'll catch them. Let us go, now." Hot Crow hopped down from his throne. "Such waste!"
       They scarpered and searched the forest. But there were no stray beauties on the ground or dangling in the branches. They neared the village and watched from shadows. Those skin bags were lighting something with a flaming stick. Something as tall as Hot Crow. A tail from the thing fizzed when those two-legged creatures touched the fire to it. The sparking tail shortened. Then the object launched with that sustained birdsong's note. Again, up high, it burst and boomed, and the glimmers fell. Hot Crow could see, now, how they vanished part way to the ground.
       "How so?" he wondered. "How did them others stay fixed so high?"
       Paper Lion stretched her corrugated neck out to look closer. "I don't know."
       "What do we do?"
       "You always ask, but I wonder if you listen."
       "I do listen. I say it true. Why else would I ask?"
       "If I find some way to get your glimmers, will you be satisfied?"
       "I swear on my wings, happy I'll be," Hot Crow said, holding his top hat to his murmuring heart.
       "You'll be happy..."
       "True, I say."
       Paper Lion sighed. "You can't pluck that glimmer-laden thing, you being all feathery fire. It'll explode right there and then. You'll be done for."
       "You can."
       "No," Paper Lion said, although it hurt her delicate heart to say. "Not this time."
       "Why? We work together. Always, I say it true."
       "How true? Your heart and mind wander elsewhere."
       "Then I'll go all lonesome," Hot Crow huffed, and set off flapping and scuttling along the dry path to the skin bags' lair.
       "No!" Paper Lion called after him.
       Hot Crow flew fast, impatient. Paper Lion scrambled after, to catch him by the tail, even if snatching him back set her vellum frame on fire. But Hot Crow flew furiously. Paper Lion's paws srushed over dry soil. Hot Crow was a fireball, speeding toward the two-legged skin bags. They heard his flapping and Paper Lion's scrabbling too late. Hot Crow scooped up the glimmer-tube in his fireless beak. Paper Lion skidded, stopped. Those skin bags watched the thieving fireball, dumbstruck. Then they turned on Paper Lion and chased.
       Paper Lion ran and ran. It was all she could do: leave that Hot Crow to his mischief, and hope all ended well. Maybe it would; maybe it wouldn't. That was the dichotomy of their lives together--the chanceful flip of a stolen silver dollar.
       She heard a doleful whistle. A boom. She couldn't look back. Those skin bags were hurling hot, fierce things at her. She dodged this way, skidded and slipped that way; flaming rods stuck in the ground either side of her. But she dipped and dived well enough.
       Almost.
       Safe among the trees again, Paper Lion settled at the foot of Hot Crow's throne. She curled round a flat rock where the tall grass used to grow, and she hoped that Hot Crow would fail. Then he'd return soon enough. And maybe he'd see something more than smooth shining things. Something with texture and rough edges.
       Either way, she'd wait as long as time allowed. Wait while there was still time, here beneath the Veil. She'd wait a hundred moonrises and sunsets for Hot Crow to come back, with or without his precious dazzlers tucked beneath his wings.
       She waited while an unseen flame nibbled her tail, caught by the skin bags' fire-rods. She waited when her shanks began to burn. She waited while the dollar flipped between hope and doubt.

       Hot Crow reached the clearing with something in his beak. A brilliant, shimmering orb. He hopped to the top of his throne and set it down. It illuminated all the silver things beneath. He sat for a while, entranced by its lustful light.
       "I did it," he cooed. "I did it."
       There was no rustle of paper. He did not hear a praiseful voice. But he was happy. As the sun came up, he was happy. When it sank, he slept and he was still happy.
       Dawn planted cherry-blossom clouds in the Veil and his heart hummed quieter.
       "Lion?" he asked the wind and the dark space between the trees. "Come, see what I got."
       Paper Lion didn't come. Maybe she'd gone wandering by the stream, Hot Crow decided. Wandering for a long time, he realised.
       Another day passed. The moon smirked.
       "Lion?" Hot Crow called.
       She didn't answer. She didn't come.
       The sun kissed Hot Crow's throne again. But he noticed his dazzler didn't dazzle so much in the light of day.
       He hopped down from his chilly throne. Looked around. "Lion?"
       No answer.
       He folded his wings. Set his top hat on a flat rock and nestled there. He waited and waited, but Paper Lion didn't return from dallying at the stream or prowling her usual haunts.
       He didn't notice the freshly burned ground where he sat. Nor the off-white flecks scattered by the wind. He didn't even notice his trophy gleaming when the dark returned.
       But he felt something. Inside, he felt it. An agitated beat. A knocking in his flaming chest. Like something forgotten, drumming for attention.
       He waited some more. Longer still. Listened closer to that beat, until it lulled him into a long sleep, dreamless and black.
       Except...
       It wasn't black -- not quite. A whitish speck appeared. Dull, yet vivid enough against the darkness.
       Closer and closer he tumbled, flightless and freefalling. A shape formed from the fleck of white. Paper Lion. She was here, waiting for him. His heart fired up, the way it had for those sky-bound dazzlers. She glowed invitingly, her vellum flank scribed with a delicate grain, a poem of imperfections, truer than words.
       He spread a wing to reach her. Nestled in the velvet dark, she looked like something silvery bright -- like something he could touch.