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Alex had a lot of energy, as he climbed over old, fallen trees, through brush, and around trees with limbs that seemed to have a knack at hitting him in the side or tugged at his coat. Still, even as he wandered around the area, he was feeling ok. He wasn't far from the witch's home, and while he probably could have gone further in the woods, looking for a clearing or at least some place he could set up a small camp, he felt it was better to stay nearer to the hut.

Maybe it was just the fact that he had worked for quite a while the day before, to help fill the water barrels of the witch's, but he felt good. He hopped up onto the fallen remains of a once proud tree, and perched himself there, looking around. His clawed fingers grabbed at the still rotting wood, his hacked up flip flop styled shoes giving his toes plenty of room as he sat there.

His tail twitched a bit, ears perked up. The animals around him could be heard quite easily, with their noisy calls. But that didn't interest Alex as he looked around, then blinked as he watched a small mouse scurry through some of the underbrush. For a second, his tail froze, some unknown desire wanting to chase the rodent and... Well, he wasn't sure what happened after the chase, nor did he dwell on what he was thinking about it for anyways. He was busy looking for someplace to set up a camp.

"Hmm. Nothing around here. Maybe I should check down closer to the river", he said to himself. He'd find someplace to set up a nice shelter. It would just take time.

The pilot looked around some more, before he started to move off the log he'd been perched upon, when he heard a neighing sound from behind him. He looked back over his shoulder even as he moved, when one of his shoes slipped out from under him, on a patch of damp moss, and the hybridized pilot tumbled unceremoniously to the ground, looking up at the sky.

"Uh... erf." Alex looked up at the sky, through the canopy of leaves. Ok, an agile cat he wasn't. He sighed just a bit before he rolled over and got back up, brushing some of the damp leaves from his coat and pants.

"Yeah, real smooth Alex", he said to himself, before he realized that his little fall was first started by the sound of some sort of animal. And thats when he looked back to where he first heard the noise, his short tail twitching behind him.

A horse? With a navy colored mane? Ok, that was something someone didn't see often. "Uh, oh, its just a horse... in the middle of the forest." He thought about that fact for a bit, since he didn't really expect that many horses would take refuge in a forest. He always thought horses liked plains and stuff.

The pilot chuckled some and slipped off his leather jacket, to brush off the back of little leaves that were stuck to it. "And for a second I thought some dangerous animal was sneaking up on me." His longer ears twitched, as he picked his coat clean with his sharp little claws.

Once he was sure the coat wouldn't be messed up from his little fall, he looked back to the horse, who seemed to still be standing there. "Uh." He wasn't sure what to make of the horse. He figured a normal animal might react oddly to him, sort of like the two dogs he'd run into since his change.

His clawed hand reached up to brush out some of his hair, a few leaves falling from it as he looked the horse over, and then raised an eyebrow as he looked at the horse's hooves, and the fact that they didn't seem to touch the ground. "Bwah?"

For a horse, it was acting really strange. For a floating horse, maybe that was normal. As the horse 'float-walked' towards him, he tilted his head a bit. He wasn't quite sure what to make of the horse that was standing in front of him. After all, hovering like that would break all sorts of laws of physics. He knew about why stuff flew, and this wasn't anything like that.

And then the horse said "Hi" to him. The pilot actually took a half step back, his ears and tail perked up in nervousness. The horse just said hello to him, and floating. And talking. And floating.

"Uh. Hi." Yes, Alex was a bit off guard for meeting a talking horse. It was just.... odd. "You. You can talk?" He seemed to find the subject rather perplexing. Horses didn't talk. Not unless their name was Mister Ed, and this was hardly a Black & White TV show. "What the heck are you?"

Yeah, Alex wasn't used to this whole idea that magic might actually exist. He'd never seen any before, not like this anyways.

The pilot blinked a bit, and blushed at the horse's statement. "Uh, oh, yeah, I guess you're right." He ran his clawed fingers through his hair and smiled.

"Wait, you're Jade? Oh, uh, Gerta mentioned your name yesterday." He held out his hand to her a bit, then blinked, realizing there wasn't much chance the horse would shake his hand back. "Uh, sorry."

He chuckled a bit, in embarrassment, and smiled, "I'm Alex Barrett. I'm a pilot out of Manila. Uh, so you're one of the others, one of the ones who ended up here before me." The realization made the pilot rub the temple of his head a bit.

"Don't worry about it. Sorry I was a bit spacey there. I'm still not exactly used to this situation I seem to be in." He moved to sit down on the old log, brushing off a spot, so he didn't have to stand. "Guess you can say I'm having a real crash course in this world." He motioned for Jade to move on over, not sure if she was comfortable standing. She was a horse though, so maybe she did. Alex didn't know though. The only horses he knew was the thousands of them that were under the engine cowling of his PBY.

He smiled a bit, as Jade talked to him. "Ah, ok." He wasn't aware that she'd rather stand, but that was fine. His tail twitched a bit behind him. "Its understandable that you're nervous. I mean, I'm a bit suprised to find myself talking with a talking horse."

Alex chuckled a bit, as Jade seemed to be just as full of questions as he was. "Well, lets take your questions one at a time. I'm not going anywhere, after all, Not for now anyways. And as for knowing Gerta, well Iris her cat showed me the way to her hut yesterday. She gave me a fortune reading. And yes, she mentioned you, and that there were two others like yourself around." His ears drooped just a bit, as he remembered the prediction. Things were going to get worst, before they got better, and when they did get better, he wouldn't be himself.

The pilot shook the thoughts away and smiled, "Uh, but anyways, I helped her with some chores, and she sent Iris into town to deliver a message for me. And that gets to the second question. No, I'm not the only one here. Actually, there's a small group of folks here. I left town, when I changed, but I didn't know the others would change too, so thats why I asked about getting a letter to them."

He sighed a bit, and rubbed his fingers together, feeling the odd sensation of the scaled fingers rubbing together. "I just hope they get the letter. Before they change."

He stayed quiet for a minute or two, as he thought to himself about how he hoped the others would listen to him, and get the heck out of town. That was his hope anyways. "Uh, so, what about yourself? Where are you from, Jade?"

The pilot listened some, his hand idly reaching up to scritch just behind his ear at the small feathered tuffs he had there. "You're from Loghedge? Weird. I sort of thought you might have been from where I'm from. Hmm. No matter I suppose."

Alex adjusted his goggles some, and smiled. "So, you changed at some point? Do you know why? It seems sort of weird that you'd just one day turn into a hovering horse." He was sort of curious about the why, since it was probably the same reason he was changing too.

"Uh, sorry about all the questions. Probably a bit overwelming or something. I know I feel that way a bit." He chuckled and rested his hands on the wooden log he was resting on, his claws slowly making small claw marks in it, although he didn't really know he was doing ot to keep his claws sharp. No, it just wasn't something he was noticing.

It was obvious from Jade's description of the situation that she had no clue who the 'Magician' was from his tarot card reading. The only thing she did seem to know was that he was going to continue to change, both in body and in mind. It didn't sit so well that he was going to end up something else, but he'd be something else in mind too, when it was done. If thats what his 'death' prediction meant anyways. There was supposedly a lot of hardships as well, and who knows how many of them he'd get through before the bitter end.

To Jade, Alex just sat there, his thoughts being kept to himself, although they were a bit obvious as well, his face twisting into a bit of a frown, his ears drooped just a bit.

After he'd processed his thoughts into nice little bits, and had shuffled them aside, he raised an eyebrow. "Magic?" Ok, he still didn't believe magic existed, but well, he was looking at a floating horse. Maybe magic was real, but he didn't really believe that he'd be learning to do stuff like you'd see in some Hollywood movie.

"What? So I'm going to turn into some wizardly... furred and feathered... thing?" He sounded a bit like he couldn't wrap his brain around the image of him performing magic as some feathery and furred freak of nature.