Pico landed on a palm tree outside the Hotel Del Coronado and took stock of the situation.
The situation was this: he had no idea where he was.
Technically, this wasn’tnew information. He hadn’t known where he was since the dragon attacked him at the library. But from up here — really up here, higher than he had ever been without a shoulder to land on — the full shape of things came into view. Ocean. Beach. But not Ocean Beach, his home. Instead, a very large red and white building that was clearly someone’s house, though he couldn’t imagine whose.
He announced himself anyway.
Yet, nobody came.
He tried again, louder, with more conviction, the full-throated I am right here and I know exactly what I’m doing version that had always worked at home. A seagull banked past and regarded him the way seagulls regard everything — with contempt and without interest in follow-up.
The Hotel Del had been standing since 1888. It had hosted presidents and film crews and at least one persistent rumor about a ghost. It was not, in Pico’s estimation, the kind of place that would be impressed by a parrot who had been lost since Tuesday.
He wasn’t wrong.
He sat in the palm tree for a while. The ocean was there. The bay was somewhere behind him. The bridge — the big curved one he’d seen earlier — was visible if he turned his head. He turned his head.
The Library was over there. He was fairly sure.
He also knew, in the particular way a bird knows things, that knowing the direction and knowing the route were not the same thing. And, it was getting close to sunset.
The Kickstarter for The Launch Collection — including the Hotel Del Coronado print — runs through July 5th. Back the campaign here.