The way she had stopped talking, the way she seemed to curl up in herself, as if she wanted to disappear, all of them were clues. All of them led back to the fiery ears, which she couldn't tuck away, apparently.
"Hey," he said, reaching for her hand and covering it with his, "it's gonna be alright. If you can't make them disappear, I can sneak you out through the back and take you back to the Academy. Nobody will care about it there."
He glanced at the fallen notebook, and said: "What were you drawing?"