Excerpt from Mouse Wing Trainee Evaluation Report completed by Trainer Sam

Zoë is a bright and eager trainee. For a greenie she shows remarkable potential. She is already way ahead of the learning curve when it comes to plotting courses and reading astronomical charts. She has an excellent paw when it comes to guiding her bird steed. More important, she’s eager to log as many flight hours as possible.

Zoë’s assigned steed is Popkin. She shows remarkable patience with him. Personally, he drives me nuts. Zoë is the only mouse who seems to be able to keep Popkin focused on the task at hand. I normally recommend that greenies fly with different avian steeds, but given the close rapport that Zoë and Popkin have already developed I think it would be a waste of time to saddle her with any other bird.

I’ve noted a tendency for Trainee Zoë to rely a little too heavily on her mentors’ expertise when flying. It is my recommendation that Trainee Zoë be given a solo mission sooner rather than later to test her capabilities and see what she can do on her own.

Carja’s Notes

Zoë is from the third of a series of “birthday” stories I wrote this year. I’ve long been a fan of the name Zoë and have used it on occasion in other stories I’ve written (always with the umlaut over the ‘e’). The friend I wrote the story for enjoys creating World of Warcraft characters whose names begin with the letter ‘z’ so I decided to use Zoë as a nod to that fact. My friend is also big time into astronomy, which is why Zoë has a telescope with her in the story.

I love Popkin! He was just so much fun to write. For the Funnies I decided to reduce his vocabulary to one word. In the original story, he’s obsessed with pickles as well, but he’s able to hold a conversation.