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The Silent Colony
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tassa.doc
Keywords male 1270957, female 1157163, transformation 46798, squirrel 32649, dragoness 13846, birth 3880, story progression 2171, story series 2143, furred dragon 1915, newborn 799, parenthood 83, adaptation 15
Tassa


A Silvania Story  -  SY 4527, Late Autumn


~ I ~

It started quietly, the way the most significant things often did.

Noraxia had been restless since midday  -  shifting between forms more than usual, unable to settle, the feral configuration that usually eased her discomfort suddenly feeling wrong in some way she couldn?t articulate. By late afternoon she had moved to the main room and stayed there, lying low, her breathing slow and deliberate. Jukrit sat nearby with a book he was not reading.

He had delivered hundreds of infants in his years as a healer. He knew the particular quality of the silence in this room, had known it since early afternoon, and had said nothing because there was nothing useful to say yet and because Noraxia would tell him when she was ready.

She told him at dusk.

"Jukrit."

Just his name. Just that.

He put the book down and went to her.

He sent Chenar for Veverka  -  his mother had delivered more infants than he had, in the years before his training, and there was a specific kind of steadiness she carried that he wanted in the room. He sent word to Raskon through the terminal, brief and factual. He prepared the things he would need with the methodical care of a healer setting aside everything that was personal, everything that was frightened, everything that was husband, in order to be useful.

He was not entirely successful at setting those things aside. But he was functional, which was what the moment required.

Noraxia was managing the labor the way she managed most difficult things: with concentration and a complete absence of complaint that was somehow more expressive than complaint would have been. She had shifted fully feral  -  the broad low body, her four limbs grounded against the floor, the natural architecture of a dragon?s ribcage giving her something to brace against. It was the right instinct. He trusted her instincts.

Veverka arrived within the hour. She came in, assessed the room in one sweep, and without a word took the position that was most useful, which was beside Noraxia?s head. She had a quality of calm that was different from Jukrit?s  -  his was trained, deliberate, a professional tool. Hers was older than that. She put one hand on Noraxia?s neck and simply stayed there, and Noraxia?s breathing changed slightly, and that was the whole of it.

Jukrit looked at his mother across the room and felt something he didn?t have a word for.

Outside, without having been asked, the household gathered. He could hear them through the walls  -  the soft movement of Kalina in the yard, the lighter patter of Kyren who could not keep still. Chenar, who had delivered the message and then apparently decided he was not leaving. Varena, whose particular stillness had a texture to it that was different from her usual calm.

Raskon arrived an hour later and sat on the porch steps and did not come in and did not go home.

~ II ~

The labor was long.

Jukrit had expected complexity  -  Tassa had been shifting in the womb for months, and he had thought carefully about what that might mean at the moment of birth. He had consulted the Guild?s records and found nothing useful. He had written to a dragon-lineage healer on the mainland?s eastern coast and received a response that was thorough but completely inapplicable to a hybrid. He had, in the end, decided to be present and adaptive, which was the most honest answer he could find.

What he had not anticipated was the shifts happening during labor itself.

It happened the first time in the third hour  -  a ripple of change, visible even from where he was positioned, as Tassa moved between forms in the passage. Noraxia made a sound that was not pain but surprise, and Jukrit steadied himself and adjusted, and they continued. It happened again in the fourth hour, and again in the fifth. Each time, the shape of what he was doing changed. Each time, he changed with it.

He stopped thinking about anything except what was directly in front of him. He stopped being a husband and a person with fears. He was simply a healer with a task that kept revising itself, and he was good at his work, and that was enough.

Veverka talked to Noraxia in a low continuous murmur  -  not instruction, not reassurance exactly, just presence rendered into sound. Words from Jukrit?s childhood, he realized at some point. An old shaman?s cadence that his mother had learned somewhere and never lost.

At the end of the fifth hour, Tassa arrived.

She came into the world in furfolk form  -  small, amber-furred, with a faint shadow of brown at the nape that would be a mane someday, and Noraxia?s teal eyes already open and already looking, with the absolute directness of someone who has arrived somewhere and intends to take it seriously.

She looked at Jukrit. He looked at her.

Then she shifted  -  a full dragon form, sudden and complete, and he nearly lost his hold on her, and recovered, and she shifted back, and he laughed, startled, the laugh escaping before he could stop it, which was perhaps not the most professional response but was certainly the most honest one.

"There she is," Veverka said quietly.

~ III ~

The next hour was practical work, and then it was over, and then Noraxia was holding her daughter.

She had shifted to anthro to do it  -  the feral form was where she was comfortable, but anthro was where her arms were, and she wanted her arms. She sat against the wall with Tassa against her chest, and Jukrit sat beside her, and for a while neither of them said anything at all.

Tassa shifted twice in the first ten minutes. Each time it happened, Noraxia simply adjusted her hold and waited, with the equanimity of someone who had been preparing for this for months and had decided to find it remarkable rather than alarming. The second time, she made a small sound  -  a huff of breath that was almost a laugh.

"She?s still testing," Noraxia said.

"She?ll probably do it for a while," Jukrit said.

"Good." Noraxia looked down at her. "She should."

Veverka slipped out to tell the household. Jukrit heard the news move through them  -  not shouts or exclamations but a particular settling, like a held breath released, like the sound a room makes when the thing it was waiting for finally arrives. From outside he heard Chenar make a sound he had never heard from Chenar before and could not classify. Kyren?s quick footsteps went back and forth twice and then stopped.

After a while, Veverka came back in and sat with them, and did not speak, and this was exactly right.

~ IV ~

Raskon saw her the following morning.

He came to the door with the precise formality of someone who is aware he is not family and is uncertain of the protocols and has decided that precision is the safest approach. Jukrit brought him in. Noraxia was in the main room, feral-formed again and more comfortable for it, Tassa tucked against the warm expanse of her chest.

Raskon looked at Tassa for a long time without speaking.

Tassa, who had been drowsing, opened her teal eyes and looked back at him with the same absolute directness she had deployed on the world since her arrival. Then she shifted  -  squirrel this time, tiny and furfolk and adorable  -  and made a sound that was not quite a cry and not quite anything else.

"Hello," Raskon said. Very quietly. As if to someone whose time he did not want to waste.

Tassa blinked.

"She looks at you like she?s already measuring you," Noraxia said.

"Yes," Raskon said. "I noticed." He seemed, if anything, to find this appropriate.

He stayed for an hour and held a conversation with Jukrit about nothing consequential, which was his way of staying without imposing, and then he went home.

~ V ~

The first week was something Jukrit would not have known how to describe in advance.

He had attended new families before  -  had sat with parents in the strange suspended time after a birth, when the world has changed shape and the new shape hasn?t quite become real yet. He had thought he understood what that was like. He discovered he had understood it the way a diagram understands a landscape.

Tassa shifted on no predictable schedule. She could hold a form for an hour, or shift three times in ten minutes, and there was no pattern he could find in it  -  not hunger, not temperature, not waking or sleeping. She simply shifted when she shifted, for reasons that were entirely her own, and the household learned to receive both versions of her with the same equanimity that Noraxia had modeled from the first night.

This was easier for some than others.

Chenar adapted immediately and without apparent effort. Tassa in furfolk form was a small squirrel cub who was larger than him. Tassa in dragon form was even larger, but still fit easily against Chenar's side, and he had decided that this was the relevant fact. He spent long periods simply sitting near her, watchful and content, with the air of someone who has been waiting for a specific thing and is pleased it has arrived.

Kalina approached her with the ceremonial gravity of a large animal who knows her own size. She would lower her great head to sniff at Tassa  -  whichever form she was in  -  and then step back and take up a position nearby that was clearly deliberate. She did this every morning. It seemed to be a ritual she had devised for herself.

Varena kept a respectful distance for the first three days, then crept closer by increments, then on the fourth day was found lying at the edge of Noraxia?s space with her chin on her forepaws and an expression of such concentrated wistfulness that Noraxia had laughed out loud. After that Varena was simply present, another warm body in the orbit of the new small person.

Kyren went directly to Tassa on the first morning as if an appointment had been kept. He circled her twice  -  she was in dragon form, slightly larger than he was  -  and then sat down beside her and put his nose against her flank. She shifted to furfolk mid-contact. He waited, patient as stone, until she settled, and then put his nose against her again. After that he behaved as if they had reached an agreement.

~ VI ~

The nights were hard.

Not because Tassa was difficult  -  she wasn?t, not especially, she slept in the way of new creatures who have not yet distinguished night from day and found the distinction uncompelling. The hardness was the particular quality of exhaustion that accumulated in new parents, the way it settled into the bones differently from ordinary tiredness, the way it made three in the morning feel like a country with its own specific geography.

Jukrit had known this intellectually. He had counseled new parents through it for years. He sat at three in the morning on the fourth night with Tassa in dragon form by his chest  -  warm, small, breathing with the complete commitment of something very new to the project of being alive  -  and revised everything he thought he had understood.

She shifted in her sleep. Furfolk now, curled against his collarbone. Her mane was coming in more clearly  -  the brown fuzz of it, distinctly Noraxia?s. Her ears were distinctly Jukrit?s, the shape of them, the way they moved even in sleep toward sounds.

Noraxia was asleep beside him, which was the correct state for her to be in, and he was not going to disturb it.

He sat in the dark with his daughter and thought about nothing at all for a while, which was unusual for him and felt like a gift.

Then she opened her teal eyes and looked at him, and he looked back, and she made the sound that was not quite a cry, and he said, very quietly, "I know. I?m here." And she closed her eyes again.

He sat there until dawn came through the window, gray and cold and entirely welcome.

~ VII ~

Veverka came every day that first week, always in the morning, always with something practical  -  food, or supplies, or simply an extra pair of hands for the hours when both Jukrit and Noraxia needed to sleep at the same time. She did not offer opinions unless asked. She did not tell them what she had done differently or what she would do differently now. She simply arrived and was useful and left without fanfare, and this was one of the most generous things Jukrit had ever witnessed her do.

On the fifth day she held Tassa for an hour while Jukrit and Noraxia both slept  -  really slept, fully, without the listening-even-in-sleep that had become the texture of every rest since Tassa?s arrival. Tassa shifted twice during that hour. Veverka received each shift with a small interested sound and adjusted her arms and continued.

When they woke, Jukrit found his mother sitting in the light from the window with his daughter in her arms, and the expression on Veverka?s face was one he did not think he had seen before  -  something unguarded and immense and very quiet.

He did not say anything. He went and made tea and brought her a cup, and she nodded without looking up, and that was enough.

~ VIII ~

By the end of the first week, the household had settled into new patterns the way water settles into a new shape  -  not forced, not decided, simply finding the configuration that fit.

Noraxia healed and grew stronger with the particular efficiency of a dragon-lineage body that had been through something significant and was ready to be done with being fragile. She returned to her feral form as her default, which was more comfortable for nursing and for rest, and began reclaiming the yard by the fifth day, moving slowly and deliberately in the thin autumn sun while Tassa was managed inside.

Jukrit returned to seeing patients on the sixth day  -  briefly, carefully, Veverka present for anything that ran long. His patients received this news with the collective response of a small community that has been waiting for something: relief, and warmth, and in several cases gifts of food that arrived at the door over the following days in quantities that were genuinely excessive and entirely appreciated.

Kex sent fish. Khari sent three kinds of preserved fruit and a blanket he had made himself that was large enough to cover a feral dragon, which suggested he had been planning it for some time.

Raskon sent a note, in his careful script, that said: I?ve been thinking about what she should know about orbital mechanics. I?m prepared to begin when she?s ready. Jukrit read it twice and then put it somewhere safe.

Tassa, through all of it, shifted and slept and woke and looked at the world with her teal eyes and continued the project of being new to things. She had no preference, as far as anyone could tell, between her forms  -  she moved between them with a fluency that suggested she did not experience them as separate, which Noraxia said made complete sense and Jukrit said was going to require some very careful conversations in a few years and they were both right.

On the seventh evening, when the household was quiet and Mornius was rising in the west and Tassa was asleep in dragon form on Noraxia?s flank, Jukrit sat beside them and watched the moonlight move across the room.

He thought about the crystalids beneath Bluestone Priory, still listening. About Nessa, who had not yet decided but was still here, and perhaps that was its own kind of answer. About the long survey road on Kigorith, and the prior?s hand on the warm stone, and the word the priory had said without saying anything: come back. He thought about all the distances between things and how none of them had turned out to be as far as they?d looked.

Noraxia?s eye opened, just slightly. She was not asleep. She had the particular stillness of someone at rest who is also, quietly, paying attention to everything.

"She shifted again," Noraxia said. Her voice was low and even.

"I know." He had felt it  -  the small change in weight and warmth on her flank. "Furfolk?"

"Furfolk."

He nodded. They were quiet for a while.

"She?s going to be so much trouble," Noraxia said, with an expression that made it clear this was the finest possible thing she could imagine.

"Extraordinary trouble," Jukrit agreed.

Outside, Mornius climbed higher, and Saxtus followed, and the doubled moonlight found the window and came in, and lay across a squirrel shaman and a furred dragon and their daughter, who was already, in the first week of her life, exactly herself.

 -  End of Episode  -

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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After five hours of labor — complicated by Tassa shifting between forms during the delivery itself — Jukrit and Noraxia's daughter arrives in furfolk form, opens her teal eyes, and immediately shifts to dragon, nearly escaping Jukrit's hands and startling a laugh out of him that is entirely unprofessional and completely right. Veverka steadies the room throughout; the household gathers outside without being asked; Raskon sits on the porch steps and doesn't go home. The first week is exhaustion and wonder in equal measure — each household member finding their own way to Tassa, Kyren treating their first meeting as a kept appointment, Veverka holding her in the window light with an expression Jukrit has never seen on her before, Khari sending a blanket clearly planned months in advance. Tassa shifts on no predictable schedule and shows no preference between her forms, moving between squirrel and dragon with a fluency that suggests she doesn't experience them as separate — which is, Noraxia says, exactly as it should be. But as the first week closes and the household settles into its new shape around this small person who is already entirely herself, one question quietly remains: will Tassa ever settle into one form, or is the shifting simply who she is?
Keywords
male 1,270,957, female 1,157,163, transformation 46,798, squirrel 32,649, dragoness 13,846, birth 3,880, story progression 2,171, story series 2,143, furred dragon 1,915, newborn 799, parenthood 83, adaptation 15
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 8 hrs, 49 mins ago
Rating: General
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