The Still Pool, Part 2 by ShamanSquirrel < Submission | Inkbunny, the Furry Art Community

Keywords male 1292544, female 1176819, dragon 161583, hybrid 76661, lion 47267, squirrel 32984, dragoness 14064, mongoose 3955, alternate universe 2582, story progression 2223, story series 2189, furred dragon 1986, travel 544, alternate reality 146, cliffhanger 65

The Still Pool

Part Two: What This World Keeps

A Silvania Story — SY 4529, Early Winter

~ I ~
They moved away from the pool quickly, because the forest at night with a lion furfolk somewhere in the port below was not a place to stay longer than necessary.
Orava took charge of this, which was what Jukrit had needed without knowing to ask for it — someone else holding the immediate practical weight while he carried everything the pool had shown him. She knew the paths back from memory and in the dark, moving with confidence. She had walked this forest for decades, and she set a pace that kept Lev between Jukrit and Noraxia without making a production of it.
Noraxia was in feral form. She had shifted at the pool's edge the moment Orava read the message from her terminal, without discussion, and she had stayed that way. Jukrit could feel the quality of her attention — directed forward and outward, tracking the forest around them, a dragon who has identified a threat and is deciding how to approach it.
"He'll have gone to the port authority," Rona said, from her position at the back of the group where she moved slowly and absolutely refused to be hurried. "He won't know where we are yet. He knows you're here — he followed the merchant trail. He doesn't know this region."
"Does he have a legal claim?" Jukrit asked. "Orro. Through his marriage to Sasha. Can he argue custody?"
"That is the question we need to answer before Noraxia does anything," Rona said.
Noraxia made a sound that was neither agreement nor disagreement.
"Noraxia," Jukrit said.
"I heard her," Noraxia said. "I am not going to do anything before we know what he has. I am simply going to be present while we find out."
"In feral form."
"In feral form," she confirmed. "He should understand the situation clearly from the beginning."
Jukrit considered this and found he could not argue with the logic of it.
Lev walked between them and said nothing. He was holding Jukrit's hand, which he had not done since his first week at Riverside Market, and his grip was steady.

~ II ~
Orava had a contact at the port authority — a compact mongoose furfolk named Destan who owed her a long-standing professional courtesy and who arrived at the house within the hour of her communication, carrying the relevant documentation and appeared to find it distasteful.
The legal picture, as Destan laid it out, was this: Orro was Sasha's husband, not Lev's father. He had no biological claim. He had no adoptive claim — no formal adoption had ever been registered. His argument, if he intended to make one, would rest entirely on his status as Sasha's spouse and whatever furfolk family law said about a stepfather's rights over a non-biological cub in the absence of the biological father.
"And with the biological father present?" Jukrit asked.
"With the biological father present, registered, and willing to assert paternity," Destan said, "his claim is negligible. He could contest it. Courts have occasionally found in a stepfather's favor when the biological father has been absent and uninvolved for the cub's entire life." He looked at Lev. "How long has the cub been with you?"
"Six months," Jukrit said.
"Any documentation of that period? Medical records, educational records, neighbor attestations?"
Jukrit thought about the Regional Medical Guild. About Kex and Khari and Veverka and Raskon and Nesori and every person on Willow Ridge Lane who had folded Lev into their daily life without being asked to. "Extensive documentation," he said.
Destan nodded. "Then his legal position is weak. That doesn't mean he won't try."
"Let him try," Noraxia said, from the doorway, where she had remained in feral form throughout the conversation.
Destan looked at her. He had trained himself not to be visibly affected by large dragons and was currently exercising that training.
"Yes," he said. "I imagine that is one approach."

~ III ~
Orro came to the house the following morning.
He was large — genuinely large, a lion furfolk who had the size that occasionally appeared in that lineage, a size that solved most problems before they required any other solution. He came up the path to Orava's house in the early tropical morning with his shoulders set and his eyes forward and looked like he had rehearsed this.
He stopped when he saw Noraxia.
She was in the yard. She had been in the yard since before dawn, which was not something anyone had asked her to do and which no one had been surprised by. She was in feral form, her wings half-spread in the morning warmth, and she was looking at Orro with complete and patient attention. She was a Cygnagon dragon who has identified something and is waiting for it to make a decision.
Orro stood at the yard's edge.
Noraxia did not move.
The morning was very quiet.
Jukrit came out of the house and stood beside Noraxia. Destan was behind him with the documentation. Orava was at the door. Rona was inside with the cubs, which was where the cubs were going to stay until this was finished.
"Orro," Jukrit said.
Orro looked at him. Looked at Noraxia. Looked back at Jukrit.
"The boy," Orro said.
"Is my son," Jukrit said. "Biologically. Registered with the Regional Family Authority of Pansilva as of eight months ago. In the care of a household with extensive documentation of that care, attested by a Regional Medical Guild healer, two Guild-registered craftspeople, and fourteen other neighbors." He paused. "Your legal claim to him, as Destan here has established, is negligible at best."
Orro looked at Noraxia again. She had not moved. She was not growling, not posturing, not doing anything that could be characterized as a threat. She was simply there, enormous and entirely still, as though not going anywhere and that this decision is not under negotiation.
"I want to see him," Orro said.
"No," Noraxia said. It was the first word she had said since Orro arrived. She did not raise her voice.
Orro stood at the yard's edge for a long moment. The morning birds were loud around them. The tropical air was warm and smelled of the forest.
"She sent him away," he said, finally. Something in his voice shifted. Not remorse exactly, but the sound of someone whose story had more in it than the version they'd arrived with. "Sasha. She chose him over—" He stopped.
"Over you," Jukrit said.
Orro said nothing.
"You're not here for legal reasons," Jukrit said slowly. "You're here because she chose her cub over her marriage and you want—" He looked at Orro and saw something he had not expected to see, which was a creature in pain of a specific and diminishing kind. "You want someone to explain that to you in a way that makes sense."
Orro looked at the ground.
"He isn't coming back to you," Jukrit said. "That's final and it's legal and it's not changing. But if you want to tell me about Sasha — how she is, whether she's safe — I'll listen. Because she's his mother and I'd like to know."
The silence lasted long enough to be a decision.
Then Orro sat down in the dust at the yard's edge abruptly. He had been holding himself upright on pride alone and has finally run out, and he talked.

~ IV ~
Sasha was safe. That was the essential thing and Orro delivered it first, which told Jukrit something about him that revised the picture somewhat. She had gone to her sister's household after Lev left. She had not come back. Orro had followed the merchant trail not because he wanted the cub — the honesty of this arrived painfully and clearly in how he said it — but because following the trail was the only thing left to do with a grief that had no other direction to move in.
It was not a sympathetic story, exactly. What he had said to Lev was not excusable and Orro did not try to excuse it. Jukrit had spent enough years as a healer to know that the creatures who did the worst things were usually also, underneath, the most comprehensible ones.
He sent a message to Sasha through the contact information Orro provided, because Lev deserved to know his mother was safe and deserved to hear it from Jukrit rather than from anyone else. He did not ask Orro to stay. Orro did not offer to. He left as he had come, down the path through the tropical morning, without looking back at the house.
Noraxia watched him until he was gone. Then she shifted to anthro form — the first time since the message the night before — and came inside and sat down and accepted the tea that Orava handed her without ceremony.
"Well," Rona said, from the corner where she had been listening to all of it.
"Well," Noraxia agreed.
"Are we going to tell Lev about the pool?" Jukrit asked. "What it showed. What his absence meant."
"Not all of it," Noraxia said. "Not yet. He's not quite six. He knows he's safe here and that we're not giving him back. That's what he needs to know right now."
"Yes," Jukrit said. "That's right."
He went to find his son.

~ V ~
Lev was in the back of the house with Tassa, in the shaded courtyard where the tropical plants grew in abundance. He was showing Tassa something on the ground — an insect of some kind, large and iridescent, with the focused interest. The cub had already decided that the tropics were full of things worth examining and intended to examine as many as possible.
He looked up when Jukrit came in.
"Is he gone?" Lev said.
"Yes."
"For good?"
"For good." Jukrit sat down on the courtyard's low wall. "Your mother is safe. She's with her sister. I've sent her a message."
Lev absorbed this. Something in his face that had been held carefully released, not dramatically.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay," Jukrit agreed.
Lev looked at the insect for a moment, and then at Jukrit, and said: "I knew you'd fix it. You fix things. That's your job."
"It's one of them," Jukrit said.
"The other one is the family," Lev said, clearly having paid attention. "You keep adding to it and then you look after it."
"That's—" Jukrit looked at his son. "That's a reasonable summary."
"I know," Lev said, and went back to the insect.
Tassa, in furfolk form, shifted to dragon briefly to get a better look at whatever the insect was doing, then shifted back. Lev did not react to this. He had stopped reacting to it months ago, which Jukrit found, in this particular moment, quietly moving.

~ VI ~
Orava introduced them to Zara on the afternoon of the third day, which was after Orro had gone and after Lev had been taken to the beach by Rona and Tassa with the specific intention of giving the adults time to talk.
"There is someone who has been waiting to meet your family," Orava said, to Noraxia specifically. "She has lived in this region for many years. She knows the pool. And she is—" Orava paused. "She is your mother."
Noraxia went very still.
Jukrit looked at her. Her expression was doing something he could not immediately read — not the controlled evenness she used in difficult situations, but something older and more undefended than that.
"She is here?" Noraxia said.
"She has been here for decades," Orava said. "Since before you were born. She will explain."
Zara arrived at the house in the particular unhurried manner of someone who lives near enough to walk and is old enough not to hurry. She was a Cygnagon dragon — elderly, her scales darkened with age from what had probably been a deep gold to something closer to bronze, her movements careful in the way of very large creatures navigating spaces built for smaller ones. She was in anthro form for the doorway's sake, which she managed with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing it for decades.
She looked at Noraxia.
Noraxia looked back.
Whatever passed between them in that moment belonged to them — to a daughter and a mother who had not been in the same room for a very long time, longer than Jukrit had known Noraxia, long enough that the meeting had taken on the particular quality of something deferred past its natural moment.
"You saw something of me," Zara said. "At the pool."
"Yes," Noraxia said. "In the other world's version of you. When the alternate Noraxia reached across." Her voice was even. "She showed me her life. She showed me you. Not as a stranger."
"No," Zara said. "Not as a stranger."
They held that for a moment. Then Noraxia said, with the directness she had always had and had clearly not inherited from a mother who chose her words with such care: "Why are you here? All this time. Why here?"
"This is where I came after," Zara said. "After it ended. After Figbert." She settled into the chair Orava offered her with the gradualness of something very large taking weight off very old legs. "I came here and I could not make myself leave. The pool. The ambientite. The particular quality of what this region holds in its stone." She looked at Jukrit. "Your world's edition of the book — I have read it. It is strange to read a book written for me in a different world, by someone who was not quite the person I knew."
"You knew Figbert," Jukrit said. "In this reality."
"I did." She was quiet for a moment in the way of someone deciding how much of a long story to tell. "He was a healer-shaman. Small, quick, precise. He had a way of listening that made you feel the entire world had paused for the purpose." She glanced at Jukrit. "You have it too. The listening."
"What happened between you?" Noraxia asked. The voice of a daughter who has been waiting longer than the afternoon to ask.
"We were young," Zara said. "Or I was, by dragon reckoning — which means I was considerably older than he was in years, but not necessarily in the ways that mattered. We were — for a time — what the other world apparently made permanent." She paused. "But I was not ready. For what it meant, to build a life across that distance. The size of him against the size of me. The length of my life against the length of his. I thought about all of it too much and too early, and by the time I had finished thinking, he had—" She stopped. "He had found other ways to live."
"Did you regret it?" Jukrit asked.
Zara looked at him for a long moment. "Every year," she said. "In the particular way you regret the things you chose not to do rather than the things you failed to do. Failure you can make peace with. Choice is harder."
The room was quiet.
"And in the other world," Noraxia said, "he wrote the book. For you."
"For his Zara," she said. "Who was ready, apparently, when I was not." She looked at Noraxia steadily. "You have read it. Your edition."
"I co-authored it," Noraxia said.
Something in Zara's expression moved — something old and complicated and not entirely sad. "Yes," she said. "That is what the other world's version lacked. It is very good but it has only one voice." She folded her old hands in her lap. "The book is better with two."
They talked for a long time after that. About Noraxia's childhood. About the years between. About Thaxia, and what she thought of all of this. About the pool and what it had taken Zara to understand what it was showing her, all those years she had lived beside it. When Zara finally left, Noraxia stood in the doorway watching her go for a long time.
"Did you know?" Jukrit asked. "That she was here?"
"No," Noraxia said. "I knew she left the family territory when I was very young. I didn't know where she went." A pause. "Thaxia knew. I think Thaxia has always known."
"Are you angry?"
She thought about it honestly, the way she thought about everything. "Not today," she said. "Ask me again tomorrow."

~ VII ~
That evening, after Zara had gone and the cubs were asleep and Orava and Rona had retired, Jukrit and Noraxia sat in the open-sided room where the tropical night came in warm and full of sound.
"What did she say to you?" Jukrit asked. "At the pool. The other Noraxia. When you gave each other the greeting."
Noraxia had been waiting for him to ask. He could tell from how she received the question — not surprised, simply ready.
"She couldn't use words," Noraxia said. "She communicates only with him, and only in his mind. What she gave me was — impressions. Images. Feelings without language."
"What did they say?"
"The first thing was recognition," she said. "She knew me. Not as herself — she understood that I was a different version. But she knew the core of what I was, the way you know your own reflection even when the mirror is warped." She paused. "The second thing was the boy."
"Lev."
"She showed me his absence in her world. She knew about it. She wanted me to understand that she knew." Noraxia looked at her hands. "And she wanted me to understand that the absence was not — nothing. That in her world the version of events where Lev did not exist was not simply neutral. Something was missing from it. Something that the other world's version of this household was smaller without, even if it didn't know what it was missing."
Jukrit sat with this.
"She was telling you he matters," he said. "Beyond just to us."
"She was telling me his existence here is not an accident that the universe is indifferent to," Noraxia said. "It is a divergence that means something. That he is here, specifically, with us, specifically — that is not random." She looked at Jukrit. "She said one more thing."
"What?"
"She said: keep him." Noraxia's voice was even and certain. "Which I thought we had already decided. But she said it as if it needed to be said out loud. As if the saying of it mattered."
"Keep him," Jukrit repeated.
"Keep him," Noraxia said.
Outside, both moons were visible through the open side of the room — Mornius and Saxtus, the same moons that rose over Riverside Market, looking the same from here as from there, indifferent to the distance between one home and another.

~ VIII ~
They stayed three more days, because Rona asked them to and because Rona was very old and the request had weight with limited time.
Lev went to the still pool once more, alone with Jukrit in the late afternoon of the penultimate day. He looked into the bioluminescent water for a long time.
"Is it still the same?" he asked. "No one else?"
"No," Jukrit said. "Still just you."
Lev nodded. He had turned the knowledge over in the days since the first visit — Jukrit could see it in him, the processing, the adjustment. He had not asked many questions. He was a cub who preferred to arrive at understanding himself and then present his conclusions. It was a quality Jukrit recognized and which he was relatively certain Lev had not inherited from him.
"It means I'm supposed to be here," Lev said. "With you. Because the other version didn't have me and it worked out fine for them but this version does have me and it's different."
"Yes," Jukrit said. "That's one way to understand it."
"And Orro was what almost made it go the other way."
"Yes."
Lev looked at the pool for another moment. Then he looked at Jukrit with the tawny lion eyes that were entirely his mother's.
"I'm glad it went this way," he said.
"So am I," Jukrit said.
Lev put his hand in Jukrit's and they stood at the pool's edge while the bioluminescence shifted slowly in the deep water, holding what it held.
On the last morning, Rona walked them to the path that led down to the port, which was further than Jukrit thought she should walk and which she walked anyway. At the path's head she stopped and took Jukrit's hands the way Sister Omavel had taken them at the convent gate, the way that very old people sometimes held on.
She released his hands. She looked at Noraxia.
"The other one," Rona said, meaning the alternate Noraxia, "she made the right choice at the pool. Giving you what she gave you."
"She did," Noraxia said.
"You would have done the same," Rona said. "If it had been the other way."
Noraxia considered this. "Yes," she said. "I would have."
Rona nodded, as if confirming something she already knew. She looked at the cubs — Tassa in dragon form in the morning light, Lev with his lion's tail and his sciurid ears and his particular quality of resilience — and her expression was warm.
"Good," she said. "Go home."
They went.
On the ferry north, on the second morning, they saw the oartails again — or a different raft, it was impossible to say. The pale shapes at their steady collective work, pulling together against the current, making for wherever they were making for with unhurried certainty.
Lev watched them from the railing until they were out of sight.
Then he turned back to the ferry and went to find Tassa, and the current carried them north, toward winter, toward home.

— End of Part Two —
— End of The Still Pool —

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The Still Pool, Part 2

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