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First Crossings
what_old_means_now.doc
Keywords male 1306416, female 1188958, anthro 257337, feral 107882, size difference 81136, bear 54689, age difference 34312, squirrel 33335, dragoness 13874, romance 9767, mongoose 4008, story progression 2278, story series 2239, construction 944, academy 165
What Old Means Now

A Silvania Story — SY 4531, Spring

~ I ~
The feral studies program needed a curriculum. Veverka had known this from the beginning and had been working around it. She was designing everything adjacent to it and leaving the space.
The materials arrived in the form of Quarren.
He had been in Riverside Market for two months. The household had met him. Jukrit had assessed the situation without comment, and had found nothing to concern him. Quarren was a large awakened feral brown bear who communicated through a symbol interface fluently, as he had been doing it for twenty years. He had served as a Wide Ranger on Kigorith for the same twenty years. He had retired and come to Riverside Market and had begun corresponding with Wena about awakened feral cognition, and what had begun as research correspondence had become something else.
The household had accepted this well. Kyren had assessed Quarren on the first visit with thorough and focused attention, deciding he was acceptable. Tassa had asked him three direct questions and received three direct symbol-interface answers and had then moved on to other things.
Jukrit had said nothing yet.
Now, on a spring morning with the academy construction seven months into its ten-month schedule, Veverka had asked Wena and Quarren to come to the Millbank Row site together. She had something she wanted them to see.

~ II ~
The north wing was taking shape. The library's shelving infrastructure was going in — Khari's work, precise and unhurried. The symbol-interface access points that Jukrit had suggested were built into the ground floor at two locations, set at heights that accommodated a wide range of users.
Quarren moved through the north wing carefully. He was large. The doorways accommodated him with room to spare, which had been part of Khari's revised design. It was not designed specifically for Quarren, but with the understanding that feral students would have bodies of varying configurations.
He went to the symbol-interface access point near the north window and spent several minutes at it. Testing the interface. Noting the height of the controls, the angle, the range of motion required.
Wena watched him from across the room.
Veverka came to stand beside her.
"He was the only awakened feral in the Wide Rangers," Veverka said. "For his first six years."
"Yes," Wena said. "He told me."
"He learned to navigate every institutional system they had," Veverka said. "Forms that assumed furfolk hands. Protocols that assumed spoken language. Equipment designed for bodies that were not his." She paused. "He has spent twenty years acquiring knowledge that no institution thought to teach him because no institution was built for him." She looked at Wena. "That knowledge is what the feral studies program needs."
"I know," Wena said.
"He does too," Veverka said. "He came here for a reason that was not just you."
Wena looked at her. "I know that too."
Veverka nodded once and went to talk to Khari.

~ III ~
The age question came from Lev.
It came at dinner, two days after the Millbank Row visit.
"How old is Quarren?" Lev said.
The table was quiet for a moment.
"He was already an adult when he awakened," Wena said. "His awakening was about twenty-two years ago."
"So he's old," Lev said. Not unkindly. As a fact requiring confirmation.
"He's older than me," Wena said. "Yes."
"How much older?"
"Lev," Jukrit said.
"It's a reasonable question," Wena said. She looked at Lev . "A lot older. Awakened ferals age the way furfolk age, which means he has a long life ahead of him. But he had a life before I knew him that was twice as long as my whole life."
Lev considered this seriously. "Does that bother you?" he said.
"Sometimes," Wena said. "Then I remember that it's interesting more than it's difficult. He's seen things I haven't seen. He knows things I haven't had time to learn yet."
"Like what?"
"Like what it costs to be the only one of your kind in a room that wasn't built for you," she said. "For twenty years."
Lev was quiet for a moment. Then he went back to his food, apparently satisfied.
Tassa, who had been listening in dragon form, shifted to furfolk and said: "I know what that is."
"Yes," Wena said. "You do."

~ IV ~
She told Quarren about the conversation that evening, through the terminal in the study where she did most of their correspondence when he was at his own lodgings.
He read her account. He was quiet for a while.
Then he wrote: Lev asked because he wanted to understand. Not because he thought it was a problem.
Wena wrote back: Yes.
Quarren: Do you think it is a problem.
Wena: I think it is a fact. Facts are not problems until you decide they are.
A longer pause than usual.
Quarren: I decided for a long time that many facts about me were problems. The Rangers helped with some of them. You helped with others.
Wena read this and did not reply immediately. She sat with it for a while.
Then she wrote: Come tomorrow. We have the east wing classroom layout to review and I want you there when Khari presents it.
Quarren: I will be there.
Wena: Good.
She closed the terminal and went to bed and slept well, which was the most direct measure she had of whether something was all right.

~ V ~
The east wing classroom layout review happened on a Thursday morning, with Khari presenting and Veverka, Jukrit, Wena, and Quarren in attendance.
The classrooms were designed to accommodate a wide range of body configurations. Khari had thought carefully about this; the seating, the surface heights, the doorway clearances, the positioning of the symbol-interface stations relative to both furfolk eye level and the eye level of a seated large-bodied feral. He presented it without comment and waited.
Quarren went through the space methodically. He tested each interface station. He noted the clearance at the entry points. He sat, briefly, in the space designated as the front of the primary classroom, which put him where an instructor would stand, and looked out at the room from that position.
Then he went to his interface and wrote: The front-of-room symbol station is positioned for a furfolk instructor. A feral instructor would be standing. The station needs a second position at standing height or an adjustable mount.
Khari looked at this. "One afternoon's work," he said. "I'll adjust the design."
Quarren wrote: I spent six years in institutions that did not make that adjustment. I appreciate the one afternoon.
Khari read this and nodded once. He reached for his pencil.
Veverka, from across the room, looked at Quarren.
"The feral studies program," she said, "needs a lead contributor who has actually lived what it is trying to teach."
Quarren was still for a moment. Then he wrote: I have lived it for twenty-two years. I have also watched others live it without the tools I eventually acquired. I know what they needed that was not available. I can tell you what to build.
"Yes," Veverka said. "That is what I am asking you to do."

~ VI ~
They worked through the spring on it. Wena documented. Quarren contributed. The process was enjoyed by both of them.
What Quarren gave the program was specific. Not theory — experience. The small calibrations that made the difference between an institution that accommodated awakened ferals as a special case and one that was built for them from the foundation. The symbol-interface vocabulary he had developed over twenty years, refined through working with Kyren and two other awakened ferals he had known in the Rangers. The physical layout considerations. The pacing of curriculum for minds that processed through observation and symbol rather than text and speech.
What Wena gave was the translation. She had the Guild's documentation instincts and the academic structure and the ability to render what Quarren had learned with experience into something that could be taught to an instructor who had not lived it.
Jukrit read the first complete section of the curriculum on a Tuesday evening and sat with it for a long time before he said anything.
"This is the best educational document I have read in ten years," he said to Wena.
"It's mostly his," she said.
"The structure is yours. The knowledge is his. Neither part works without the other." He set it down. "Sister Omavel would have wanted this. She would have known what it was."
Wena looked at him. "That is the nicest thing you could have said," she said.

~ VII ~
The age question surfaced again, not from Lev this time, but from a neighbor Wena did not know well — a civet furfolk from the north end of Willow Ridge Lane who asked at the market, not unkindly but not carefully, whether she knew what she was getting into.
Wena told Jukrit about it that evening.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"I said that I knew exactly what I was getting into," she said. "Which is a partnership with someone who has spent twenty-two years building expertise in something I care about and who is patient and who finds my precision useful rather than intimidating." She paused. "And then I went to buy fish."
Jukrit was quiet for a moment.
"Quarren's age means he has context I don't have," she said. "It also means he has habits formed before I was born that occasionally need revisiting. We are working on both things. That is what relationships are."
"Yes," Jukrit said. "That's what they are."
"You're not going to say anything else?"
"No," he said. "You don't need me to."
She looked at him for a moment, then went back to what she had been doing.

~ VIII ~
On a late spring evening, with the academy's north wing shelving complete and the east wing classrooms taking shape and the first complete section of the feral studies curriculum approved by Veverka and sent to the Guild for review, Wena and Quarren sat in the academy's central corridor.
They had been there for two hours, reviewing the second section. The building was quiet around them. The evening light came through the corridor's high windows at a low angle.
Quarren wrote something on his interface.
Wena read it: I have not been part of building something before. I have been part of operating things. Using things. Navigating things. This is different.
"Yes," she said. "It is."
He wrote: I think I understand now why you wanted me here. Not only for the curriculum.
"The curriculum needed you," she said. "So did I."
He was quiet for a moment; not composing, just receiving it.
The evening light moved across the corridor floor. The building settled around them with the sound of new construction finding its equilibrium.
Wena set her notes down and stood up. She was a mongoose furfolk and he was a brown bear and the geometry of it required a small negotiation that they had worked out over two months and that no longer required thought. She reached up. He lowered his great head to her. She put her hand against the warm brown fur of his cheek and kissed him, and he was still for her the way he was still for everything that mattered, completely and without reservation.
When she stepped back his amber eyes were on her attentively, which was often.
"Good evening," she said.
He wrote: Good evening.
They gathered their notes and left the building, and Khari locked the door behind them, because Khari was always the last to leave a construction site, and the spring night was warm and the two moons were up and Riverside Market went about its business around them, ordinary and sufficient.

— End of Episode —
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Swiftrose
First Crossings
Wena and Quarren are working together on the feral studies curriculum for the Riverside Academy. He is an awakened brown bear and retired Wide Ranger. She is a Guild-trained mongoose apprentice healer. The age gap between them is significant. The professional collaboration and the relationship occupy the same space. Lev asks how old Quarren is, and Wena answers him just as plainly. Tassa says she knows what it is to be something a room wasn't built for. Quarren and Wena correspond through the terminal that evening and say things they haven't said aloud yet. At the academy site, Quarren identifies a design problem in the classroom layout that Khari corrects in one afternoon, something that took him six years to encounter in the Rangers without resolution. The feral studies curriculum takes shape. Jukrit reads the first completed section and says it is the best educational document he has read in ten years. A neighbor raises the age question less kindly than Lev did, and Wena handles it and moves on. But on a late spring evening in the half-built corridor of the Riverside Academy, with the shelving complete and the curriculum approved and the light coming through the high windows at a low angle; does what they have built together, professionally and otherwise, finally find its words?
Keywords
male 1,306,416, female 1,188,958, anthro 257,337, feral 107,882, size difference 81,136, bear 54,689, age difference 34,312, squirrel 33,335, dragoness 13,874, romance 9,767, mongoose 4,008, story progression 2,278, story series 2,239, construction 944, academy 165
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 1 month, 4 weeks ago
Rating: General
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