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Keywords male 1299346, female 1182594, feral 106974, squirrel 33182, dragoness 14127, birth 4008, furred dragon 2015, implied incest 1674, cub clean 279, gheval 76, ottertaur 7
Ready

A Silvania Story — SY 4531, Early Autumn

~ I ~
Autumn came back to Riverside Market with what seemed like agency. The whisperwood turned first, then the market gardens, then the light itself; lower and more amber, arriving at a slant that made the mornings feel considered.
Chenar had begun withdrawing three days into the season. The household had its rhythm for it. The far corner of the barn. The quiet. The patient waiting of the other animals around it. Bren nearby. Kalina serene. Darit observing from the gate on his visits.
Mira had grown well beyond both her parents' sizes, which Jukrit had documented and cross-referenced with the Guild's records on hybrid ghevals. The explanation was straightforward. Chenara's compact line and Darit's hill breed were genetically distinct enough that their cross had produced what the records called hybrid advantage — the offspring of two sufficiently different lines often exceeded both parents in size and vitality. Mira had also been a singleton, which meant she had all the resources of Chenara's gestation to herself, in addition to her surrogate Varena’s rich milk. The result was a gheval who was neither her mother nor her father but something the two of them had produced that was larger than either of them could account for individually.
Mira's labor began on the fifth day of autumn.
It began in the early morning, before the household was fully awake. It was not dramatic; just a body doing something it had been preparing to do for months. He had checked on her before bed. He had known it was close.
He came to the barn before dawn and found Kyren already there.
Kyren was sitting beside Mira's stall, keeping still. His interface was active. He had not written anything on it yet. He was watching.

~ II ~
The labor took four hours.
Jukrit worked through it meticulously; aware of what was happening, ready to intervene when needed, staying out of the way when not. Mira was young but she was not weak. She had Chenara's determination and Darit's compact physical strength and she worked through it steadily.
Noraxia came at the second hour. She did not shift to anthro. She lay outside the stall opening in feral form, her presence a steadying warmth, her eyes on Mira throughout.
Varena came down from the hayloft and stationed herself at the stall's far wall. She was not there for the birth specifically. She was there because Mira was hers in the way that mattered most; not biologically but nutritionally and socially, from the first hours of Mira's life. She was not going to be somewhere else.
Kalina watched from her stall.
Bren watched from his.
Kyren did not move.
The first foal arrived at dawn, in the grey light that came through the barn's upper slats. Small. Not Kyren-small; but small by any gheval measure, with a dark bay coat that was Mira's and a compact low-slung body that was Kyren's inheritance scaled upward. It was female. She was breathing before Jukrit had finished checking.
The second came twenty minutes later. Male. Silver-grey with tan stripes, lighter-boned than the first, with Mira's length and something about the face that was neither parent precisely but was both of them at once.
Two foals. Both breathing. Both present.
Jukrit sat back on his heels in the straw and let out a breath he had been holding for most of the four hours.

~ III ~
Mira attended to them herself, which was the first good sign. She was tired and she did not stop. She moved between the two of them with the focused efficiency of a new mother who has more to do than she has resources for and is doing it anyway.
Varena came forward when Mira needed rest. This had been the arrangement since Mira's birth and it was the arrangement now. The dark bay female foal accepted Varena without difficulty. The silver-grey male took longer — twenty minutes of circling and considering before he allowed it. He was, Jukrit noted, already demonstrating something.
Kyren watched all of this from his position outside the stall.
The dark bay female foal, unsteady on her new legs, made her way toward the stall opening. She stopped when she reached Kyren. She was twelve hours old and she was already taller than him.
They looked at each other.
Kyren was still for a long moment. Then he wrote on the interface.
Jukrit, who was still in the barn, looked at the screen.
It said: She has Mira's eyes.
That was all he wrote. Jukrit looked at the dark bay foal, who did have Mira's eyes — the same quick intelligence. He looked at Kyren.
Kyren had already turned back to watch the silver-grey male, who was attempting something complicated with his legs that wasn't quite working yet.
After a while Kyren wrote again.
It said: He will be larger than me by spring.
Jukrit waited to see if there was more.
There was not. Kyren set the interface down and continued watching his foals.

~ IV ~
Lev named them before anyone else had thought to. He came to the barn at midmorning when the household had been told and stood at the stall opening and looked at both foals for a long time.
"The dark one is Kovi," he said. "The silver one is Darek."
No one argued. Kovi and Darek they were.
Tassa came in dragon form and sat at the barn's entrance. She watched Kovi and Darek with excitement and novelty. After a while she shifted to furfolk.
"Kyren is going to teach them," she said.
"What makes you think that?" Jukrit said.
"He's already planning it," she said. "You can tell."
Jukrit looked at Kyren, who was indeed sitting with his interface active and his attention on the foals.
"You might be right," Jukrit said.
"I know," Tassa said, and went to find something to eat.

~ V ~
Chenar completed his shift to Chenara on the seventh day of autumn, three days after the birth.
She emerged from the far corner as she always did without announcement. She went to Bren first. Then to Kalina. Then she moved through the barn checking everything that was hers to check.
She found the foals.
She stood at the stall opening for a long time. Mira looked back at her mother. Kovi was at Varena. Darek was asleep.
Chenara made a sound Jukrit had not heard her make before. Not alarm. Not greeting. Something between those two things that did not have a name in any vocabulary he had.
She went to Darek and nosed him gently. He woke. He looked at Chenara with the silver-grey face that was partly hers and partly Kyren's and partly neither of them. She looked back. Chenara accepted the fact that she was their grandparent on both sides of the family; Mira’s mother and Kyren’s father.
Then she stepped back and went to her stall.
Whatever that had been, it was settled.

~ VI ~
Tane arrived on a Thursday.
He came by hired transport, managing the long journey as he always did. He was larger than Jukrit remembered, which was the same thing Jukrit thought every time he saw Tane and which was probably more about the weight of what Tane carried than his actual dimensions.
He came through the gate and stopped.
From the gate you could see the barn's open door. From the barn's open door, if you were at the right angle, you could see Mira and the two foals in the morning light. Darek was on his feet. Kovi was moving between Mira and Varena confidently accepting the world around her.
Tane stood at the gate and watched this for a moment before he said anything.
"How old?" he said.
"Four days," Jukrit said.
Tane nodded slowly. He watched Kovi move between Mira and Varena with her new-foal confidence.
"I want to see them," he said.
"Of course," Jukrit said.
They went to the barn. Tane stood at the stall opening in the otter-taur configuration that made most barn spaces feel smaller than they were, and looked at Kovi and Darek.
Kyren was at the interface. He glanced at Tane and then back at the foals.
"The small one is the father," Jukrit said.
Tane looked at Kyren. He looked at the foals. He appeared to be doing mathematics.
"Yes," he said. "All right."

~ VII ~
That evening they sat in the kitchen and talked about Kiswi.
Tane had brought documentation from the council; the expedition's formal parameters, the equipment list, the communication protocol that Wena and Quarren had contributed to and that the council had approved with two amendments. He had also brought something less formal: a folder of his father's research materials, the notes Branjo had kept on Kiswi ecology before the evacuation records were sealed.
"He thought the freeze was cyclical," Tane said. "He said so in every grant application for forty years. The applications were denied every time."
"He was right," Jukrit said.
"He was right," Tane said. "And I am going to stand on a world that proves he was right, and he will not be there to see it."
He said this plainly, without drama. It was a fact and he was giving it its weight.
"The groundmoss," Jukrit said. "He documented it."
"The first-growth species," Tane said. "The ones that return when the conditions allow. He had thirty years of notes on their propagation patterns." He looked at the folder. "When I go through the portal I am going to see whether his predictions were correct. That is what I am going there for, among other things."
Noraxia was in anthro form at the table's end. She had been listening.
"What were the two amendments?" she said. "To the expedition protocol."
"The first was that all initial documentation to be filed jointly with the Swambazi archive," Tane said. "Yazari's people have three centuries of portal monitoring data that should be part of the record."
"And the second?"
"That any Bakiswi diaspora member who wishes to receive the first crossing's documentation in full," Tane said, "receives it within twenty-four hours of return. Before any political body. Before any government. The diaspora first."
Noraxia looked at him.
"Yes," she said. "That's right."

~ VIII ~
Before Tane went to the guest room that night he asked Jukrit to take him to the barn once more.
The barn was quiet. Kovi and Darek were asleep, the small dark shape and the silver-grey one close together in the straw. Mira was resting. Varena was in the hayloft. Kyren was at the interface with the dim glow of the screen in the dark.
Tane stood at the stall opening and looked at the sleeping foals.
"Kiswi has been empty for a thousand years," Tane said. "The groundmoss has been growing for — we don't know how long. Years. Maybe longer. It started before we knew the freeze was ending." He was quiet. "The world didn't wait for us to decide to come back. It started coming back on its own."
Jukrit looked at the sleeping foals. He looked at Kyren, who had been waiting for his foals since spring, who had sat outside the stall for four hours of labor without moving.
"Things start before you know they've started," he said.
"Yes," Tane said. "That's exactly it."
Kyren looked up from the interface. He looked at Tane for a moment. Then he turned the interface so Tane could see the screen.
It said: They will be ready by the time you return.
Tane read this. He looked at Kyren. He looked at Kovi and Darek.
"Thank you," he said.
Kyren turned the interface back and went back to watching his foals, and the barn was quiet, and outside the autumn night held Riverside Market in its first cool air of the season, and somewhere beneath a cave system on Kigorith the portal waited patiently, and the expedition was twelve days away.

— End of Episode —
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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The Argument
Last in pool
It is the fifth day of autumn. Chenar is in the far corner of the barn beginning his shift back to Chenara. Mira's labor starts before dawn. Jukrit attends. Noraxia lies outside the stall in feral form throughout. Varena comes down from the hayloft and does not leave. Kyren sits outside the stall without moving for four hours. Two foals arrive. The first is dark bay with Mira's eyes and a compact body that shows Kyren's influence. The second is silver-grey with tan stripes and lighter-boned. Mira exceeded both her parents' sizes because the genetic distance between Chenara's line and Darit's hill breed produced hybrid advantage, and because she was a singleton with full gestational and nutritional resources. Lev names the foals before anyone else thinks to. Kovi and Darek. Kyren writes two things on the interface. The first is about Kovi's eyes. The second is about how large Darek will be by spring. Then he goes back to watching. Tane arrives ahead of the Kiswi expedition and stops at the gate when he sees the foals. That evening he and Jukrit talk about Branjo's research and what it means to stand on a world that proves a dead Bakiswi right. Before Tane goes to bed he asks to visit the barn once more. Kyren turns his interface toward Tane and writes one line. But with the expedition twelve days away and the portal waiting beneath Kigorith — what will Tane find on the other side?
Keywords
male 1,299,346, female 1,182,594, feral 106,974, squirrel 33,182, dragoness 14,127, birth 4,008, furred dragon 2,015, implied incest 1,674, cub clean 279, gheval 76, ottertaur 7
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 5 days, 23 hrs ago
Rating: General
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