~ I ~ The morning of departure Khari made coffee. He made it with attention and without fuss, the kitchen filling with the smell of it while the household moved around him. Bags packed. Terminals checked. The last round of Jukrit's medical kit being assessed for what might be needed on a world that had been empty of people for a thousand years and whose specific conditions were not yet fully known. Lev appeared at the kitchen doorway. He looked at Khari. He looked at the coffee. He appeared to be assembling a sentence. "Is this the kind that—" he began. "No, Lev," Khari said, preventing a civet stereotype was going to be said regarding the making of coffee. Lev accepted this and went to find something to eat. Kex, who was sitting at the kitchen table, looked into his cup. "He read about it," Kex said. "Everyone reads about it," Khari said. "I've been hearing that question since I was twelve." "And?" "And the coffee is better this way," Khari said. "This is the end of the discussion." Kex drank his coffee and did not pursue it, which was one of his better qualities. Jukrit came through and took a cup without stopping. Noraxia, in anthro form, took one and held it with both hands and looked out the window at the morning. Wena came through with her documentation kit over one shoulder and her notes already out. Raskon came through and took a cup and stood near the door, which was where he stood when he was thinking about something he had not finished thinking about yet. Tane was already outside.
~ II ~ The farewell happened on Willow Ridge Lane, which was not a large street and was not built for the number of people currently on it. Tane's two council representatives had been joined by three others who had arrived overnight, and the expedition's full party — Jukrit, Noraxia, Tane, Raskon, Wena, Vethran, and Harvet's four-person documentation team — made the lane feel briefly like a market day. Nesori watched from the catwalk above. She had Tarvek on her hip. She did not come down. Jukrit looked up at her before they left. She looked back at him without asking for input. "I'll bring him back," Jukrit said. "I know," she said. Kex and Khari were at their gate. Veverka was at hers. She looked at Jukrit with assessment that she had never put into words. "Go," she said. He went. Tassa stood in the lane and watched until the transport disappeared. Then she turned back to the house. Tarvek, whom Nesori had brought down after the transport left, was standing on the lane, still conducting ongoing negotiations with gravity. He looked at Tassa. She looked at him. This was, technically, the first time they had been in the same space without at least one adult actively present. Tarvek sat down. He appeared to have decided this. Tassa shifted to dragon form, considered this decision, and sat down beside him.
~ III ~ The journey to Kigorith took a day. Noraxia flew with Jukrit and Wena. The others traveled by ground transport, which meant they arrived in the early evening to find the survey camp had been transformed. The Bakiswi had come. Not the two council representatives who had been staying at the house. Not the three who had arrived overnight. The word had moved through the diaspora network faster than anyone had tracked, and what was waiting at the Kigorith survey camp was somewhere between forty and fifty Bakiswi otterfolk; some of whom were mixed hybrids with other furfolk types, including in the ottertaur configuration of Tane's heritage, some in smaller otter-furfolk form. Most had traveled for days and had not been willing to miss the opportunity. Harvet's team, which had been managing the site efficiently for months was not entirely prepared for the magnitude of the situation. "How many are there?" Jukrit said. "More than yesterday," Harvet said. The cave system entrance had a queue. A queue, in a cave system, in the middle of Kigorith. Several Bakiswi were communicating loudly in their own language. Three were at Harvet's documentation equipment asking questions the equipment was not designed to answer. One very elderly Bakiswi had sat down directly in front of the cave entrance and appeared to have no intention of moving until something happened. Tane moved through all of it patiently. He spoke to people in Bakiswi. He listened to what they said. He made his way steadily toward the cave entrance. Raskon stayed near Jukrit. Several Bakiswi had looked at the Iskret with expressions that were neither hostile nor neutral. He received these with the composed steadiness. "Are you all right?" Jukrit said. "Yes," Raskon said. "They have a right to look."
~ IV ~ Back on Willow Ridge Lane, Tarvek had a stone. He had found it on the lane's surface and had been examining it for ten minutes. Tassa watched him from her seated position in dragon form, her round body settled into the comfortable solidity. Tarvek held the stone out to her. She looked at it. She looked at him. She took it carefully. She turned it over in her smaller furfolk hands, having shifted without noticing, and looked at it seriously. Then she handed it back. Tarvek received this as a response. He appeared satisfied. He put the stone down and looked for another one. Nesori watched from the porch step, simply recording what she was seeing. Veverka came through the gate from next door and sat beside Nesori. "He's been doing that for ten minutes," Nesori said. "Yes," Veverka said. "Is that normal?" "For Tassa, yes," Veverka said. "She accepts things that are offered to her seriously. She always has. It is one of her better qualities." Nesori watched her son hand Tassa another stone. "He has never done that with anyone else," she said. "No," Veverka said. "I imagine not."
~ V ~ The cave system took two hours to navigate with fifty Bakiswi trying to navigate it simultaneously. Vethran, who had been at the site for months and knew every passage, organized the descent. He was a Cygnagon who had decided was determined to manage the chaos. He was not wrong. It took two hours rather than forty minutes, and the lower chamber was more crowded than it had ever been, and the ambient sound of fifty Bakiswi in a cave system was considerable, but they got there. The portal was warm. It was always warm. When the last of the Bakiswi reached the lower chamber the noise did not stop immediately but it changed. It became something different. It was the sound of people arriving at a place that had taken them a very long time to reach. The elderly Bakiswi who had been sitting at the cave entrance was now at the front. Tane was beside him. Jukrit did not know how this had happened. It seemed right. The elderly Bakiswi put his hand on the portal's surface. Jukrit watched his expression change. "He says it's warm," Tane said quietly. "Yes," Jukrit said. "He says it feels like it was waiting." Jukrit did not have anything to add to this that would improve it.
~ VI ~ Tarvek found the barn. Tassa had taken him to the barn door and no further. She understood that some spaces required permission and that cubs in barns required supervision. But the barn door, open, with the sounds and smells of the barn coming through it, was sufficient for Tarvek, who sat at the threshold and absorbed it. Kyren appeared at the stall. He looked at Tarvek. Tarvek looked at him. Kyren was the size of a large cat. Tarvek was already approaching that scale from the other direction. They were, briefly, the same order of magnitude. Tarvek made a sound. It was an Iskret sound that Tassa did not have the vocabulary for but that she correctly identified as positive, because Tarvek's ears were up. Kyren turned and went back to the stall. A moment later Kovi appeared at the stall opening; dark bay, four days old, already moving with more confidence than made immediate sense. She looked at Tarvek. He looked at her. Tassa watched all of this from behind Tarvek. "That's Kovi," she told Tarvek. Tarvek tried repeating “Kovi”. "Yes," Tassa said. "She's new."
~ VII ~ Tane went through first. This had been agreed from the beginning and was not contested. He was Bakiswi and his father had been right and he was going to stand on the world that proved it. Noraxia had pulled Jukrit aside an hour before, in the upper cave passage. "One of us should stay this side," she said. "Yes," he said. He had been thinking the same thing. "You have to go through. You're the healer. If something goes wrong on Kiswi they need you there." She looked at him. "I stay. Anything goes wrong on this side, I'm here." "You flew us here to watch from the cave entrance," he said. "I flew you here because you needed flying," she said. "This crossing belongs to the Bakiswi. I can be present for it without going through it." He knew she was right. He also knew what it cost her to say it. "Next time," he said. "Next time," she said. "Go." Now she stood at the back of the lower chamber, in anthro form, arms folded, watching. Tane pressed the activation points and the portal opened. Cold air came through, and the pale Kiswi afternoon, and the smell of ice-melt and groundmoss. The Bakiswi in the lower chamber made a sound that was not quite language. Tane stood at the threshold for three seconds. Then he went through. The chamber was very quiet. He came back ninety seconds later, not crying. "The groundmoss," he said. "It's further than it was. It's been spreading since we opened the terminal." Nobody said anything. "My father's propagation models," Tane said. "They're correct. Down to the distribution pattern." The elderly Bakiswi at the front made a sound. Several others responded. Tane listened. "He says," Tane said, to Jukrit, "that he would like to go through now." "Yes," Jukrit said. "Of course." The elderly Bakiswi went through. Then the two council representatives. Then the others, in groups, orderly now unlike the way they had been in the cave system. The portal was not chaos. It was the thing they had come for and it deserved a different approach. Raskon waited until most of the Bakiswi had gone through. Then he looked at Jukrit. "Ready?" Jukrit said. "Yes," Raskon said. They went through together. It was the first time Jukrit had gone off world.
~ VIII ~ On Willow Ridge Lane the afternoon settled into its autumn rhythms. Nesori made tea. Veverka stayed. Kex came back from the river with fish he had caught in the cold morning water and sat at Khari's kitchen table and let Khari deal with them, which was the division of labor they had arrived at over years. Tarvek had fallen asleep on the property’s edge. This had happened suddenly and completely, as it did with small cubs who had been engaged with something until they weren't. Nesori had carried him inside. Tassa was in the yard in furfolk form, sitting near Ashari's fence, not doing anything specific. She had been quiet since the transport left that morning. Lev came and sat beside her. "They'll come back," he said. "I know," she said. "Tarvek fell asleep on the lane," he said. "I know. He was tired." "Did you give him your stone back?" Tassa looked at him. "He gave it to you," Lev said. "You gave it back. Did he give it back to you?" "He kept the second one," Tassa said. "And gave me a different one." "Which one did you get?" She opened her furfolk hand. A flat grey river stone, smooth, ordinary, absolutely the same as any other river stone on Willow Ridge Lane. Lev looked at it. "Good trade," he said. "Yes," Tassa said. "I thought so." The two moons were already visible in the pale autumn afternoon, waiting for dark. Somewhere under Kigorith a portal was open and a world was being re-entered, and on Willow Ridge Lane a grey river stone was being kept because a small Iskret cub had offered it and that meant something.
A delegation is sent to the portal on Kigorith, and already nearly 50 Bakiswi are already eager to return to their recovering homeworld. Back at home, Tassa and Tarvek engage in some much needed cub bonding, essential to their development.
