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What the Door Shows
what_kiswi_holds.doc
Keywords male 1300761, female 1183423, anthro 256004, feral 106728, bear 54364, squirrel 33217, forest 17019, dragoness 13839, mongoose 3983, furred dragon 2029, shaman 470, cub clean 281, gheval 77, iskret 14
What Kiswi Holds



A Silvania Story — SY 4531, Deep Winter

~ I ~
Winter on the Pica River was a damp cold of a river town, the kind that got into stone walls and stayed there. The Pica ran slow and dark through Riverside Market in winter, carrying ice at its edges, keeping its center open. On Willow Ridge Lane the whisperwood had gone bare and the catwalk was frosted most mornings and the household moved between house and barn with the efficiency.
Veverka came for dinner on a Thursday, which she had been doing since the academy opened. She came through the gate, and Tassa, who had been watching from the window, was at the door before she reached it.
"Grandma Vev," Tassa said.
"Tassa," Veverka said.
This exchange happened every Thursday ritualistically.
Wena and Quarren had come too — from across town, where Wena had been living since summer. She arrived with her documentation notes, and Quarren came behind her, navigating a kitchen doorway he had learned to manage at an angle due to his large size.
Lev was already at the table. Tarvek, who Nesori had brought over, was on the floor near Kyren's terminal investigating block of wood that Khari had given him.
"Tell them about Kiswi," Tassa said to Jukrit, before he had sat down. "You keep not telling and I want to know."
"I've told you parts of it," he said.
"Tell the whole thing," she said. "With everyone here."
He looked around the table. Everyone was looking at him, agreeing with Tassa.
"All right," he said. "From the beginning."

~ II ~
"The first thing," he said, "is the wind."
He had thought about how to describe Kiswi and had decided to start with the wind, which was what made the planet that was not finished rebecoming itself.
"The equatorial band, the habitable strip between the tropic lines, sits between two ice sheets that are still largely intact. The poles are still frozen. The ice is retreating but slowly, and as it retreats it generates what the survey team called katabatic winds. Cold dense air accumulates on the ice sheets above and flows down into the warmer valleys below. The temperature differential between the ice and the open ground drives it. You can be standing in reasonable warmth and then a katabatic wind comes off the ice and the temperature drops twenty degrees in under a minute."
"Twenty degrees," Wena said.
"The survey team had instruments. I had a healer's assessment and the physical experience of it." He paused. "It was very fast."
"What does it feel like?" Lev said.
"Cold and sudden. The air coming off the ice has a smell to it, mineral and clean and nothing like anything I've encountered on Pansilva. It's not unpleasant."
"What else?" Tassa said.
"Fog. Persistent fog in the zones where the warm moist air from the equatorial band meets the cold ground near the ice margin. When we moved toward the transitional zone the visibility dropped to a few meters. The survey team had been through it before and knew how to navigate. I stayed close to Wena."
Wena, across the table, looked up from her notes. "He did," she confirmed. "Very close."
"The precipitation is heavier than anything I expected," Jukrit said. "The warming atmosphere carries more moisture than a stable cold world would. When it rains on Kiswi it rains thoroughly. The meltwater has no drainage system yet. The permafrost is still releasing and the ground is saturated. There are shallow lakes forming across the low areas that weren't there when we first opened the terminal. The pre-evacuation Bakiswi records documented the hydrology as it was a thousand years ago. Tane's father Branjo spent forty years building models from those records, predicting what the thaw would produce. The models suggested this. Seeing it is different from reading the models. "
Quarren wrote on his interface and turned it toward the table. It said: What does the ground feel like to walk on.
"Unstable in places," Jukrit said. "Where the permafrost is thawing beneath the surface, the ground gives slightly. The survey team marked the areas they had tested and warned us off the untested ones. There were sounds; deep creaking sounds from the ice sheets at night. The planet is still working out what it is going to be."

~ III ~
"Tell them about the things we saw," Raskon said. He was at the table's end, his cup in both hands. He had been quiet through the climate description. He had been there. The account was his to process too.
"The groundmoss first," Jukrit said. "Branjo documented the first-growth species — the ones that return when conditions allow. The groundmoss was the primary one. It covers the wet low areas in the equatorial band in a pale green that you can see from a distance. From the ground it is dense and living and when you press your hand into it you can feel the warmth it generates. It is doing the work of preparing the soil for everything that comes after it."
"Like Mowla's deepwort," Tassa said.
"Something like that," Jukrit said. "A pioneer plant. The first one willing to move into a place that is not yet ready and make it more ready by being there."
Tassa looked at this information with focused attention.
"In the wetter areas, near the meltwater margins, there are small plants that are not groundmoss. Low-growing, no more than two centimeters. Tane identified them from his father's records. They are the second wave; the ones that follow the groundmoss when the soil has enough organic matter to support them. They are very new. Some of them, Tane thought, may have germinated within the last season."
"Animals," Lev said.
"Two kinds," Jukrit said. "The first kind lives in the groundmoss itself. Small, very small, no larger than the end of my thumb, and fast. The survey team called them mossrunners for the documentation, which is not their Bakiswi name. They live in the moss, eat what the moss produces, and they were not there when the Bakiswi evacuated. They came from somewhere; Tane's father suspected there were populations in deep cave systems near the planet's geothermal zones, where the temperature stayed above freezing through the entire freeze. A thousand years in the dark. Now they are in the light."
"What do they look like?" Tassa said.
"Small and pale," Jukrit said. "Eyes very large for their body size. They have been in the dark for a long time. They did not seem alarmed by us. I don't think they had the category for us yet."
"What was the second kind?" Lev said.
"In the meltwater lakes," Jukrit said. "Something lives in them. We only saw it twice, and only briefly; movement under the surface of the shallow water, something with a body plan I couldn't identify from the glimpse I got. Branjo's records don't document anything in the surface water. Whatever it is, either it survived the freeze in a form no one recorded or it came from somewhere else."
The table was quiet for a moment.
"Somewhere else," Quarren wrote.
"The portal network has six destinations," Jukrit said. "Kiswi is one of them. We don't know how long the portal was in use before the builders stopped using it. We don't know what came through. Or when."

~ IV ~
Raskon spoke then, which surprised no one at the table.
"The settlements," he said.
Jukrit looked at him.
"Tell them about the settlements," Raskon said. "What we found."
"We found two," Jukrit said. "The equatorial band has six documented Bakiswi settlement sites from the pre-evacuation records. The ice had retreated from two of them. The structures are intact beneath the surface ice; the cold preserved them. When Tane's council cleared the first layer of surface ice from the nearest settlement's central structure, what they found inside was—" He paused. "A room. A table. Objects on the table. A thousand years old and in the cold dark and entirely as they were left."
Nobody spoke.
"One of the council members found her family name on a storage container in the second settlement," Raskon said. "Carved into the material. She had the name from a genealogy record. She had never expected to see it on an object."
He stopped.
"I am not Bakiswi," he said. "My government knew about this world and said nothing for forty-two years. I have thought about how to hold both of those things and I am still thinking about it. But standing in that settlement, I understood what was kept there. What was waiting." He looked at his cup. "I am glad we went."
Tassa was watching Raskon with complete attention.
"Did you take anything?" she said.
"Nothing," Jukrit said. "The council's protocol was clear. Document. Photograph. Leave everything as it was. Nothing is removed until the Bakiswi diaspora as a whole has decided what the settlements mean and what should be done with them."
"That's right," Tassa said.
"Yes," Jukrit said. "It is."

~ V ~
Veverka had been quiet through most of the Kiswi account. She was not an inattentive listener, but she had come to dinner with something else on her mind and was waiting for the right moment to say it.
The moment arrived after the table had been cleared and Tarvek had fallen asleep on the floor near Kyren's terminal.
"I have something to tell you," Veverka said.
The table looked at her.
"The academy is in good hands," she said. "Quarren leads the feral studies program. Raskon has the interplanetary curriculum. Wena manages the archive. Aldren's daughter Seni is finishing her first year and has already begun assisting with the second cohort." She looked at Jukrit. "I built it. It is built. It does not need me in it every day."
"What does it need?" Jukrit said.
"Less of me," she said. "And more of the people I trained."
Tassa looked at Veverka. "Grandma Vev," she said. "Where are you going?"
Veverka looked at her granddaughter. "The Nowshoy Forest," she said. "Across the Pica."
"That's further," Tassa said.
"Yes," Veverka said. "But not far. I can cross the Pica in half an hour. I am not disappearing. I am going where I can do my own work without using the energy I should be putting into it on managing an institution that no longer needs managing."
"What work?" Lev said.
"Shaman work," Veverka said. "The kind that requires a forest. The kind I have been putting aside for two years while I built something that needed to be built." She looked at the table. "Nowshoy Forest has things in it that I have been meaning to investigate since before any of you were born. I am not getting younger. It is time."

~ VI ~
Jukrit walked her home through the winter dark afterward.
The Pica was audible from the lane; low and slow and ice-edged. In summer the river was loud and present. In winter it became something you heard rather than saw.
"Nowshoy Forest," Jukrit said.
"Yes."
"How long have you been planning this?"
"Since before the academy," she said. "The academy came first because it needed to. The forest will come next because it will always be there."
He walked beside her. "Tassa will miss Thursday dinners."
"I will still come for Thursday dinners," Veverka said. "Across the Pica is not across the world, Jukrit. I will come when it matters and I will send word when I cannot. That is how it works."
"She'll want to visit."
"I expect so," Veverka said. "Nowshoy Forest is good for a curious child. There are things in it that would interest her."
"What kind of things?"
"Shaman things," Veverka said. "You can ask me again when she's older and I'll give you a better answer."
He looked at his mother. She was sixty-one years old and she walked through the winter dark like someone who had places to be.
"Be careful in the forest," he said.
"I have been careful in forests for fifty years," she said. "Go home, Jukrit. It's cold."
He went home.
Behind him the Pica moved in the dark, slow and certain, carrying Riverside Market's winter downstream.

~ VII ~
Tassa was dropped off by Noraxia to see Veverka the morning of the move.
She came in dragon form, which was her cold-weather preference. She sat in Veverka's yard while Veverka finished the last of the packing.
"How long until you're settled?" Tassa said.
"A week," Veverka said. "Perhaps two."
"And then I can visit?"
"And then you can visit."
Tassa watched her grandmother close the last box. "Grandma Vev," she said.
"Yes."
"The mossrunners on Kiswi," Tassa said. "Daddy said they didn't know much about them yet."
"Yes," Veverka said.
"Do you think they know the world changed?"
Veverka stopped what she was doing and looked at her granddaughter.
"I think," she said, "that they know the dark ended. Whether they have a word for that is a different question."
Tassa considered this. "The Nowshoy is dark in winter," she said.
"Yes."
"But it ends."
"It always ends," Veverka said.
She picked up her last bag. She put her hand on Tassa's head, which required reaching up slightly because Tassa in dragon form was not as small as she was a year ago.
"Come across the Pica when you're ready," she said. "The forest will have things to show you."
She went through the gate. Tassa watched her go. She watched until Veverka reached the corner and turned it and was no longer visible.
Then she sat in the empty yard for a while, in the winter morning, and let it be what it was. Noraxia came back to pick her up.
~ VIII ~
Winter settled over Riverside Market with persistence. The Pica ran slow. The whisperwood was bare. The barn was warm and inhabited and the household moved with its usual routines.
Kovi and Darek were growing. They were growing faster than made sense to Jukrit's healer's eye, which he attributed to the hybrid advantage that had already expressed itself in Mira and appeared to be expressing itself in the next generation. Kyren monitored them like the proud father that he was. Mira was a present and attentive mother.
The academy's winter cohort had fifteen students. Wena's latest correspondence noted that the symbol-interface study space was at capacity on three mornings a week and that Khari needed to add two more stations.
Across the Pica, in the Nowshoy Forest, Veverka was settling in. She sent word after ten days: the forest is what I remembered. I will see you Thursday.
She came Thursday and ate dinner. She told them things about Nowshoy Forest that she would not elaborate on. Veverka know Tassa may ask about those things when she decided the time was right.
Kiswi, meanwhile, was thawing.
Not quickly. The planet did not hurry. The groundmoss spread another few meters at the margins, and the meltwater lakes deepened by increments. Somewhere in the deep geothermal caves the mossrunners went about their business in the new light, and the thing in the meltwater lakes went about its business in the cold shallow water. Branjo's models continued to be correct.
A world that had been frozen for a thousand years was becoming something.
It was going to take time. That was fine. It had already waited a thousand years.
Time was not the difficulty.

— End of Episode —
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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The Crossing
What the Door Shows
Jukrit tells about his experience visiting the planet Kiswi through the interplanetary portal. He gets a little sciencey. Also, I decided that Veverka should move to a place called Nowshoy forest for continuity reasons, since I recently rediscovered an old story I wrote a decade ago where she lives there and want to be consistent. Also, the name Pica River was added for that same reason. In previous episodes, it was just vaguely called a river without giving it a name.
Keywords
male 1,300,761, female 1,183,423, anthro 256,004, feral 106,728, bear 54,364, squirrel 33,217, forest 17,019, dragoness 13,839, mongoose 3,983, furred dragon 2,029, shaman 470, cub clean 281, gheval 77, iskret 14
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 4 days, 18 hrs ago
Rating: General
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