52 (Short Stories) in 52 (Weeks)

Story #1 - Final Draft - Always Falling Home

'Verse: Rabbit'verse
Length/Rating: 1,210 words, PG, Gen
Pairings/Warnings: None
Summary: Every First has to learn how to fall.

The girl walked through the cafeteria doors alone, dressed in ill-fitting trainee overalls and still buried under the numb feeling that none of this was really happening. Her morning had been full of corporate lectures and paperwork, medical screenings and hurried introductions. It was rare to get a candidate from the last quarter screenings and rarer still to get one from a colony world, so no one had been prepared when she arrived.

They'd spent the morning telling her how special she was and how her talents were vital to the academy's mission... and all Belig could think of was how much she wanted to go home.

If she'd known it was a test she would have failed it, but the academy has learned to outwit its candidates. No one wants to be a First. No one sane, at least.

She picked up a tray of food from smiling cheerful people who thankfully didn't try and make conversation, and headed for the furthest table she could see.

The cafeteria was immense, starting near the doors with the normal plastic and metal trappings of civilization and then opening out into a giant indoor wilderness. Tall glass ceilings arced overhead, built carefully so once you were in among the trees it was easy to forget you were still inside.

Because the academy was built for humans and people who weren't quite human anymore.

She put her food down on a wooden picnic table and then abandoned it to curl up against the trunk of one the trees, cradled in its nest of roots. And there, in the bit of the building that still reminded her of home, the numbness lifted and everything she'd been trying so hard not to think about suddenly became real.

She cried until she had no more tears and only towards the end, when she was sobbing in hiccuping gasps for air, did she notice the woman slowly working her way over to her table in a sideways shuffle.

It should have looked awkward, but the odd rocking movements seemed fluid and effortless. The woman was moving backwards at an angle where she could just see behind her, but without ever looking directly at her destination. When she was within a few feet she stopped and shifted her weight from side to side in the same calm slow rhythm.

Belig wiped away her tears and tried to swallow down her hiccups, without much success. "Hello?" she asked, looking over without getting up. The woman wore the jumpsuit of a First, a darker version of Belig's trainee gear, but it was battered and worn and the jacket's right arm was covered in mission patches.

The woman rolled her shoulders and then slowly turned her head so their eyes could just barely meet, still rocking. When the girl didn't object the woman smiled and shifted slightly more, still carefully not facing the girl, and she moved to the bench on the far side of the table.

"Comfort sharing, close come I?" The words were halting and the woman mimed putting down her tray of food across, but not close to the girl's.

Belig nodded, wiping away tears that weren't there. "S'okay." She started to reluctantly stand and the woman stomped a foot, startling her.

"Stay, stay, calm, breath first." The woman frowned for a moment, "Word shapes ill-fitting, but rest." She settled onto the bench, still softly rocking. "First Vahaann-- Vanhanen, I." The woman stumbled over the name and made a sharp clicking sound, frustrated with herself.

"I'm--" but the girl wasn't herself anymore, she was First Belig now. "First Belig." She tried to ignore the woman's head bob as she caught the hesitation. "You just got back, didn't you." Belig asked, relieved that she could stay sheltered by the tree. Somehow the rough bark against her skin felt safe, even with the worst fears of her future sitting across from her.

"Hah!" Vanhanen grinned, still not quite looking at her. "Back enough. Word shapes too brittle, hard to hold, but mended soon enough." That seemed to be the limit of her small talk reservoir and the woman dug into her food, quietly eating and looking out into the woods.

After a while Belig felt better enough to start on her own food and the two ate slowly and quietly together.

"Was it hard, the mission you just came back from?" The girl asked, studying the wood-grain as it wound along the tabletop. The dance of not quite looking at each other felt natural now and she was learning the rhythm of the older woman's movements. Breath in to the left and pause and shift--

The woman touched her cheek to her shoulder and looked away in one rolling movement. "Yes." Vanhanen said sadly.

"Did it work?" Because that was the whole point, the whole reason the Firsts went out and came back broken. They were learning how to be alien enough that the aliens would finally notice them too. It was what they would send her out to do and it terrified her, because sometimes the Firsts never came back at all.

"No." The rocking stopped and Vanhanen was heavy and still in her seat. "Nothing." For a moment the woman was motionless and then she reached down and pulled out a faded photograph from her jumpsuit and handed it carefully over to the girl.

The picture was of a small band of creatures that looked roughly like giant sloths, tiger-striped and half hidden in the forest behind them. Belig handed the photo back just as carefully and Vanhanen tucked it away again.

"Word shapes too far hidden," the woman said bitterly. "If at all."

Belig blinked, because it had never occurred to her that the survey results might sometimes be wrong on sentience and she asked without thinking "Are you sure?"

Vanhanen laughed tiredly, but in a friendly tone. "For me, yes. But shapes for others?" She shrugged. "When mended enough, I report. Then someone falls again, or not." She touched her cheek to her shoulder again and looked to the sky.

"Is it always that hard?"

"No," the woman looked down. She was trying harder to look directly at Belig, to win back that morsel of humanity, but resumed her rocking. "Some falls-- memories like stars, beautiful, bright." Vanhanen said fondly, "But distant once mended."

"What about the ones who don't mend." Belig knew you weren't supposed to talk about the Firsts who never came home, the ones so far gone into the alien that there was no way back from those feral mindsets, but she was scared and she wanted to know.

To her amazement Vanhanen grinned. "Firsts' Secret, listen, listen." She gestured Belig close and the girl leaned in, confused. "We fall, we break, but not broken. Find good place, home place, fall hard home. Stay." She laughed at the girl's reaction and sat back. "Learn, learn, watch, but someday home calls... heart must listen."

Belig had no more questions after that and they sat together companionably in silence until the trainers finally came looking for her.

And years later when she found home in a pack of creatures that weren't quite foxes and weren't quite birds, she followed her heart and fell for good.