A New Beginning

Chapter 34

It took me a few seconds to spot Mom and Dad among the crowd that was rapidly dispersing into the trees.

"See you tomorrow, Abby!"

"Tomorrow? What about tonight?"

"It's supposed to rain most of the afternoon and evening."

"Ugh. I guess that means another boring afternoon in the burrows. I'm going to stash some fruit so I don't have to get wet later. You may have a heat lamp, but I don't have any way to warm back up. No one likes to cuddle when you're cold, either."

"Yeah, Dirk objects too. Although he squawks pretty good if you can catch him by surprise."

Her mirth rolled across the mindlink. "I'll have to keep that in mind in case I ever catch him sunbathing."

She flew over to her mother, and both of them disappeared into the canopy as they went in search of breakfast.

Mom and Dad waited just long enough to make sure that Dirk and I were following before they flew towards the trees. The direction they chose confused me – this wasn't the way back to the meadow where we left Taureen and Aeria.

Movement ahead made me squeak as I realized why we were going this way. "They followed us?"

Mom glanced back at me in amusement. "They always watch our Morning Song. Are you really that surprised that they followed us out here?"

My ear tufts went back in embarrassment – it hadn't even occurred to me that Taureen and Aeria would follow us through the trees. They had likely followed our tracking devices, but how they had covered so much distance so quickly was a riddle for another day.

Instead of landing on their shoulders, we flew near them as they began jogging back to the main walking trails. We headed back home to have some breakfast and get ready for the rest of the day.

I was certain of one thing, though – I wanted to come back another day to sing with the flock.

       The rain began falling not long after lunchtime. From the darkness of the clouds, it wasn't going anywhere any time soon. I rustled my wings unhappily when the wind blew a few cold drops past Aeria's umbrella.

This open section of the sidewalk had nothing to stop the wind or the rain. The guards' armor must have been waterproof and warm since they didn't seem overly bothered by the wet stuff falling out of the sky. Dad didn't seem to mind the rain, although even his wings were folded tighter to his body than usual.

It was a relief when the training building came into view. I waited impatiently as we went inside and walked through the hallways to reach the airlock doors.

The doors slid open, and I took a deep breath. Nothing stood out. My eyes scanned the empty corridors as we walked through them. Despite my best attempts, I couldn't smell anything out of place. No hint of sicora or crawler. Not even a nebulous whiff of a ktari.

We rounded corner after corner as the suspense built, but I couldn't figure out what was here. I began focusing on my eyes and ears as well as my nose – not that it helped any. The next corridor was quite strange, with odd symbols on the walls and weird spinning decorations hanging from the ceiling at various heights.

A quick glance at Dad showed that he didn't know what to make of it either. The corridor only got stranger as we went farther. A couple of the decorative twirlers above flashed with bright lights, and some were larger than I was. Without any wind, I wasn't sure how they were moving.