The birds woke them again in the morning. The storm had passed in the night and now Hanthran shone brightly. Soft yellow rays reflected off the stones in the bend of the cave. Orion stretched inside his sleeping bag. "Oh, man," he said groggily, "what a night. Thank the stars for this cave. We would have been in real trouble without it."
Fel and Celli began to stir.
Orion got up slowly and made his way to the entrance of the cave. A beam of light from Hanthran shone through the overhanging greenery to where he stood. He felt for his necklace. It was still there. He lifted it into the light – its beauty seemed to have increased overnight. He could not remember seeing such a deep, brilliant yellow. As he gazed at it he felt something alter inside of him, like a chemical reaction. He felt his thoughts become clear and focused; whatever anxieties he had had about the future were now in a distant partition of his brain.
The pilot did not take time to analyze this phenomenon, for now, he simply accepted it. He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. He felt better, more whole, healthier than he had felt at any time in the last five years; since his father had taken his Journey to the Stars.
He placed his pendant under his jacket and shuffled back to where Celli and Fel were stirring, attempting to extricate themselves from their sleeping bags. "We better get going," he said, "we can still make the afternoon transport if we leave now." Orion started packing his sleeping bag. "Anybody have any dreams?"
"After I fell asleep," Fel said, "I didn't even hear the thunder."
Celli was quiet.
"What is it?" Orion asked, kneeling down on the ground beside her.
Celli smiled, sitting cross-legged inside her sleeping bag, her hair in tangles. She sat back, leaned against the rock wall and looked at the sphere. "I don't know," she started, "it was kind of confusing, most of it; but in one part..." she tried to remember exactly what happened. "Yes," she said as a scene flashed in her mind, "I met someone; we all did." She paused.
"Did he say anything?"
"It was a girl – older than me. She had blond hair and light eyes," she chuckled; "she was dressed in the strangest clothes, like something I saw once in a history chip."
Orion's eyes grew wide.
"What?" Celli said.
"Celli," Orion said slowly, "was she wearing a white shirt and a colorful vest?"
"Yes," Celli answered, surprised.
"And did she have a long skirt and sandals made of animal skin?"
Celli looked at him in shock. "How...?" she started, "that's exactly how she was dressed."
"I saw her too," Orion said, sitting on the ground in front of her, "first, in the dream where I found this cave, then in a dream the next night. In my dreams though," Orion went on, "she seemed to be in her tenth cenro." He pondered the similarities. "Maybe they're different people."
"Maybe," Celli said.
"What else happened?" Orion asked.
Celli strained into the darkness of the cave as she tried to remember more. "She didn't say anything," Celli fidgeted with her fingers, "she just looked at me." Her face relaxed. "She smiled the most beautiful smile; like she was trying to tell me something... without words." Celli looked back to Orion. "I think she was trying to tell me that everything is going to be alright, that it will work out."
"That what will work out?" Fel asked.
"I don't know, exactly... it was a good feeling though, maybe it was a good omen," she looked hopefully at the boys, "after all, we both saw her."
Orion glanced at the sphere. "I sure hope it's a good omen, because there was still that bad omen that I've been dreaming about."
"Well, so far nothing bad has happened," Fel said, "except the storm, and even then, we managed okay."
"Yeah," Orion said, "well, maybe she is some kind of a good omen then." He glanced at his wrist-com. "We better get going. We have some extra time, but the storm may have made havoc of the trail; it'll probably take us longer than it did to get here."
They stuffed their sleeping bags into their backpacks, dragged them out into the forest, and began their return journey, walking away from the cave and the sphere with many questions and no real answers of any kind.
They made their way up the slippery side of the crater and into the ancient forest, heading back to Colang-Brez. Orion was right – the trail was a disaster. Large branches blocked the way and even whole trees lay uprooted along the path.
"Wow, that was a major storm." Fel said. "I don't think they've had anything like that out here for quite a while."
"Probably caused damage in Colang-Brez – the resorts," Orion guessed.
After three mec-lan of picking their way along the trail, they stopped to take a break. They sat down on a fallen tree and took out a box of poglo sticks.
"Hey, Orion," Fell said, "you got any water?"
"No. Celli?"
She shook her head as she ate.
"No water," Fel said in an over-dramatic voice, "and we're out here in the middle of nowhere!"
Orion chuckled as he activated the map on his wrist-com, "let's see... there's got to be a stream around here somewhere." He furrowed his brow as he studied the map. "Wait a minute; this can't be right."
"What?" Fel asked.
"Well, according to this... we're way off course!" Orion sighed. "I'm really sorry guys, I thought that we were following the trail." He cursed under his breath.
"Wasn't much of a trail," Fel consoled him.
Orion bit his lip in frustration. "I should have checked my com a long time ago, I just assumed..."
"It's okay," Celli said, touching his arm. "We're okay. Even if we have to spend another night out here, which..." she looked around at the tall trees stretching up to an azure sky, "I actually wouldn't mind."
"Well, from where we are now," Orion said, having gotten over the worst of his frustration, "I don't think we'll make it back to Colang-Brez before nightfall anyway." He looked at the map again, "We can make it most of the way though. Here... the quickest route is through those hills." He looked at his comrades. "It'll be a bit of a climb, but... it sure is shorter than going around them, see?" Orion showed them the display on his wrist-com. "Here we are, here. We followed the trail till about... here I guess, then we started going east instead of north-east." Orion rolled his eyes. "I should have checked!"
Fel laughed. "Forget it," he slapped Orion on his shoulder, "why cut out vacation short? Hey, we actually found what we were looking for, how impossible is that?"
"Yeah," Orion said, realizing again how unlikely that was. He reached up and felt his pendant to make sure it was really there.
***
Traveling through the hills was more taxing than they had anticipated. The trail, which was clear when they had begun, faded and died as they reached the top of the first small hill. After that they were forced to plough through the forest and over rocks and logs with no trail at all. Their primary goal was a point in the center of the hills marked as 'midpoint' on the map. By the time they made it to 'midpoint', the highest elevation in the area, Hanthran was nearing the horizon.
Orion wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Whew," he exclaimed, "we made it!" He looked back the way they had come, then at what lay ahead. "At least it'll be easier now," he said. "It's mostly downhill from here on."
"Should we climb down now?" Celli asked.
Orion shrugged, "why not, what do you think Fel?"
"It'll probably be too dark to travel in a mec-lan; and it'll take a lot longer than that to make it to level ground. We'll have to climb up and down a few times: look. And no trail." He glanced around the hilltop. "I say we play it safe, camp up here."
"I agree," Celli said. She did not feel, at this point, inspired to trek further.
Orion nodded. Every muscle in his body, it seemed, protested against progress and demanded rest.
The three of them put down their packs and sat on the large smooth rocks protruding from the ground. There were no trees growing on the top of the hill, only hundreds of large smooth rocks with tough thick grass growing between them. Orion indulged his fantasies for a moment and imagined they could be sitting atop an unimaginably large, gaviol beast – the rocks being its scales.
They looked down into the valley – lush green forest spread out before them and reached the horizon. To the east they could make out the Keptal mountain range partially shrouded in clouds. They watched together as Hanthran made contact with the horizon, then slowly dipped behind the forest to the west, taking the day with it, causing time to lag, preparing a backdrop for the stars.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" Celli broke the silence, "everything is so unpredictable out here. We don't have the same control as we do in the com-zone."
"We aren't familiar with it." Fel observed. "The people who live in the agri-zones are closer to it. Maybe there really are outlanders who live disconnected from the com altogether."
Orion felt the hairs on his neck rise when Fel said that. "You really think there are?" he asked.
"I've heard rumors."
They watched the sky to the west; the after-glow of the sunset lingered in the few small clouds causing them to gradually change color as the world transitioned into night. They watched for an hour before they realized that it was becoming dark, then they rose from the rocks upon which they had been sitting, stretched, and looked to the east. The Keptal range was still visible, highlighted by the last glimmer of light against a background of black sky with stars. Mountains and stars.
They turned to the task of setting up their tent, slowly fitting the supports into slots and raising the fabric into a dome. They moved slowly, unhurriedly, flowing with the pace of the things that surrounded them: the clouds, the turning of Ophilion, the colors, the stars. To do anything in haste would be to violate the trust they had gained with Nature in the last sixty hours.
They quietly rolled out their sleeping bags. When everything was set, they turned out their search-beams and closed their eyes.
They were not alone on the hilltop. The permanent residents were there - all around them; aware of them - watching them. They were a novelty on the wild hilltop.
Their hearing was acute; they heard the sound of scurrying in the grass around their tent, small creatures running through the thick grass, but nothing touched their tent. They heard a call from the night sky - a shriek from a night bird, but they were not afraid. They heard the scurrying again, this time in one direction; the small creatures were running fast, then they were gone. Next they heard the stealthy footfalls of a larger creature, crunching the thick, short grass. They heard the sound of sniffing near their tent, but nothing touched their tent; a local resident was only curious. A crunch and a jump and sharp claws clicking on the rock nearest them. Licking: tongue on fur. A lazy yawn and a pleasant grumble, then silence.
The creature outside was friendly; so were the small creatures, they were friendly, too. The hilltop, the night, the stars – all friendly.
Orion was tempted to sit up and open the magnetic strip and see who was lying there on the rock beside them, but he felt that that too would be a violation of trust. It must be a banjute, he reasoned. And the smaller things, they might be hiebra-luren; forest luren. The banjute was still there, Orion could sense it. Then, as a confirmation, he heard it move on the rock; soft fur on stone - the click and scrape of a few claws as it found a more comfortable position. Is it guarding us from danger? Orion thought, or guarding its territory from us? Whatever the case, the boy felt an affinity with the creature just outside their tent, which he believed to be a banjute.