Date Point: 14Y 1W AV, late morning
Peterson Residence, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
As though in answer to the prayers and desperate pleas of children, it seemed Santa had actually come through in a way this year that didn’t involve socks. There were, it seemed, no words in any language quite as cherished as ”School restarting after winter break will be delayed two weeks due to the ongoing refugee crisis.”
Or, at least, that’s the way it seemed to Gillian this morning, having had sufficient time to absorb the news delivered by her long-suffering father and express herself by zooming excitedly in several directions at once. Only minor breakage of household items had resulted, in the form of a lamp and a lone picture frame holding a photo of Gillian herself in first grade which she’d always hated anyway.
“Hey!!! HEY!” Samuel said finally, raising his voice and trying to forestall the amok-running that had ensued on delivery of the news.
“NOSCHOOLNOSCHOOLNOSCHOOLNOSCHOOL…”
“Hey! Quit with the bouncing on the sofa!”
At that, the pandemonium died down a little. Liina, for her part, sat and watched with a mixture of appalled amusement and disbelieving agreement evident in her ears.
“So, no school at all? For another two weeks???” Gillian asked.
“Yes. So, enough with the bouncing on the furniture. You break anything else, and I’m not gonna cover for you with your mother, young lady,” Samuel said in mock-severity. “One lamp and a picture frame, I can work with.”
Gillian looked abashed. “…Sorry, Papa. I’m just excited ‘cause NO SCHOOL!!!!”
“I know you are, Peanut. What we’re going to have to do is figure out something to keep you two…and your friends…busy for those two weeks. I’m not sure how we’re going to work that.”
“Oh. That’s right. You were on vacation, weren’t you?” Gillian asked, a little crestfallen.
“Yep. And Lord knows, your mother certainly can’t take any time off right now. I don’t even know when the next time she’ll get a day off is going to be.”
Outside Folctha, fields and woods were being cleared with little or no thought to longer-term planning, which was about as much of a departure from the norm for Folctha as could be imagined. Already-cleared land had been repurposed under a hasty eminent domain declaration of temporary but long-term use, going from farmland to hastily-laid-out refugee camp tent rows in grim line after line of shell-shocked Females and cubs. Gillian and Liina hadn’t been allowed to go out to the camp, of course, but both had spent the last several days being shooed outside to play while there was still good weather, and so had inevitably made some other friends who had either been there or had met someone who had.
No space in Folctha was spared the sudden influx of refugees. The Interfaith Center had actually been cleared out, once there had been room for the cubs there to go somewhere else. Perhaps not too unexpectedly, it had also become during the daytime a gathering place for the cubs that were still quartered at the Thing further up the main hill in Folctha as well as some of the cubs that lived in town with human families.
Samuel sighed. Hopefully, these two will be spared most of what’s going on. “Okay. So, Peanut…here’s the deal. I absolutely have to get out to the camp to finish up the first surveying I did a few days ago remotely. Your mother is going to be working until after dark today. You two are going to have to be pretty much on your own…” he trailed off, and held up a hand. “Hey. Stop bouncing a minute and listen.”
Gillian stopped, sitting on the couch where she’d been bouncing. “Sorry Papa.”
“As I was saying. You two are going to have to fend for yourselves for most of the day, so here’s the deal. I’m going to give you some money, and I want you both to check in with me every couple of hours, let me know what you’re doing, and where you’re going to be. I’m not going to pretend I can keep you two inside, and I’m not going to even ask that. Just be safe. Lots going on, okay?”
“Okay, Papa!” Gillian replied excitedly.
“Yes, Father,” Liina answered at the same time.
“Okay.” He gave them a stern look. “I’m trusting you, Peanut.”
“Yes, Papa!”
“Your phone is in my office. I put it on the charger last night, so it should be all charged up today. If the battery dies, you come home and plug it in, okay?” There were nods. “All right. Get something to eat, and then off you two go.”
The two girls rushed through gobbling down something out of the stasis fridge that was alternating bites of hot/cold and meat/not meat, washed it down with something to drink that neither paused long enough to taste. Grabbing Gillian’s phone, backpack with a few essentials, and the money from Samuel, they rushed out into the freedom of an unsupervised morning.
Gillian leading the way, they got as far as the first intersection with a cross street, then paused to take stock of what and where they were doing and going.
“What’s wrong?” Liina asked.
“Just trying to think of what to do ‘n where to go,” Gillian replied thoughtfully. “Cause I was thinking at first we could go down to the river front park, and then I thought no, because there’s no play structures down there, just lots of room to run around and stuff. And the Alien Quarter won’t really work, prob’ly, ‘cause, you know, there are so many refugees and we don’t wanna get in the way, and we should prob’ly stay away from the main portal, an’… Hey! I know! Let’s go down to downtown and walk ‘round! There’s always stuff to look at there, and everybody’s really nice and stuff. C’mon! This way!”
She set off at a trot, and then realized she was probably leaving Liina in the dust. She slowed to a walk, bouncing a little with each step. Liina trotted along next to her, her much shorter legs pumping furiously to keep up with the gangly human. They made their way out of the more residential area where Gillian’s family lived, down the hill towards the river, and into the bustling downtown district in short order.
Liina found herself looking at the sights overhead and around her. The sky glinted hazily far above, Folctha’s municipal shielding providing power and a measure of environmental protection at the same time. Along the street, brightly colored banners in yellows and blues waved gaily overhead in the soft breeze. Her nose twitched at the myriad unfamiliar smells of a human city as they walked, sorting scents one from another.
Gillian led the way, obviously familiar with where they were going. A quick cut through an alleyway led them out to a main thoroughfare obviously meant for foot traffic only. Fewer adults than she was used to seeing were evident, which was kind of what she had been expecting anyway. There were the people working here…and lots of kids… but the adults of Folctha were nearly one and all engaged with the refugees streaming in from Gao.
At the end of the street they were on, the Interfaith Center rose on a plot all its own. A low pale waist-high cream colored wall topped with a decorative wrought-iron railing surrounded it at the street, less as a barrier and more as a delineating this is where this place starts marker. The gate at the front was wide and inviting, twined with a native Cimbrean equivalent to ivy covered in teal-colored leaves. Between the fence and the building itself, odd-shaped paver stones led this way and that in a pathway between decorative rock, sand, and gravel gardens tended to daily by diligent orange-clad Starmind monks. To one side of the building, which Gillian knew from many visits, the bubbling of a water fountain came from a courtyard that led inside.
The main doors, made of wrought-iron bound English oak, stood open. At the center of the doors, a pattern common to both humans and Gaoians indicating “infinity”, formed a sideways double loop of polished copper, with fine cutouts of various religious symbols and the Starmind mon visible to those that might look closely. Notably, there was plenty of room for more. Coming from inside, Gillian and Liina could hear the noise of Gaoian cubs and Human children playing, generally running amok, and if one listened carefully, some level of bickering.
“Wow….,” Liina trailed off.
“What?” Gillian asked, pausing.
“I…your people use wood a lot for decoration. On my world, wood is really rare, and it’s really expensive.”
“Really? Wow. Yeah, we use it for lots of things. Papa showed me something we call a ‘flea market’ once where they had tons of these little carvings of wood, and there was all kinds….ebony wood, mahogany, teak, and I don’t even know what else. Lots of different colors, all really pretty. I’ve never seen them, but I guess on Earth there are places the trees go up so far you can’t even see the sky between them.”
Liina tried and failed to envision something like that, and shook her head. “We should go in.”
In they went, Gillian smiling at the sounds of (mostly) happy play, and Liina’s ears pricked up in excitement, curiosity, and nervousness. Within, the entrance hall held several Mothers watching the kids play. All three turned as they came in, giving them welcoming ear-tilts.
“Good morning,” said the closest.
“Good morning, Mother,” Liina replied automatically. “This is Gillian.”
“Hi, Gillian,” the Mother said. “I’m Mother Urma.”
“Hi,” Gillian said, suddenly a little shy. “I live here in town. Liina is staying with us, an’ my Papa gave us some money and said we could do whatever we wanted today, ‘long as we’re responsible.”
“Well then. You girls are welcome to go on in if you like,” Mother Urma said, with a gesture towards the main central room/amphitheater.
Needing no further invitation, they pushed the doors the rest of the way open and went inside. One corner had a large group of female cubs industriously doing something in a tight huddle, and most of the rest of the room had smaller groups of male cubs in a variety of mostly-physical pursuits. None of the furniture appeared to be in imminent danger of getting broken, probably because all of them clearly knew they were being monitored from the next room.
The group of Female cubs collectively looked up as they approached, and several scooted aside to make room. Gillian looked around as she sat cross-legged in a move Gaoian hips couldn’t possibly emulate, and realized she was the only human in the group. A quick look around the larger room found that there were actually no other humans in the room at all.
“This is Gillian,” Linna said, introducing her. She sat Gaoian-style next to Gillian.
“….Hi,” Gillian said, overcome suddenly by a wave of shyness.
A wave of chirruping greetings ran around the group in untranslated Gaoian. Gillian looked around the group uncertainly, trying to figure out what they were doing. It turned out to be a game of some sort, played with random-looking ceramic tiles that had one blank side, and a picture and inscribed character in loopy Gaoian script on the other. From their appearance, they’d obviously seen many years of use; most were a lopsided octagonal shape, but many had odd lumps here or there, or an upturned side, or the picture was off-center, or some other obvious defect since no two were alike. There was betting going on, utilizing interesting-looking rocks and pebbles which changed paws almost as often as the tiles themselves. It was all very confusing.
The game continued, most of the cubs far too invested in what they were doing to talk to the odd gangly human that sat watching them play. Gillian realized she didn’t mind. It was neat, and she’d never seen a game quite like this one except when Papa and Mama had some of their grown-up friends over.
Come to think of it…it was kind of like poker. Sort of. If poker involved everybody’s cards being face-up and a bunch of rocks.
Okay, well, maybe it wasn’t really like poker at all, but it was the closest thing she’d seen that she could think of. Almost suddenly, the game came to a frenzied end, with a great deal of fuzzy chittering and pointing at one another, and then all eyes turned to the two newcomers.
“Do you want to play with us?” one asked Gillian, ears up and pointed at her alertly.
“Yeah! Only, I don’t really know the rules for your game at all an’ it looks super complicated. But I brought one of my games, if you guys want. The rules are super easy to learn.”
There was much agreement. Everyone, it seemed, was interested in a human game.
“Okay!” Gillian said, taking off her backpack and setting it down with a thud. Liina’s ears went back in surprise.
“That…sounded heavier than it looks. What have you got in there, rocks?”
“Kinda! Only, not really,” Gillian replied. She fished around in the bottom of the bag and came up with a heavy-duty nylon net bag full to the brim of glass marbles. There was a collective ooooooo from the group as they all leaned in to see. Glints of light caught from the windows played this way and that, with the odd opaque marble inside the bag.
“So this is a really old human kids game,” Gillian explained importantly. “My Papa says kids have been playing this on Earth for thousands of years. I don’t know if I have enough for everyone, though…maybe five or six at a time?” She dug out a handful of spheres that were larger and somewhat fancier than most of the rest, setting them to the side and dug in again, grabbing a random handful, and set those down.
“‘Kay. So….we need a circle. ‘Bout this big across,” Gillian said, holding her hands out to indicate. The watching audience moved back, and one produced a suitable length of string from somewhere, which was quickly laid out. “So, you can play for keepsies, which won’t work today, ‘cause you gotta have your own marbles for that. We’ll play for quitsies, which means everybody…uh, me, that is….who brings marbles keeps their own, and anybody can quit at any time. ‘Kay?” There was some jostling to one side from several cubs that wanted to play first, which quickly degenerated into snarls and claws, and which dissipated magically upon the appearance of a Mother at the entryway.
“So,” Gillian went on once the commotion had passed, “You do it like this.” She demonstrated a flick, knocking two marbles out of the circle. “Now, if I was playing for keepsies against somebody else, then I’d keep those and go again. I got…lessee…five shooters, and a whole bag full of ducks here. Um. Those are the littler ones. Everybody got it?” She looked up to a circle of eyes glimmering with undisguised avarice. Gambling, it seemed, was a universal constant.
The shooter marbles were passed around after a quick flash of fuzzy paws in a sort of rock-paper-scissors analogue to determine who got to play first. Gillian was called upon to display how one was supposed to shoot, and the first several attempts by her new friends went mostly careening off to one side or the other. One cub actually flicked his shooter vertically too hard and got himself in the eye, which occasioned much (mostly) good natured chittering and teasing. It took a few tries, but all of them quickly picked it up, and less than ten minutes had gone by before an all-new group was sitting down. Gillian surrendered her shooter to another cub that was looking at her with sad eyes, and stood back with Liina, who had been with the first group since they’d come in together.
Gillian watched them play at marbles for a little while, and then nudged Liina. “What are they doing?”
The ‘they’ in question was a sizeable group on the other side of the room, of larger male cubs in their mid to late teens, clustered around a human tablet watching something involving loud noises, rhythmic shouting, and generally uncivilized noises.
“I have no idea,” Liina started, only to be interrupted by another, smaller female cub sitting next to her.
“They’ve been watching that human video all morning. It’s some kind of ceremonial dance, only they won’t let anybody else see it. Oh, and most of them are from the same creche in Wi Kao, so they think that makes them special or something,” the other cub said dismissively.
Gillian would have responded, had there not been a far more interesting interruption at that point. Outside the room, a man holding a guitar had been talking with several Mothers, and although she couldn’t hear him over the general din, the thrust of his it’ll be fine hand waving at them as he strolled through the double doorway was plain enough to see. She thought she recognized him; he was a regular here at the Faith Center, and she figured he probably actually worked here.
The man calmly walked in, wending his way to and fro around groups of cubs. Once to an open point up near one end of the big room, he swung his guitar around, and with a few experimental chords strummed, had well-nigh undivided attention from the room.
“Good morning,” he said with a nod to the room and the close-lipped smile of a human accustomed to living and working with non-humans. Chirruping little voices answered him in a pitter-patter of untranslated Gaoian from around the room.
“[I thought perhaps we could try singing together today,]” the man went on, this time in not-quite-flawless Gaoian. “[I’m Rabbi Aaron, and I’m very glad to meet all of you. Would you like to sing with me?]”
“What’s that he is holding?” Liina asked Gillian very quietly, leaning up to whisper in her ear.
“It’s just a guitar. Don’t you have guitars?” Gillian said back, trying to be just as quiet.
“What’s a ‘guitar’? I mean, I can see that, but…”
“It’s a musical instrument – strings and stuff. You don’t have those?”
Liina held up one paw and waggled her fingers, then stuck her claws out. “Our fingers aren’t like yours at the ends, remember?”
Up on the stage, Rabbi Aaron had knelt down and was talking to a small group of suddenly-shy young cubs, idly strumming the strings and changing the chords with his other hand. Behind them, most of the room strained to see the musical instrument and the human holding it, with cautious and speculative whispering going back and forth. Abruptly, Rabbi Aaron looked up and around the room, and realized everybody was looking at the guitar, and not him.
“[You’re all wondering what I have here?]” he asked, smiling again. “[This is called a guitar, and it is an instrument common to many cultures on our world. It has strings, as you can see,]” he strummed for illustration. “[And you can change the sounds of the strings with pressure up here.]” He changed chords several times with his other hand to demonstrate. “[On my world, we accompany this with other instruments, or vocals. Guitars take many shapes and can sound many different ways, but this one is my favorite because it doesn’t have anything added to it. It’s just the strings and the big chamber back here,]” he went on, thumping the body of the guitar. “[Nothing fancy.]”
One older cub near the end of his teen years sidled forward. “[Father Gyotin said that there were other musical instruments in here that we could try out, but we had to be careful because we could break some of them.]”
“[Oh, yes,]” Aaron went on. “[There are some that will look familiar to you, and many that won’t. Most of them are human instruments, in fact, although I think we’ve gotten some from your people and a few others. They’re in that storage room over there.]” He pointed at a door to one side of the room.
“[I thought many of you might like to learn some human songs meant for singing without much accompaniment,]” Rabbi Aaron said. “[What do you all think?]” There was much nodding and agreeable chittering at the idea of learning a real human song.
“[Okay, then. Let’s start with something simple! This is called ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’…]”
Many hours later, outside
“Your people have a lot of songs like that to sing along with,” Liina said.
The girls had decided to stay for a long time and sing along with everyone else. The lunch that had materialized an hour or two into the proceedings had also not hurt, but it was getting on towards the middle of the evening, and the sun had started to go down. Gillian had, thankfully, remembered to check with her Papa, who had said that if they were going to stay at the Interfaith Center, to just let him know when they were leaving, and that was fine. The pandemonium that had erupted, however, when the group of Wi Kao males had broken out the conga drums and started a haka, had inspired both of them to find something to do elsewhere.
“Boys,” they said at roughly the same time, for the umpteenth time that day, rolling their eyes at each other. Both giggled.
“Don’t your people have lots of songs, like, campfire songs ‘n stuff?” Gillian asked. She absently gnawed on a cheese stick that she’d surreptitiously stuck in a pocket earlier.
“We do, but they aren’t like that. It’s….hard to describe. Your music just seems really…I don’t know, alien to me.” Liina said reflectively. “A lot of our music uses drums and rhythm, and we don’t sing the way you do. It’s almost more like storytelling, where yours is kind of like poetry set to music. Does that make sense?”
Gillian nodded, and paused with a thought. “Oh! Cause, I just had a thought. I should show you rap music, only we’ll have to wait till tomorrow. Papa thinks I don’t know about his Eminem collection, but that’s my favorite, and I can’t listen to it when he’s home ‘cause he says it isn’t appropriate.”
“What does that mean?” Liina asked.
“I think it’s ‘cause it has bad words and talks about bad things and stuff, but it’s sooooo good,” Gillian explained.
“…Bad words? What are those?”
“Um. Words that are, like, only for adults to say?”
“Oh. I don’t think we have those either. There are words we aren’t supposed to use when we’re cubs, but that’s mostly just because Mothers say we don’t understand them….but that doesn’t mean we can’t.”
“I wish I was a Gaoian. Then I could say swear words and not get in trouble!” Gillian declared. Liina chittered.
“I think just being us is great,” she said.
“Yes!” Gillian fist-pumped into the air. “Go us!”