From: elf@halcyon.com (Elf Sternberg)
Newsgroups: alt.sex,alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.furry
Subject: Journal Entry 151 / 0918  [ Reunion, Part 6 ]
Date: 15 May 1996 13:30:45 GMT
Organization: Pendor, UnLtd.
Lines: 276
Message-ID: <4ncma5$jlt@news.halcyon.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: coho.halcyon.com

Aldea, Cerim 4, 0918

    The water surrounded him; the sound of bubbles rose around him 
as air that had followed him down found its natural course back to 
the surface.  He had adjusted to the intense cold, and found 
pleasure in just floating in the silent, crystalline water.  As he 
floated a peculiar feeling swept him, a feeling that seemed to come 
more from within his own brain then from anything outside.  He 
opened his eyes and 
headed for air.

    As he broke surface, he looked around.  "Greta?"  She was 
nowhere to be seen.  And he was no longer in the pool of water he 
had jumped into earlier; he was in what looked like a fountain, 
only it was obviously deep enough to hold his body.  It was also 
very still; only his treading water disturbed the otherwise calm 
surface.  The fountain was lined with ancient, dusty-gray granite 
stones, each square-cut to fit against its neighbor, and each 
overgrown with ivy.  The day had been warm and sunny; now clouds 
covered the sky and hid the overhead sun.  He swam for the edge and 
pulled himself out, looking around; he stood on the edge of some 
sort of open theatre, long disused and overgrown.  Much of the 
stonework was cracked by the tenacity of nature pushing through it.  
Nickolai turned around; behind the fountain stood a great, curved 
wall, and in English writing, obscured by the climbing ivy, it 
read: 

              -               -              -

    WHO CAN CONTROL HIS FATE?
                - OTHELLO, ACT V, SCENE II.  Wm. SHAKESPEARE.

              -               -              -

    "Not me," Nickolai sighed gently.    

    "Perhaps not," a masculine voice said behind him.  "But that 
should not stop you from seeing it."

    Nickolai turned around, surprised.  "Who are you?"

    "Call me Hal," the man replied.  "No relation to Hal Masters, 
of course, but still... Hal."

    "Hal," Nickolai said, smiling.  "Three quarters of Hall?"

    "Something like that.  I'm here to keep your mind occupied."

    "For how long?"

    The man, an older man using a cane to stand, and dressed in a 
flowing white robe that draped off of his shoulders, walked forward 
and laid his hand on Nickolai's shoulder.  "It's been long enough."  
He smiled and turned his back, walking up the stairs and out of 
sight through the theatre.  "Hey!" Nickolai shouted, to no avail as 
the elderly man disappeared.  Nickolai ran after him.  Beyond the 
rotting stone archway of the theatre the stone turned to sand and 
reeds grew up out of the sand around him.  He ran, feeling a need 
to run now more than a desire to catch the old man, and as he ran 
the sounds of pounding surf caught his ear.

    He ran harder still, his lungs starting to burn, his body 
starting to pound with his straining heart.  He ran fast, faster 
than he thought he had ever run before, and when the reeds ended 
and the sand path ejected onto the beach, he stumbled forwards, 
losing his footing and falling forward into the sand. 

    "Ooof!" he said, rolling before sitting up on his hand and 
knees, shaking the sand free of his hair and his clothes. "Yech."

    "Oy!" a voice said to his right.  "Are you okay?"

    "Um... Yeah," he said.  "I think so."  Nickolai looked down at 
himself, bewildered.  He was still wearing the T-shirt and jeans he 
had worn on the walk to the Hall.  Only his shoes were missing.

    "Where did you come from?"

    "Right..."  Nickolai turned around, looking back at an unbroken 
wall of reeds.  His appreciation for what was happening to him 
caught up with the rest of his confusion.  "Let me guess.  There's 
no theater back there, is there?"

    "What kind of theatre?" the voice, belonging to a male Ssphynx 
with long, shaggy fur that leant him vaguely leonine look.  He 
smiled down at Nickolai.  

    "Stone.  Kinda old?"

    "Nope.  Lived here nearly eight centuries and I've never seen 
nothing like that.  Where were you before you came here?"

    "The Great Hall."

    "Aye," the Ssphynx said.  "You're a long way from home then, 
aren't you?  Name's Kedar."

    "Nickolai," Nickolai said as he accepted the Ssphynx's hand and 
rose to a sitting position.  "Where am I?"

    "It's name is Gaerdim," the Ssphynx replied.  "I named it when 
I found it, two centuries ago.  It was a dark and dreary day, I 
remember.   Kinda like today.  So you came through the Hall.  
Congratulations, son.  I imagine you'd be wanting to head on back 
towards civilization?"

    Nickolai nodded.  Kedar continued, "Well, I'm afraid the 
nearest SDisk is twenty kilometers from here, and you'll have to 
walk to get there.  I wouldn't recommend you try it until tomorrow.  
There's gonna be a hell of a storm tonight."

    "Can you... can you tell where I could find shelter?"

    "Sure," the Ssphynx replied.  "Come on, I'll show you my home."  
He led Nickolai up the beach a short distance, in the direction 
opposite where he had indicated the SDisk would be, and over a 
rickety wooden bridge that had been erected so the Ssphynx could 
walk over the dune without disturbing the sand.  On the other side 
of the dune sat a squat, colorful home with a front porch facing 
along the line of the beach.  Apparently made of cement bricks and 
mortar, it had been painted with ocean motifs; curling waves 
crashed towards the back of the house as white seagulls floated 
over them.  Plants were hung along the length of the porch, their 
long leaves dangling downwards from their pots towards the ground.  
"It's not much, but I've lived here for a long time."

    "How long?" Nickolai asked.

    "Almost eight centuries," the Ssphynx repeated.  Nickolai's 
mind, boggled at the thought the first time, still didn't want to 
parse that phrase correctly.  "You're the first person to come this 
way since I moved here."

    "You've lived here all by yourself?"  Nickolai asked.  Alone 
for a thousand years, out here, with nothing but yourself?  This 
male must be mad!

    "That's right.  It's quiet out here.  No folks, not too many 
machines.  Just me and my ocean."

    Nickolai nodded.  "Maybe I should head for the SDisk tonight.  
It'll be cooler, and I wouldn't want to disturb your solitude."

    "Naah, that's all right.  You got kicked out here for a reason, 
and I may be a hermit, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be a bad 
host."  The Ssphynx grinned.  "Come on, I'll feed you some chowder 
I've got lying around."

    Still wary, but appreciating the Ssphynx's company, Nickolai 
decided to accept.  "I'd appreciate that," he said, his stomach 
suddenly informing him of just how starving he really felt.

    "Well, if you're going to be a Pendorian, you've got to learn 
to eat like one."  He led Nickolai in through a battered screen 
door, then wandered over to a large metal pot (Nickolai thought 
"cauldron" might be  a good word to describe it) and dished out a 
large helping of brown, meat-laden soup.  "Here," the old Ssphynx 
said.  "Eat."

    Nickolai accepted the bowl gratefully.  "What time is it?"

    "Nearing dark, I imagine."  The Ssphynx padded towards the 
window, which had no glass, and peered out.  "And that storm's 
comin' in somethin' strong.  Seeing as your my guest, can I get 
some help from you to close up the storm shutters?"

    Nickolai nodded around a mouthful of hot soup.  "Yes," he 
finally said after swallowing.

    "I appreciate it.  Eat fast, son."

    Nickolai did as instructed, and then he and the Ssphynx walked 
around the house, latching down wooden storm shutters, pulling in 
the potted plants, lashing down some larger items the Ssphynx had 
scattered around his house.  From the look of the place, Nickolai 
could see old trees towering a few hundred meters back from the 
shoreline.  The Ssphynx had chosen some natural outcropping of sand 
and shell that spread back from the dunes on which to build his 
home.  Behind the house, Nickolai now saw, a stream flowed by 
slowly, bringing the house fresh water.  A few droplets fell on his 
head as they tied a picnic table down to a pair of palm trees that 
erupted from the sand.  "The rain's begun," Nickolai said.

    "I felt it."  They ran into the house, and he Ssphynx closed 
the door, throwing two heavy beams of timber over it to keep it 
closed.  "I get these storms from time to time.  Tonight looks to 
be a real blower, but I think we'll come through all right."

    The rain did indeed began to fall, at first lightly.  But then 
the wind picked up and howled outside, and as Nickolai sat in the 
one chair in the house and wondered, nervously, what he could do to 
pass the time.  "Tell me something, K..."

    "Kedar," the Ssphynx replied.  "Don't worry about it.  You're 
probably the first living thing to hear it since I left 
civilization behind.  Nice thing about Pendor.  It'll be millions 
of years before the place gets crowded.  That's my ocean out there, 
even though it's the size of all Terra's waters put together.  But 
nobody else lives on that ocean.  It's mine alone."

    Nickolai nodded, thinking back to the day when he and Furry had 
made love on the Vinyare' beach and he had been so impressed, so 
wondrous that they had been alone, just he and Jofuran.  So alone 
in fact that they had made love on a warm beach under a blazing sun 
and nobody had been the wiser.

    But this, Kedar's kind of alone, was more than he could bear 
imagining.  He was glad, at the end of their day, that he had had a 
place to return to, with live people to talk to.  "Kedar..."

    "Aye?"

    "Why do you live all the way out here?"

    "Because when I was born Shardik broke a promise to me."

    Nickolai looked up.  "What kind of promise?"

    "He made a promise to let me be free.  But he also threatened 
to kill me if I got out of line."

    "You, or all Ssphynx?"

    "All Ssphynx.  Son, there's something wrong with the Ssphynx 
brain.  It's hard to describe.  But it's a serious problem.  
Ssphynxes weren't programmed to be social.  Somehow a serious case 
of xenophobia lives in all the first gen Ssphynxes.  Maybe it was 
our shape or something.  Doesn't matter what it was.  Of the whole 
hrair of Ssphynxes that Shardik made, less than a thousand 
integrated into Pendor."

    Nickolai nodded.  "Where are the rest of the Ssphynxes?"

    "Oh, I imagine most of them made it back eventually.  I can't 
imagine ninety percent of a species becoming lonely hermits, like 
me."

    Nickolai nodded.  "Why don't you come home?"

    "Habit," the old man said.  "I got my Nixie friend who comes by 
once a year to give me stuff she thinks I'll need.  I lost count a 
long time ago.  Only reason I know what time it is is Nixie tells 
me."  A thunderbolt crackled outside, startling Nickolai.

    "How about you, son?  What makes you come this way?"

    Nickolai decided to start at the beginning and work his way all 
the way through to today.  He explained meeting Jofuran, falling in 
love with her, Shardik's deal, everything he could remember about 
that fateful summer two years ago.  Then he progressed forward 
until he came to today, when he walked out, or rather ran out, onto 
the beach.

    The Ssphynx nodded quietly during the whole thing, then 
stretched and yawned.  "There's not much we can do about the storm 
outside.  I've got some spare bedding and the like," he said, 
rising and tossing Nickolai some blankets.  "I'm afraid there's not 
much more for you except the floor."

    Nickolai nodded, laying most of the blankets out on the floor 
to provide some padding.  The night was warm, like the day had 
been.  The rain came down in torrents outside, and Nickolai 
eventually found sleep.

--
"Journal Entry 151 / 0918  [ Reunion, Part 6 ]"
The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., and Related Tales
are copyright (C) 1989-1995 Elf Mathieu Sternberg.  Redistribution of
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--
Elf Sternberg            FUCK THE CDA!       (Cohen vs. California, 1971)
elf@halcyon.com          Nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati.
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