A picture, the eldest reminded, is a made thing. The choice of the maker, if it is to be light or dark.

A maker up there? A monster still in waiting?

It watches what we do with this monster. It will learn from us as we learn from it.

It knows we killed the monsters.

A shiver through them all. The monsters had been wrong, had been thieving nest-burners, but… if the monsters could walk UP that far, and stay and watch, perhaps… Nests first! said the fierce young one who would soon require a nesting ground. Lose nests, lose People. Comforting murmurs. Nests will be. Will find nests. A nest for you, for the younglings. Always nests.

Nests…

Nest here. The brashest of them looked around at the monster boxes. Right hand drumming, no agreement. The brashest twisted a neck suddenly too thick for the straps of the travel harness, and looked away. Sorry. No offense meant. Sorry.

The eldest stretched, one long arm after another. Enough now. Relax. Safe here. Rest. One by one they settled. The eldest opened a stoppered gourd and removed the whistler. The brashest stretched fingers. A few slow notes, up and down. Someone shook the gourd, and seeds and beads shivered, danced, made a rhythm. Long toes curled, tapped on the dirt. Another whistler, wavering at first until the tones met, clasped fingers, and danced together. Now the voices. Good hunting, good hunting. New hunting, new hunting. The music curled around familiar patterns, engulfing new learning, shaping it to the arch and spring of the known. Monster, monster, dancing, dancing. Monster, monster, boxes, boxes.

“Kuh,” said the creature when it came in the kitchen. Ofelia grinned. So it could remember. She had thought it would. They were not stupid, after all. She went to the cooler and opened it. The creature came to stand beside her. Ofelia scraped some of the frost off the inside of the freezer section with her fingernail and showed it to the creature. It sniffed, its eyes disconcertingly focussed on her instead of the frost.

She felt the shock of its tongue on her finger before she realized it — she had been looking back at its eye, not at her finger. The dry rasp startled her; she felt the air gusting out of her, and jerked her hand away. Its eyelid blinked; it too pulled back with a little burst of air that felt warm on her hand. Warm. Warm-blooded. She had known that. She had felt the heat of their bodies against hers that stormy night. But she had not been so aware of the warmth of their breath. Her hand was across her mouth before she knew it; she could only think of the smell of her own breath, how it might offend. That breath, its breath, had an odd smell, but it wasn’t bad.

It was looking at her now, at her finger. Its tongue came out again, and licked what she had to think of as lips. Not so soft and mobile as human lips, but not like the skin of its face. Browner… a purplish brown on this one. The tongue, too, was darker than the bright pink of human tongues. It had felt stiffer, dryer, than a child’s tongue.

Now, as she watched, the creature reached into the cooler and scraped off some of the frost with its talon. It licked that off with quick little strokes of its tongue. Then it scraped up another lump, and reached toward Ofelia, holding its hand in front of her mouth.

What did it mean? Ofelia looked from the hard dark fingernail with its coating of melting frost, to the golden-brown eyes, and back. Did it expect her to lick its finger? It moved the finger closer to her lips. She swallowed, watching the first drop of water ooze down from the cap of frost.

Courtesy overcame caution. She put out her tongue and touched it gingerly to the frost. Cold, of course. Under the frost, her tongue felt the hard, smooth surface of the nail — talon — whatever it was. Like her own nail; her tongue felt nothing disgusting, only a hard smooth surface topped with cold. “Kuh,” the creature uttered.

“Kuh,” Ofelia agreed. Her children had liked to eat the frost in the freezer; most children did, in hot weather. She turned away, found a shallow bowl and a wooden spoon, and scraped more of the frost into the bowl. She handed it to the creature, who took it and stood there as if it had no idea what to do next. At least it couldn’t expect her to lick its fingers if they were all engaged in holding the bowl. Perhaps it didn’t even know the frost would melt into water.

Meanwhile, the cool air was chilling her feet and ankles, and the open door wasted electricity. “Don’t stand in the door,” Ofelia said, and gently nudged the creature away so that she could close it. It moved back, holding the bowl but not looking at the frost. Instead it watched her. She wished it wouldn’t. She had had enough for the moment. She poked her finger into the bowl. “Cold,” she said. “You can eat all this, if you want.”

It turned its head, then set the bowl on the table, and picked up another finger-tip of frost. She watched as its tongue came out — dark, yes, and more bristly than human tongues, and dryer — and licked at the frost. It looked at Ofelia. She sighed, and took a fingerful of frost she didn’t particularly want, just to be polite. If that’s what it had meant. It dipped another fingerful, and licked it dry, then paused. That must be what it had meant. Take turns. Did it think she was trying to poison it, or was it being polite? She had no idea. The cold felt good in her mouth, better than she remembered. She let the frost melt on her tongue, trickle down the sides of her mouth.

The last of the frost had melted before they had taken many turns. The creature dipped its finger in the water and touched it to the long protrusion she now thought of as its nose, above the mouth. Then again, to touch the lids of each eye. It pushed the bowl a little towards her. Ofelia, frowning, put her own finger in the cold water. She didn’t know what the gestures meant; she was half afraid to copy them, but she was also afraid not to copy them. What was she saying, if she touched water to her nose, to her eyelids? It would be something about smelling, something about seeing… but what? She put her wet finger on her nose, then on her eyelids.

The creature grunted, and walked out of the kitchen without looking back. Now what? Had she insulted it, or was it running off to tell its friends what she had done? She went to the door to see. It hopped over the fence between the lane and the garden and started down the lane. Now she could see that the highstepping stride was mostly on the toes, with the heel knob touching down only occasionally. Ofelia shrugged to herself. She had raised bread to eat today; she didn’t have to worry about the creatures all the time. She cut herself several slices off one loaf and ate. It was good, from the hard crust to the soft, yielding inner crumb.

Were the creatures like bread? She had touched them several times now, and she still wasn’t sure. Their skin — if it was skin — felt harder than hers, but no harder than the calluses she remembered on feet and hands. Were they soft inside? Were their muscles as soft as human muscles, or hard like their skin? Did their shape come from bones in the middle or the hard skin on the outside? She found herself looking at her bread with new attention. Her science lessons had been a long way back, and no one had seemed to care much whether she really understood living things. A special class understood that, just as a special class understood spaceships or government. What they cared about, all they really cared about, was that she learned to do what she was told and not make messes. Even when Humberto insisted that they both take night classes to qualify as colonists, the instructors had not cared whether she understood the machines she was taught to tend and repair. Follow the instructions, she was told. Follow the diagrams. It’s no harder than making a dress from a pattern, one of them told her. Even homemakers like you can do that. She had clenched herself around the pain of his scorn and proved that she could, indeed, follow the diagram accurately.