“Pretty close. Try to think back a few months, Clennie, to a certain rather traumatic day… one I don’t think either of us will ever forget.”

His words were opaque, but flickerings of empathy drew her memories forth. “This?” Athaclena fingered the soft, almost translucent material. “This is from the plate ivy?”

“That’s right.” Robert nodded. “In springtime the upper layers are glossy, rubbery, and so stiff you can flip them and ride them as sleds—”

“If you are coordinated,” Athaclena teased.

“Um, yeah. But by the time autumn rolls around, the upper plates have withered back until they’re like this.” He waved the floppy, parachute-like plate by its fibrous shrouds, catching the wind. “In a few more weeks they’ll be even lighter.”

Athaclena shook her head. “I recall you explained the reason. It is for propagation, is it not?”

“Correct. This little spore pod here” — he opened his hand to show a small capsule where the lines met — “gets carried aloft by the parachute into the late autumn winds. The sky fills with the things, making air travel hazardous for some time. They cause a real mess down in the city.

“Fortunately, I guess, the ancient creatures that used to pollinate the plate ivy went extinct during the Bururalli fiasco, and nearly all of the pods are sterile. If they weren’t, I guess half the Sind would be covered with plate ivy by now. Whatever used to eat it is long dead as well.”

“Fascinating.” Athaclena followed a tremor in Robert’s aura. “You have plans for these things, do you not?”

He folded the spore carrier away again. “Yeah. An idea at least. Though I don’t imagine Prathachulthorn will listen to me. He’s got me too well categorized, thanks to my mother.”

Of course Megan Oneagle was partly responsible for the Earthling officer’s assessment and dismissal of her son. How can a mother so misunderstand her own child? Athaclena wondered. Humans might have come a long way since their dark centuries, but she still pitied the k’chu-non, the poor wolflings. They still had much to learn about themselves.

“Prathachulthorn might not listen to you directly, Robert. But Lieutenant McCue has his respect. She will certainly hear you out and convey your idea to the major.”

Robert shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Athaclena asked. “This young Earthwoman likes you, I can tell. In fact, I was quite certain I detected in her aura—”

“You shouldn’t do that, Clennie,” Robert snapped. “You shouldn’t nose around in people’s feelings that way. “It’s… it’s none of your business.”

She looked down. “Perhaps you are right. But you are my friend and consort, Robert. When you are tense and frustrated, it is bad for both of us, no?”

“I guess so.” He did not meet her gaze.

“Are you sexually attracted to this Lydia McCue, then?” Athaclena asked. “Do you feel affection for her?”

“I don’t see why you have to ask—”

“Because I cannot kenn you, Robert!” Athaclena interrupted, partly out of irritation. “You are no longer open to me. If you are having such feelings you should share them with me! Perhaps I can help you.”

Now he looked at her, his face flushed. “Help me?”

“Of course. You are my consort and friend. If you desire this woman of your own species, should I not be your collaborator? Should I not help you achieve happiness?”

Robert only blinked. But in his tight shield Athaclena now found cracks. She felt her tendrils wafting over her ears, tracing the edges of those loose places, forming a delicate new glyph. “Were you feeling guilty over these feelings, Robert? Did you think they were somehow being disloyal to me?” Athaclena laughed. “But interspecies consorts may have lovers and spouses of their own race. You knew that!

“So what would you have of me, Robert? I certainly cannot give you children! If I could, can you imagine what mongrels they would be?”

This time Robert smiled. He looked away. In the space between them her glyph took stronger form.

“And as for recreational sex, you know that I am not equipped to leave you anything but frustrated, you overen-dowed/underendowed, wrong-shaped ape-man! Why should I not take joy in it, if you find one with whom you might share such things?”

“It’s… it’s not as easy as that, Clennie. I…”

She held up a hand and smiled, at once beseeching him to be quiet and to let go. “I am here, Robert,” she said, softly.

The young man’s confusion was like an uncertain quantum potential, hesitating between two states. His eyes darted as he glanced upward and tried to focus on the nonthing she had made. Then he remembered what he had learned and looked away again, allowing kenning to open him to the glyph, her gift.

La’thsthoon hovered and danced, beckoning to him. Robert exhaled. His eyes opened in surprise as his own aura unlocked without his conscious will. Uncurling like a flower. Something — a twin to la’thsthoon — emerged, resonating, amplifying against Athaclena’s corona.

Two wisps of nothing, one human, one Tymbrimi, touched, darted apart playfully, and came together again.

“Do not fear that you will lose what you have with me, Robert,” Athaclena whispered. “After all, will any human lover be able to do this with you?”

At that, he smiled. They shared laughter. Overhead, mirrored la’thsthoon manifested intimacy performed in pairs.

Only later, after Robert had departed again, did Athaclena loosen the deep shield she had locked around her own innermost feelings. Only when he was gone did she let herself acknowledge her envy.

He goes to her now.

What Athaclena had done was right, by any standard she knew. She had done the proper thing.

And yet, it was so unfair!

I am a freak. I was one before I ever came to this planet. Now I am not even anything recognizable any longer.

Robert might have an Earthly lover, but in that area Athaclena was all alone. She could seek no such solace with one of her own kind.

To touch me, to hold me, to mingle his tendrils and his body with mine, to make me feel aflame…

With some surprise, Athaclena noticed that this was the first time she had ever felt this thing… this longing to be with a man of her own race — not a friend, or classmate, but a lover — perhaps a mate.

Mathicluanna and Uthacalthing had told her it would happen someday — that every girl has her own pace. Now, however, the feeling was only bitter. It enhanced her loneliness. A part of her blamed Robert for the limitations of his species. If only he could have changed his body, as well. If only he could have met her halfway!

But she was the Tymbrimi, one of the “masters of adaptability. ” How far that malleability had gone was made evident when Athaclena felt wetness on her cheeks. Miserably, she wiped away salty tears, the first in her life.

That was how her assistants found her hours later, when they returned from the errands she had sent them on — sitting by the edge of a small, muddy pool, while autumn winds blew through the treetops and sent gravid clouds hurrying eastward toward the gray mountains.