Chapter 15: Wings and Ribbons

~ Serenity

I knew what to expect on my tenth birthday. One present, a brightly wrapped cube. I even knew what to do with it.

Now.

I'd only been teasing on Andy's tenth when I told him I already knew the answer to the test.

But having knowledge and knowing how to use it are two different things, Daddy always says.

The birthday party was fun, even with the distraction of the cube. Maia and Jeni sang me a special birthday song that they wrote me. We played our usual game of football on the lawn, but I think this may be the last birthday we play it. Andy and Jeni always seemed to wind up tackling each other, no matter what play was called.

Everyone was excited and happy. Dad and Uncle Con were particularly happy that day because of some passing comment one of the soldiers training to fight the Sh'kxu had made to his Sergeant. It got passed on from person to person until it got to Con, and it made him think so hard he actually took three or four seconds to thank the messenger who passed the note to him. Con had figured out how to give the Yaru Warriors hands!

I waited until the middle of the next day to officially 'solve' my cube. The facet I went to was full of waterfalls and flowering vines, and there were large, bright red birds with long tails that seemed to fly by in a series of long swooping glides. I didn't find any minds within my range that qualified as 'people', but that didn't mean they couldn't be here somewhere. I touched the mind of one of the graceful red birds, and saw a gentle, happy little mind, just content to fly around and eat the tiny little fruits of one of the vines that grew near the waterfalls.

I jumped back home, sent a thought off to Dad that I'd finished the test, and got one of his warm and fuzzy thoughts in return. I spent some time arranging the vine I'd pulled from the new world in one corner of the wall. I made a bowl of soil from the backyard, and fused it into a waterproof container with a little of the Light. More soil from the garden fill it, and a piece of Light attached that told it to stay floating in the same spot all the time, and I had a planter for the vine. I encouraged it to grow into the soil, and made sure a spur of it grew out at just the right spot to give Rose, my new pet bird from the facet of Waterfall, a perfect spot to perch on in her new home.

I used the Light to build a thick pad on my right shoulder that Rose could grip with her claws, and she rode happily there as I went downstairs to see if Mom was still home.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in the sun room with Grandpa Paul, Grandma Mary, Shelaana, and Andy, Trevor, Kieran, Ian and Grace.

"Hi Grandma! Hi Grandpa!" I said as I ran over and gave them both a hug.

"Serenity Elizabeth McKesson, just what is that on your shoulder?" Mom said, in her MOM voice.

"Mom, this is Rose. Rose, say hi to Mom!" Rose said hello with a low, melodic cooing sound that almost sounded like an old low-pitched steam whistle.

"I solved Dad's test." I said, answering the silent question that still remained out there.

"That was fast." Grandma Mary said. She had been there for the party yesterday, so she knew I'd only had the 'test' since then.

"well, it was no big deal. Andy was the one who had to work out the hard part when he did his. The rest of us already know what has to be done, its just a matter of figuring out the how, right Trev?"

"Yeah, its no big deal." Trevor said. "Ian and Grace will be the interesting ones. We're all wondering how Mr. McKesson is going to do it. One cube for the both of them, or a cube each?"

"One more month and we'll all know, won't we?" Kieran said. "Then we'll all have our armor, and maybe we can start going places together."

"There are enough of you to form your own Legion teams." Grandpa Parkin observed.

"Well, I doubt that Dave is going to let that happen for a while, and that is just this batch. The next is already arriving. Borthun and Yela's little Dave, Arden and Alicia are expecting again, as is Felicia and Cyrus." Mom said. "I even hear that Fred and Ariana are planning a Taluatan bonding ceremony next week and that Ariana is already expecting. So are Porter and Glova Burgess."

"I'm not sure if its public knowledge yet," Andy said, "but so are Riah and Zaiah.

"Darn!" Mom said, automatically substituting the word because we were there. "Here we go again, huh? Did someone slip something in the water?"

"Its the coming war on Precipice, honey." Grandpa Parkin said. "War always seems to trigger the human need to have children."

"The war has got us all going, and for a lot of different reasons." Mom said. "I guess Dr. Virginia McKesson and Mrs. David Alan McKesson have both been just as caught up in it as everyone else."

"Its going to get worse before it gets better, you can count on that." Shelaana said. "They're just now really ramping up the military side of things, and I'm sure there are lots of things we don't know about that are keeping Dave and the Legion busy."

I looked at Andy and saw him looking at me. <Go ahead.> He sent me.

"You know Mom, us kids could be helping out a lot, and freeing up you adults for other work."

"Ren, its just too dangerous." Mom said, her standard answer.

"What is dangerous about helping to process the people that are rescued from Precipice? We don't even have to be in the same room with them, and you cannot tell me that those poor people are a danger to anyone." I countered.

"We'll have to talk about it later sweetheart, it looks like your Dad and Uncle Con are here to take us on your first facet survey mission."

I took Rose back up to my room when I went to put on the new armor Dad handed me. I put her on her perch and told her to stay there until I returned, tickling the vine with a little Light until it had produced a couple pieces of fruit for her.

The mission to Waterfall, as I called the facet, was fun and it was interesting to finally get to do the things I'd heard about and seen in the thoughts and memories of the others.

Oddly enough, Waterfall was another facet that featured plateaus, just as Andy's birthday discovery had. Mine was not a single continental plateau, and it was going to be much more hospitable it appeared, than Mesa had been. Of course the canyon systems of Mesa were prime training grounds for the Warriors who were becoming the Preci Freedom Force.

I used that conversational link to once again lobby for inclusion in the war effort. Reminding them again how suited our talents were for the work of acclimatizing the newly rescued Preci. I wasn't expecting a victory, merely planting the seeds for the future.

We finished our survey and dropped off the data on Obsidian. While we were there Con took us over to his workshop in the Hall of Gifts and showed us his work on giving hands to the Yaru.

"Waldo is an Earth Science Fiction story by a writer named Robert H. Heinlein." Con said. Uh oh! I detected lecture mode engaged!

"In that story, the main character, whose first name was Waldo, suffered from a crippling genetic disorder that left him so weak that he had to live in a space station in orbit, so he could move around in zero G. Earth's gravity prevented him from doing almost any normal human activity, even something as simple as holding a spoon and lifting it to feed himself. A brilliant inventor, Waldo designs and has built remote manipulators that receive the feeble movements of his own hands and translates then into useful, even powerful action. This idea, from this short work of science fiction was such an evocative image that years later when scientists actually began to build remote manipulators for handling radioactive and hazardous materials in laboratories and harsh environments, they called them 'Waldoes'."

Titan came walking down the corridor next to the workshop, wearing a combat collar, similar to those the War Hounds in training on Cascade were being assigned. Titan's was wider, and had a tapered extension that ran down the neck and between the shoulder blades. What was really cool was that Titan was juggling three balls as he walked, using a pair of hands that floated in front of him. They looked like somewhat large human hands wearing thick gloves.

"This may look cool, but this is just a parlor trick.!" Titan said with glee. "The important thing is, now when I get an itch in that place I can't reach? I can reach!!"

We were all still too stunned and impressed to remember to laugh. Instead, titan got, in triplicate,

"Wow!"

As soon as we got back home, I ran up and checked on Rose. She was doing fine, but I let her hop onto my shoulder and then sent out a thought to Andy. He was with the rest of the kids in our usual spot.

We had, Andy and the rest of us 'Legion Kids', appropriated a spot as our special place that we thought Mom and Dad would either find amusing or upsetting. Our secret spot was 'The Ledge'.

"How did it go?" Andy asked as soon as I got there.

"Great!" I answered. "Designation 'Waterfall', a world of plateaus, sort of like your was, only the plateau's aren't a mile high, and they aren't all part of one big continent like yours was."

"No, how did the convincing Mom and Dad go?" Andy asked, obviously exasperated. I giggle back.

"I think it went well actually, they listened, didn't argue, and did not say no at the end. They didn't say yes, but they didn't say no, so that's a first. Oh! And guess what!"

"What?" I got back from everyone at once.

"I got to see the new hands that Con has invented for the Yaru! They're called 'Waldoes', its from some science fiction story from Earth. Titan was juggling three balls in the air using them."

This was exciting news for everyone, and it distracted them for a while with excited talk, but after allowing the distraction to carry on for a few moments, Andy got everyone focused back on our purpose.

"C'mon. We were waiting for Ren, and now she's here. We can't afford to wait any longer."

We quickly formed our familiar circle on the meditation rug Eru had given us for our 'clubhouse'. We merged our minds quickly, settling into a comfortable familiarity. With our fusion complete, we moved ours mind into the Light. We stretched our awareness and our perception, and we felt the world within the Light, and aware, we chose to be... somewhere else.

When Dad and the Legion heard the story of the Seekers and the Choctowineh, and how they finally grew to be one people, and with their new skills and insights chose to seek adventure and understanding in some new place, moving in some new way, beyond reality, they did not understand and knew that they couldn't follow.

The Children of the Legion understood. We had not found the path they took, but we found the place where the path must start. Our future surely would lead us into those places, but for now there was one place which did not require finding. The Dream World.

We went to the Dream World because the Sh'kxu sleepers were there.

The ship-borne Sh'kxu had been dreaming so long together that they had built a dream mind powerful enough to reach back into the real world. If, in their dreaming, their dream mind's awareness found Dad, or any of the Spirit Masters and Soul Divers working to defeat them, it would have been the end of everything. The dream mind would have reached back into reality and killed them, probably all of us, with a thought.

So every two days, we joined our minds, slipped through the world of Light and into the Dream World. Even though we joined our minds to enter the Light, we entered the Dream World as individuals, and as individuals we spent a couple of hours building a new bit of dream, and letting the Sh'kxu dreamers chase it through the endless corridors of their own minds.

There are others there, in the Dream World. For the most part they are very happy to discover others able to journey there with them, but they are all afraid of the Sh'kxu dream mind. They see it as an aberration, and are afraid of its power. They have been watching them for a long time, long before they came to Precipice. A lot of them were helping us keep the dreamers distracted.

The Dream World is not hard to find. It is where everyone goes when they dream. It is malleable to the extreme, and each dreamer crafts it without effort. It is incredibly resistant to certain things though, Conscious dreaming is one, and finding and contacting other dreamers is another. But a strong mind is a strong mind, and within the Dream World there are those who seek out the company of others like them. That was how we met Spinner and the Wood Wise.

Spinner was a person, an individual, almost as old as reality he said, but we thought he said that as a joke, because we were kids. He was really old though, we could tell that. The Wood Wise were more like the Sh'kxu, a group mind that shared their dream. Unlike the Sh'kxu, they were one mind when they were awake too, except they were seldom awake.