Chapter 19

The deep welcomed me, as always.

I spent a week on Cloudburst thinking within the depths, quietly alone and away from the madness that had blossomed around me on Earth.

It had been a busy and dizzying three months since that day on Meadow when I'd first demonstrated my flight suit. The audience, including Grandpa Dave and Grandma Ginny, had been impressed. They were even more impressed when I'd taken the suit off and handed it to Gianni Sabarte and told him to give it a try.

His initial effort was more hesitant than mine had been, but he flew. If you wore the suit, you could fly. Training and practice could make you an accomplished flyer, but anyone with the strength to flap their arms could use it to fly.

The McKesson wheels got turning very quickly the minute my feet touched the ground following that first flight. By the time Chris and I showed his parents the suit in their back yard in Somerville, it was officially the next big thing from McKesson Industries. While Chris packed and spent hours on the Q-net settling his schedule and making the final arrangements for his first semester of college, I met with gravitic engineers, programmers, financiers, marketing experts and lawyers until I could hardly stand it. I had most of it mapped out already, they merely had to agree, eventually, that I could do it the way I wanted. Even the lawyers had to agree eventually, though there were going to wind up being certain restrictions built into the suits in countries with carefully controlled air spaces.

The plan was to release the suit with the sparrow interface and offer other birds and non-bird visual options as extras. The optional visuals would be sold on data chips and it was expected that a market for custom programmed visuals would take off pretty quickly. Chris and I gave An and some of our other programmer friends and acquaintances the heads up, and hoped some of them would be able to take advantage of it when the time came.

It didn't take the engineers very long at all to realize that the suit would work with an implant as well as with the helmet, and that brought the entire group back in front of me, and especially the lawyers. I let the engineers do my talking for me, and between the two groups they eventually reached an understanding. Safety interlocks would be included that prevented its use without a helmet unless the implant met certain 'industry standards'. Since nobody was making them but McKesson, I didn't really see it as an issue, but then, I'm not a lawyer.

Eventually, things had shaped up to the point where my presence was no longer needed. I signed on a few dotted lines, watched a McKesson Financial Services vice president route a couple of advance deposits and licensing payments into my personal accounts, which added a significant number of zeros to the end of my balance, and then I was gone.

By the time my tangle of new threads binding me to Earth was woven into something semi-manageable, and Chris had made it through the latest series of commitments with the Legion, it was late fall. I was contemplating the next few weeks and months as they related to the grand scheme of things, when Grandma Cor sent a thought my way.

<Skye?>

<Hi grandma!> I was surprised to hear from her, and with a quick flicker of thought I let a tendril of myself slip between worlds and saw that she was sitting in the kitchen at the Tower of the Wind. I reached for a little Light and jumped myself there.

"Grandma its good to get your call," I hugged her and kissed her cheek. What's the occasion?"

"Well, you must have been bored to just jump right over," she laughed.

"A little bit, I guess," I agreed, laughing along with her. "I've finished becoming the next McKesson entrepreneur back on Earth, so I was temporarily at loose ends. Your thought came at the perfect moment."

"Oh! Well, I don't have anything to busy you with today, but I was going to ask you if you were going to be coming for Thanksgiving. Do you think you can make it?"

I did a little mental check and realized that the holiday was less than a week away. "Of course! I'd love to come!" I was truly excited, not just to make grandma happy, but because I had forgotten about the holiday, not having gone to their annual gathering in recent years. "Do you think mom and dad will come this year?" I said, turning to grab a seed covered roll from the countertop.

"They usually do, and I think I can guarantee it if I tell them you will be coming."

"No, don't bother, I'll drop in and let them know myself." I had a sudden thought, and spun back around. "Can I bring someone?"

"You have someone to bring then?" there was an amused twinkle in her eye, and I suspected that she knew more than she was letting on.

"I do," I answered with a blush. Dammit! I don't blush! Not even for grandmas.

"Of course you can bring a guest, and we'll all be thrilled to meet him. Ahh ... it is a him?"

"Yes, this time," I laughed. "See you then, and thanks!" I kissed her cheek again and then was gone.

The house was warm and cozy, just as I remembered it. Mom was out back milking Char and Shar, the goats. The grasses that grew on the eastern facing hills here seemed to be just what goats needed for making exceptional cheese, and Mom had been making her own for some years now.

"Need a hand?" I asked from the doorway.

"Sky! What are you doing here?" she never broke stride in her milking, "Spirits take me, but you always were about the only one who could sneak up on me like that."

"I just left Grandma Cor. She invited me to Thanksgiving and I thought I'd drop in and let you and dad know that I was going to be there this year."

"Oh wonderful! We were thinking we would go ourselves, but now we definitely will."

"Good! You look great, how is dad?"

"He's fine. He's away at a training exercise of some sort. War games of some kind, I think. Should I let him know you're here?"

"No, its fine. I'll see both of you in a few days at the Tower anyway. Be sure to tell him I love him when you see him though, okay?"

I leaned down and gave her a kiss and a hug. The milking never slowed, but I left her there with a big smile on her face.

<Chris?> I sent from the condo in Boston.

<Skye? What's up?> Came his answering thought immediately.

<Were you planning on going home for Thanksgiving?>

<Thanksgiving? No, to be honest I hadn't even thought of it. Its just a few days off, isn't it?>

<Yes, and I just got invited to grandma and grandpa's annual Thanksgiving feast on Arbor. Want to go?>

<Thanksgiving at the Tower of the Wind on the arm of Skye McKesson? I'd be daft to say no, wouldn't I?>

<Not daft. It could be pretty intense. My parents will be there, not to mention the whole High Wizard and Wind of Arbor thing.>

<Count me in. I'd rather get the overwhelmed and intimidated stuff out of the way as soon as possible ... assuming it is possible.>

<Relax, you'll do fine. Wear your Legion armor. That'll speak volumes about you to grandpa and grandma without you having to say a word. If great aunt Serenity is there, it'll help with her too.>

Grandpa Andy and Aunt Coral were the ones I worried the most about. They were seers, and couldn't just turn off their ability to see the future. Sometimes it caused them to act strangely around people whose futures they had seen. I wasn't sure if I could insulate Chris from their gifts as much as I had managed to do for myself.

My suggestion to Chris that he wear his Legion armor left me wondering about what I would wear. I certainly wasn't going to wear anything Arborian, or at least nothing that was just Arborian. I didn't want to show up in something from my current Earth wardrobe.