“Rhiann,” he repeated, mentally linking the sounds to the image of me as he saw me. Strangely, despite his embarrassment, his image seemed to have more shape than I envisioned myself; a broad, deep chest for good lung capacity when flying at high altitudes, though his perception of my milk glands seemed to be more prominent than I bore, narrow waist which makes for smoother flight at speed and good flexibility while hunting and fighting and finally hips that, to me seemed grossly broad, nothing like the taper to make high-speed flight smoother and give that slight edge of speed over your sisters. While obviously the hips in his image were more slender than the chest, they still seemed broader than I wore. Even so, there was a hint in his mind of a desire to mate what he saw as an attractive female, despite our obvious physical differences.
To be seen as attractive and to have such an obvious, to me, desire to Fly me on sight startled me. But more than one thing stopped my from immediately accepting his desire, most important of which was his lack of wings and thus his inability to fly me even if I wanted to. My ears colored and I folded them back to hide my own embarrassment as seeing something he obviously didn’t know I could see.
We stood there for several heartbeats, looking into each others’ eyes, each trying to hide certain feelings while trying not to embarrass or frighten the other into flight. Finally he stepped back and gestured with a sweeping hand, “Please, sit down. I want to know more about you,” his words and mind said at the same time. Turning to the side, I eased myself back down to the ground, using my TK to keep from dropping ungraciously onto the grass while he resumed his former pose on the other side of the fire. A quick glance through his eyes allowed me to see that the light of the fire in the gathering darkness did seem to enhance my chest much in the manner his imagination offered, making me want to adjust the thin, soft leather to hide what seemed so distracting to him.
The scent of scorched meat reminded me of my second haunch of meat hanging over the flames. Using my telekinesis, I lifted the meat, stick and all, and reached out with my hand to pull it back. As the campfire was mine, I took the office of Hostess and Eldest, offering the meat to my guest first, before using my own knife to slice a thick slab for my own hunger. He used his own metal-bladed knife to take a modest slice and bit off a piece, chewing slowly as he formulated his questions to me.
“You are not from this Earth,” he started. “Where are you from?”
I answered with a swift review of my world as I knew it: soaring high over the trees and flashing between their boles as I flew with my sisters in contests of speed and agility. I—
“Whoa!” He cried out in voice and mind. “You’re making me airsick! Slow down, please!” He sent images of becoming physically ill from the swooping and darting uncontrollably and his throat actually clenched as he fought to avoid offending my hospitality.
I tried again, this time sending an image of flying slowly over the lush canopy below, focussing my eyes first on one clearing, then another as I worked to assist the hunting flight one day.
“Urk!” he gasped, swallowing hard. “Start on the ground!”
By now I was quite puzzled. He’d already shown that he wasn’t afraid to fly; in fact he’d jumped more than one time from his great, metal, flying beast and enjoyed the sensation of flying through the air—or rather, falling—at a dizzying rate. Then I realized. It wasn’t the flying that was bothering him, it was the sudden movements in my races; the shift in focus of my eyes as I sought prey from my high altitude. It wasn’t the flight itself, but rather not being in control of the flight in whatever manner. So I tried again.
I started at the tribe’s summer village. It lay deep in the nesttree forest, sufficiently far from the mountains to be reasonably safe from the Pardu raiders while close enough to the plains that a hunting flight could try for bigger game and still return to the village while the meat was reasonably fresh—just less than two days’ flight. I showed him my sisters, most older than myself but many falling within what I’d discovered to be his standard of beauty. Each of them looked alike to his mind, but each had something, something in the way they moved, held their ears and tail, groomed themselves or wore certain decorations that set them apart from each other. Of course, my Mother was there too, unusually tall and pale-colored but just as clearly a mature Sauk not yet showing the ravages of age as the Elders did.
Rather than presenting my world as a progression of images, I allowed him into my mind, to see Sau’du as I saw it, letting him control where he looked and what he saw. Strangely, it seemed that my nude and near-nude sisters held his attention for quite a while as he studied their forms and tried to discover what certain areas looked like. His mind mused as he beheld what was—to him—a fantasy. It actually took several moments before he realized that there wasn’t a single tod in sight. The memories he browsed lay before the time of the in-Gathering of tribes and thus before we’d acquired our young tod. This meant that our Elder tod lay asleep, still exhausted from his night’s Flying. Soon after that, he also realized just how few kits ran or flew through the village. I encouraged him to continue when it seemed he had a question, suggesting he wait until he saw more of my home.
Next he started really looking at the nesttrees and the nests lying on the massive limbs as high as a hand of wingspans above the ground. He estimated as much as 60 feet in human terms for the highest based on my own wingspan. The highest nests are usually small, less than a wingspan, and lay open, serving as much as lookouts against aerial predators as homes for the vixens who slept within them. Lower and usually closer to the bole of the tree lay nests covered with a skin or cane hut about a wingspan tall, about the same width and rising to a point in the lower leaves of the next higher branch. These served mostly for mated pairs, living together for companionship and pleasure while remaining accessible to the rest of the village in the event of need. Finally, on the lowest, broadest branches rested the nest of the Elders. This nest usually wrapped around the bole of the tree at least partially, woven of long canes and heavy branches to support the mass of usually a hand of the huts safely off the ground while allowing the Elders to walk between them. On occasion there would be nest with a skin hut at the same level as the Elders’ in another tree nearby, this one shaped to fit the branch it lay on and served but one purpose, to act as home and hospital to a vixen nearing her birthing.
