Warrior
still working on this one... obviously... read it if ya want
Mateo crouched in the dappled shade of a solitary oak, looking down across rolling hills, grass and sky both burned dry by August sun. Dust rose from tractors crawling through farms at the remote end of the valley, beyond the probing thread of Highway 223. He stiffened when he saw the van turn onto the narrower track scratched into the dirt of the hatchery, watched it narrowly even after he recognized it as one of their own.
Beside him, Sierra stirred from her nap, body arching into a luxuriating stretch that flattened twin arcs of grass and crumpled oak leaves. She blinked at him groggily, exquisite golden irises almost swallowing the black slits of her pupils. �Someone arrive?� she asked, sitting up, reaching up to fluff leaves out of her coppery hair.
Mateo eased down beside her, and she snuggled in against him, rubbing her snout across his chest, softly purring. �Nesters, I think,� he said, exploring the curve of her shoulders with one hand. Both were anthro form, erect and humanoid in stance but with the jaws, claws, and tails of raptorkind. Mateo�s mane fluttered with the breeze sweeping across the hot grasslands; his tail flopped a little in the grass as Sierra brought his attention to new matters. �Think they have four Fijaro Clan pairs. My Clanmother said we�d start using your Clan�s lands to solidify our union.�
Sierra pushed against his chest into a sitting position, Mateo�s arm still around the small of her shoulders, and made a teasing swipe with her three-clawed hand. �I thought we�d be the first Guerrero-Fijaro nesters,� she ragged him, and both broke into tooth-baring grins.
�You�ve never met my Clanmother,� Mateo said. He got to his feet, looking back out over the reach of the valley. Sierra glided over to where their clothes had been cast behind the oak. Her immediate presence gone, Mateo�s face hardened back into a muted frown. The van rose its own puff of dust as it crawled nearer to the hatchery.
Hot and dark in the corners of his mind, he heard the thought again: Love, what have I brought you into?
Mateo and Sierra entered the main hatchery under its vast glass rotunda. White struts cast spiderweb shadows across the intricate terra-cotta-tiled floor. The hills sheltering the compound from the outer world shouldered into the blue depths of the sky, the ravines notching the ridge thick with digger pines, their lower slopes tawny with summer grass, dotted with oaks. Mateo remembered his own Fijaro nesting grounds � in the floor of the Central Valley, two hundred miles northward, a tangled complex of vineyards and citrus orchards hiding a secret world. The Fijaro Clan had never prospered as the Guerreros had, breeding an ambition sometimes beyond the clawtips of caution. He didn�t want to think of old Mueria, the unapproachable Fijaro matriarch, not with Sierra and her sharp, sympathetic intuitions beside him. Certainly not after what he�d managed to piece together about how their union had come about to begin with.
�It�d be lovely to go with your family to the homeworld next summer,� Sierra said, catching hold of his hand as they strode across the tiles. �You�ve ever been to your Clan estates?�
Mateo shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the first doorway opening from the central hallway ahead of them. They had almost entered the hall when it opened silently inward, a small, age-toughened full-human standing half behind it as if ready to shut it in their faces. In his face, Mateo corrected himself. Old Josif had been one of Sierra�s caregivers when her parents worked in the hatchery, and the two still held a bond stronger, Mateo suspected, than their own.
�Good morning, Fijaro,� Josif said amiably enough through the formality. Mateo bowed respectfully to the elder man, who nodded and stepped back to let them enter. Sierra touched her snout-tip to his sternum in a gentle nuzzle, and he ran a sun-spotted hand across her mane. �Good to see you so well, hatchling. Your union is certainly agreeing with you.�
She smiled. Josif led them into the room, a vast window on the far wall throwing light across bookshelves reaching across two walls, and three glowing monitors sunk into a desk in the center. Josif sat in one of the chairs by the monitors, then swiveled to face them and gestured for them to sit in a leather couch by the wall.
�Sit down, sit down,� he said in a weak but clear voice. �You may be young, but you know ways to expend your energy.� He favored Mateo with a smile, which he returned, nagged by a sense of the older man�s distrust.
�We were walking out east of the hills,� Sierra said, adjusting the cords that tightened her clothing. �It just feels so� primal being out there.�
Josif nodded slowly, his eyes avoiding Mateo�s. �The human in you. The savanna draws her out, brings her to a world of lions and hunts and the magic of fire. Wait until you go to the real homeworld, though. The raptor in you will express herself in ways you never thought to imagine. How are your parents?�
�They�re doing well, thanks.� Sierra put a hand on Mateo�s leg, and he covered it with his own, locking their fingers. �Mother is buying up some of the old hardline over in the Silicon Valley to consolidate our company�s holdings. The family has a good share of the softline infrastructure now in the south Bay Area.�
Josif�s face relaxed in something almost like a grin. �Business is all you children think about. Sometimes I even think you let it influence Family decisions.�
Mateo stiffened slightly, but Sierra stroked his thigh and he managed not to show any outward agitation. How much did this old man know? Worse, how much did Sierra suspect?
Josif finally looked him in the face. His eyes were cold, but Mateo couldn�t doubt the caregiver�s loyalty to his own Family, particularly Sierra. �My Fijaro son,� Josif said, more as a statement than any lead to further talk. Mateo sent a glance around the room; when he looked back, Josif�s eyes had lost focus somewhere in the direction of the monitors. �Important things are happening above our heads, my child. I�m sure you don�t know the part you play, any more than I know mine.� He drummed his fingers once on the desk before returning Mateo�s stare. �Why is your Clanmother suddenly so generously diplomatic with the Guerreros?�
Mateo�s gullet tightened. �Our Families have always been diplomatic with each other,� he said, insincere to his own suspicions. He felt Sierra�s hand move, and looked at her; her eyes were dark and silent in the cool shadows of the library.
�But never allied,� Josif said. He sat back, folding his hands in his lap. �There has never been a sanctioned Guerrero-Fijaro union. Now you are only one among several. After it was announced that we�d exchange nesting space between our Families, three more young couples pledged themselves. I grant that when Families do ally, things like this happen quickly. But why should we ally now?�
�Assets,� Sierra said, tone unreadable even to Mateo.
�But why, my daughter, are we so interested now in business with the newworlders?�
Mateo knew the accepted reason, a change in the values of the Old Ones, an evolution, good or ill, of their eons-old society. It was happening now after all those years, went the doctrine, because mindnets and other newworlder developments were beginning to bridge the gap between �true� humans and the Old Ones, making it possible � some said inevitable � for them to meet on equal terms. The impregnable secrecy that had sheltered them from newworlder attention would be a superfluity, a useless, hindering artifact of changing times. Long ago Mateo had wondered what individual Families would do to meet this new ecology; he never liked what he saw.
�If it were my choice,� Josif was saying, �I would leave all of this for the Meeting Nests. I wouldn�t bother you two with this on your visit here to the Birth Nests. But� I am afraid for both of you. Especially you, Fijaro.�
Mateo snapped around to stare at the old man, sitting there with a calm determination. Me? �Why?�
Josif�s chest rose, and a silent sigh escaped him. After a moment, he looked away. �Please try to enjoy this moment of your lives, my children. You will never see it again. I�m afraid I have to leave you for now; I�m reaching the tired age of life. Blessings.� He rose, touched Sierra�s snout with his bony hand, and walked slowly toward the door in the far corner of the library.
�Why me?� Mateo insisted, ignoring Sierra�s clutch on his hand.
Josif turned at the door, and Mateo saw an unexpected heat in his eyes, almost close to tears. �Don�t disappoint the hopes I have for you.� And he turned back and hobbled out of the room.
Moonlight flowed through the shimmering curtains to fall across the blankets and pillows of their nest. Mateo lay awake, listening to Sierra�s steady breathing, feeling her warmth along his side. The quiet happy exhaustion he wanted to feel after their lovemaking felt empty, sinking into a cold acid seep of restlessness. He couldn�t sleep with Josif�s face burned into his eyes.
For some reason he started remembering what he�d seen of the homeworld. What the Old Ones called the Harmony � the collective pack consciousness gained through the traumas of the Changing from human to anthro form � had allowed him to absorb the feel and smell of places he�d never known, loves and kills and hatches from the dawn of his kind. They weren�t his memories to tap, exactly, more like leaves shivered to the ground during the drought season, collected and unfinished. He remembered foggy mornings in the highland forests, tree-ferns and tall redwoods and cold thick mud between his toes. He tasted the swirling water of rivers, smelled freshly hatched eggs fetid in the sun, lay against the downy warmth of mothers and fathers and mates.
But then he found himself staring into a fire, his shadow and those of his packmates thrown like spirits impaled upon the walls. His sharpened smell recoiled from the sharply feline stench outside the cave, and his constricted voice box croaked a warning. Another mate, blond hair tied back to fall over a deerskin tunic, held a hatchling in her arms and came close to him, staring out into that all-too-near night. She looked at him from the side, and he could hear the thoughts passing through her mind, and he grew more confused within himself, seeing himself from so many angles that he seemed to be a million beings and nothing all at once. A shadow shivering in the fire. The flowing totems painted across the walls filled him with echoing vision, a hundred million years overlapped and transparent, forests and streams and ice and sand and death.
Sierra�s sudden jump woke him. He was alert in an instant. She had coiled into the ready crouch of the defensive strike, tail jerking, eyes wide as shadows passed over the curtains. His thighs bunched instinctively, pulling him onto his feet and into a taut tension ready to be sprung. Together they hissed a threat, neck muscles tensing into s-curves, searching the breeze for scent.