FSE

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For Neil Gaiman, who unknowingly gave me the seed crystal

_ _

_ "Ye gods, that thing is repulsive."_

_ "Yes, I know."_

_ "Why do you keep it?"_

_ "It needs me."_

* * * * * * * * * * *

The rat, mid-sized for his particular feral species, ran through the maze, turning, sniffing, seeking, thinking its little rat thoughts. Not for the first time, Dylan wondered what those thoughts might be. According to all the research, there weren't really any thoughts at all. Everything was instinct, everything happened because it was supposed to, impulse and drive forcing action and reaction. No thought, no emotion, no desire for anything other than what was vital - breath, water, food, procreation, the latter being not vital for the individual but for the species. This, Dylan had been told, was the curiosity of the ferals: They were all but forced to reproduce against their will. It was not a matter of choice; the species had to continue.

At the termination of the maze, the trapdoor clanked shut behind the rat. Dylan clicked the stopwatch, noted the time as the rat devoured its food pellets. There was no purpose to this, of course; studies of this sort had gone on for decades, ever since Sentients discovered that they could make ferals do stupid things by controlling environment and forcing instinct to bend to their will. Excuses were made: Would changing this hormone, activating this portion of the cerebral cortex, administering this drug, cutting out a portion of the amygdale, change anything? If so, would the same thing happen in the workings of Sentients? How many millions of ferals had gone through this senseless maze-running...

A chime signaled the end of the workday. Dylan picked up the feral rat by its naked tail and returned it to its usual cage, took care of the physical maintenance, straightened up, got his overcoat, went home. His mate had dinner ready, as usual, with the usual Monday meal, and the conversation included the highlights of the day, yesterday, last week, last year. Afterwards, she graded papers for the classes of "little ones" that she taught, and he looked through online news sites, the variations of events similar enough to all others that nothing stood out.

Per his ritual, he spent half an hour with a book of poetry, carefully reading each line, looking beyond the simple meanings of words to seek the fine tracery of beauty that the poet worked so diligently to evoke. At the end of his time, he put his bookmarker in place, measuring with precision what he had lost. Upstairs, he performed various necessary functions, went to bed with his mate, confirmed that it was the right time "to try for little ones" of their species, fucked her, and went to sleep.

In the early hours of the morning, when the house, the neighborhood, the world lay motionless in its impossibility, Dylan rose carefully from the bed without disturbing his mate. He found what he needed in the medicine cabinet, lay naked in the tub, and opened his veins with detached scientific precision. On the wall, in his own blood, he wrote HELP ME.

* * * * * * * * * * *

_ "What about your needs?"_

_ "What do you mean?"_

_ "You said that you kept the filthy thing--"_

_ "Please - ugly, not filthy. There is a difference."_

_ "You said that you kept the UGLY thing because it needed you. What about your needs?"_

_ "Why do you think they're different?"_

* * * * * * * * * *

Backing the delivery truck up to the loading dock, Dylan observed that there were advantages to being an otter; for one thing, he could turn his neck almost completely around to see what was behind him, instead of relying on the mirrors. You couldn't always trust mirrors, after all; objects in mirrors may be closer than they appear.

His spotter was almost unnecessary, but the company had to have extra people to blame if their equipment were damaged. Naturally, it was barely maintained in the first place, but an "accident" meant that the company could avoid blame, and that was all that mattered. Dylan simply made sure that he wasn't the one having to fill out the paperwork when the time came. Life was easier when you didn't care about what you couldn't do anything about.

There were a few good things about Tuesdays. For one thing, it wasn't Monday; for another, it was a light day for local delivery, since the big factories and distribution centers sent stuff out on Monday and Thursday, and it had to pass through the local facility before it could be sent out in the local trucks. Besides, in this part of the garment district, there were still a few places that actually knew how to make a proper fish sandwich.

Tuesday-morning quarterbacking took up conversation as the various boxes, bags, and other containers were offloaded, some by him, most by the guys at the mall loading zone. They grabbed what they needed (nearly treading on Dylan's long, thick tail, one of the disadvantages to being an otter, sometimes), put it on push-carts, trundled them through the dark recesses of the maze-like "back alleys" inside the mall that no one ever really thought about. For most, items simply appeared magically on the shelves, no doubt placed there by gnomish night-dwellers or divine intervention. Few really understood what went on behind the scenes.

Dylan accepted the cup of filthy coffee with good grace, sampling it as best he could to look friendly. At least_look_friendly, that's how you get along. Oh yes, everything's fine at home, thanks, the pups were growing great-guns, the old sperm bank was great, and could you believe that last field goal attempt, what the fuck was he thinking? A good end run would take 'em by surprise, half the time at least, and when you need points, you need 'em, you don't go screwing around pretending you don't and just putting on a good show, not with stadium ticket prices as high as they are these days.

Four stops, fish for lunch, probably veg for dinner, that was Tuesday for you. There was a night class series coming up soon; Dylan thought he'd like to try his paw at woodworking, nothing requiring a whole Shopsmith set-up, just some simple tools like they showed in the course description video online. He'd have to keep the stuff away from the pups, they'd get hurt pretty easily without supervision. That was his young male all over, though, always trying to do what his Poppa was trying to do. Fast learner. That's what they called him at school: Fast learner. It would be okay, though; he had a cabinet with a lock on it that would serve well.

Evening around the dinner table was good, with the young male prattling about his school day, the young female still in pre-school and playing with her green peas on the plate, and his mate reminding him of the trouble with the car, it's all right for him taking the bus to the depot to pick up his truck, but she needed the car, and the transmission was grinding again. Call Bob, he said. All mechanics were named Bob. It was on their name-patch on their shirts: BOB. That's what made them mechanics.

The pups were put to bed, the television showed the trillionth variation of the original sitcom (now in reruns), and he laughed quietly in all the right places, assisted by the laugh track recorded from a live audience (now in reruns). Dylan and his mate went upstairs, got things ready for the morning so that no one had to rush, fucked (no more kits, she'd been fixed), and went to sleep.

In the delicate point of darkness when nothing stirred, Dylan sat up in bed and did something that might have been called "feeling," if he'd had a word for it. He padded downstairs, his long, thick tail trailing behind him, wondering why he still had one. What was this whole "evolution" thing for, anyway? In his den, he opened a locked cupboard where he could keep his woodworking things when he went to the classes, and he pulled out a familiar, heavy object that felt as if it fit his webbed forepaw perfectly. It was always so very quiet at this time of night, and he hoped that he wouldn't disturb the neighbors. He aimed the revolver directly at his right eye (because things in mirrors may be closer than they appear) and fired.

* * * * * * * * * *

_ "You are vastly superior to that ugly thing."_

_ "Perhaps."_

_ "Unquestionable!"_

_ "Debatable."_

_ "You should destroy it."_

_ "It's already done that to itself."_

_ "Then why do you keep it?"_

_ "Because it needs me."_

* * * * * * * * * *

Wednesday morning board meetings never varied, which Dylan thought positive for only one reason: As a signal that you're ready for a weekend, nothing beats realizing that your presence was more as a figurehead than anything else.

The gray wolf looked around the table, seeing a variety of species: Managers, Sycophants, Drones, Bean-Counters, and Vermin, although he could have stopped at the last word and have had done with it. Before each of them, a company-branded, high-cost mug; under the mugs, custom coasters, and under them, an expensive, highly-polished, solid oak table; under each butt, an ergonomically-designed chair created by some sleek sable in Sweden and costing what Dylan used to earn in nearly a month, at the start. Around all this, two opposite walls with oak bookcases filled with important-looking binders bearing important-sounding titles, and the other opposing walls made of glass and steel, one looking into the main cube-farm of secretaries, the other looking out across the city from fifty-seven storeys up.

None of this had anything to do with architecture, with the actual construction and building of monstrosities like the one in which Dylan found himself, appearing to be carefully attentive to the numbers and dates and other data being thrown around. How long had it been since he'd had a hammer and nails in his paws, when he'd strung wiring with a supervising contractor long before they called it being an "electrician's apprentice," since he'd gotten mortar and gypsum dust and paint on plain jeans or overalls? Despite his policy of everyone being permitted - privileged - to go bare-pawed except in specific safety situations, the rest of everyone's body was covered in specialty fabrics carefully, personally tailored at an exorbitant rate. Within this one room, the currency value of its artifacts could pay for a two-bedroom home in a good neighborhood, or a four-bedroom home in a poor one, where it was more necessary but no doubt less profitable to someone.

The formalities of updating information that Dylan could more easily and more efficiently simply have scanned on his computer were done. For a moment, he sat thinking about his office, with its own thick carpets, oak desk, special chair, fine china tea cups and leaded-glass tumblers, all the things that made up what people called Success, commanding what people called Respect. The wolf thought about the photograph on his desk, carefully framed, featuring a trio of smiling faces, his wife Rachel, his pups Thaddeus and Edgar, all three lost to an easily-preventable "accident" in a high-rise building's elevator, a product of another Successful, Respectable Businessfur. No fault, of course, because responsibility stopped at the crossroads of the Almighty Dollar and the Corporate Charter. The case was settled for an amount that was surely representative of three lost lives as translated into Dollars. Priorities were priorities, stakeholders were paramount, business as usual.

Without any evidence of the troubling thoughts crossing his muzzle, the Successful, Respectable corporate president stood, thanked everyone formally, and made his announcement that confirmed the rumor mill about his decision to turn the day-to-day operations over to the VP, effective at once. Worried faces looked everywhere except at the VP, whose only reply was to sit slack-mawed and stare at the gray wolf as he outlined the planned transition, noted that the papers were signed, witnessed, notarized, and properly executed.

"Our first priority, as a company, will be to ensure better safety standards, especially in high-rise buildings like this one. Let me offer but one example." From his inside jacket pocket, Dylan took what appeared to be a fairly small and lightweight hammer, except that the striking-head, about two centimeters long, came to a sharp, conical point. "In an emergency, one of these tools could help save a life, by breaking out the windshield or side windows of an automobile. In a building like this, however..."

The wolf padded to one of the windows that looked out upon the city and swung the hammer with barely any force at all. The window cracked and crazed like the bark of a birch tree in winter, and although it was still entirely in place, it was clear that it would not take much effort to remove the glass entirely.

"Unacceptable," he said. "Clients won't want their expensive view of the city marred by wire mesh or other obstruction, so that's out. We need something better than what we've got, and if we don't have the scientists and engineers to solve the problem, then we need to get comprehensive requirements to our contractors and deal with it. Understood?"

Several murmurs of assent appeared reluctantly around the table. Not a leader in the pack of them, whatever their species.

"Pups and kits could fall out of second or third storey windows this way! We will begin by putting efficient safety glass on any and all multi-storey structures, small or large. I will_not_ let construction standards be degraded like this, do you understand?"

"The costs--" began one of the managers.

"--cannot be counted in currency, nor the benefits measured in profits."

"The stockholders--" began another.

"Can kiss my furry gray ass. Not one of them doesn't know about my commitment to safety, especially now. If they don't like it, they can sell their shares to those who can see past their almost non-existent capital gains tax. Now see to it, or this company will not stand another day!"

His hard gaze circled slowly around the table, unchallenged, unmet, silence speaking volumes. It was the young female collie taking notes in the corner who had enough nerve to say, "I'll call Maintenance for that, sir. Please be careful."

"No problem; I'll take care of it."

Dylan launched himself perfectly, curling up into enough mass to strike the weak point with his shoulder and dissolve the glass into fragments and memories, then he spread his arms to fly fifty-seven storeys (stories?) to the ground.

* * * * * * * * * *

_ "What a contemptible failure."_

_ "Each attempt makes growth."_

_ "Hopeless romantic."_

_ "Worse. Hope-full."_

* * * * * * * * * *

Dylan realized that Thursdays at the Gypsy Tea Room were usually slow; it was no surprise to him that no one had requested a reading from him in some little time. He stretched luxuriously, as felines were wont to do, and let himself calm his inner fears and restiveness. Something nagged at him, like some dream that he felt he should be remembering, or perhaps channeling for someone. He remembered bits of them sometimes, like snippets of someone else's memory, slices of life that he simply couldn't understand clearly. Dylan felt that they should mean something; after all, that's what psychics are supposed to do, right - interpret signs and portents for people?

The lean cheetah smiled to himself. It was so easy to fall into the trap of believing that you're a fraud, because no one will ever disagree with you. When he was a child, he was taught (through studious example from his parents) that if you hated yourself first, no one else could do anything worse to you. It was a way of protecting yourself - destroy your own soul, then no one else can do it for you, and that's all that they want to do, you know, is to destroy you. You're no different; you're not special, or if you are, you'd better hide it and pretend that you're just like everyone else, because "different" will only make you miserable.

Sighing with a soft smile, Dylan embraced the ghosts of his parents lovingly and set them aside. It wasn't their fault that they couldn't understand. It had taken him a good many years to accept himself, be himself, become himself, and now he sat in his loose-fitting garb, in a small alcove of the café, his round table suitably covered with a rather traditional green velour tablecloth, always kept clean, a neat and tidy place for him to spread his cards. The overhead lamp hung from the ceiling, its soft, low-watt bulb giving soft but sufficient light to read by. His deck lay patiently, waiting for his paws to tell them it was time to feel the energies in the air and provide answers to questions waiting for their possessor to find the courage to ask them.

It wasn't easy to ask for help. He was afraid to love Ciara for what seemed the longest time. The young cheetah was alone and used to it, and no, that wasn't an excuse. "Alone" seemed better, for a reason that he kept from himself. The sweet young hare wore away slowly at his defenses, getting around them even before he truly realized it. By the time they had become lovers, and that astonishing, magical, heart-filled weekend had passed, he found himself in a complete panic, not knowing what to do.It's real, something tried to tell him. It's real this time. It's the same magic you hold within. It's real. It took a week of self-torturing thoughts and isolation for him to make himself so miserable that he was thinking of the unthinkable - death - before he began to think of the other unthinkable - life. Taking the risk, Dylan called Ciara, who had been worried frantic for him, but who heard his cry for help and invited him to come talk.

He had expected only what he had, at the time, called "sympathy and kindness" at best and "pity" at worst. She took him into the bedroom and stripped him, not for sex, but to help him take off all the pain that he was clinging to with so much desperation. Each article of clothing was one burden more to take off and leave behind. Naked, they went to the bed, where she simply held him and let him cry for more than an hour, and then they began to talk. They talked for hours and hours, the sun setting and coming up again before Dylan realized that he had broken through the things that kept him from being real. It became the time when a hare gave birth to a cheetah, and they made sweet, sweet love, slowly, tenderly, needfully, creating the real magic of recreation upon each other. The young feline, as if reborn, rediscovered his gift, and his heart, and he was able to read the cards as never before, touching other hearts tenderly so that he could weave the story that they needed to hear.

He wondered idly what story he needed to hear just now. Dylan resisted the temptation to read for himself. The cards never lied, but he could lie to himself all too easily. The secret to finding an answer through Tarot is not to know the question; combined with his intuition and his ability to weave a story, the cheetah could describe something in terms vague enough to show that there are a myriad solutions, yet specific enough to suggest specific directions for his client to try. He never "told the future" in all his life, and especially not now. There were too many; every single choice led to a different future. He once imagined seeing (or did he actually see?) all of the various threads, from one given point, with a billion billion offshoots at the end... and all of them had a different vibration, one he interpreted as color. The most positive choices felt golden, brilliant, or nacreous; negative choices led to dark or even colorless lines that actually felt as if they could suck the life out of anything near it, blacker than black, less than nothing, lower than any heart should experience. These were the hungry places that could never be filled, a bottomless, featureless void that devoured hope and souls as a snake takes its prey whole.

Dylan both was and wasn't afraid of such places. He wasn't afraid because he knew (thanks to Ciara) that it was possible to go beyond them, to see past them, to change your vibrations to suit a better color, a higher outlook. Yet he was afraid because something told him that he had been in these places before, and not just that horrible week before the hare saw him reborn. They were familiar, these ugly places, and still worse, they were comfortingly familiar, that sense of a place that you didn't want to be, but you stayed, because anything new was too frightening even to consider. That sort of place where you keep letting your energy wane, bit by bit, because it took energy to make energy, to raise you up to another level, and no one could be bothered to lend that just that little bit of energy to bring you back into the world of the Living...

"Are you available?"

"Yes, of course." Dylan recovered himself, smiling softly at the Dalmatian who stood before him and indicating that he should take a seat. The canine did so, sitting stiffly erect, far too tense for the relaxed setting of the tea room. His head didn't move a centimeter; his muzzle was set in a hard, square block, and his eyes all but bulged from his head. His clothing was rumpled at best, in some places frayed and torn, not merely used but overused. The cheetah's nose might not have been as sensitive as some, especially with the smells of incense, coffees, and teas floating in the air, but he scented pain, flop-sweat, fear. The posture, the clothing, the odor... something was very wrong. "How can I help you?"

"Read."

"You'd like a reading?"

"Read."

Dylan shuffled the large cards, letting them feather gently against one another as he tried to open his heart and spirit to them and to his client. He wasn't even sure he'd be paid, but that didn't even stay in his mind long enough to concern him; the canine needed something, clearly, and perhaps Dylan could help. The cheetah felt the internal signal that it was time to cut the cards. "Please choose a number, one through five."

"Three. Like before."

The feline let nothing show as he carefully cut the deck into thirds, passed his left forepaw carefully over them, his instincts telling him that the middle pile was the correct one, and something else telling him that the middle pile had been correct before as well. He put the middle stack atop the left pile, those atop the right, and began to deal out the Celtic cross, as was his usual pattern. Of the ten cards that he laid out, eight were of the Major Arcana - a rarity simply by mere numbers, and usually an indication that the cards had something particularly important to say. Dylan felt his fur crawl, and it took an extra effort to control his tail. Looking at the cards, at the message that they were trying to tell him, at the story that they nearly wept to convey, the cheetah's eyes widened. He raised his look slowly to the bulging eyes of the Dalmatian before him, watching as the spotted canine began to nod.

"Different story now?"

"I... don't understand..."

"You lied to me."

"I didn't--"

"YOU LIED TO ME!" the dog screamed, pounding the table hard. Any noises from around the room stopped. "YOU SAID IT WOULD BE ALL RIGHT! YOU SAID SHE WOULDN'T LEAVE!"

"I couldn't, I wouldn't have said--"

"YOU SAT THERE AND TOLD MY FUTURE AND SAID SHE WOULDN'T LEAVE!"

Dylan put up his forepaws pleadingly. "I don't tell the future, I never tell anyone that I can foresee the future, that's not--"

"SHE LEFT ME, YOU FUCKING FELINE, SHE LEFT ME!"

A tall, strong mare in a flowing gown stepped up to the table and asked softly, "Is there an issue?"

The rest happened quickly. The Dalmatian stood up suddenly, knocking over his chair, reaching into a pocket to pull out something as the noise and fear of the crowd began swiftly to rise. Without even thinking, Dylan flipped the table up at the interloper knocking him backward, sending the cards flying everywhere and everywhen, as the possible futures rained down around him. The canine's forepaw flailed, gun waving wildly as the mare tried to back away. The cheetah leaped forward, finding that he wasn't going to be quite as quick as the dog's forepaw. There was a sound of thunder, a shattering in his heart, a feeling of being thrown backward and sideways, a single emotion like a prayer (Ciara...), and the curious realization that the only card that had landed face up, near the cheetah's fading sight, was the Wheel of Fortune.

* * * * * * * *

_ "Yet another contemptible failure."_

_ "Why do you say that?"_

_ "It was destroyed again."_

_ "Through nothing it did."_

_ "It caused it, just like before."_

_ "Life causes death. It's a one-to-one correlation."_

_ "Then what good is it?"_

_ "The ugly thing, or life?"_

_ "They're the same."_

_ "Perhaps."_

* * * * * * * * * * *

The wind off the beach was cold and near-constant, and Dylan was its only companion. Friday mornings in February were not a popular time for bathers, and the sky was too occluded for tanners, so he and the wind and the waves and the sand and his thoughts were all that existed in the long stretch of ocean-side beach. The old badger had come there to walk, and to be alone, and if he were lucky, to die.

He had spent many long years, trying to do what he was told, trying to be the right sort of furson, trying to fit in and make himself useful, trying not to be a burden on others or society, trying not to expect too much, to ask too much, as he had been raised to do, taught to do, bludgeoned into doing. He still read books (they hadn't forbidden that, yet), and he learned things, and he wrote things, and he helped people, and after all these long years, he had even found someone to love... although it was unrequited. That was not the young white fox's fault; Ivory's path lay elsewhere, and despite what bond they'd formed, it wasn't the fault of the young male for being who and what he was. They had parted sweetly enough, but an empty space still needs to be filled. Dylan couldn't begrudge someone being who he really was, who he really wanted to be. You don't love someone and wish they were someone else.

Logic and common sense were one thing, but emotions were paramount, and they made things extremely complicated. To rid oneself of emotion was to destroy passion, to become soulless, and to give up need desire. Dylan had come to feel that perhaps this was better, safer; after all, to be a drone was to be of service to all others, to be self-less, as society had come to demand of its drones. And yet, the badger felt, we are not bees. There is still art, and compassion, and dreams, and hopes, and imagination... even though it was in no way prized anymore.

He wrote up a document at one point, outlining thirty-five years of accomplishments, study, creativity, passion, desire, all the things that would make him a teacher, a mentor, someone who could inspire kits and pups that there's a_reason_ to want to read. He could share his spirit, his insight, his humor, maybe get one or two out of thirty to really want it to happen. He'd never have the chance. The universities had made their decree: No credit for experience, only for sucking the leftovers directly from the academic asses, in hope that they would poison him into regurgitating Their Way of Doing Things. He had tried three academic programs and was evicted each time, once for being gay, once for proving another professor wrong (in front of his students), and once for having an original thought that poked a hole in yet another doctor's dissertation. Thinking wasn't permitted; this was, after all, academia, not a center for learning.

Dylan looked out across the vast expanse of ocean, seeing as it were the vast expanse of his innumerable failures, his impossible desires, the limitless agony of his futile life, and he felt finally that it was time to let go. He walked to the shallows of the incoming tide and fell to his knees, then flopped onto his ass and waited. The cold water was soon over his legs, retreating, moving sand with it, pulling, leaving his black and white fur soaked and vulnerable in the even colder wind. Drowning, exposure, simply giving up the ghost, it was all the same to him by this time. There was nothing, no one, no point. He had done all he could. His talents, his gifts, his love, all rejected. No value, nothingness, oblivion...

* * * * * * * * * *

_ "Madness. How many times can it fail?"_

_ "As many times as it takes."_

_ "You are cruel."_

_ "It would be more cruel to deny the chance. I am merely needful. As he is."_

_ " 'He?' "_

_ "Evolution is all, even for ugly things."_

_ "How can it evolve?"_

_ "The same way that I can. By being needed. By wanting to be needed."_

_ "Who needs it?"_

_ "Far more than will ever admit it. Far fewer than he requires to live."_

_ "Then what is the point?"_

_ "The point is the miracle."_

_ "What miracle?"_

_ "The miracle of one more day."_

* * * * * * * * * * *

"Tell me a story."

Dylan opened his eyes slowly, unsure that such a thing should be possible anymore. He lay propped up on a chaise longue of thick, comfortable pillows, like red velour, in a small, warm, softly decorated room. A lamp stood on a small table nearby, an ivory-colored cup of tea still steaming, and a pot in a cheerfully-colored paw-knitted cozy, and next to it, a crystal jar of golden honey. A plate held crisp, fresh lemon slices, another held some shortbread cookies, a proper afternoon tea for a guest who had not expected to be attending one ever again. The badger looked around the room, aware of shimmering light on the ceiling, as if reflected from a pool. It was then he heard the voice again.

"Please... tell me a story."

A clicking sound accompanied the voice coming from the waist-high wall that contained the lighted pool of water. Dylan could not understand quite what he was seeing. The dolphin in the pool both was and was not feral; the badger had the impression that the body itself was nearly all made of its ancestral DNA, but that the voice was a new addition, as if a member of this cetacean species were trying on some kind of new coat.

"Where...?" Dylan tried to begin, but the words failed him.

"You looked like you could use some tea," the voice of the dolphin continued softly. "And I would like to hear a story, if you would tell one. Are you not a storyteller?"

Dylan sat up on the chaise longue, looking at the dolphin speaking to him, wondering why it should surprise him that the dolphin could speak perfectly good English, or any other language for that matter. Perhaps they'd always been able to, but none had chosen to speak before. The evolution of bodies and languages was not a mystery, it was a history, and history was only the collected data of what was known. Perhaps something had been overlooked, or simply not paid attention to, or perhaps hidden. He could understand that.

"May I ask how you know me?"

"You tell stories. My friends and I read them. We are very excited when you post them, but we have little way of telling you. You are DreamBadger, are you not?"

"Yes," Dylan said softly, recognizing his screen name on the site where he published his stories. "You follow the Internet?"

"We follow vibrations."

The badger blinked, taking some time to process that notion. He took his tea and sipped it - a lovely, fruity mixture, already tinged with a touch of honey. It seemed to warm him even more than ordinary tea would do. "I hope you will forgive my ignorance. I'm not sure that I understand."

"Vibrations are everything. Everything is vibrations. Light, sound, atoms, everything. We follow vibrations. It is what we have always known. You have adapted vibrations, but you still use them."

"And what we call the Internet works on vibrations - satellites, transmissions, wi-fi connections. You're following the vibrations. Reading them."

"You understand."

"Well," Dylan smiled softly, "let's say that I have some idea of what you mean." The badger set down the tea cup and realized for the first time that he was wearing the same clothes that he'd had on that morning, at the beach, and that he was completely dry, warm, safe. Nothing in his fur smelled of the ocean. He looked to the dolphin and wanted to ask a question, many questions, but the dolphin had asked first, and manners are important when life and the world seem uncertain. Protocol and courtesy were the first tools of diplomacy and friendship.

"I must confess, I'm better at writing them over time than I am at making up something on the spot. But if you'll allow me a little leeway, then please relax yourself, and I will spin a tale just for you. Or perhaps you have your friends near...?"

Making a chittering, yipping sound of pure delight, the dolphin dove back into the pool, making what Dylan heard as a kind of watery screeing noise, and then gathered a little speed before jumping up and flopping himself bodily upon a smooth ledge beneath one of several gentle, almost misting waterfalls. Just as Dylan realized that this was the dolphin's equivalent of a chaise longue, one which would help to keep his skin's surface area moist without needing to dip back and forth into the pool, two more dolphins came up into the pool and clicked and squeaked for a moment.

"We have a guest," the first dolphin chastised so very gently.

"Forgive our rudeness," the second said, seeming to bow toward the badger. "We did not mean to exclude you."

"You are DreamBadger?" the third asked, a sense of excitement in his voice, the tone of a teen meeting a rock star backstage. "I am Lyriallicha. Will you tell us a story?"

"It is my turn to apologize," the first dolphin said. "I did not introduce. I am Chronystyma, and there is Oranthyptris." He turned to his companions and offered softly, "DreamBadger has told us that he prefers writing to telling a story without preparation, but that he will try for us. Shall we be kind?"

Lyriallicha, who Dylan somehow did feel was more like a teenager than not, practically trilled, "Have no fear. You cannot disappoint us. We are honored to hear your story."

The badger remembered a saying from one of the First Peoples of his land:Sometimes, a person needs a story even more than he needs food. He took another sip of tea to warm his throat, set down the cup, and sat up straight and proud. "Then I will tell you the most rare, the most unusual, the most dream-filled story that I know. More intoxicating than the sunshine of dandelion wine, and more sweet than the seas around the coral reefs of the most perfect islands you've ever known."

The second two dolphins dove quickly and hauled themselves onto resting places like that of the host. Dylan leaned forward almost conspiratorially, his eyes wide, his ears slightly splayed, and he stage-whispered, "There once was an old badger who kept the universe in a jam jar below his basement stairs..."

* * * * * * * * * * *

_ "Who told it that?"_

_ "Another of my ugly things, as you would have it."_

_ "Did it steal the story?"_

_ "No... this one remembers. That's what all stories are. Or had you forgotten?"_

_ "How could I forget?"_

_ "By forgetting who you are."_

_ "Who am I?"_

_ "Perhaps this one knows..."_

* * * * * * * * * *

Dylan opened his eyes to the gloaming. The beach was deserted. He sat reclined against a small hillock of sand and grass, looking out upon the vastness of the ocean, of the impossibility of life, of the infinitely infinitesimal chance of a dream, a desire, a telling, a story. The old badger remembered that the First Peoples told of Seven Directions, Seven Arrows pointing the way through the Void. Each direction had its own meaning, its own purpose, and the balance between the seven was why...

...why?

Feeling the breeze picking up, Dylan realized that he wasn't nearly as chilled as he had been before. Nothing was as cold as it had been. For the first time in days, he felt hungry. He wasn't sure what he was hungry for, but it was at long last an honest hunger. He'd mere filled his belly each day for the past week, not even caring what he was...

...week?

He pulled out his cellular phone. Likely not to be any reception, but...

SATURDAY - 6:42AM

There was an old badger who kept the universe in a jam jar under his basement stairs...

Dylan rose and went in search of breakfast.

* * * * * * * * * *

_ "Someone was listening."_

_ "Yes."_

_ "All the stories, but this time, someone was listening."_

_ "Yes."_

_ "Was he listening?"_

_ "This time, yes. And you called him he, not it."_

_ "He has a story."_

_ "He's always had a story. No one listened."_

_ "I didn't want to listen."_

_ "That's why you had to keep looking at the ugly thing."_

_ "He's not ugly."_

_ "No, he isn't."_

_ "I'm not ugly."_

_ "Not when you listen."_

_ "Will you listen?"_

_ "I've always listened. It's what I do."_

_ "And need."_

_ "Yes. And need."_

_ "Why?"_

_ "Because need is the part of love that makes you listen..."_