Chương 63: Chapter 62: Farewell

Before the great nomadic reforms of 847 A. E., the argument was always framed as a sacrifice - what you gave up to stay in one place. The reformers got it backwards. The question was never what you lost through a sedentary lifestyle. It was what you could gain through movement.

Once the infrastructure followed the people - the drones delivering everything needed, the interfaces replacing the need for separate entertainment or medical equipment, the care systems travelling with the bands rather than waiting in fixed buildings - there was nothing left holding anyone in place except the idea that they should be. It turned out that idea was the only thing that had ever been holding them.

- From the collected writings of Helan Oru, 22nd Head of the First Brain's Faction The next day was meant for rest, which meant almost half the day was gone by the time Kara emerged from his room. Kara lay on his bed for longer than usual, looking at the ceiling. It felt different somehow. Tomorrow it would be empty, and the day after that, most of the people in this settlement would be gone too - the community rotated out the day after his departure, and the place had already begun folding itself up.

Waggy was already awake. He was sitting at the foot of the bed, watching the door, having concluded some time ago that the ceiling had nothing further to offer. One of his shoulder blade stubs had developed a slight curl overnight, a subtle crook at the tip that Kara had not noticed the evening before.

"Alright," Kara said. Waggy turned, gave him a look of absolute acknowledgment, and walked directly to the door. They found Ren and Kohaku in the cedar forest around noon. Kohaku was doing her perimeter flight, a slow arc through the upper canopy that she had taken to doing every day at roughly the same time. Waggy tracked her progress through the trees without moving from his spot on a low branch, his head rotating in small increments. There was no plan for the day. That was the point of it.

They walked generally upward for a while without discussing where they were going. They walked through the forest. Cedar smell, cold ground, light coming in at a low angle through the branches. At some point they found a flat outcrop above the treeline and stopped there because it just felt right.

From where they sat, the settlement was just visible below - the square, the dark rooflines, a few figures crossing between buildings with the brisk efficiency of people who had started mentally organising their departure. Bundles visible in the square already. Waggy settled between them, having organised the seating arrangement entirely to his own satisfaction. Kohaku landed beside Ren, tucked her wings, and watched the valley. Her wing seemed better but still not at top condition.

"He didn't say what they were for exactly, though he did mention their uses," Ren said, after a while. He was looking at the settlement. Kara glanced at him.

"No." Ren turned a piece of bark over in his hands - had been doing that for the past ten minutes, turning it, not looking at it, setting it down and picking it up again.

"The quills. The cedar. The ore."

"We both know what they're for," Kara said.

"I know." Ren set the bark down.

"I've seen him make one, years ago. The cedar he used had the same grain density. I didn't want to say it loud because I didn't want to be wrong about it and then have to live with having said it."

"Ren, you're not wrong about it. It is for the umbrellas." Ren was quiet for a moment. Kohaku shifted slightly.

"He might only make one," Ren said.

"He might," Kara agreed.

"Or he might make two, and one of them is mine, and you get nothing, and that would be embarrassing for you." Ren looked at him. Then he laughed, the kind that came out louder than intended and startled Kohaku slightly before she resettled herself.

"That would be genuinely devastating. I would have to leave. Just - walk into the mountain."

"You could take the standard umbrella."

"Into the mountain?"

"It would be useful for a while." Ren shook his head, smiling. He picked the bark up again and threw it off the outcrop instead of turning it over anymore. Below, a figure crossed the square carrying something large toward the storage building - early packing, settling accounts with the settlement before departure. Kara watched it for a moment. Waggy sneezed violently. He sneezed again, shook his head once with great dignity, and returned to watching the valley as though it had not happened.

Kohaku made a sound low in her throat. After lunch, Kara made his way to the edge of the outcrop and worked through umbrella forms at half pace, feeling where the weight was moving and where it wasn't. His thigh still hurt if he tried moving too fast, but at this pace, he was mostly fine. He had to get one last practice session in before leaving, just in case something felt off. He had improved.

Some things had settled into where they were supposed to be, the canopy arriving at the right angles with the right weight for the most part. The things still wrong were clearer for it. He went through the third form three times, then stopped, put the umbrella across his knees, and looked at the valley. As much as he was looking forward to what came next, he was going to miss this. In the evening, the community gathered for the meal as they always did, though the room had a slightly different feel to it.

Someone had made a decision about the cooking that had resulted in a mouth watering smell reaching them while they were still washing up. Kara sat between Ren and Hana, flowing between conversations. Ren was usually the loudest with Kara listening in, but today he wasn't just a passive listener. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Morning came quicker than he would have liked. Kara had his bag packed before the settlement properly woke.

He sat on the step outside the main building with Waggy in his lap and watched the light move across the square. Soon enough, the settlement was in motion - a rolled mat leaning against the wall by the east entrance, crates being restacked near the storage building, Yuki moving between the main block and the supply room, doing a final accounting. The community would leave tomorrow. The square would be empty within forty-eight hours.

Isamu appeared at the edge of the square while most of the community was still inside. He crossed to where Kara sat, then turned once to the main building and made a brief gesture. Ren came out a moment later, slightly rumpled, pulling his collar straight. He took one look at Isamu's face and went still. Kara stood. Waggy flowed off his lap and sat between them. Isamu regarded them both for a moment. Then he turned once to the entrance, where Hana had appeared, and she brought two long objects wrapped in cloth.

Isamu handed one to Kara. The other to Ren.

"Open them," he said. The cloth fell away. The shaft was dark cedar, smooth and cold under his hands, the grain running along it in the tight close-set lines that came from decades of slow growth above the snowline. The lines Isamu had shown him to look for in the valley. Iron fittings at the collar, forge-blued, with a faint smell of cold metal that was already familiar from the ore pouches they had carried down.

The ferrule was reinforced, the canopy thread wound tight and even - the quills they had harvested themselves, in the gulley, from the Yamaarashi they had battled to bring down. He turned it once in his hands. It was heavier than the standard umbrella. Considerably more so. The weight settled into his palm in a way that made him briefly grateful for the strength training he had done, the point allocated during the descent. He would need more, but it was a comfortable weight.

It would see him through multiple tier ups. Holding it, he felt proud. He somehow felt a connection to the umbrella, perhaps because he had procured the materials himself. Each part of it held a story. From the moment he first picked up the umbrella after Instructor Ken showed him its use, he had thought it was a useful tool. Now, it just felt right, like it truly belonged to him.

"Thank you," he said, and looked at Isamu directly.

"I don't - this is more than I expected. More than I know how to repay." Isamu looked at him for a moment.

"The materials are yours. You retrieved them." A pause.

"The craft is mine. That part is a gift. Use it well." Ren made a sound beside him, half breath and half word, like he'd started to say something and his throat had closed around it. He stared down at the umbrella in his hands, eyes glassy and his mouth open a little.

"Grandfather," he started, then stopped. He tried again.

"I - I knew what you were making, I think I knew, I hoped I was right but I kept telling myself not to hope too much because what if I was wrong, and then -" He stopped again, shook his head, laughed once.

"I don't know what to say. I've wanted one of these since I was eight years old watching you practice in the square and now I'm just - I'm standing here holding it and I can't -" He looked up. His eyes were bright.

"Thank you. I mean it. Really." Isamu let him finish. When the words ran out, he said, "Your canopy still needs work. Both of you." Exactly the same voice as always.

"The umbrella will not fix that."

"I know," Ren said, laughing again with the unsteadiness still in it.

"But it will not hold you back either." That landed. The rest of the community had come out by now. Nobody said anything. Isamu turned to Kara once more, and what he said next was meant to outlast the saying of it.

"You understand the weapon," he said.

"You don't trust it yet. Trust comes from repetition and use you haven't done yet." He let that settle.

"Do the repetition. Make it a part of how you move."

"Yes, I will. Thank you," Kara said, bowing his head. Isamu nodded once, turned, and walked back toward the main building. The most Isamu farewell Kara could have imagined. The community dispersed by degrees. Ren's mother came forward and said something to Ren in a low voice, one hand on his arm. Yuki stood nearby, quietly present. Ren turned back to Kara. His eyes were still bright.

"Ping me," he said, and before Kara could respond, "and don't give me that look, I mean actually write, not just - I'm alive, arrived safely, weather acceptable. Tell me things. Tell me if the umbrella is working, tell me about wherever they send you, tell me about Waggy." He was talking quickly.

"I mean it. I want to know."

"Yes, yes, I'll ping," Kara said, smiling. Ren looked at him a moment longer. Then he stepped forward and pulled him in for a bear hug. Kohaku had landed on the ground near Waggy. The two of them stood close together without quite touching. Then Kohaku lowered her head and pressed her muzzle briefly against the top of Waggy's head. When she lifted her head, Waggy turned and brushed against her, purring softly. Hana found Kara at the edge of the square while the Suzaku was being called.

"You should know," she said, matter-of-factly, "that a war umbrella made to Isamu's specifications, from those materials, retrieved from those conditions - people would pay considerably for that. Among the best available on Earth, if you asked any expert in the field." Kara looked at the umbrella. He had not been thinking about it in those terms.

"Thank you for all your help," he said, bowing slightly. Hana nodded.

"Safe travels." The Suzaku arrived over the treeline five minutes before schedule. Red-gold, great feathered wings catching the morning light as it landed in the square, amber eyes moving once across the assembled community before settling. Waggy was not going in the bag. Kara settled on the Suzaku's back, and Waggy arranged himself across his lap, having decided some time ago that the bag was now old news. The war umbrella lay across Kara's back.

The weight of it was different from the standard umbrella he had earlier. He was glad of the strength he'd built into his frame over the last weeks. He would need more of it, going forward. The Suzaku lifted. The settlement became gradually smaller than it should have been, given everything that had happened in it. Ren was waving from the square with both arms, enthusiastically enough that his mother put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from pitching forward.

Kara raised a hand and held it until the treeline took them. The transit terminal was cut into the elevated rock north of the settlement. The PfP contact there was a compact woman in her forties who processed arrivals and departures briskly. She checked his documentation, confirmed the connection, and handed him a transfer note.

"Long-distance vehicle departs in forty minutes," she said, already turning to the next task.

"Area 5." Kara looked at the note. Area 5.

"Thank you. Any reason given?" he asked.

"Assignment from above," she said, without looking up. He stepped back from the counter. Waggy looked up at him from the floor, waiting. Area 5. Shanks had said nothing about it in their meeting. The assignment had come from above, which meant it had come most likely from Shanks, which meant there was a reason to it that he did not currently know. Kara folded the note and put it in his bag. He had four weeks to find out.