REDEMPTION

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 33
Seasonal Shift
 

Despite the base of her hybrid form having evolved for a desert climate, Mandy found that part of her enjoyed the cooler weather that heralded the groups’ first winter on Bastien. Fennecs were able to accommodate rapid temperature changes, dealing with the heat of their natural environment with ears that had evolved to work as radiators while also coping with the nearly forty degrees Fahrenheit change when the sun set, using that as their primary hunting period. This, however, hadn’t been her consideration when she was given an option of choosing what furmankind body she wished to have.

The young woman that had been given the name Amanda Sterling had chosen a fennec fox donor simply because it had been cute.

As the late autumn sun fell upon her sandy colored fur, her colony chores for the day done as Sofiya had standing instructions for all of the females that were expecting to only perform light duties. Amanda wasn’t as far along her term as some of the others, but was showing, and as such was only allowed to fill the water troughs for the horses and other livestock or to curry one or two of the mounts and nothing more. While she felt a little like an invalid, she had to admit that it was nice to be able to have the free time to just lie in the sun while her paw like hand caressed her growing belly.

Feeling rather lazy, Amanda didn’t open her eyes until the cooler air reasserted itself with a shadow falling over her and opened her dark eyes to see thick, grey clouds coming in that blocked the orange-white light of Epsilon Eridani. With the clouds came a few flakes of snow, one falling perfectly into her ear, making her sit up and shake her head vigorously as it melted. Sitting up she watched a few more flakes fall lazily between stalks of the tufted Bastien grass before the amount of snow increased substantially.

Though she’d had a memory wipe for some reason, Mandy could remember always being excited as a little girl at the first snows when she was growing up in Scotland and found herself on her feet, head up and arms thrown wide as she reveled in the first snow of her new home. Laughter behind her showed that she wasn’t the only one that was excited. Tipper, Mina and Ruiz ran out of the Great Dome and began cavorting about while others paused in their work to look up at the white flakes falling from the sky.

It wasn’t until the first crash of thunder and strange flash of lightning that Amanda even considered heading indoors, the nearest structure being the Great Dome, her heart pounding.

Suzette looked up from where she was watching her kits play with wooden building blocks that some of the other Furs had made, a smile splitting her muzzle. “The Thunder Snow is early this year,” the vixen commented.

“Thunder snow?” Amanda asked, her eyes wide as her ears tried to lay flat.

Suzette nodded. “It has happened every year we have been here. The very moist air from the west reacts with the dry air to the east on the other side of the mountains and the first month of snows always has thunder and lightning. It is actually very pretty when you become accustomed to it.”

The fennec vixen went to sit with the red fox, an embarrassed smile forming. “I don’t know if I can get used to that. I almost wet my knickers!”

“It happens every year,” Suzette repeated with a pat to the back of the other female’s paw-like hand. “Then at the end of winter the Angel's Breath will turn the snow all different colors if there is still any on the ground. It is very tres magnifique! You will see.”

Before Amanda could say anything in response, Richard entered the dome with a very shaken looking Matthew Sykes, the red fox male visibly trembling and laughing nervously. “So note to self; when it starts to snow here, get the heck down from the doggone water tower!”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Richard inquired as the two drifted to the section of the Great Dome that had carafes and urns of hot tea waiting for anyone that needed something to drink, the brew that the Vulps that had been with the original Felis colony introduced the Abeona group to slowly replacing the stores of coffee as the drink of choice.

“A little twitchy,” the red fox said. “If I weren’t faster than I used to be I know I’d have broken my fool neck.

“I’d still feel better if you got one of the doctors to check out your shoulder. That tubing material is flexible, but you hit pretty hard,” the silver fox persisted.

“Was there an accident?” Suzette inquired as she stood, glancing at her kits to make sure they weren’t in any immediate danger of getting into trouble. At almost two years old they had begun to intersperse their yips, barks, growls and infant babbling with actual words and demonstrated a penchant for names and the word ‘no!’ in several languages, particularly when it came to eating their vegetables.

“It’s just a bruise, Miss Suzette,” the former construction worker from West Virginia said quietly.

Richard couldn’t help the smirk and wink he gave Amanda, finding the fact that Matthew was completely intimidated by the French born physician incredibly amusing. Nan Pi-lei’s encounter with the grass-lobsters and a concerned Matthew had pushed the red fox vixen’s patience to the end and when the American Fur had continued to try and tend to the injured vixen, getting in the way of her treatment, Suzette had physically picked up the male and deposited him outside before sealing the door of the medical dome without a word. Since then Matthew had paid her deference that he didn’t anyone else. Never mind that both she and her husband were serious students of Savat and capable of enforcing their orders before patching up anyone that pushed them that far.

“I will be the judge of that,” Suzette told the red fox firmly. “Take off your top, s’il vous plait.”

“Yes, Miss Suzette,” Matthew relented almost demurely.

As the vixen looked after the other Fur, Richard let Amanda pull him down next to her on the bench she sat on, accepting a happy nuzzle from the fennec. “I saw you bolt when the thunder boomed,” the silver fox teased the smaller vixen. “It didn’t scare you too bad, did it?” He asked as he lifted Amanda up and set her on his lap.

“Too right it did!” the fennec hissed in a whisper before giggling and slipping her arms around her mate’s neck. “Near peed myself over that! I’ve never heard of thunder and lightning with snow.”

Richard nodded. “I saw it once when I was a boy, but it wasn’t like this.” Another flash of lightning was accompanied a moment later by a loud boom that was felt as well as heard. “It’s kind of cool, though,” he said looking up through the fiberluminum panels at the snow that had begun to accumulate.

“Well, I suppose we could always get Sofiya and Elena and head back to our dome and all snuggle under blankets with some tea…” Amanda suggested archly.

Richard smiled warmly at the fennec, liking her idea immensely but was interrupted in his response by Suzette stepping up. “Richard, I’m going to have to put Matthew on light duty for the next few weeks.”

The silver fox’s ears twitched in interest. “Did he bang himself up that bad?”

“Not terribly so, but his shoulder is sprained. If he pushes too hard it will take longer to heal and he may make it worse. As it is I would like to take him to the medical dome and give him an anti-inflammatory injection. There is swelling and the shoulder is feeling a little too warm.”

“Do what you feel you need to, Suzette,” Richard acquiesced. “You’re the expert. We all know that Matthew will push himself too hard and brush it off.” The last was added with a pointed look at the red fox.

“Aw, c’mon. This ain’t that bad,” the other American said plaintively.

“You heard the doc,” Richard countered as he managed to pull his PBJ out and documented the injury, finding it a challenge to do so with his arms around Amanda. “She says light duty, then light duty it is. Besides,” he added with a sly grin, “this’ll give Nan and Neelu a reason to dote on you for a change, right? I don’t want them mad at me for denying them this chance!”

Matthew grinned in return and shook his head as he walked away. “I am in so much trouble,” the red fox muttered as Suzette left her kits playing for a moment, knowing they were in good hands as she headed for the infirmary facilities.

“Now,” Amanda said as she resettled on her mate’s lap, “when Suzette comes back, I think we need to find the others for that tea and snuggling we were talking about.”

***

The thunder and lightning tapered off near sunset, though the snow continued to fall until there was a good three inches of powder on the ground before stopping, prompting many of the Furs to arrange an impromptu party. A bon fire was put together and the various cooks for the colony whipped up simple meals that could be consumed easily as the others cavorted around the fire or broke out into spontaneous snowball fights, no few of the combatants getting into wrestling matches that turned into something else. Couples and groups of three and four would vanish for a bit before reappearing, smiling and a little mussed, the cooler weather having an odd effect on several of the ladies of the group.

It was Riva, coming back with a stunned looking Victor Rushenko, her longtime partner from their first days at the Stockholm Institute, that explained it to Sofiya and Richard as Elena and Amanda had gone to get hot drinks for the rest of their family.

“Foxes mate in the last part of winter, but I think that this is something that we will be seeing more of during the colder months as we aren’t fully vulpine or human.” Riva settled back in the circle of the Russian Fur’s embrace, both suffused with a happy glow. “If we are adapting to our new world and our new bodies, then this may be the norm from now on. I think we will have more children come summer, which is fitting as that’s when the crops and livestock will be the most plentiful.”

“Or it could be that all have been preparing for the winter and this is being the first chance for relaxing and having fun,” Sofiya commented drily. “I have been having everyone working hard. Perhaps too hard.”

Before Richard could say anything, Riva and Victor halted that line of thought.

“No, Sofichka,” Victor rumbled jovially. “We are from countries that know the cold. You are showing that you are thinking ahead. With the snow I am happier to have been a busy little ant than a lazy grasshopper!”

“Victor’s right,” Riva agreed. “This is our first winter here and it’s better to be over prepared than caught unaware. Besides, no one is complaining. Most of us are working as hard as we did in our jobs on Earth, some of us less so, but we are doing so without many of the things that we relied on. We are growing our food, not getting it from a store. We are carving out a life on a world that is far from where we were born. I think we’re doing rather well.”

“I agree,” Richard tossed in. “When we were all training together we knew it wouldn’t be a picnic, and we’ve accomplished a lot. If anything we should be proud of what we’ve done. And you are doing a great job of seeing to it we do our jobs and succeed.” The last was added with a kiss and nibble to the red fox vixen’s neck causing her to giggle happily.

“Stop that! I am already feeling…privyazcivyy, er…affectionate.”

“Most of us vixens are,” Riva mumbled happily.

Victor seemed to forget that he and his bat eared vixen were in mixed company. “I think tonight is going to be a very long, happy night.”

Ruiz had gone and gotten a sort of guitar that he’d been working on since the colonists first week, carefully hand carving the wood in his off hours and taking sinew that had been meticulously culled and cured from not only the Abeona livestock but also the different animals obtained through limited hunting. The native Bastien wood had been painstakingly hand-rubbed until it glowed dark red and black with green veins. To many of the Furs it sounded a little like a cross between a medieval lute and a mandolin, but the tone was pure and it resonated beautifully.

As the South American fox began a tune that was soft and gentle, Richard spun Sofiya around and wrapped his arms around her. “You know, one of the things that you and I have never done is dance together.” His right paw-like hand slipped into her right while his left arm slipped about her waist. “I think that this would be a great time to remedy this oversight.”

Sofiya looked up into her mate’s bronze colored eyes, the fairly low-level tension that had filled her over the past few days flaring into something far more primal and powerful. She let Richard guide her as they danced and felt everything besides the two of them fall away, almost like it was when they first discovered their feelings for each other. There was no colony, none of the other Furs, and it was something that the vixen had needed.

Before she was truly aware of what was happening, caught up in the moment, the two of them were back in the dome they shared with Elena and Amanda, though the other two foxes were pleasantly absent. Sofiya loved the other two females that she shared her Richard with, but tonight she needed him all to herself.

“Give me children, miy liubluy,” the blond vixen whispered. “Just as we talked of so long ago when Poppa died.” She sighed as she looked up at her silver fox, his eyes seeming like two jewels in the dark shadows of his face as a sense of urgency filled her, smiling as her beloved joined her on the sleeping pallet and exulting in the feel of warmth and affection that suffused both of them.

***

“Your mother and I were a little surprised by this…expansion of your family,” Nathan Tavington said in the recording that Richard and the vixens watched, the message from the silver fox’s parents having arrived with the latest transmission from Earth. “I suppose that it’s a practical expedient, though, considering the disproportionate ratio.” The man in the video cast a glance over his shoulder before resuming. "Don't say anything to your mother, but I’m rather envious, son. From your descriptions I know they’re exceptional ladies. Though your mother is thrilled that one of them shares her name and I have to tell you that all of them are most fetching, but then I’ve always found the different Furs to be somewhat enticing, something else we really don’t need to tell your mother. She was hoping that each of them could send her a short message when they find the time.

“The progress on the new colony ship that you saw on your way to Sebra is coming along rather well. There were some material delays, unfortunately. Things are again heating up in some of the less stable regions of the planet that the TCC runs contracts through. It’s caused a slight delay in hull construction. I know it has my particular office in a bit of a budgeting uproar and I’m wondering if your mother and I shouldn’t put in our names for colony detail. I don’t know if the world has always been this dangerous, or if it’s being continuously bombarded by the news twenty-four hours a day that just makes it seem that way, but I think that I would rather face some strange critter than some of the fanatics we have here.

“I did talk to Ásmundr Gustavsson and it seems that the AHCP research teams are thrilled with the reports that you’ve been sending back on the new equipment. Who knew that a more efficient water filter could make such a drastic difference? That will certainly come in handy when Bastien or some of the other planets are cleared for permanent colonies.

“Ah, that reminds me. Your friend, Jack, has just completed his run to Sebra himself. In just a few more months he and the other Canis from around the world will be headed to New Zealand to undergo their immersion training and simulation. Like you, he’s an impressive specimen of his chosen Fur type. Seems he found a young lady himself, one Connie Durant. The lass chose one of the latest Canis furmankind types that Ásmundr's office approved…a maned wolf. She looks more like she’d be at home in the Vulps ranks, but I’ve been assured that she’s definitely Canis. It’s rather heartwarming to see the two of them interact. Jack dotes on her to distraction, but they’re good for each other.”

The elder Tavington looked at his expensive wrist watch and chuckled to himself.

“I’m going to have to wrap this up. I might be the Director of TCC Colonial Operations, but even I can’t surpass the time constraints for a burst message. Just know that you, Sofiya, Elena and Amanda all have our love and that we wish you the best.”

The screen went blank and Richard blinked several times, feeling a strange tightening in his chest that he never associated with his father. It wasn’t until he took a deep breath that the silver fox realized that all three of the vixens that were part of his family were touching him and he drew strength from the contact.

“I didn’t know your mum and I had the same name,” Mandy commented happily. “I like that!”

“Is this Jack the same that you were telling me about the same that was taking care of the mean woman?” Elena asked with interest.

Richard nodded. “Yeah. Jack kept her from making the Adirondack Institute and all of us Furs from looking bad. He also helped the kid that warned us to do that documentary we watched that was sent last month. I was impressed. No wonder Ásmundr put him on the AHCP payroll.”

Sofiya slipped her arms around the silver fox’s neck, leaning over his back and shoulder to place her head next to his, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Jack is being a very good person. And it is good to hear that he has found a lady love.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re biased,” Richard said with a grin as he spun in his chair and brought all three vixens in for an embrace.

“Of course I am being biased,” the red fox quipped. “When a woman is in love she wants all of the world to be in love with her.”

“’course keeping all of us so happy might also have something to do with it,” Mandy added with a mischievous gleam in her dark eyes.

The moment was broken when a rather frantic looking Charity entered the operations dome, the fur under the American grey fox’s eyes damp and worried. “Richard? Have any of you guys seen Joel? He didn’t come back from his shift on watch last night?”

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.