Had it not been for Talina’s quetzal-enhanced hearing, she wouldn’t have known how long Kylee sobbed her grief. The girl had taken Flute, removed herself from the impromptu camp, and retreated up to the foot of the slope. Only then, out of sight, had she allowed herself to let go over the deaths of her mother and father.
That had been hours ago.
Talina, dozing off and on, had kept watch. The night creatures moved in the trees; night chime—so different from the sounds of the day—had risen and fallen in harmonic cadence. Briah Muldare had moaned in her sleep. Kalico, to Talina’s amusement, snored. Taglioni slept with the sprawled and loose-limbed unconcern of the totally exhausted.
But nothing was as painful as Kylee’s heart-wrenching grief.
The stars had wheeled most of the way across the sky when Talina stood, willing circulation back into her legs. That internal sense told her that morning was only an hour away.
Stepping gingerly, she slipped up the trail. Glanced around the bole of an aquajade. On the unyielding stone, Flute lay curled around himself like an oversized donut. The quetzal’s vigilant right eye was fully fixed on Talina.
Took a moment for her to realize that deep in the curl, Kylee lay cradled. The girl’s knees were drawn up to her chest, her hair splayed across the quetzal’s foreleg. She might as well have been sleeping in one of those beanbag beds.
Flute’s right eye regarded Talina with an unusual intensity. Seemed like nothing was getting by the quetzal on this night.
“How’s she doing?” Talina asked softly.
Flute’s hide flashed a deep-bruised purple, patterned with black and infrared designs. Colors and patterns Talina had never seen.
Rocket’s Wayob—perched on Talina’s shoulder—whispered, “This is grief. Something quetzals do not feel.”
Seemed she learned something new every day. “So, how come Flute’s feeling it?”
Flute flashed the designs for “Kylee hurt. Deep hurt. Makes eye-water. Do not tell.”
“Yeah, I wondered how she kept it together as long as she did.”
Talina sighed, stared up at the stars. So the kid had buried her head in Flute’s side and bawled herself empty?
“How are you doing, Flute?”
Again he flashed the bruised purple, then black and infrared. She swore that if only quetzals had tear ducts, Flute, too, would have shed a tear.
Didn’t feel grief, huh? Flute did. Mark it up to humans changing quetzals as much as quetzals changed humans?
“Hurt with Kylee.” The patterns were perfectly clear in the night.
“Yeah, buddy,” Talina told the quetzal. “Me, too. Keep her safe.”
The beast’s hide shaded into orange, quetzal for “yes.”
How much pain could a kid take in life?
Kylee’s words: Everyone I ever love dies.
One of these days, the kid was going to explode. As it was, the only creature she could allow herself to be vulnerable with was a quetzal. How screwed was that?
Talina gave Flute a parting smile, then reshouldered her rifle. As she turned to go, a single whimper passed Kylee’s lips. Even in dreams, her heart was breaking.