his head. “Although, now that I think about it, I don't see why I should be particularly surprised by such a boneheaded, stubborn, impulsive antic—especially from you!”
Honor's eyes widened. She couldn't think of a single thing she'd done in her entire life—well, up until today—to deserve that resigned tone from Ranger McIntyre. She hugged the injured treecat in her lap very gently—the other 'cat was too badly hurt for her to risk moving any more than she'd had to after she'd used her bush knife to cut away the log under which he'd hidden himself and covered him with her jacket—and stared into the display in confusion.
“Oh, don't look so innocent at me, young lady!” McIntyre snorted. “This is a tradition in your family!”
Honor blinked, and then her eyes went wider than ever as she realized what he was talking about. But that was ridiculous! She hadn't been adopted by either treecat—she didn't want to be adopted by either treecat! She'd only been doing what needed to be done, and it was—
She made the mistake of looking down.
Two grass-green eyes looked back up at her, brighter and deeper and simultaneously darker than any sea she had ever seen. She fell into them, as if they had no bottom, no end. And as she fell, she felt something—someone—reaching back to her. It was as clear, as sharp, as any voice she had ever heard, and yet she couldn't hear it. It was there, and it wasn't there. Imagined, and yet more real than anything else she had ever experienced. It was nothing at all like Stephanie Harrington's description from her journal . . . yet it was simultaneously perfectly and exactly the same.
But I can't be adopted, a little voice in the back of her brain wailed. It'll mess up everything! All my plans. All my . . . .
That voice faded into silence, inconsequential beside that other voice, the one she heard without hearing. The dream was still there, the plans and hopes, the determination, but she was going to have to make a few changes, because now the dream had to include this, for it was unthinkable that it could not.
Ranger McIntyre was still saying something over the com, but she was no longer listening. She was listening to something else, and her hand was gentle as she touched the treecat's—her treecat's—silken, tufted ears as if they were what they had just become . . . the most precious thing in her universe.
* * *
Sharp Nose's mind voice was shadowed with pain and weaker than usual, yet amusement flickered in it.
Laughs Brightly replied,
Sharp Nose protested, his mind-glow as soft with unvoiced love for his brother as Laughs Brightly's was with love for him.
Sharp Nose bleeked a soft, pain-shadowed laugh and reached out to caress his brother's mind-glow gently. Laughs Brightly's mind-glow had always been strong; now it was brighter than sunlight on water, and it was growing stronger still by the moment.
he said softly,
Laughs Brightly replied, ears twitching as he heard the whine of a rapidly approaching two-leg flying thing. He knew, without knowing exactly how he knew, that it was a healer, summoned by his person, yet that was unimportant, and he drew the bright, welcoming joy of her about him like a still softer and endlessly warmer blanket on a day of ice and snow.