She came out of it quickly, as the supply of chemicals from glands in her neck and brain stem shut off. The compounds already
in the girl’s
brain cells began to break down, releasing her.
Reality blew around her, the breeze freshening cold against her skin. She wiped the sweat from her brow. There were tears
in her eyes, and
she wiped them, too, sniffing, and rubbing her reddened nose.
Another failure, she thought bitterly. But it was a young, unstable sort of bitterness, a kind of fake, something she assumed
for a while, like a
child trying on adult clothes. She luxuriated in the feeling of being old and disillusioned for a moment,
then let it drop. The mood did not fit. Time
enough for the genuine version when she was old, she thought wryly, smiling at
the line of hills on the far side of the plain.
But it was a failure nevertheless. She had hoped for something to occur to her, something about the Idirans or Balveda or
the Changer or
the war or… anything….
Instead, old territory mostly, accepted facts, the already known.
A certain self-disgust at being human, an understanding of the Idirans’ proud disdain for her kind, a reaffirmation that at
least one thing was
its own meaning, and a probably wrong, probably oversympathetic glimpse into the character of a man she
had never met and never would
meet, who was separated from her by most of a galaxy and all of a morality.
Little enough to bring down from the frozen peak.
She sighed. The wind blew, and she watched clouds mass far along the high range. She would have to start down now if she was
going to
beat the storm. It would seem like cheating not to get back down under her own steam, and Jase would scold her if
conditions got so bad she
had to send for a flyer to pick her up.
Fal ’Ngeestra stood. The pain in her leg came back, signals from her weak point. She paused for a moment, reassessing the
state of that
mending bone, and then—deciding it would hold up—started the descent toward the unfrozen world below.