"Whee!" he heard behind him as Furry went sailing past."Whee!" he heard behind him as Furry went sailing past. "Careful!" he heard from above him, immediately followed by an "Ouch!" "I told you to be careful," he heard Michelle say. "It's harder to stop than you think. And if someone else is in the well while you're doing that, you could have a collision." "Sorry," Furry said as he came to the top level. She was rubbing the top of her head. She looked at him with a pout and said, "I bumped myself." "I heard," he said. "Let me kiss it and make it better." He pushed carefully off the bar he was holding to where she stood, leaned over and kissed her head gently. "Better?" She smiled. "Uh-huh. I appreciate it." She turned her head and kissed his lips. "Come on, you two," Michelle said. "Let's go upstairs." "To where?" "Well, I have to get back to work. Aaden and I were clearing out some vegetation that had overgrown one of the monitor stations. And I like to make sure they're working right. We also found some weird plant up there; its leaves glow when you crush or crack them. You can hang out on the beach or something." Nickolai smiled and said, "Sure. Wouldn't mind that." "What?" Furry asked. "Come on," Nickolai said. They followed Michelle up a flight of stairs that lead to a wide walkway. Michelle walked a short distance to the edge of the castle and said, "Jump!" Which she did, falling slowly out of sight. "More gravitics," Furry said. They followed the drifting Centaur, who put down just on the edge of the lagoon. "Through there's the Vinyare' sea," she said, pointing out to a crack in the bowl that the lagoon flowed through. "Have fun. Make sure you're back by the first flash." "First flash?" Nickolai asked. "I'll explain," Furry said, retrieving their packs and handing his to him. "Come on." They walked down to the crack, easing their way along the narrow path of sand that led alongside stream, out to the beach. "The 'flashes' are what happens around nightfall. The shadow squares are pretty close to Pendor; I guess Shardik could have built them further away, and bigger, but he didn't. |