He sits in the Pontiac as shadows trickle down through the pines. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four. Bunny comes out in her apron and gets in the car and rubs her forehead with the heels of her hands. In a to-go box she has three pancakes with strawberries and cream.

“Use your fingers, honey, it’s all right.”

The fading light plays tricks; the parking lot stretches; trees become dream trees. A first star shows, then hides itself again. Best friends best friends, we’re never apart.

Bunny tears off a piece of pancake and hands it to him.

“Okay if I take off your muffs?”

He nods.

“And touch your hair?”

He tries not to wince as her fingers catch in his snarls. A family leaves the restaurant, climbs into a truck, and drives away.

“Change is tough, kid, I know. Life is tough. But we still have the house. We still have our yard. We still have each other. Right?” He closes his eyes and sees Trustyfriend cruise over a wasteland of endless parking lots, nowhere to hunt, nowhere to land, nowhere to sleep.

“It won’t be the worst thing to have neighbors close by. Maybe there will be kids your age.”

An aproned teenager crashes out the back door and lobs a plump black bag into the dumpster. Seymour says, “They need big hunting ranges. They especially like high vantage points so they can hunt voles.”

“What’s a vole?”

“They’re like mice.”

She turns his earmuffs in her hands. “There are at least twenty places like that north of here your owl could fly to. Bigger forests, better forests. He could have his pick.”

“There are?”

“Sure.”

“With lots of voles?”

“Tons of voles. More voles than there are hairs on your head.”

Seymour chews some pancake and Bunny looks at herself in the rearview mirror and sighs.

“You promise, Mom?”

“I promise.”

THE ARGOS

MISSION YEAR 61

Konstance

It’s the morning of her tenth birthday. Inside Compartment 17, NoLight brightens to DayLight, and she uses the toilet and brushes her hair and powders her teeth and when she pulls back the curtain, Mother and Father are standing there.

“Close your eyes and put out your hands,” says Mother, and Konstance does. Even before she opens her eyes, she knows what her mother is setting onto her forearms: a new worksuit. The fabric is canary yellow and the cuffs and hems are tacked with little x’s of thread and Mother has embroidered a little Bosnian pine on the collar to match the two-and-a-half-year-old seedling growing inside Farm 4.

Konstance presses it to her nose; it smells of the rarest thing: newness.