These were the best transcriptions the yeoman could manage from the scientist’s ornate scrawl, seen upside down through a window she was meant to be cleaning. They were two strangers separated by the craft’s thin shell. Windows were the most menial work on any restoration ship, but she preferred a wing, if truth be told, which it wasn’t, because who ever asked what a yeoman liked? Other than the wind? So noisy. But, truth be told, she lounged on this wing whenever she could, to see his pen skate along, to see what he said he saw. She worked this wing when at port for census, on cloud hovers for repairs (though she tied down for these), or even at R&R, since the cedar scientist rarely left the ship.

She had a sponge and bucket on the hump of the wing. Salt was stubborn.

She washed the window with big sweeps of her arm.

She heard screaming somewhere. Probably just the wind again.

The cedar scientist’s scribble about horses filled his page, a feathery absorbent material, no longer wood pulp, certainly not animal skin pounded thin. Staff would transpose his ink to Plain Print, feed it into Central Brain. Who was his transposer? The yeoman was jealous of whoever it was.

The cedar scientist was near retirement—last trip to the West Sea. He was hurrying, it appeared, to sign off on the nearly complete restoration of formerly indigenous cedar (another success, after controversy, the yeoman had heard at mess). But if the cedar scientist was giddy in his work today—giddy? an old person’s word; the yeoman puzzled at its arrival in her mind—it was due to this other miracle before them: the dramatic equine display on the beach. Horse Love impeded by Fallen Wood (blowdown).

In her mind the colt and filly were Romeo and Julie, a foggy combination and not quite right yet, and the yeoman would have called the female “chestnut” more than brown. Damn but the window streaks were persistent! And that wind! Always bringing more!

She needed a squeegee but none had been requisitioned. Salt was tough. The cedar scientist had no idea she was there, though they were barely a meter apart. And such a bright sharp day.

HIS NOTE: Colt enraged with frustration. Blowdown extending from tree line well into surf. Filly eats berries, bushes caught in tangled forest matter. Mule release will complicate!

HER NOTE: blowdown: A fence between male and female.

She’d nearly forgotten the mule in cargo, the big feller. She’d slipped down into the hold, fed him chips and sandwich crusts. An off-load ramp would soon appear for their new, experimental cargo.

HIS NOTE: A graying flag above and behind the trees on the beach. Black once.

HER NOTE: flag: a bit of cloth on a stick, ugly skull-face with an X below.

And then: The winds here can scream like a human man.

‌Two

Bear