She took a step into… mud. She turned her head up to greet the rain. She felt it then, the grim grasp of a whole grav. She took labored steps. Her knees cried out, feet, too. She inhaled the thick, moist air flavored with strange scents. These fetched forth from her long-ago memories of the Deep South. This world was an immense mudball, fragrant, air thick like water and richly flavored. Ah…

Back home. The orbitfall plunge, alien mad dance, lungs heaving in thick, rich air—

All of it swelled up around her, brimmed over, and ran down her face in thick tears.

FRAQ

Before I took their Great Plunge, I spoke to my Flock:

Eat as if you will die tomorrow, build as if you will live forever.

This is an ancient saying, our nest wisdom, yet still vital now. I risked the Plunge not to perform a great fall, but to construct—to build anew the great bridges hidden within our galaxy’s spacetime.

I and their Rachel female did descend without any true damage. I admit my body was much stressed by the fall, and aches still. It was akin to the arch-challenges our kind regard as necessary to become fully fledged Lorders of we Yth.

She was of course affright, as grounders must be, in their air. Yet she persisted. Their culture had made a sport of this challenge, so they were well equipped to render unto her a firm suit. I admire their ability with ’facture, the shaping of knowledge into firm form. They command machines well.

They built well for me, indeed. I was snug within my own descent casing. It shed the friction heat well. I felt the rush of velocities faster than sounds, the rattling of frame and bone, the howls of sharp forking yellow electricity, the gamut of deep, hard air.

The groundlings were rapt, as is their due. She shone for them, I shone for we Yth.

Of course, we Yth had played such flight sports long ago. In our bones we knew that space flight includes space fall. This is only natural—to us. Not them.

The groundlings are young and strange and yet respond to our older, truer ways. Like so many species, they know, absolutely firmly know in fullflight wisdom, that they are the crown of creation. It is a truth, as some of them say, self-evident.

We Flock thought such, when our species was young and foolish. It must be so. As made known—through what the Library terms Messages, and we Flock ken by historical knowledge—these groundling histories speak of their relentless upward progress to now, surely the peak of intelligence. They have not—yet—lived through the destruction of their world. They have risen from grunts and war-clubs but do not yet perceive the darker undercurrents of life on scales galactic.

So can we still evade their piercing gaze, through misdirection. They are sure of themselves, and so vulnerable to our adroit inspections.

Yet still: one of their endless commentators said on open cast-broad, “I doubt we can fare much better than the Incas and the Aztecs did against the Euros.” I shall not trouble you with the details of this idle dread. So, it is their fear we must quell.