“You spend all your time up here–” Ey tapped at eir temple. “–and being confronted by the ways in which that can go wrong to someone who was, as you say, brilliant, and it can really mess with you. I bet he holed himself up in that office for a while and paced a ring into the floor.”
If ey had been expecting a laugh or a smile from the skunk, ey was disappointed. She simply nodded and looked off into the water again. “There is nothing wrong with that, Ioan. We have known that disconnect. We have known the feeling of a mind coiled in on itself. That is frightening to all of us. It should be frightening.”
Suspecting that May would appreciate it and not knowing what to say to that, ey simply reached out and took one of her paws in eir hands.
+Ey didn’t know how long they sat there like that. Ey didn’t remember what ey was thinking, or where ey looked. All ey remembered was the satiny feeling of May’s pawpads against eir skin, and the sound of a quiet lake.
+May broke the silence first. “Ioan, my tail is falling asleep. Can we go back?”
+Ey nodded, levering emself up onto eir knees, then onto eir feet so that ey could help the skunk to her feet.
+She laughed and winced once she stood, rubbing at the base of her tail. “All pins and needles.”
+“I can’t even begin to imagine how that must feel in a tail.”
+“And I cannot imagine how to describe it. Help me down, and we can walk back.”
+“Walk? You don’t want to just leave?”
+“If you are going to drag me out on a hike, then so help me God, take me on the hike, Ioan.”
+They walked back along the deer trail, back the way they came. The water was now to their left, and where their eyes had been drawn to it before, they were now drawn to the pine forest that rimmed the lake. Trees reached straight for the sky from their brown bed of needles.
+And as they walked, May talked. “I worry about them. Both launches, both families. The interview with Ezekiel, yes, but both of them, both Castor and Pollux, are starting to get closer to the center of it all.”
+“The center?”
+“All three of us — Dear#Castor, Dear#Pollux, and I — have warned all three of you Balans that there is