Chapter One

One

Noel forced her eyes to unnictitate, holding herself stiff to find a confidence she didn't feel. Eight members of the higher board sat to either side of her, their wings held apart from their bodies as the mers and jins leaned across the table and argued about whether the last eight weeks had been a success or failure. The pressure wasn't unfamiliar. She thrived on it. But the guilt their questions had sparked? That was new.

Wings drooping, she gazed out the window as the board members discussed what they thought was her future, but was really the future of their world. Beyond the large window the air was white, not gray, the blue of the sky over the perpetual cloud cover seldom seen. On the rare day that the sun broke through, the observation/meeting room would be packed by sun voyeurs, but now, the only things here were pointing fingers and wings looking to steal her updraft.

"Madam Noel," the associate at the far end said, his deep voice bringing her wandering attention back.

"Yes, Sira Zuriel?" she said pleasantly as she popped her toe knuckles. She'd been ignoring his holo requests for a week now.

"Noel, we appreciate your desire for more time, but with your recent unapproved, wild expenditures, the majority of the table believe it's in the company's best interest to assign portal thirty-four quarantine status and waste no more resources there."

Noel's eyes nictitated in anger. "You want to close it?" she said, not even a hint of wheeze in her words. But still, the guilt pricked. She herself had given the world the nickname thirty-four, earned by sending so many of their people there. But they weren't dead. They couldn't be. Their world was dying. They needed diversity or it would fall in a hundred generations.

"Your Honorables, we can't close it," she implored. "Those who went need more time. The portal opened for an unreal span, I agree, but that's a promise that a large population waited, sophisticated and informationally connected. Our people simply haven't found each other in a significant number to reopen the portal."

"Or that they have been killed on sight," a small, dark jin named Rueth said, earning nods around the table. "Eight weeks is time enough for them to find each other if the indigenous population is not violent and the environment is not toxic. You have made a valiant effort, but it has failed through no fault of your own. Thirty-four creation sparks is a hard loss. We simply do not have the resources to fulfill your hastily offered contracts and keep the portal fixed to receive, idle for their unlikely return. It needs to resume searching out other avenues."

Profit, she thought bitterly, giving her wing hem a little shake to show her disgust. That's what this is all about. "If it isn't my fault, why am I before you, justifying my actions? Yes, I promised thirty-four creation sparks to their survivors if they did not return. But it's just that number that has made reopening the portal a potential reality, not merely a hope to keep the populace from rebelling. Or is that all this company is for?" she said, coming to the heart of it. "Pacifying the populace? Giving them a false hope so they don't rise up in anger that our society has put wealth before survival generation after generation? To distract them from the reality that we will be extinct in ten generations because we allowed short-term profits and willful ignorance to destroy our world?"

Eyes were nictitating, and she pointed at the floor as if she could see the portal at the base of the tower. "We need that portal fixed to receive," she said loudly, and Zuriel adjusted his wings in a blatant attempt to get her to land her mouth. "We need an influx of new species to bolster our own. It's an uncomfortable truth, but we are over the bell curve of our own existence. We need this to shift the graph, or we will not survive. I did not send my people to a possible death to keep the world's population content under a false hope for another generation. I sent them to bring change."

"Thirty-four, Madam Noel?" Rueth protested. "You understand that this is almost five times the number of creation sparks that we had allocated to this project."

Noel ran a hand over her head. They were not listening. "You would I rather had stopped at five? Ten? Anything less than twenty-three individuals would be throwing lives away. Thirty-four is a chance. You don't want to pay out? Fine. Don't declare them dead. Give them a year."

Zuriel chuckled as the rest responded, his whistle insultingly high. "We can't expect their families to remain positive and support their decision for a year without compensation. Children are being born, and the creation spark they carried in promise is gone."

"That argument does not lift wing," Noel said, angry. "No one who crossed had close family, much less a child on the way. And even if they did, creation sparks do not go from parent to child, but grandparent to grandchild. No, Your Honorables, you will not blame this tragedy on me, for it's not a tragedy. I will not declare them dead. If you feel the need to stay positive in the news, run their bios showcasing their unique abilities that will help ensure the portal reopens and a new source of trade and resources become available. There are thirty-four of them," she said bitterly, thinking of August, lost when they really needed him. "Plenty of fodder for the news grinder."

"That is not the point," Zuriel said, but Noel saw faint wing twitches up and down the table. Not everyone agreed. Some had been pushed into silence. "Your actions have put us grossly over budget. You spent money we will not even have for ten years. We can't keep the portal idle in the hopes that they will return."

"Build another portal," she said bluntly, and Rueth whistled as if she was a child.

"I don't think you understand the cost, Madam Noel," he said, and she lifted her wing knuckles high over her head. It wasn't rebellion, but it was close.

"That portal needs to be freed to search out a new, more viable world," Zuriel continued. "We can't keep it focused on a world that is too toxic to survive."

"We have no indication it's toxic," she said, and her wrist holo gave a ping. Her eyes nictitated in embarrassment and she covered it, sure she had set her privacy settings before the meeting had started. "With all respect, mers and jins, you are flying your downdraft backward. The real cost is in turning the portal from receiving. Portal thirty-four may be idle, but it is not unworking. And as long as I'm in charge of resource development and acquisitions, it will remain so."

"Is that your final word, Madam Noel?" Zuriel leaned across the table, waiting for her response so he could ask for her resignation.

Noel took a slow breath. There were a few downcast eyes, but mostly a satisfied agreement. She was to be their sacrificial piscy. I am sorry, August. I will fight for you from the news holos.

But then her eyes slowly unnictitated at a gentle pull of air, unusual this high in the tower. Once more, her wrist holo dinged, glowing an emergency red as it broke through her privacy mode. Around the table, more dings followed by shocked expressions as messages coded higher than their privacy settings came through.

She lifted her hand to accept the message, hesitating when the door irised open and her assistant, Marriel, rushed in, her wings flushed and eyes wide.

"Madam Noel! Portal thirty-four is receiving!"

A shudder rippled over her, and her wing knuckles clicked together high over her head. It was open. They were alive. They had a successful connection! "Excuse me, Your Honorables," she said bitingly, allowing her wings to billow defiantly as she strode to the door. "If you will allow me to make you wealthy beyond belief, I think this meeting is over."

"Noel!" Zuriel whistled sharply, but she was gone, wings open and half flying down the corridor, Marriel flustered as she tried to keep up.

"Clear the snap ring. I'm going down," Noel demanded as they headed toward the nearest jump circle, heads turning and people pressing out of their way. Gossip was loud, and the looks both fearful and excited. Behind them, Zuriel shouted for her return, ignored.

"Yes, ma'am. I've cleared a circle. It's waiting for your arrival," Marriel said breathlessly as Noel halted on a jump ring. "Wait!" the smaller woman said as she adjusted Noel's ribbon shirt to hang properly. "Okay. Now you're set."

Noel whistled her thanks, and at the agent's nod at the other end, Noel relaxed her concentration, walked the labyrinth in her mind, and then stepped forward, using the power of the creation spark she sheltered to make a tiny hole in space and move to the portal floor.

She landed with a snap, her head jerking up at the unusual noise and commotion. Everything sounded wrong, sharper. The air, she realized, is painfully dry.

"Close the floor off. Containment seals," she said as she stepped from the ring into a milling chaos, and the agent on duty, a young mer who couldn't be more than a year certified, popped his toe knuckles, nervous.

"Already done, Madam Noel," he said, whistles raspy in alarm. "Quarantine seals are in place, and for every one coming back, we are prepping two to go out. The portal is open." He hesitated. "Congratulations, Madam Noel. We have a permanent link," he said, wing hem trembling.

And as she looked around, she understood why. Portal agents in black uniforms were already walking the labyrinth and winking out. Boxes of supplies waited nearby on the vacated freight floor, but it was the thin, malnourished people resting amid them that blanked her expression. They had been strong and powerful when they had left. Now they were barely alive, bowed over and trembling with fatigue at the stress of trying to breathe. What fresh hell did I send them into?

"Medical!" she shouted as she strode forward, immediately caught by a well-meaning jin in medial green.

"Madam Noel, keep back," the nurse said, her eyes glinting with slivers of gold to show her distress. "They will all survive. We can't risk any possible contamination."

"I understand." But it was hard, and she forced her wings smooth.

Seeing her settled, the agent hustled away and shouted for more water.

Noel paced the outskirts, wanting to help but knowing better than to break the thin semblance of quarantine. The hastily triage was fast moving, and she watched in frustration as her people were quickly assessed and snapped to a better facility. All of them were wearing the same foreign white sheet, looking like a death shroud as it covered their malnourished bodies. Their wing membranes were patchy, and their eyes were clouded, the gold of their distress looking milky through what she hoped was not a permanently thickened nictitating membrane. "What have I done?" she whispered, her words unheard in the surrounding noise.

"Noel!" came a clear shout, and she turned, her breath catching as Kane fended off three medical agents, almost shoving them out of his way as he strode across the portal floor.

Quarantine be damned, she thought as she went to meet him. "Kane?" she called in wonder. Unlike everyone else, the mer seemed healthy, his nictitating membranes clear and his wings glistening with a quickly fading moisture. He was in the black uniform he had left in…and it was clean.

"Kane, you're okay!" she said as the tall agent raised his brow in a smile, the back of his hand held low in greeting. She stared at his good humor, a shaky hand rising to touch his. She could smell an odd scent on him, but her eyes closed as she pulled him closer, almost wrapping her wings about him, she was so glad to see him.

"Madam Noel." He flushed, clearly embarrassed when she let him go. "Puck smiles on us today."

She took a step back, her toes fingering her wing hem. "You did it," she said, her relief that they weren't all near death almost too much to bear. "You brought them home."

His eyes glinted gold for a moment, then cleared. "August brought us home," Kane said, his gaze locked on hers. "He held us together when it seemed we would die for nothing. He learned their language when no one else could and befriended Renee. She risked her life to bring us together."

She took his elbow and moved him to a quiet corner. "The Ree Ney? What happened?" she asked. "Is the surface so bad? Where is August?"

"It's dry." Kane made a face. "Intolerably bright. There are seldom any clouds, and I only saw rain eight times. But this?" He gestured to the weary mers and jins who had snapped home and had yet to be processed. "This was Tayler."

He said it deep in his throat, like the Piers, with no whistle or click. It was a guttural expletive, and she wasn't sure whether Tayler was a force of nature or a person.

"They are smart, Noel," Kane said, hunched to put his lips to her ear, his wing pulled so no one could overhear. "We were collected and divided into two groups. They kept us apart. I don't think it was to keep us from returning, as they were surprised when the portal opened. Tayler," he muttered, almost spitting the word, "used pain to force answers where there were none, but Renee and Jackson did more with understanding. It's because of them that we came together to open the gate."

Noel touched his wing, wondering if it was thinner even if it did have a healthy shine. His fingers, too, had shortened. "You were in one group, the rest in Tayler's." She hesitated. "August. Is he…"

"He is well." Kane nodded. "I accompanied the wounded so you would see balance, not simply the outrage that Tayler committed. Humans are smart but fearful of their world, and for good reason."

Again he pulled her almost to the shadows, and Noel's wings shivered. Hue mans…

"It's a plentiful Eden," the mer said softly. "But everything there wants to eat everything that roots in the ground and half of what moves. August won't want to leave. He's in Puck's heaven with so many animals to study." Kane hesitated, eyes gold behind his nictitating membranes. "Ten more wish to stay with him. They're learning English from Will now that the sparks have a working knowledge of the human's language."

August is learning their language? Not the other way around? "August is done," she said firmly, and Kane winced. "I need him here. Especially now." She strode from the corner to find the next wave of replacements. One could carry her word to him.

"He won't come." Kane followed quick behind. "It's what he has studied his whole life for."

"Exactly," she said, worry for the brilliantly minded mer heady. "He can work from here."

Kane touched her shoulder, stopping her. "Noel." His eyes glinted gold. "Their green is like nothing I've ever seen. They have grains, fruits, many proteins. Renee never had the same meal in a row, and she stayed with us in quarantine for the last two weeks to prove to her own people that we were safe."

"They had you in quarantine?" she echoed, surprised at their sophistication after seeing the state of her people. Then: "One of them lived with you?"

"Yes, but that's not my updraft to ride with you." Kane's eyes pinched. "They have more species of basilisks than we have individuals. And they roam free, Noel. Everything is free to live or die as they can."

"Except us," Noel said. The gate agent was trying to get her attention. Apparently the shift change was complete and he wanted instruction now that all the wounded were in medical. "You were imprisoned. Tortured."

"Quarantine," he amended. "As good as if not better than we have here. The biodiversity is so rich that danger comes from everywhere. Fear and caution are ingrained in them just to survive. But August tells me that they care for even the dangerous parts of their world, preserve them even if it would kill them. I don't understand it, but they are fascinated by what they fear. August says that's what will make us safe in the end."

"Safe?" she blurted, remembering the grief and pain glittering gold in her people's eyes. "There is no accord to be found here. They deliberately harmed our people."

"Tayler harmed our people," Kane insisted. "Renee fought at great risk to herself to bring us together. Risked her life. Her freedom. Noel, August begs you to recognize Tayler's cruelty but not act on it. He implores you to move slowly, letting the humans dictate our passage as their fears abate and shift to an ultimate emotion of protection. There are shadows of us in their literature and history as fables. Us, and piscys, Nix, and even Piers, though none survived to the present."

Nix. A stab of fear ran through her as she tugged her wing close to disguise her flash of worry. "No." She motioned to the gate agent to clear the labyrinth for a second outgoing run. "You will return and bring August back immediately. I need his personal report."

Kane grasped the hem of his wings and spread them in a show of obedience. "I would be honored to return to Earth, but August will not descend that downdraft with me to return."

Her lips pressed. "Then I will go get him."

"Madam Noel!" Kane protested, but she was already moving, pace quickening as she strode to the labyrinth's beginning and end, deep within the pattern's core. "Madam, you can't. You're the head of Portal Acquisitions."

"We haven't had a new off-world portal for a thousand years," she said bitterly, remembering the profit and loss meeting she had left. None of them had believed it was possible, had been betting it wasn't. Their only profit was eliminating loss caused by frightened people. "I want to see. I'm going!" she shouted, grimacing when the nearby conversations cut off and the gate agent's wings paled. "I will send no one else until I see for myself," she added, and Kane lurched, snagging an air canister from the nearby emergency cart the triage had left behind.

"Then take this," he said, holding it out. "It will help until you acclimate."

She hesitated, her long fingers feeling the cool metal as she took it. "Is the air so bad?"

Kane shrugged. "It's dry and bright. You'll appreciate the moisture. Renee is why my eyes are undamaged and my lungs unscarred. She realized what we needed before we gained their language and could ask. But the quarantine window is broken, and it's unlikely that the moisture will be adequate now."

"And Tayler did not," Noel said, shocked when the gate agent slid a contract to her, his hands shaking. Release of blame should I die. Of course.

Kane leaned close. "It's in my mind that she used our weaknesses to her advantage. Madam Noel, August has a message for you. They are devious and sometimes cruel. They lie, and yet value the truth. Their world is harsh with diversity, and if they feel threatened, as Tayler did, they will kill us on sight. But they are also brave, self-sacrificing, curious. They laugh, they love, and they choose their future by weighing their past against a hope."

That sounded like August, giving her advice that was so full of contradictions that it was worse than none. "I understand." Taking her pen from a fold of her ribbon shirt, she signed the contract. "Tell the honorable board members that if I am not physically back in twelve hours to close the portal and never open it again. No matter who is on the other side. Understand? I'm sure they will be most eager to."

"Yes, ma'am," the gate agent said, the mer's voice shaking.

"Kane?" She turned, getting between him and the beginning of the labyrinth. "I want you to stay here," she said, and he gripped his wings in protest. "If I don't return, your first-account testimony of what happened will be needed to balance out the others." Her breath was raspy, and she steadied herself as she turned to the swirling nothing between the white floor and black ceiling. "Don't let them close the portal early. Lie if you have to about how beautiful and rich their world is. Get it on the holo and out before the public so they can't shut it down."

"Yes." He bobbed his head. "But I won't have to lie." He made a plaintive whistle, and she hesitated. "If I may? Allow August to remain. He's become important to Renee, and though she's a fringe member of the group holding us, her word carries weight with those who make the decisions. She will work harder in our interests if he's there. She sees something in him that makes her want to fight."

Noel's eyes nictitated in the glow of the labyrinth as she thought about that.

"Portal outgoing!" the agent on desk shouted, and she took a step forward, her mind readying itself for the long snap that waited for her at the end of the labyrinth. Her grip tightened on the air canister, and as she wove through the convoluted sweeps and turns, she had a fleeting thought that she should have taken a survival bag. Her pulse hammered as she reached the end. It was one step from the beginning, and her eyes found Kane through the haze of nothing. "Noel!" she heard faintly, tensing at the hooting claxon of an emergency shutdown as Zuriel strode to the portal desk, wings flapping. Perhaps August was right, she thought as she felt the need to rebel, to go when she was told to stay, to see something no one had ever seen before. Perhaps we are all adventurers.

Her breath seemed to hesitate in her lungs as she stepped forward into the haze, a curious inward feeling pulling through her as her foot descended to land on the portal room floor…

…and came down upon a ragged, hard-etched line carved into a white stone. She had snapped, and snapped hard.

Gods, she thought, breathless as she looked up at a low ceiling, the air stabbing her lungs and drying them in a flash of flame. Staggering, she almost fell. The chatter of her people was harsh in the dry air, and she blinked, her eyes nictitated as she followed the guttural, weirdly attractive singsong sound of…humans?

Bipedal, she thought as she squinted, wings clamped in distress. Oddly similar facial structure, and though shorter, they seemed heavier, more compact. No wings, but in this dry, thin air, flight would be impossible. They covered their feet like Piers. Most wore the same cut of clothing, making them either unimaginative or uniformed.

"Madam Noel?" a wide-eyed mer said, and she nodded, accepting the arm of an agent doing scarcely better than she. Noel belatedly took a sip of air from the canister, and the fire in her chest retreated to a dull throb.

"August," she said, scanning for him. "Where is August?"

The air was tasteless, but a faint metallic scent mixed with a plantlike smell. She was in a large room, the…humans and her people all mingling freely. The space was divided by a short wall, glass littering one side, the shards glinting in the light from their sun. The humans' voices twined and spun in a fast pattern, not a whistle or click to be heard. She exhaled, waiting for her creation spark to make sense of it and change their words into something recognizable…but they may as well have been the squeaks of piscys for all the sense it was making of them. Her spark did not recognize them. Strange, but Kane said as much.

She stiffened when she spotted August standing beside two humans just this side of the broken window. The smaller one was pale, making him a vegetarian. His hair, and it had to be hair despite the length of it, swung in straight lines to his shoulders. The other was taller, darker than August. Renee, Noel decided at the human's obvious confidence. It looked as if they were talking, August included.

More humans stood behind that short wall, their feet on the broken glass. Some had the wary stiffness of guards, the others…she was not so sure. And beyond them, surrounded by a protective glass…was a—tree? Noel blinked, trying to get her eyes to focus. Under it was a low moss, the sun beating on both of them to make them glitter like nothing she had ever seen. Green. Kane said the world was green, but this was like living jewels.

"They are living in a world of gems," she said, then she fell to coughing, struggling as she breathed the cool, damp air from her canister. She felt her eyes shift gold, and when she recovered, August was there, a hand under her elbow.

She blinked the gold from her eyes, trying to see him through her second eyelids. "You aren't supposed to be here," she rasped, her words sounding unusually tinny in the dry air.

"Neither are you," the mer said boldly, then he hunched, contrite. "Noel, I had to come. I had to be here. It was Renee." August's words whistled over themselves as he all but babbled. "She made Hancock tell us our missing lived. She rescued Will. She proved to Jackson that we would not make them sick so he would bring the missing to us. There is hope here. It's not all loss. What Tayler did is not all that they are. They're fighting to survive in a world so overflowing with feral life that the memory of fear is always near. But they can move past it. I know it. I've seen it."

Noel took the air tube from her lips. "Does it get any better?" she asked, her lungs aching and her skin feeling as if it was flaking away.

"Earth is green and blue and brown," he gushed, oblivious to her misery. Clearly his creation spark had adapted him somewhat. "The colors so rich. I've seen pictures. They have so many species, and they give them room. They are not all like Tayler."

"How long until I can breathe?" she said around her cough, and he started, his eyes flashing wide.

"Oh, sorry." His wing knuckles clicked together high over his head in apology. "It will stop burning in a few hours, sooner probably since I think they sealed the room and are increasing the humidity, though I doubt they will get it to normal. Not with the partition broken." He winced, eyes nictitating briefly. "But even with that, I wouldn't attempt to fly. The air is too thin. I tried before I was, ah…"

"Captured?" she suggested as she pulled herself out of her hunch. The dark human, Renee, was staring at her as the pale male tried to capture her attention.

"Quarantined," August said, wing twitching nervously. "For our own protection, and, to a lesser degree, theirs. But I think the point is moot now," he added, gaze on the broken window and the humans beyond. "The room had been sealed when the portal opened, and the window blew out with the pressure of equalization. If anyone becomes ill, it will be us. They have all our gut flora. We have none of their newest adaptations."

Her skin had stopped tingling in pain, and she could almost open her eyes without them nictitating. "And you know this because they gave you access to a lab?" she said sarcastically.

"No." August grinned. "But I saw Renee's data."

Noel leaned against the back of what passed as a chair, but her denial hesitated when her fingers brushed the fabric. It was organic. Soft and sturdy—and organic. "They have science," she said as she handed her canister to one of her people, and they began to pass it around. "You seem well. A little pale, but well."

"Because of Renee," he said, clearly uneasy. "Noel, I can't go home."

It was Puck's hell here. "You will," she said, glancing to the beginning of the labyrinth. "Now. With me. You are too important to risk. I never should have agreed to it."

"I'm staying," he said, expression resolute. "I am a piscy."

Noel looked him up and down, a sliver of dry humor bringing her wing knuckles up. "I admit that you're acting like one, yes."

August grimaced. "A scientific piscy," he added. "There might be toxins that have to build up before they show. I will stay and be the sacrificial piscy. The permanent evolutionary changes will show in me first. My eyes are already beginning to adapt. I can look at the courtyard and their tree at full noon and not squint."

Noel glanced past the humans to glimpse the flaming gold and green in the sun. "You're pale."

"We ran out of protein," he admitted. "But I've begun sampling Earth food with the intent to test for toxins, and there are many nonanimal protein sources to try."

But she shook her head, remembering the thin, gaunt bodies of her people, and how they had been tortured. The Honorables would have her creation spark for their grandchildren. "No. You can work from home."

"I can work from here," he insisted, glancing at the mismatched pair of humans across the room watching them. "With Renee. She is a doctor of the same science I am. Noel, the sparks don't automatically translate their words, but with enough contact, you can begin to understand them. I have learned to speak their language."

"You can speak that ?" She glanced at the thick ring of wingless bipeds behind the broken window, some silent but others making those curious up-and-down guttural sounds. They were so chaotic that even her creation spark failed to recognize them as communication.

Her eyes narrowed in angry doubt as she wondered if he was lying to exaggerate his usefulness here. They were not built to reproduce such sounds, but their bodies adapted to the environment and the need, and if he'd been grunting enough, the mer's larynx would change to make the right noises—as weird as they sounded.

"Noel, just try this," he said, holding out a bowl with three blue eggs in it. "I saved them from Renee's breakfast."

"A piscy egg?" she said, lips curled.

"The piscys here all died out," he said, surprising her. "It's a blueberry. A tiny fruit."

" This is a fruit ?" She plucked one, feeling the firm give. "You'd have to pick hundreds of them for one meal."

"Renee says they grow by the hundreds on each bush." He hunched closer, clearly eager. "She eats them every day. I had one this morning. Try it."

She shook her head in refusal, and he pressed closer. "You need to see what they are so fierce to protect before you decide they are being too harsh," he said.

"If I die, I'm taking you with me," she muttered, then put it in her mouth, rolling it around for a second before gingerly biting down.

Noel's eyes widened at the sudden give and burst of sweetness. Her gaze went to August's satisfied smirk, and she nodded slowly. The texture was unexpected, but the taste was like nothing she'd ever experienced.

"It's one of many species of small fruit," August said. "Let me stay. I will work with Renee to be sure that nothing gets past the portal that can destroy what we have left."

Noel moved her tongue to find the last pockets of flavor. This was one of many fruits that Renee ate every day? Noel eyed the couple across the room. Perhaps the smaller, white one was the jin Renee. True, she was not directing anything, but no one was making her leave, either.

"There may be one or two species that can survive Nextdoor without sun that will not damage our remaining ecosystem, but even if not, I can help screen for imports such as this."

She nodded, still tasting the blueberry. "What is that flavor?"

August shrugged, stringing a few guttural throat sounds together.

Her lips quirked. "You really can speak their language? Maybe you should stay."

He flicked his wing hem nervously. "Why do you think I've been spending every last waking hour perfecting it. Ah, do you want to meet Renee and Jackson?"

Noel looked across the room to the pale human staring at her, her lips pulled back to show her teeth. Renee seemed too fragile and small to have sway with the larger, heavily dressed humans. Perhaps that was why she was showing her teeth at everyone. "Yes," she said, shocked to see August was showing his teeth back to her. Actually, there was a lot of teeth showing going on. Savages.

August's lips fell to cover his teeth. "Noel, please don't laugh when she tries to speak. It's awful, but I think she knows what a laugh is now, and she tries so hard."

"I will do my best." Noel fell into place beside August, tugging her ribbon shirt straight so her portal emblem showed. Try to take my success from me, you damn shortsighted fools? she thought as she took step after wobbly step to meet their future. The entire portal facility had been created to bolster a hope that its builders hadn't believed in.

But she had, and now it wasn't hope. It was real.