Fic: The Summer Intern (cont.)

[jeriendhal]

The next three days passed quickly, marked only by an incident on the morning the first when the First One's tree house home was invaded by a trio of does looking for a comfortable spot for one of them to birth her joey. They'd arrived when the First One was away giving a lecture, but Nan had made an emergency call to Nez for help and the joey made the short but strenuous crawl from its mother's womb to her pouch without incident.

It also happened to have been the only dry day as well. The next two days it rained again, ranging in strength from merely a light drizzle that lasted the morning to an intense, lightning lit deluge that jarred Nan awake in the middle of the night.

"Does it ever stop raining around here?" she muttered half to herself as she climbed up into the First One's tree house that afternoon, after spending the morning catching up on her notes for her paper.

"It ain't called a rain forest because a th' sunshine, Vix," the First One noted. He was looking grumpy himself, glancing out at the downpour with distaste. "Now show me what you've found when you doing the grades, yesterday."

"Yes, sir," Nan said, hanging up her slicker. She slid into the comconsole chair and brought up the students' files. "A lot of the social papers were pretty routine. Showing they paid attention in class but nothing special. This one by Student 45 though, was... interesting.

The First One crossed his arms and raised his tail spade over his head. "Define interesting."

"As near as I can figure he thinks defeating the Dominion in the Second War was a mistake and the ferin would have had a better deal if they had gone back to working for the Varn."

He shook his head. "Compared to some a' the things I've seen, he's probably gotta point. I'll talk to him though. I think a few stories about the Dream Stalker will set him straight. Anything else?"

"Yes, sir. Student 32 may have a problem understanding..." She was interrupted by an urgent bleep on the comconsole, the blinking indicator marking it as an emergency call. Nan punched the receive button and said, "Residence of First One, this is Nan."

The display of the students' files disappeared, replaced by the image of Ranger Freya, her ears twisted back in an expression of severe agitation. "Nan, is the First One with you? I need to speak to him right away."

"I'm here, Freya," the First One said, leaning into range of the pickup. "What's the problem?"

"It's at Master Furrow's farm, the one you visited last week with the damned buck and his troupe harassing it. You remember?"

"Course I do," he replied. "What's up? Is the little idiot still causing trouble?"

"I hope not, I really hope he wasn't," Freya said. "There was an explosion in the farmhouse less than an hour ago, a big one. Furrow and his son are both dead."

TBC

Comments

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow...

...this could get ugly

I just hope it was not those Ferin...

mjkj


PS: The first paragraph threw me off a bit - is this some type of recap? Then you should put in the "last" three days instead of "next" three days - or did another trio of does birth a joey there?