Requestor: Becca
Characters requested: Heruvael and Hileko
Timeline: 387 AK, 404 years after Hope's Passage, 50 years before Hu-Hua's Cry

Heruvael stifled a sigh at the nearly inaudible sound of tiny feet padding into his study. The soapy water and blowing-sticks had not kept his son occupied and out of his pelt near as long as he had hoped. He glanced at the pool of bright illumination that entered the chamber through the skylight above. Not even an hour.

"What is the sky, father?"

The healer-hyarmi sighed again, this time wanting to be heard. He did not turn. "It is the atmosphere around the planet, the air that you breathe."

"But air isn't blue! How can the sky be air when the sky is blue and air isn't? Is the sky special air?"

"Air is pretty much colorless, my son, just like water in a cup is colorless, yet it can look quite different in other places. It depends on what's in it, and what's around it, and on the light striking it."

"What's around the sky?"

"Beneath the sky is the world, and above the sky is the void." Questions like that required little attention, and Heruvael found his gaze straying across the page in front of him. If only his own questions were so simple...

"What keeps the sky from going away?"

"Gravity." Heruvael turned the page over, searching for a diagram. "The world holds the sky close."

There was a brief silence, and Heruvael's attention sank into his work. "Barometric pressure..." he murmured.

"What's Bar--barometric?"

Heruvael winced. "It's how heavy the sky is. Due to gravity, and temperature, and...other things."

"How can the sky be heavy? I don't feel anything."

With an amused sigh, Heruvael turned toward his son. Those curious golden eyes and pricked ears, so insatiable...

Had he ever been such a persistent nuisance? The healer-hyarmi's faint smile faded at the answer. Yes, he had. But he had possessed two parents to afflict. Two parents and two brothers.

"Believe me," his tone was terse, "you would feel it if the sky's weight went away. Now why don't you go play with your bubbles. Go chase the wind."

Hileko's whiskers drooped. "But my bubbles keep popping. They pop too fast. What makes them pop, Father?"

Heruvael turned back to his work. "Evaporation...and gravity. If it were very humid out, maybe they would last longer."

"Humid?"

The healer-hyarmi realized he was looking at the wrong side of his sheet. He flipped it over. "When there is a lot of water in the air. That's humid."

"What's evaporation?"

Heruvael raised his head with a frown. "You know what evaporation is. You know what humidity is too, for that matter. Go play or go sit in your room."

"What's gravity, Father?" His son's voice sounded both stubborn and somehow desperate.

Heruvael glowered down at the equation in front of him. Only Hu-Harek would invent something so befuddling and galling as the calculus, and then inflict it on the rest of the world. Just because he was over five centuries old did not make it remotely enjoyable.

Well, there was no need for him to suffer alone, was there?

He turned, with an unpleasant smile, and saw his five-year-old son's gaze meet his. "You want to know about gravity, do you?" The cub winced, and Heruvael's smile broadened. They both knew what was coming...so why be a disappointment?

The healer-hyarmi launched into his discourse, ignoring Hileko's attempts to ask the meaning of words like 'mass,' 'acceleration,' and 'orbit.' Eventually the cub started shifting with restlessness, and Heruvael began digressing, rambling on about tides and the alignment of the Sister and the sun, though he doubted his son could even imagine the ocean.

Some time later, when Hileko's golden eyes had glazed, and he looked desperate to flee the chamber, Heruvael brought his lecture to a wordy close.

"I think you're not really that interested in gravity at all," he said at the end of it. "You look bored--why don't you go play?"

But instead of seizing the opportunity and bolting, the tan-and-cream cub flopped down on the floor. "You're mean."

Heruvael bit off a startled laugh. "How so?"

"You're not answering my questions. You're just trying to make me go away. Rude."

The healer-hyarmi turned back to his notes. "And you're interrupting my work and coming in without asking. There's more than one rude hyarmi in this chamber."

Hileko did not say anything, but Heruvael heard quiet motion behind him. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that the cub had moved to sit right outside the entrance of his study.

"What's--"

Heruvael slapped a mage-shield across the entrance five hand-widths thick. His son could ask questions until he went hoarse, but Heruvael would not hear him.

For a time, there was blissful silence and the somewhat less-blissful thrashing out of the problem before him. At last Heruvael sat back, rubbing his spine. He pulled his thoughts away from his triumph and realized he could still feel the presence of his son's power, quite near and unmoved.

He turned.

Hileko was huddled up against the mage-shield, curled into a little, shaking ball. It appeared that he was weeping, and when the healer-hyarmi stretched out with his mind, he could feel the cub's unhappiness.

Heruvael sighed, as much in frustration as in pity. He could not give himself to his son every waking hour; he could not understand why Hileko so desired his company.

The healer-hyarmi shook his head at himself for his foolishness. He was not so old that he had forgotten his own youth; nor would he forget how much he had adored his own father.

"Henu..."

With another sigh, Heruvael let the mage-shield dissolve into nothingness. The cub toppled over, then scrambled up.

"Why so sad, dear son?" the healer-hyarmi asked. "Don't you know what day this is?"

Hileko shook his head, appearing confused. "It's the twenty-seventh of Octurn?"

"That's right. And do you know what that means?"

The cub shook his head again.

Heruvael smiled. "It means the Autumn Council meeting is coming, in only a few weeks. And I'm sure you remember what that means."

Hileko let out a happy squeal. "Fenda's coming! Fenda's coming!" He bounced in place, sorrow forgotten.

"That would be correct, my son." Heruvael turned back to his sheet with a rueful smile. He could only hope The Defender came early, as he was certain to be hearing excited queries about the time remaining every waking hour until that moment...