Диана Дуэйн: How Lovely Are Thy Branches

Being reduced to speechlessness around Carmela was hardly a new experience for Nita, but this particular incidence was setting new records for the underlying implications. “But I thought— Wait. You said that—”

“Nonono, wait just a minute! Look there. Is that what I think it is?”

“Uh,” Nita said, and peered ahead, her mind only half on whatever she was supposed to be looking for. The corridor up that way was fairly busy, full of aliens of all shapes and sizes. But after a second she thought she saw what Carmela was looking at, a dark-colored conical shape, hard to see clearly through the throng. “That tall thing sticking up? The green one— Oh. It’s a Demisiv—!”

“In a baseball cap!” Carmela said, and accelerated away.

…And so it was. Nita went after her, shaking her head and grinning. What are the odds, she thought, that one of my favorite wizardly houseguests should just happen to be passing through here while we’re here too? But the odds didn’t really come into it when you balanced them against the wizardly truism that there were no such things as coincidences. Or rather, when something that looked like a coincidence turned up, it was usually a sign from the Powers that Be that you should start paying attention: almost always, something else was going on.

Nita got caught up with Carmela after a few moments. “This is so perfect,” Carmela was saying, confident that Nita was right behind her. “See that, this was an absolutely great idea, we’d have missed him if we didn’t have the scoots!”

That was probably true. Within a few moments they were close enough that when Carmela started waving her arms and shouted across the crowd, “Hey, is that my shrub?!”, Nita could even through the intervening crowd see all those fir-tree-like branches of Filif’s arch up, as if in surprise, and then start waving back as if a wind had shaken them.

And it took only a few moments more before the two of them had hopped off the scoots and were elbowing their way through the remaining crowd in an impromptu contest to be the first one to hug their fellow wizard. Nita came from behind in the last couple of meters and just barely beat Carmela there.

It was always a little interesting hugging Filif, as you wound up getting a face full of something that felt like pine needles, even though the scent more closely resembled something like cinnamon instead of the kind of cool, green smell you might associate with a conifer. “You are so well met,” Filif was saying, “what a fine surprise, but what are you two doing here without my knowing about it? I’d thought the Knowledge would have alerted me that you were within physical-meeting range.”

“Might ask you the same question!” Nita said. The instrumentality that managed the wizards’ manuals (and the many other ways that the Art’s practitioners accessed spells and other wizardly data) would normally notify you, if you’d asked it, as to the presence in your physical neighborhood of other wizards with whom you’d worked. Nita had a good number of these alerts embedded in your manual, not least for those wizards who (however briefly) had lived in her basement. “Should’ve had a notifier go off.”

“Well, I only just got here,” Filif said. “Just out of the gate, in fact. Maybe that’s the problem. Anyway, the Master and I have business—some Interconnect Project details to sort out: I’ve been doing liaison work for the Demisiv side of the Project Authority.” He rustled a little, half-turning as Nita let go of him (and Carmela did not), and all the eye-berries on the free side of him glowed a little brighter as he tried to peer through the crowd. “He must’ve been delayed—he was in some other meeting, and said it might keep him a bit late.”

“Well, never mind that,” Carmela said, hugging him again—or still—and then letting him go. “Your business business can wait. And if he’s coming along to find you, good! Two birds with one stone.”

Filif half-turned in the other direction, and looked around him with more of his eyes. “Not sure I see any birds,” he said, sounding dubious. “Or for that matter, stones.”

Nita laughed. Sometimes the wizardly Speech did fairly well at translating human idiom, but sometimes it completely failed. “She means she wants to talk to both of you at once.”

“Well, that’s certainly preferable to hominid-on-avian violence,” Filif said. “Ah, now, here he comes. Not so delayed, then.”

Nita peered around her, not bothering to look up, because there wouldn’t have been any point in trying to see the Master of the Crossings over the heads of any crowd: when he was moving at any speed, he moved low. To her own amusement, though, it was the sound of lots of sharp little legs clicking and clattering against the smooth floor that told her which way to look (in this case, behind her). Nita turned and saw him coming, and grinned, and as he caught sight of her through the crowd that parted before him, Sker’ret was already half rearing up so that his front three pairs of legs were off the ground and the head with all those stalked eyes was on a level with Nita’s. She held her arms open, and when he more or less crashed into them, she grabbed him and hugged him to her and thumped his dorsal carapace. “Sker’!”

“Our saviors return,” Sker’ret laughed in her ear. “It’s been forever.”

“It’s been last week,” Nita said. “Getting amnesic from overwork?”

“No, I mean when the two of you were last here together.”

“Two weeks then. Maybe three.”

“Pedant,” Sker’ret said affectionately, gave her a squeeze and let her go.

“And what about me?” Carmela demanded. “You’re late for my daily dose of alien snuggles!”

“And whose fault is that? Anyway, you’re the alien.”

“No surprise at this sudden appearance then, my cousin?” Filif said.

“Excuse me?” Sker’ret said as he headed for Carmela. “I am the Master of this facility, coz. Of course I knew she was here: she’s got a facility-independent wizardly tracker routine associated with her. How else can I find her in a hurry if more invaders arrive and we need saving?”

“My favorite stalker,” Carmela said, and hugged Sker’ret as if hugging giant purple metallic centipedes was the most normal thing in the world. Which, for her, it naturally was.

“And why does her tracker work better than the Knowledge-based routines you’ve got hooked up to me?” Filif said, bending over in a sort of half-bow to Sker’ret so that they could brush their upper limbs together.

“Because she can do a lot more damage in a much shorter time than you routinely would,” Sker’ret said.

Carmela burst out laughing. “Oh, Sker’, you say that like it was a bad thing!”

“So tell us,” Filif said. “What damage are you contemplating now?”

“We’re having a Christmas party. And both of you are invited.”

All Filif’s berries on the side facing Sker’ret, and all Sker’ret’s stalked eyes, exchanged a bemused glance.

“And Christmas would be what?” Sker’ret said. “Is it a holiday of some sort?”

“Don’t you remember? Remember how excited Filif got about this?”

“Um…” Sker’ret was making a kind of thoughtful null sound that even in a Rirhait perfectly communicated a sense of I don’t want you to feel hurt but due to being really busy I have no idea what you’re talking about at the moment.

“Fil,” Carmela said. “Explain it to him. Remember that time of year we told you about, the last time you came visiting? The time of year when we bring trees into the house and decorate them?”

Filif looked astounded. “Wait. This is that time? Then what are you doing here? Mostly your folk are with family at such times, I thought!”