Charlotte knew when she got her dinner, so when it was close to sundown and she hadn't come scratching at the back door, Winona went outside to check on her.
Jim had always insisted on those sophisticated names for the pets—no Rex or Cookie on the Kirk homestead—and in the absence of close neighbors there was usually nobody to assume she was calling for a child who might have gone to play too close to the highway if they weren't hiding up in the magnolia tree; but today there was a woman stopped several yards into the southwest side of the yard, and the first sight of her long air gun put Winona on edge.
"You got a kid outside?" the woman yelled, her tone almost professional.
Recovering from her initial alarm, she answered back, "Just a dog."
The woman seemed to be scanning the yard, her attention on Winona half absent. "Would you come over here a second?"
"It's my land," she said dryly, beginning her steps over, "and I'll go where I like."
Even across the closing distance she sensed a smirk from the other woman, who put her hand up just as Winona was almost facing her, listening for something. After a pause she said in a low voice, "You'll want to bring that dog in for the night. Have you heard the news? The Andorian harnick?"
"...The what?"
"There was an accident on the ground involving a transport carrying some animals for a xenozoology conference. They managed to round up the other animals that got out of the hold, but this one must have gotten its tag off. Somebody spotted its footprints close to their chicken coop north of here."
"At the Porter farm?"
The woman nodded.
"...And this is your job?"
She laughed. "No, I wouldn't be living here if it was. Just something that would look good on the resumé if I manage to track down this thing."
Winona glanced again at what looked to be a hefty tranquilizer gun. "Is it dangerous?"
"The fun part is we don't really know how it will interact with the other animals locally, aside from smaller prey. They don't hunt humanoids, but they've been known to attack them in some circumstances...Shh, listen to that…"
Winona listened. "That's the evening sprinkler coming on in the back…"
"No, it isn't." Her eyes were sly but innocently pleased in the recognition, half talking to herself, "Thought I heard it. That's a harnick. They swish their tails over the ground rapidly, it makes that noise…"
As she listened more closely, there was more of an irregular thrum to it, but such a slashing from far off that she almost couldn't believe an animal could produce such a powerful sound just with the slap on so many blades of grass. It seemed to be coming from somewhere in the trees back behind the old swing set.
In the strain of listening, she had pulled closer to the other woman without thinking, as if lending her ear into the other would help her channel the noise. With their faces turning to meet now she was met with big brown eyes, a confident glint in them she almost recognized.
Winona asked, "Have we ever met?"
Smiling with a hint of reluctance, the woman said, "More or less. It was over a comm link several years ago. I had both your sons in my summer program and one of them was causing enough trouble to call for an off-planet message…I can't remember over what now."
"I'm sure it was Jim, and he could probably remind us; I seem to remember he liked you on the days he was paying attention. Was it...Mrs. Silva?..."
"Miss Silva, and Audrey would be fine."
They shook hands, and Audrey got down to the unconventional request concerning whether or not it would be okay to camp on the property, since the harnick would be most likely to come out of hiding several hours after sundown. Winona couldn't see why not, and later watched from the window with some bemusement as the woman unloaded a proper campground from her truck and set up for the night in the overgrown epicenter of the backyard. She later noticed the truck gone after Audrey took off briefly, and when Audrey returned she went straight back into the yard again; it felt strange not to at least invite her in for some of the casserole, but she had to allow Sam to take Charlotte out on a leash later, and would admit there was something comforting about somebody being on the lookout. While Jim was helping her clean up, she caught a glance outside at Audrey leaning out of the tent to pet the hound, looking like she was laughing at something Sam said.
After the usual creaks and stomps of the tall boys had abated for the late night, Winona felt the hint of brisk air when she passed the attic stairs. With slow steps she went up to the loft which had once been a bright and quaint master bedroom and now was only storage. Crossing her arms in the haunting chill, she found the window that one of the boys had left open. One of them went through photo albums and other things up here, she knew, though he was furtive enough about it that she hadn't yet assumed which one. Both of them, for all she knew. Funny how a place could transform itself from a cozy bedroom into a kind of musty secret—the thought had strayed her into stillness in the middle of her reach to shut the window, but a breeze shuffled in—and she shivered, then took a brief glance at the slant of the roof, wondering if this thing lurking outside could climb very well.
She was turning on the kettle a few minutes later, and when she reached into the high cabinet for a tea mug, something made her glance linger out of the window above the sink, out to the outline of lamp light in Audrey's tent that tinted the material a hearth's orange. She realized she was feeling a kind of shyness it used to be her instinct to push right through, and after a moment, she reached farther into the cabinet for the big steel flask.
Later with her loose pullover on, she strode through the brisk yard and then stopped outside the tent, saying, "Knock, knock?" to where the tent was only half zipped up.
Audrey glanced out. "See anything?"
"Oh. No." Glancing at what she was carrying, half forgetting she needed to explain, she said, "I just thought you could use some caffeine if it's going to be a late night."
There was a touch of soft surprise in the woman's expression before she let Winona in.
.
.
.
.
Audrey was checking some notes as she measured out the sedative cartridges. Watching her with her hands cozied around the warmth of the flask, Winona asked, "If you know it's there, why do you need to wait for it to come out? Can you not hunt it?"
"Oh, maybe if I had more experience. They're observed to be at their most aggressive close to where they sleep; they really don't like to be disturbed there, and if you practically tripped on him in the dark…"
"I see."
Audrey looked up at her. "You're Starfleet, right?"
There was little doubt Audrey knew that for sure, being a local, but it was polite coyness. Winona gave her a crooked smile. "A couple extended missions in data analysis. I never got much natural science."
"I was going to ask if you maybe had a phaser around. The stun setting isn't much different from these, it shouldn't hurt him."
"...Yeah, but I keep it at my in-laws' place. I don't think either of the kids would ever mess with it, but it just became habit."
"Well, I can load the other tranq gun if you'd feel better having one. And your aim could be better than mine…"
Audrey trailed off as Winona had put out her hand to pause her, listening closely across the brief sway of wind over grass that went and then died, leaving the crisp but distant sound of footsteps.
Audrey shook her head, whispered, "That isn't…"
"I know it isn't," Winona mumbled back, then let out a little growl of a sigh at the crunch of a bicycle's wheels heading off down the road. She shook her head. "Oh, it is just too damn adorable that he thinks he's getting away with this."
Audrey smirked mildly. "Jim?"
"The very second he thinks I'm fast asleep, on a night I warned him to stay in...and it's probably some girlfriend or boyfriend I know nothing about. And he knows better. I tell you, that kid is scary brilliant, but when it comes to a crush he can turn into a box of rocks just like that."
Her slight harshness grabbed sudden laughter out of Audrey, and Winona cracked into a snigger, their eyes squinting across the lamp light.
"Well, what can I say," she added. "He probably gets it from me. I broke a pretty good academic streak I had the year I met his father."
Audrey's smile became more distant. "Yeah, I'm no better. When I go adopting new hobbies my friends start to wonder if I've met someone. I didn't even like off-world camping before I met my ex-wife. And now it's like I got into all this stuff just to have a reason to get back out there...Not that I've been where this beast comes from. Way too cold. But I've heard stories."
"I'm sorry the Kirk farm isn't much of an adventure."
"...The night is young," Audrey remarked, affecting a mysterious, almost suggestive expression.
The yard around them had almost paused, caught in a silence as the breeze completely died again. Winona asked, "Why does it move its tail like that?"
"Oh, it stirs up the snow worms. Something about the sound draws them up out of the ground so they can eat them."
"Hmm. My uncle used to catch bait worms by making this grunting noise with a rod in the earth and a…" She tried to pantomime the way he created the vibration, with wood and metal.
Audrey was nodding along. "It's remarkably similar behavior. Only snow worms are about the size of your arm, and they have these ugly picks for teeth..."
Winona cringed, bringing on a chuckle. Audrey was done loading the second tranquilizer gun, and pushed it over to her. She tested how well she could see through the sights, trying to get a knack for it in case she needed to use it without much light.
"Those harnicks, they go all the way out to the freezing shores once the worms start thinning out," Audrey said. "There's a story about an ancient pilgrimage some people made across the ice cliffs, and how they had no idea what that sound was. That many of the animals, maybe hundreds of them, whipping their tails all at once somewhere in the distance...I can't imagine how that must have carried once it hit the echoes of those cliffs. One of the legends says it sounded like an invisible storm...And, that far into the whiteness of that space? Wouldn't you feel like you had fallen outside of time? This wind you could hear but not feel, everything just senselessly still. Almost like you'd died."
Having trailed off of this strange account, Audrey met Winona's look across some new translucence between them.
Over the years, Winona had met and talked to many people she knew to have gone through great pains in their life, and felt nothing but blank space between herself and them, but there were times, more elusive times when she seemed to stumble into understanding with someone: an observation about some piece of art on the wall or a stray comment about how Christmas seemed to come faster every year, and there was true and immediate recognition of that same tired place inside of someone else, and that place was loss. This, a fairly unexpected one, was one of those times.
The vaguely intimate atmosphere seemed to crack away into another sound of the wind kicking up again outside, but Audrey earned all the more of her respect for looking not quite embarrassed in her discomfort, when she shrugged and remarked, "And all of that over some creatures wanting some grub."
The glow of the tent seemed to hold no time as they passed the hour and then some. Winona had finally stopped wondering when she would hear her son returning home when she offered to go refill the canteen, and Audrey went out and took a little patrol around the tree border to glance for tracks. Only when Winona was at the back door did she hear the rubber over gravel and set the flask down next to the birdbath, already grinning wickedly at the thought of catching Jim by surprise.
A car, speeding fast at this late hour, was coming around the curve of country road which swooped straight again right around their mailbox. Its headlights torched up the lawn briefly, the light crawling up the grass, and just before it passed, something big and long crawled a stencil across the yellow illumination and Winona hissed—"Shit"—and doubled a couple steps back, yelping against the body coming up behind her.
"It's me," Audrey whispered, patting a shoulder, and they clutched each other in thrilled laughter.
"You—it was there—Holy fuck, Audrey."
"Look." Audrey nodded down and moved the flashlight to the strange reptilian-looking, very big tracks she'd followed from the back yard.
It was only now occurring to Winona how preposterous it seemed, that she hadn't even stopped during dinner to look up a picture of what the thing looked like, only let her imagination get away from her, only to recognize in the one glance of that low and long prowling body that the thing was alien; the sight had struck her cold. Hand over her chest, she scolded vaguely at the air, "Didn't even ask you what it looked like. And you're telling me these weird stories…"
Still laughing a bit Audrey said, "Look, that car probably spooked it, I need to see if it's headed for the trees—"
A rustle and a gasp, off closer to the front porch. Winona's heart did an instinctive leap, and she was about to grab the flashlight from Audrey but the light was already glowing across the house, toward the growling.
Jim's bright eyes were lit with fascinated horror, growing more fearful still as the black form took on a hackles-up look, standing its ground in a deep snarl; he must have almost walked right into it.
"Jim," Audrey said steadily, "you need to back away from it, slowly, okay?"
"...Okay," he said in numb obedience, and took one step back. Then another.
His third step was into the magnolia roots. Winona saw the slightest trip in his step and the growling seemed to heighten.
"Mom?" Jim went still.
One second the haunches seemed to tighten closer to the earth, and then Audrey yelled something cut out by the yowl as it launched towards Jim.
Jim's sharp curse was muffled in his arm; by the time he stopped his cringing to peek over it, the harnick was down, Winona's stun dart shot straight to its neck.
Audrey made a whoop and nudged a triumphant pat at the shoulder where Winona still had the tranq gun raised, breaking her out of that hunter's trance so that she could lower it and meet her son's look.
"...That was awesome!" Jim declared, grinning now.
"It was," Audrey agreed.
Finally acknowledging the sternness in Winona's look, he winced. "Am I grounded?"
"You are," Winona said.
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.
.
.
Once Audrey had the thing in the cage in the back of her truck, it looked even bigger somehow.
Winona thought it defied any description she'd be able to make to anyone else later, any comparison to a Terran creature she knew aside from it being as much like a dog as it was like a lizard. It didn't have scales or fur, but something in between. There were protrusions in the shape of the bone or cartilage she couldn't even pinpoint an evolved purpose for. It smelled like sweaty leather. In a different mindset, she might have asked Audrey if they knew how a tundra animal had such a dark green-black color, but her chance to glance at it under any light was brief, and when Audrey drew a blanket over the cage she just turned and headed into the backyard.
She was munching on the box of cookies in the tent, just staring off, when Audrey poked her head in with a rueful look, and said, "I don't mean to act cavalier. Are you okay?"
"...I had the shot," was the only reply she came up with.
"I thought you did, so I kept the light up."
"If you hadn't...but you trusted me. So my son's fine."
Audrey thought for a second, then just nodded. "Well, I made the report; they can be out here as early as five."
"You might as well stay over. Get some sleep before they get here. I can pull out the guest bed. Or…"
She trailed off into a shrug, and Audrey looked around them with a smile. "Shame to waste a camping trip."
Audrey had taken a heat emanator from the back of her truck and shortly after she turned it on the tent felt like a gold color to go with the lamplight she used to keep reading something sitting in her lap, making scattered notes in it even as she managed to make some conversation about the several seasonal jobs she kept throughout the year, eventually asking Winona about what she used to do.
Winona would remember finally lying down on her back in the warm fleece to recall a story about an old mission, and she would remember her attention starting to dwindle on something Audrey said in return, but she hadn't intended to fall asleep.
She woke up in a jolt of nightmare, startled by the surroundings, and then a calming hand was at her shoulder.
Audrey was still sitting up and had the instinct not to say anything right away, just waiting until Winona looked up at her and went still, then patted her hand with a sigh. She took her arm away, and put aside her reading.
"Something I can get for you?" Audrey finally asked absently, like such casual care had already long existed between them. "Anything I can do?"
Winona looked slowly up to her, the glance lingering close on the serenity of her. It felt like old wisdom mixed with young audacity: she swallowed, said in her sleep-scratched voice, "Um. There is something I want."
They were in a kind of unison; Audrey's understanding was pushed open, illuminated, but not dismayed. Her slow smile was its own sentence. "Yeah?"
"Just...keep me warm, if you want?"
Winona felt a nervous twitch in her face. Her answer had brought a hand that was already moving to curl softly to the back of her neck, gave Audrey encouragement to caress and hold the motion of her head curving in to meet the shoulders coming to rest beside her. It seemed so cold and so warm at the same time, suddenly; she shuddered, soothed by those touches at her neck, by the strong curve of ribs she held under her arm as she was clutched in close.
These new surfaces were so much softer than the fleece and the ground beneath, and gave better, as any distance between them slipped to a close.