---------The next day-------------

"Now... I'll be a few hours away. Do you now remember how to use this communicator? You just push the same figures I gave you on that paper, and then this blue button in the right side. Just like we tried it. In case you need to talk to me... hehe, 'through the little window' like you say."

Yoka eyed at the functions the wrist communicator she had had attached to her left arm for a while now. It had been mainly for the voice-translation purposes this far, but about an hour ago, Buzz had taught her how to make a simple direct-connection vidcall. Her head was still swirling after yesterday's long lessons of alphabet reading. Dozens of black fly-blow-looking dots to study, and all they looked almost the same. And of course they had to have completely a different logic than Sivakka's pictographic literary form. But... conceivably she would get the point of this com gadget easier, since she had at least seen tens of times before how he made a comlink connection with these ones.

It was a considerably early morning, and Buzz was leaving again. He had a job interview today at the City Hall in attendance of Commander Nebula, as well as a dozen other minor or major matters to handle in the town centre. Yoka could have some free time at home again, provided that she would give him a call if she wanted to use some hi-tech widget and did not know how. And perhaps Buzz was a bit credulous also to think that she would not do anything stupid any more.

"Can I go for a walk?" she asked before he stepped out of the door.

"Sure, Yoka dear. Just don't go too far, ok?" he answered smiling. Surely a little walk could do no harm?

Yoka-hanen's blue-eyed husband was somewhat wrong. As the front door had whooshed shut, and his speeder's engine roar vanished, she calmly finished her breakfast and went to get her hunting attire on and pack some snack with her. 'Walking' meant her just one single thing: go and catch some food. The thick, wide woods began about a kilometer further from their house. The front door clanged once more close and a tall figure, with a huge crossbow along a quiver hanging from its back, emerged from the yard.

Truly, the morning was still early. An airy mist floated in the lowlands, and the sun's rays were still pale. The sand road rattled blithely under the girl's moccasins, and she felt a sense of brisk freedom growing in her heart. She promenaded on, past houses towards the green tint in front of her. Weird shapes these teepees had. And no one seemed to be around. Kaleva's main road was always teeming at this time of the day. These people here were odd. Or... actually she was the odd one not knowing the local habits, Yoka admitted pursing.

There were no paved streets to cross before the plants around the early-traipsing female started getting denser. The path however made a stop to a fence. She hopped over it, made another jump over a broadish reed-mace growing ditch, ending up to stand on the very edge of the destination. Ah, the lush wide greenness... there she would enter.   

For the first time after leaving the plains of Kaleva Yoka felt the same light freedom she had used to have as maiden. The forest around her was fragrant with profound odor of resin and exotic flowers. The thick crowns of the leaf trees rustled above her, as she entered deeper and deeper the place she felt so united with. An ancient Kalevan rune beat rhythmically in her heart... the Master of Forests, the Great Tapio had a daughter called Tellervo. In her childlike mind, the Indian often identified with this mythical damsel. Ah, how the whisper of trees hummed together with her solemn melody. "Kas mikkihiiri maettaehaeltae maettahaelle kaey, ja pikku jalka pilkahtaa..." she let the whole solo boast out of her lungs, stretching her arms in the air. Someone might have considered her being feeble-minded because of bellowing Gibberish around like that, but the woman did not care.

It was definitely a dreamy relief to jump along soft tussocks after all the metallic, clanging lands. There really existed things behind the stars that her heart was bound with. Like a miracle... a wide, warm smile spread on her face, as Yoka took a good breath of the balmy, fresh air. It never winded quite like this in her old home village. The lake back there, with its ample high seas, gave a remarkable flush of freshness to the climate. Well, at least in the city and in this brisk forewoods. The energetic willows and birches sprouted here and there, and in the middle of them were older, beard lichen growing spruces. Her mind broke the barriers of confusion and embarrassment. Here, here in the kingdom of flora and fauna she knew herself. Here was no one saying that she did everything wrong. Alike in the woods of Kaleva... her sacred sanctuary of past. Here she could be her own lord.

The greenness turned duskier as the steps went on. Also, the tree trunks turned ever wider and wider and their branches more hoary. These were the grandfathers of the forewoods, she thought simpering. Her sense of time had vanished, and several miles were evidently behind. The woman made a little notice for her surprise. There was a small path emerging from the nearby bushes, dry needles and low grass as its blanket. It could be seen that this track had been perhaps decades or more time ago used a lot, but it seemed to be forgotten now. It had been far much wider once, but nowadays the earthier sides had limber seedlings growing there like some uncared-for hedgerow. It meandered as a small ribbon towards the hummocks ahead, vanishing behind an enormous, primeval oak of some sort. The sun did not shine much in here, but the shrubberies were rather full of crackling and tweeting, life bloomed everywhere. Animals strolled around, yet hiding in the shadows untamed. As Yoka wanted to enjoy her liberty and figured out much nothing else to do, she decided to follow the footpath. Perhaps it would take her to interesting places. The gleam of her adventurous nature ignited in her gray eyes, drawing her grin wider. Just because of her sheer delight, she made a few somersaults in the air after leaping high, letting an old hunting whoop echo out. The wilderness had gotten the upper hand of her.

The trail coiled and squirmed, as if it had no end. Past large boulders and block stones it stubbornly wriggled like some muddleheaded basilisk. The light coming in had turned scarcer and scarcer, but Yoka did not care. This virgin forest was a heaven. She used her time wisely, though. As understanding that the Lightyear family would need food, she ambushed several larger rodents that were quite light-witted. A swish of an arrow, and another one of those furries was hanging lifelessly from her back. The woman conceived doing nothing wrong, only she wondered a bit that she had not seen more hunters around. "Food" seemed to keep hopping in the coppice quite exuberantly. Perhaps tomorrow she could come back and put some booby traps up, and thus their house would have eatables plentifully! Yoka-hanen did not much know about grocery stores or supermarkets this far, neither that she would need a hunting permit to assail any unlucky creatures here. Those were unidentified definitions in the wild world she had appeared from. Right at the moment, if someone had come to jabber her about getting a pile of licenses from the local police department, she would have merely considered it as a bad and confusing joke.

Now however something strange seemed to be ahead. Those moss-growing structures further on did not seem quite fitting to the lush bottle-greenness. They had not been visible until Yoka-hanen had emerged from behind a huge old tree, whose mere trunk had the width of a petty single-family house. After climbing over the massive roots that stood occasionally several feet over the terrain, the abnormal show was reached.

She gasped. One of her fingers scratched her hair. Did these Morpheans or Kaonians have their own miniature Suur-Kaleva? So it looked like in her eyes. The trees were more dispersed here, though so vast and shaggy that sunlight did not pierce them. In any case, there was a round, almost open place surrounded by copious oak-like plants and some firs. In the middle, were the evident ruins of some larger building. Nowadays the sculpted stones were having lichen covering, being half-buried inside the high grayish boggy moss. Here and there some pillars tried desperately hailing their glory towards the sky. But the majesty-effect was gone, as it appeared that they were broken halfway up, missing their hats and tops. Upon the nearest one to Yoka, a tiny cock-eyed owl roosted and inanely goggled at the girl. It blazed up and started enthusiastically to fly round and round her head, like some brainless fly, hooting incessantly.

"Mokoma toljake! Suksi suolle, senkin kitukasvuinen poelyhuiskunkuvatus!" she snapped, whisking her arms around to get the pest away. Finally it after so on fifty circulations gave up, wafted onto the nearest branch and called twenty similar owls to perch there with it. They seemed to be enormously interested in to gawk at her, and tilt their heads in a line. Snorting she gave a glare at the bizarre birdies and decided to take a closer look at the ruins.

As her curious steps wandered among the wrecked structures, conclusions were made. This had been a high construction of some kind, perhaps a tower. Yoka had never seen such a thing, but with her frisky imagination could create vivid illusions. Flames had once licked the rocks, since they were blackened from the parts were lichen was not carpeting them. There had been a fire, or relevant that had devastated the building. Shrugging she wondered why the nearest ancient trees did not seem to have any sign of damage in them. Well, perhaps they had either grown later or then these uncanny aliens here knew ways of how to collapse a turret imperceptibly. Appealing this square in any case was, alike the underground rooms of Suur-Kaleva.

After walking around the site once or twice more, the girl decided to leave it. She had been quite long on her journey, and Buzz might have returned. He could be proud of her, since she had gotten so much prey in such a small time. What Yoka had not even though was that it would take about two and half hours to promenade back. But used to day-long hunting trips, that meant nothing for her. And it was a warm summer day, so why bother? She was free. Free from the worries of the modern society.

But what the woman did not notice, was that something was staring at her from the middle of two trees. Something different from a cock-eyed fowl. Something covered in shades. As Yoka directed her gaits back towards the grassed path, the black figure slithered after her, silently lurking behind the thick underbrush.

"She was with him... and he is here..." the murky figure scowled. A grate of teeth was heard somewhere from the dark bush where this unknown crouched. Unaware of anything, the Kalevan went on with her return journey. But her every stir, every move was recorded.

"She is definitely the one that was with him. No mistake. And this time I won't leave the chance unused... he will face his end. Sooner or later..."

-------

Whistling Buzz approached his house with his speeder. It was a calm afternoon, it had taken a bit longer with doing all the tasks than he had expected. But so what? Yoka had not called him; assumingly she had everything all right there. Beaming Lightyear thought about today's success. He had a brand new job. Not actually very far he had traipsed from the space ranger business, but was now employed in the city's ranger recruiting office. His assignments were to work as an informant, do paperwork that someone actually read, and to keep there and then some field practice. Perhaps a bit scattered labor, but he found it interesting. In addition, it paid well, and there was a Cosmo's Chili Burger automat in his office.

As being part-time work, he would need not to be too much away from home, but could share his precious time with his dearest. And next week she would start her evening school. There was an old professor living in the town that taught elementary English and further to immigrants and such. This a bit shabby-looking but skilled man called Remus Lunula had classes that gathered up a few times a week in the local evening institute. The Captain had briefly met him today, and explained the situation. According to the professor there was no problem although Yoka mastered just some very poor English. Just a couple of weeks ago a new group had been started and she would catch well up with the others.

There could have been other possibilities to quick-teach her, thought. Buzz nevertheless did not consider them quite profitable for her. The LGM's at Star Command had been developing a while sort of machine that bioelectronically manipulated the memory locations of brains. The "educand" was set in a chair, a low-frequency electromagnetic field was activated around his head or brain position, and a nanoinfodisk of the material that was supposed to be taught, was supplied for the machine. The data was shifted to the electromagnetic field. Thus, at least according to the theory, it was supposed to work so that the new information found its way to the person's neurons and synapses, and stayed there with all the old junk. But... there had been so much side-effects with this Fact-O-Feeder that Buzz would recommend it to use only until when it was made fool-proof. Someone who had been given express training in ornithology, had several weeks thought he was a carrier pigeon. The insanity effect had vanished in time, but this man still sometimes tied letters with a string around his ankle, cooed, and fluttered his arms while going out. Some other individual who had been quick-handled with the galactic study of literature, long thought that he was on a mission to carry his wedding ring to be destroyed inside a distant volcano, so that the Great Evil would not get it into its hands. So... this means was not an option for Yoka. She was original enough already, and needed no more wacky characteristics.

Buzz was soon face to face with this existent uniqueness. As not being quite used to the flash-micro, his wife had decided to be sure that she was not doing anything stupid. A neat campfire had been built and lit on the foreyard, and an iron cauldron had been put above it to a stand. The woman had returned home before her owner, hungry as a pack of jackals. When the male stunned parked his hover speeder on the driveway, she merrily waved a hand, asking if he wanted to have some hot soup.

Half of the evening went clarifying what Kaon's local laws said and prohibited. It was obvious that at some point Buzz had come across with the pile of dead animals in his garage. Yoka had hastily asked that maybe he would help her with the skinning, and putting the meat to hang into a dry place. He had gawked long at the immovable prey pile, so stunned that barely got a high-pitched squeak out of his mouth. The truth that she had done everything wrong again depressed her of course. It was not quite legal to hunt here with a crossbow, though Buzz would not blab on to any public authorities about this unfortunate mistake. After this, she would know not to do it again. Yet, nothing was against setting up a guarded fire on the yard. Buzz admitted that the soup done there tasted very delicious. She had smashed together a miscellaneous pile of foodstuff found from the 'winter closet' -as she used to call the fridge-, and succeeded to create quite an appetitive nosh out of them.

But the warm words considering the tisane were not enough to bring a smile back on her face for a few hours. No this, no that, that was not supposed to do, that was not allowed here. Then, what was? How could she have known? Once again was concluded that she needed time. And conceivably Buzz should look a bit more after her. At nightfall, Lightyear finally had clarified everything that had gone nuts today. A few teardrops had been needed, before she had believed that it would be all right.

Buzz took the enormous, steaming teacup in his hand. It was the suppertime. In the background, the holo-telly talked silently to the furniture. The living-room's decorating was almost finished, and the room appeared very cozy. Blue-white-green, clean and spacious was the atmosphere. A wide, soft-blue carpet covered the parquet, the round large window had alike-colored heavy curtains on its both sides. A transparent hovering table rode in the mid-floor air, whereas around it was a broad sofa and a few hover divans. Zurg grinned on the opposite wall with his big shiny teeth. Buzz' father would have been furious if his expensive portrait had not been put to ornament the living-room. This was almost just like last night; only that Mr. Lockhart's book was back in the shelf. The Captain had thought it better to let her calm down than to forcibly press her learning more weird things today. It was undeniably not that easy as he had reckoned at first. She seemed to have become more sensitive during the last weeks than what he had originally found her to be. Did the blues catch her more often, or was it just that he had not noticed it before? Though... they had met just such a small time ago, after all. No one had asked, if they wanted to be together in the first place... and still a few months ago Buzz had sworn that Star Command was his whole existence, not a family. But... that was then, now was now.

Her cup stood untouched on the table. The Indian was sitting next to him, but seemed to have sunken in her own bleak illusions. He shook her shoulder vaguely.

"Your tea is getting cold, Yoka."

"Oh, yes..." she winced and carried the cup at her lips.

"So... you were in the forest today?" he asked carefully, trying to draw her attention away from the dejection.

"I was, yes..." she tasted the tea. Peculiar drink, but not as bad-tasting as the black muddy water these aliens called 'coffee'.

"The forest is... well, you have your Suur-Kaleva. And Kaon's got this. I guess every planet and city has its own fairy tales and sort of 'forbidden places'."

Her eyes rose. That was just what she had pondered earlier. The ruins she had come across. But before she had the opportunity to continue, Buzz smilingly looked at the ceiling, rambling on.

"Yeah... Nana Lightyear's bedtime stories. She told creepy things about those woods, and who knows if a part of them might really be true. One of the common stories here is, that the forest one day hid diabolically evil things, some sort of cult..." he lowered his voice into a dramatic hush in the end. "It was told that they kept a hidden grotto or fortress or something over there. Heh well... sort of remembering these things again, after tens of years. But what's funny is that actually most of the people living here avoid that forest, just like your people back in Kaleva had their prejudices." He cast an amused look on her. "Craters, dunno what they think there is. Maybe their grandmothers have really scared the living rockets out of them when they've been kids..."

Her mien was slightly more excited. Legends, she just loved legends and runes. "I saw what you meant. Ruins. An old path leaded me there."

He raised a brow. That was something new. He had never believed that there would actually exist such things. A nasty taste appeared on his palate. She had possibly been quite deep in the woods if encountering anything such, since nothing alike was in the very near grounds. At least he as a boy had not met anything but giant, mysterious trees when playing at the edge of the forest.

"You saw... what?" his goggle was a bit blank. And briefly she narrated about it, an eager tone in her voice hiding the sadness there had been still five minutes ago. He considered this thing rather weird, but was happy to see her brightening up. In some cases, she really resembled like an overgrown kid, as being so wild and anxious about some little detail.

"Well, we might go and see them some time, if you remember how to find them still. But umm... don't go too far next time when you..." But he stopped, with the impression he was going to say something very stupid. She was the last person to get lost in the woods, and that would have been his warning. Blushing to the thought that he as a skilled space ranger was a lot worse orienteerer than she, he told her to never mind. That made room for the second topic he had.

"Yoka... we might go to visit the town tomorrow. You've been all these days just almost jammed inside here, well... except today. We'd go shopping or something. Get you new clothes and things."

She was positively beaming at him. Seeing a whole town was something extraordinary for her. Though, the word 'shopping' did not quite unfold its mysteries. What were people supposed to do when they were shopping? Watch a huge row of blacksmiths tinkling with their sledges? She did not dare to ask, thinking she would just make a fool out of herself. Well, it would be tomorrow's riddle, then.

After a few hours the couple decided to slouch into their bedroom in the third floor. Buzz was yawning, whereas Yoka still felt odd to curl up to sleep in a bed that had no pelts, straw, or feathers as cushion.

The stairs clattered slightly. But behind the two sleepy backs, the backdoor's knob slowly twisted in its lock hole. Without making a noise, the door turned ajar, as if being pushed open by an invisible hand. It remained half-open for a while, though... nothing actually seemed to get in. But as it was closed somewhat later, it was evidently done from the inside.     

...to be continued...