A rumor is going around the base. Two junior diplomats, dispatched to a far-off planet without much expectation of success, are returning in triumph: not only do they bring with them a guarantee of support from a new ally, but they also bear a gift from the elderly monarch herself: a trabruzz'a, a creature that exists in legend and childhood tales but has yet to be recorded in the tomes of scientific literature.

On his ship that night they are the last two left in the booth. They sit close but not too close, their proximity interrupted by the bottle of wine resting on the table between them.

'I had a buddy who had a friend who saw one once,' he says. 'A trabruzz'a.'

'Where?'

'In the jungles of El Tamil. He was sent there to collect samples for a research study. Said he stepped out of his tent one morning and there it was, just standing there staring at him. Scared him half to death.'

'And you believed him?'

'What reason would he have to lie?'

She has no answer to that, having never met said friend-of-buddy.

'I don't believe it,' she announces. 'I don't think they're bringing anything back. We're having our legs pulled, a prank. Besides, there's never been evidence of these creatures documented in a reliable way.'

'So things can exist only if they've been reliably documented?'

'What are the odds,' she challenges, 'of an animal such as this, living and reproducing for thousands – millions – of years, all the while eluding our efforts to find it?'

'What are the odds,' he shoots back, 'that everything that has ever existed has been categorized and recorded?'

She doesn't respond for a moment. Then she takes a final sip of her drink and sets down her glass. 'I still don't believe it.'

More information trickles back to base. Descriptions of the creature: its steel-toed hooves, its feathery mane, its broad back, large enough for two average-sized lifeforms to sit on. Its demeanor, quiet and contemplative, not panicky or stricken at the abrupt change of environment. How quietly it paces its small enclosure on the ship, as if it possesses the foreknowledge that what awaits it is nothing to fear.

But there are no images of the creature. The holo-recorder they have with them has died, the diplomats claim, so they are unable to transmit pictures to their fellow rebels. The rumors on base start up again, with many insisting that the trabruzz'a is a fake, an elaborate ploy.

'It wouldn't surprise me,' she says to him that night when he relays the news to her. Her watch has just ended and his is starting up. She lingers in the darkness scanning the horizon for signs of intruders. He blows on his hands and the puffs of steam cloud the air between them. 'They're probably constructing a fake trabruzz'a as we speak. Or they'll duratape themselves together, cover up with a blanket, and trot down the ramp when they arrive.'

'Or maybe they'll find an orbak and glue some feathers onto it.'

She nods in agreement until she realizes he is teasing her, then glares at him. By now she knows him well enough to suspect that he's chosen the opposite position solely to antagonize her.

'It's all anyone can talk about these days – the trabruzz'a,' she complains. 'The subject is taking over the base. Bets on its existence and characteristics are up to hundreds of credits apiece.'

He scuffs the ground with the toe of his boot. 'So what? The rumors keep everyone engaged, keep them occupied. Or are you afraid they're gonna lose interest in the real work being done?'

She thinks about the losses they have sustained of late, of how the optimism born months ago is slowly sinking into a collective desolation.

'No,' she says softly. 'I'm just afraid they'll be disappointed again.'

The next day word arrives that there is a delay in the return of the diplomats. A malfunction of one of their ship's thrusters. They have to stop planetside to pick up a replacement part and have it installed. Only then can they continue on their journey.

'Figures,' she tells him when he finds her one afternoon. 'What did you expect?'

'I don't expect that clunky, oversized shuttle to make it back without at least one part crapping out on them,' he says. 'Your mechanics gotta take better care of those ships, especially the ones that don't get flown as often.'

He knows perfectly well that the top priority of her mechanics are the X-wings. 'You're evading the question,' she informs him.

'I'm not,' he protests. 'I just didn't answer it the way you wanted me to.'

Her determination to provoke him into debate is growing tiresome even to her. 'As if we don't have enough uncertainty in our lives,' she sighs. 'And now this.'

'It's a minor uncertainty, compared to everything else. Why does it bother you so much?'

It is an affront, she thinks, the existence of a creature long thought to be a fantasy. A reversal of what she once knew. Now she risks having to revise that knowledge, as she's had to revise so many things in her life. It's exhausting.

But he may be right that it's only a minor thing. Not as critical as everything else bearing down on her.

'I'll try not to let it bother me,' she says grudgingly.

The diplomats' shuttle is six hours away. It is just after dawn but the entire base is awake and alert and performing their duties with a precision not normally in evidence at this hour.

The two of them sit in the far corner of the mess. Breakfast is finished and the room is nearly deserted. She sips the kaffe he brought her and checks the shuttle's location on her datapad again.

'Nervous?'

'No. Yes.' She frowns into her mug. 'It's silly, isn't it, all of this waiting around just to find out if something is real.'

'A little silly,' he agrees. 'But isn't it better than not knowing?'

'There are times when it's better not to know. Perhaps this is one of those times.'

'You think it's preferable to keep the mystery alive?'

'Yes.' She thinks some more. 'If it's real, then the stories we were told won't mean as much. The drab reality will overtake the dream.'

He gazes around the mess before resting his eyes back on her. 'Sometimes I think everything that's happened in my life before this was a dream.'

'That's absurd,' she says without thinking. A default response that escapes her before she can take it back. 'Your life up until now has always been real. Just like all of our lives.'

'Has it?'

She doesn't say anything. Deep down she knows what he means, knows what this is to him.

He brushes his thumb over the corner of her mouth. She holds her breath and waits for a sign, waits for a future that unspools in front of her, directing her actions out of the mists and onto solid ground.

He withdraws his hand and dabs a speck of crumb onto his napkin.

'I'll see you when they land,' he says, and gets up to leave.

The shuttle has touched down in the hangar. From what she can tell most of the base personnel have deserted their posts to crowd around the deckplates onto which the ramp will lower. As is usual in these types of situations, she keeps her distance from him and refuses to look in his direction.

The two diplomats descend from the ship. The first, head held high, smiles a conqueror's smile, offering up his victory for the adoration of others. The second emerges a moment later, scarcely less smug, one arm stretching behind him. He is holding something. Holding a woven rope.

Everyone in the hangar draws a collective breath.

From the shuttle's hatch there comes the clop of a hoofstep, overly loud in the silence. And then another, and then another. They watch wide-eyed as the trabruzz'a slowly emerges and begins its journey down the sloping path to the floor. The collective breath is expelled as they get a first look at what up to now has been a ghostly vision, a legend, a dream.

The creature is tall, tall enough to invite questions as to how exactly it fit onto the shuttle in the first place. Its legs are muscular and lean as if carved from marble and only hint at the power contained in them. Its face is long and narrow and in another context might appear almost sinister. Its coat flows with silvery strands, delicate enough to be woven from the threads of angels. Its tail, thick and white, flicks in anticipation.

As the trabruzz'a steps down the ramp its flank muscles ripple and exude a shimmer of color reminiscent of an oil slick after the rain. She notes its wide torso, large enough indeed for two riders, and the velvety ridge that parts its mane and runs down the length of its neck before flattening out at the base of its wings.

And then she notices its eyes. As the creature comes to a halt she peers into the dark pupils and sees a dignified bearing that eclipses the combined intelligence of the humans gawking up at it. As if it expects nothing more and nothing less than a stunned silence from those who greet it for the first time.

The two diplomats step in front of the trabruzz'a, let go of the rope, and look out at their audience.

Suddenly the creature's wings open sharply, extending meters across on each side, dwarfing the size of its already substantial body.

Everyone jumps back at the motion and then, after the moment has passed, giggles nervously at their reaction.

The creature tosses its head and draws its wings back in. It seems to sense that it should not do too much too soon.

'Can it fly?' someone asks tentatively. They all look around the hangar, judging the height of its ceiling, trying to guess which spacecraft will be the first landing spot.

'Its wings have been clipped,' one of the diplomats answers confidently. He and his partner hold all the information; the others have none. 'But we were told that in a month or two it may fly again.'

And then the questions descend all at once. What does it eat, where will we stable it, what should we name it, is it ever dangerous? Braver now, the rebels inch closer and stretch their hands out hesitantly.

She steals a glance at him, the one at whom she should not be looking. He hasn't moved from his position as he continues to stare at the creature. She expects a smirking mien, a how does it feel to be wrong, Your Worship? expression written across his face, but instead he is somber, maybe even sad.

She longs to touch the trabruzz'a herself just to close the final curtain of doubt. But not now. Later, when she is alone and the creature is also alone. Now, as always, there is work waiting for her.

'What would you do,' she asks him that night, 'if I sprouted wings and flew away?'

He touches between her shoulder blades, where knobby wing-roots would grow into feather-light arcs, the hollow bones of flight.

'I would fly after you.'

'And catch me and bring me back?'

He doesn't respond. She watches him out of the corner of her eye. Her arms curl under the pillow and she imagines mounting the trabruzz'a and soaring over the forests and rivers of her childhood. The people watching on the ground would grow smaller and smaller until all she sees is blue.

'It shouldn't be here,' he says finally. 'Not with us, not cooped up away from its home.'

'Maybe it was cooped up back where it came from,' she suggests.

'Doesn't matter. They shouldn't have accepted the gift.'

She says nothing, feels his fingertips rest on that spot again.

'I would find you to see if you were real.'

'And then what?'

'And then...' He pauses, as if the answer eludes him.

It eludes her too, she realizes. The then for which they are waiting refuses to arrive, refuses to grace them with its presence. And so they are stranded at the intersection of land and air, fact and myth, truth and illusion.

But if they are to be marooned in a not-quite reality at least they are marooned together, she thinks. It is all one could hope for given the circumstances.

'I'm glad the trabruzz'a is here,' she says softly. 'We'll care for it, learn about it, treat it well. And maybe we'll find another one so it won't be alone.'

'Maybe.'

His touch, firmer now, anchors her back to the bed, his cabin, his ship. Back to the base and the war and the wins and the losses now gladly tinged with the existence of him and the miracle of the mythical creature that against all odds turned out to be real.