Sheela does some mental reviewing before she goes to sleep.


Chapter 11: What’s Happening?

Sheela Rae Woolverson, stripped down to a t-shirt and panties, then slipped into her bed and pulled the cover up to her shoulders. She really wanted to do some more work but Nick was right, she did need to take a break; to nap out for a time if not out and out sleep. The fox acted as time keeper for them, making sure they took breaks, even that they eat something. Sometimes, not often, he let them run on for a longer stretch but they had to make up for it in additional break time.

“Lost in your work has real meaning to me, now,” she thought. “Though I’m an amateur compared to nana Sharla and Judy.”

That was the truth! When those two got the bit between their teeth on something there was nothing, short of Nick, that stopped them. Of the two, it was Judy that would immerse herself the deepest into the work.

“Almost like, in doing so, she’s trying to forget something,” Sheela mused.

Being the third generation prodigy of a famous (or ‘infamous’, depending on who you asked in the science community) scientist, Sheela was no stranger to astronomy and some of its related sciences. Acting as caregiver (sentry, actually) for Sharla exposed her to more of it as her elder, while not active in the ‘field’, still kept up on things. Her puberty hit and, as a result, the hormonal boost had distracted her from that and more toward the ‘study’ of males of her, and some others, species.

Her mind not really ready for sleep, it did a slow drifting scan of the events of the past days, changes that had occurred. They began slowly, small, minute. Sharla’s affinity with Judith and, less directly, with Nick was the start of things and didn’t spill over to Sheela very much. When real change began, she had no trouble fixing the time, even the place, when it had. It was two weeks ago within a nature preserve miles away. Even now, the memories of the eerie, incredibly emotion stirring music that played there sent shivers through her body and sensations of wonder through what many would call her soul. And not just hers, that music shook through the others there. Her great-great-grandmother Sharla had tears in her eyes, seen when she had removed the mask she’d worn. This was something Sheela had never seen before. Judith, Judy, was, at times, awed and nearly unnerved at the same instant. How it affected Nick was anyone’s guess.

“The saying ’Still waters run deep’ was coined with him in mind,” she thought.

After the one mammal concert, Sheela got to talk with the musician, Cordell Madis. The music the badger composed was placed online for sale. His public appearances were rare and always sold out in a matter of minutes. To have him here doing a gig for just the four of them was something that bordered on the unimaginable. How on Terra Nick, and it had to be Nick, Sheela knew, got him here…. After talking for a bit, he asked if she had an autograph book (on Nick’s advice, she’d brought one). Cordell signed it then inked his hands and pressed them, palms down, on the page thus leaving his hand prints there. Sheela thought she might faint, she had never heard of him doing that.

“Tell me, miss, when the music played over you, what did you see?” he asked as he wiped the ink off his hands with a cloth.

She told him of the feelings and sensations that she felt.

“That’s nice. But, it doesn’t answer my question. Again, behind, in your eyes, your mind’s eye, if you will, what…did…you…see?” he reiterated.

She called up what memories she could, they were sharp but oddly fragmented.

“I know I saw something, a lot of things, landscapes that were wondrous and some that were equally…terrible, grim. Things of beauty, and things I don’t think I want to look hard at. Scenes serene and others chaotic, jumbled….”

Struggling, she stopped.

“I…I don’t think I have the words to describe a lot of what went through my mind.

Again, she stopped to think.

“I don’t think there are words in the language to describe, define, what there was,” she finished.

He took several heartbeats to think over her answer.

“Give me your book,” he said.

After Nick helped the badger break down and store his gear away in a van, the fox got the women back into the RV and readied to take them back to Bunnyburrow. Nick saw the puzzled, almost dazed, look on Sheela’s face. She held her autograph book like she thought it might try to escape.

“He signed it, right?” he asked.

Sheela went on looking out of the front windshield then, without turning her head, hands the book over to the vulpine. Nick opened it and saw the signed and double paw printed page.

“That’s rare,” he commented.

“Look at the next one,” the teen said.

Flipping the page, Nick looked. It was the same as the first except that Madis had added a few words to it.

“Cordell Madis, to the awakened Dreamer, Sheela,” they read.

Nick closed the book up and handed it back.

“Take good care of that,” he said. “You are only the fourth person I know of that he’s done that for.”


The next day, things picked up speed. Sharla on the phone reestablishing old links to those in her field and setting up new ones. A day later, the arrival of the computer gear and other things that now roosted in a very changed livingroom. A tech. team coming in and, in two days, wiring up the place and setting up and testing all of the electronics to be sure everything was right. They even had a satellite uplink that used a laser transceiver. The down and up load speeds flat out ‘out ran’ anything else in the Burrows. A little smile crossed her face at remembering how many residents had asked if they could get that kind of service. All of Bunnyburrow was atwitter about their most famous resident getting back to work. Sheela came across an online science journal article that said “Confirmed that Sharla Gibson Woolverson is getting back into the swim of things in astronomy. All fishes and sharks in that sea; WATCH YOUR TAILS!! The BIG fish is back and on the prowl!” Sharla fended off requests for interviews.

“After I’ve been back ‘in harness’ for a few months, at least, I’ll give consideration to granting one or two of those!” she declared.

A few days of refining things and getting their mental processes ‘calibrated’ and meshed and they were in ‘harness’. And now, here she was, ready to get back to it when her nap was done.

And all of it due to a chance encounter at a fair with a bunny and a fox. Binary rogue forces that jolted the orbital paths of those they came in contact with onto new trajectories.

“Isn’t that being a little dramatic?” a part of her questioned.

“Is it? Look at the effect they’ve had, not just on Sharla and myself. The effects are radiating outward into the scientific community, even some of it into Bunnyburrow. Maker only knows where it will go from there,” another part responded. “And has it hurt anything? What would things be like if they hadn’t appeared?”

“I’d be a normal teenager doing what most teens do. And nana Sharla, she’d be hobbling along, slowly wasting away,” Sheela murmured to herself.

She let her mind drift for a time, then….

“What are you two doing to us? Where are we going? And what is it going to look like when we get to the end?” Sheela questioned.

Right on the ragged edge of sleep, an image came into her mental view. It resolved itself into a likeness of Cordell Madis. He regarded her with an expression of enigmatic amusement.

“End?”

A chuckle that is warm, soothing, and something else.

“Awakened Dreamer, what makes you think there is one?!”