The People of the Wind

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“You can’t leave now,” Daniel Holm told his son. “Any day we may be at war. We may already be.”

“That’s just why I have to go,” the young man answered. “They’re calling Khruaths about it around the curve of the planet. Where else should I fare than to my choth?”

When he spoke thus, more than his wording became bird. The very accent changed. He was no longer using the Planha-influenced Anglic of Avalon — pure vowels, r’s trilled, m’s and n’s and ng’s almost hummed, speech deepened and slowed and strongly cadenced; rather, it was as if he were trying to translate for a human listener the thought of an Ythrian brain.

The man whose image occupied the phone screen did not retort, “You might consider staying with your own family,” as once he would have. Instead Daniel Holm nodded, and said quietly, “I see. You’re not Chris now, you’re Arinnian,” and all at once looked old.

That wrenched at the young man. He reached forth, but his fingers were stopped by the screen, “I’m always Chris, Dad,” he blurted. “It’s only that I’m Arinnian too. And, and, well, if war comes, the choths will need to be prepared for it, won’t they? I’m going to help — shouldn’t be gone long, really.”

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