Honor and Remembrance

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

01/21/97:

I sat in the grass of the plains, miles from where my camp
was, I had spent hours hiking this far, using a long piece
of drift wood I had found as a walking stick. Getting that
was a day trip it's self, finding a place where I could get
down the cliff side.

Sitting cross-legged, I gently ran one of my hands over the
grass, feeling the morning dew cling to my skin. I had
walked sense before night fall to reach the spot, and it was
just after dawn now.

I was tired yes, but I had been. I had still yet to sleep,
now for over a month. In truth, it frightened me. I knew
humans can go a long time, only getting fifteen, twenty
minutes a sleep every now and then, but still, it wasn't
normal.

But that wasn't my concern right now, my concern was trying
to piece my life back together. I wasn't doing to good a job
of it. I had spent the last twenty-three days remembering
the past year, every little thing I did, every little thing
I said.

It made so much more sense now...

I could see, at least from my view, how Oriana could have
though I loved her. Some of the things I did, like
intentionally destroying my hand when Jenner took her, it
read that way if that's how you wanted to see it.

A lot of what I did could have been read that way.

I wasn't alone either, I had nearly had my face smacked up
against her being in love me with at least a few times, and
I never could place it. Like her staying with me after my
Exile was lifted.

She didn't need to stay, and in fact, shouldn't of. She had
a business to run, even if it was a whore house. But some
how, in that time she let her own work slide, to be with me.
At the time, I just though it was peculiar, now I can see it
clearly.

Another such thing was her gesture of place her index finger
on the bridge of my nose, right between my eyes. She did it
when ever she was worried about me, or I did something that
she could have counted as sweet.

In fact, I did the same thing to her once when she was
worried ten ways to home about owning the HammerHeads a
favor, but I didn't mean it as any more then getting her
attention.

Damn I was a fool.

In truth, I didn't know if I would ever see Oriana again,
and that felt bad to me. I had left my location in a message
to her before I had left, but no one has yet come to this
little world that I was on, at least, anywhere near me.

I noticed then, I had been unconsciously rubbing my left
wrist, shaking my head I made myself stop. It was that
instant I saw what the date was. It was one of those days
you never forget, cause it means so much, and is held so
dear.

The day was the Twenty-First of January... and it was
suppose to be Becky's Twenty-First birthday, and some how,
it made it all worse.

It had been over a year sense Becky had been killed, hit by
a car while she was living in England. I never got to say
good-bye, just an formal letter telling me that the best
friend I have ever had in my life was dead.

Dead... such a simple term, then leaves so much un-said. She
was such a brilliant person, and had so much future ahead of
her. So many promises that she made, and so many that where
broken in thoughts few seconds...

I couldn't even be with her when she left. She wasn't even
able to tell me when she was leaving, until just hours
before, I wasn't even able to get to the airport.

It was kind of ironic, after all the time of being the only
one who knew where she was (I was protecting her from an
ex-boyfriend who was stocking her, as well as for about six
month's there, we both spent most of the time off Earth), I
was the last to know when she was to leave.

We did get to say some kind of good-bye, a quick meting, a
few words, and a hug. Her whispering into my ear that she
would be back for my birthday, to give me the gift she had
been promising for so long.

It's funny, most people assume that Becky and I where at
least lovers, haven't spent so much time together before and
after my exile. In truth though, we weren't. At are first
meting, she was already 18, and I was only 16, and Earth
being what it was, I didn't want to press the issue.

Becky, on the other hand, had been promising me over and
over that  the day I turned 18, the first thing she would do
was get me into bed, as she felt was her right, considering
how we meet (a story I may tell some day, but not here).

In it's own way, it was rather funny. I've talked about how
I've had some lovers in my past exploits, but in fact, it
was very rare. It took so much for me to open up to anyone
in that way. I may have flirted, but never with more then
that in mind. In fact, in all the time that I've know I was
a natural,

I've only been lovers with two people. Both of them males,
not that I don't like females, I just never been with lady
but Becky long enough to open up enough to do that.

Becks knew all this, I told her that first day, when she and
her boyfriend broke up, and she needed someone to be with.
Out of some flash of inspiration, I walked her into my room,
stuck a pair of the temp-implants over her ears, and opened
the fold.

I remember her looking at it, looking shocked. Then slowly
turing around and say, in there ever so clear voice of hers,
"What the hell is going on?"

I told her, I told her everything, how I had found it, how I
had played around, how it had changed my life. She listed to
it all as the fold was open behind her. Finally she turned,
and walked though it, bold as she always was, not afraid of
anything.

It was the start of a grand adventure that neither of us
wanted to end, but did so suddenly, and so violently, with
Catarn. We where both Exiled, and couldn't go back. We still
keep as tight together as we could, but that ended when her
grandfather died, and she inherited that land in England,
then was forced to get and live there, as part of her
Grandfathers Will (not that she objected, she liked that
area of the world).

And then, in a moment of someone else's stupidity, some fool
idiot blew a corner, and hit her as she crossed the road. It
wasn't fare, she was to good of a person, she didn't deserve
to die, and not such a faceless way, and not so alone.

I truly, and fully hope, who ever was driving the car has to
live though most the most horrifying torture that could ever
be devised for anyone.

I slumped down in the wet grass, wishing for the tears that
could never come, remembering the best friend that I ever
had in my life.

It was at that second the a stray bit of wind blew past my
face, cold and crisp. That light wind blew over my backpack,
causing it to spill some of it's contents onto the wet
grass.

Out of the mess that was in by pack, was the vial Oriana had
given me before she left. It rolled out over some food, made
a bounce into the air, and landed right at my feet.

I looked down at it, getting a strange feeling in the back
of my head. Gently, I reached down, and picked it up in one
hand.

"It's something you really want." Oriana had told me before
she had left. I had been saving it, not knowing when I
should drink the liquid that filled the vial. Suddenly
though right now seemed like the perfect moment to find out
what her gift was.

With a quick twist of my hand, I pulled out the stopper on
the vial. Then, before I could stop myself, I threw back my
head and drank it.

There was no taste to it, but it felt like ice as I went
down, finally settling in my stomach, still ice cold. The
cold didn't dissipate, it grew slowly spreading out from the
center of my body.

As it reached the skin of my belly, I suddenly got the pins
and needles feel of a part of my body going to sleep. It
only last a second though, but left behind a terrific
itching. I didn't scratch at it though, I was in a way
entranced by the feelings in my body.

The cold in my body keep expanding over my skin, the
tingling and itching always following it, but that wasn't
all, I could feel parts of my inertial organs re-arranging
themselves, as well as a dull throbbing ache at the base of
my spine.

The wave of cold finally reached my feet, almost at the
exact same second that it reach my hands and my head. I was
able to watch as the tingling came over my hands, the skin
bending and puckering a bit. As the itching came, what
suspicions I had where quickly confirmed.

The hair on the back of my hands started to thicken, and
grow, at the same time my fingernails actually pulled back
into my fingers. There was a twist at the tip of my fingers,
as more of what could only be fur continued to grow on my
hands, and started to darken into a reddish tint.

I wasn't able to see more of what was happened, as my
glasses where forced from there perch on my ears (where from
the feel of it, where moving anyway) by the growth of a
short muzzle on my face.

As if in finality of the change I was going though, I felt a
tug on the base of my spine, which slowly pulled out longer,
I made a quick grab, moving for the first time during all of
this, and adjusted my pants so as not to be in pain from
this part of my change.

Soon it was the only feeling left in my body, as I felt the
fur that was already covered the rest of my body, thicken,
and grow on my new tail.

I found myself panting, felling even more weak then I was
before. I didn't have to feel over myself to know what
happened, it wasn't to hard to guess. Even so, I still
looked down at my hands, now paws, watching the red fur that
covered them blow gently in the wind, I also noticed that my
eye sight had moved up from 'really bad' to 'near perfect'.

This was Oriana's gift to me, a change to let me be what I
truly wanted to be, a fox, as I should be. She had found a
way to give it to me, as an example of how much she cared. I
knew it couldn't last for ever, she had said as much herself,
but I planed to enjoying truly being me for as long as I
could.

Sitting there, I felt a slight drop of moisture on my
muzzle. Figuring it was starting to rain, I didn't bother to
wipe it off. That was until I realized where it was.

Reaching up, I gently wiped it from my muzzle. I looked
close at the smear it had made on my finger, it wasn't
blood, as I had always come to expect, but a tear, a pure,
real tear.

Oriana had, maybe unwittingly, let me cry.

And that is what I did, I cried, I cried for Becky, I cried
for Rathal's death, I cried for the things I had seen in my
adventures, and above all, I cried for my world...

-----
Dedicated to Rebecca Jennifer Sanders, who was a very real person,
who didn't deserve to die.