Chaos and Change: Eyes of Stars' Story

Chapter One

"There're much better things I could be doing," Kaz, Senior Caretaker of the Eight Trees Ranch, muttered to herself as she stalked out of the administrative burrow-- what? It was built into the side of a canyon and almost completely underground; Kaz could call it a burrow if she wanted to-- and onto the grounds. She didn't even bother keeping it under her breath. Everyone knew the Senior Caretaker muttered when she was annoyed. Which wound up being a lot. They would ignore her, glare at her, or lean in to catch the gossip, as their natures bade them. Kaz wasn't about to stop for their benefit.

"Could be feeding the cats. Could be working that young racer we just bought. Could be chasing off the scavengers, picking off the pigeons. But nooooo. The owner speaks, and the hirelings must scurry." She snorted indelicately.

Usually, Kaz was left to do whatever tasks she pleased at the ranch, being the senior-est of the caretakers able to claim the title of Senior. She wasn't even the one in charge, disdaining the responsibility of organizing the small corps of workers. If luck went her way, she wouldn't have any contact with them, at all.

But today she'd been summoned. Summoned! Her!

Well, even Kaz had to scurry when it was the owner doing the summoning. So, she went, heard him out, and left again. She'd agreed to the task he'd set her-- how was she supposed to refuse? He was the owner! But that didn't mean she had to be happy about it.

"All right, so what did he say these beasties were like...."

That was her task: to find someone among the ranch's residents to take with her to investigate-- and bring home-- one of these new creatures he'd heard of. If she didn't know better-- and really, she didn't, she just liked to think well of him, no matter how annoying being set tasks by him might have been-- she'd have said he was just collecting a new, fancy creature, just out of curiosity and covetousness. However, she preferred to think he had some kind of reason behind what he did.

These creatures, the Ouvriax as they were called, had "appeared" on their current planet of residence, saying nothing of their homeworld. They were big, somewhere around Kaz's own size, lived on an open savannah, and had massive, curved horns. They lived in collections of small, mentally bonded groups, and preferred to be bonded rather than alone. A kind of pack animal. Or maybe herd animal, as they were largely vegetarian, which was odd.

And which also cemented in her mind just where on the ranch she would go to find her "volunteer". There were only so many non-carnivorous creatures out there, after all, so why not put them together?

Feeling much better about her assignment already, Kaz trotted out of the canyon and out towards the wooded fields where the bulk of the ranch's wynd population lived. Kaz liked wynds: they seemed somehow closer to animals, and yet still more civilized, than many of the strange sentients at the ranch. Maybe it was the lack of anything even resembling hands, and the general horse-like appearance. Maybe it was how they seemed to run in herds-- Dynces, they called them-- and stuck to them like regular horses.

Maybe it was just that they were technically "prey" to Kaz's "predator".

Well, whatever it was, spending all that time in the company of a wynd was much preferable to, say, one of the tigons or, worse, the dragon whorlings. Now she just had to decide which one.

After wandering the fields for an hour or two, nodding with grudging amicability at various wynds she passed, Kaz caught sight of something dark in the distance-- something solid-colored. It was, she decided as she squinted at it, indeed a wynd, despite that solid colors were rare. They didn't have many of them. And this one was black, it looked taller than most wynds she'd ever seen, and it was standing entirely alone, which was rare for a Wynd, too.

Check that, it had one of the cats with it.

Which meant it was Eyes of Stars.

As Kaz watched, the tree nearest him quite suddenly threw out a burst of purple flowers. As if that wasn't strange enough, that particular tree normally had white flowers.

"Perfect," Kaz said with relish. She'd take him.

Well, and his cat, but everyone had baggage, right?

Eyes of Stars was less enthusiastic. "I'd really rather not," he told her for the third time, as they were approaching the administration burrow. "I don't know the first thing about dragons."

"You came, didn't you?" Kaz pointed out ruthlessly. "I don't see you running away."

"Well, now that you mention it--"

"Too late!" Kaz curled around behind him before he could start backing away and all but shoved him through the doors. She was almost twice his size; it wasn't all that hard. His cat hissed at her. She hissed back. The cat dove under the nearest table-- it was too big to fit under the sofa.

"Don't threaten Daaruuv," Eyes of Stars said, turning back his fluffy ears at her.

"She threatened me, first," Kaz snorted. "She's your cat; keep her in line."

"She's not mine," the wynd protested, then shied away from a table he'd just inadvertently brushed against, and just as inadvertently turned from creamy rose color to ruddy mahogany color. "Oh, damn!" he snorted unhappily. "I hope no one was particularly fond of that table...."

"It's more valuable now," Kaz assured him. "And of course she's your cat. She follows you everywhere, doesn't she?"

"It's more like I'm hers," Eyes of Stars sighed. "At least I haven't done anything horrible to her yet...."

"Stop moaning and get onto that teleporter already," Kaz replied unsympathetically.

The wynd gave her a baleful look with those glowing eyes of his, but he stepped obediently onto the raised platform in the middle of the next room. After all, at least he'd get a free trip out of this-- and he did like to travel, or so she'd heard, quite well-acquainted with the teleporter-- though he didn't know yet what else he might wind up with. Kaz was careful not to mention that part, or he would have found a way to bolt.

Eyes of Stars was, after all, a little shy of prolonged company. Kaz bet it had something to do with people in the past getting uppity about his rather odd abilities, or maybe just about his own fear that they would. Things and sometimes people around him had the disconcerting ability to change. Randomly. Trees bursting into bloom, tables changing color, sudden hair growth, whatever. There had even been rumors about someone back at Lanse'shri who'd undergone a complete change of personality one day, though no one could agree on whether it had been temporary or permanent-- though it was said that the change had been drastically for the better.

Still, Eyes of Stars had no more control over it than he did over Daaruuv somehow following him everywhere he went, even to different worlds. It made him worry, kept him from starting a Dynce despite the way the mares looked at him, kept him from enjoying the company anyone who was as herd-minded as a wynd would crave.

Well, if this fell out as hoped, Kaz thought smugly as she stepped up after him and stated their destination to the static teleportation spell there-- "Planet Malnev, the plains!"-- he wouldn't have much of a choice. He'd have a constant companion, an assurance that even if he was chaos incarnate he couldn't alienate everybody, and someone to encourage him to start some kind of herd of his own. These ouvriax creatures liked being a part of a group, after all, and Kaz doubted Daaruuv would count. Eyes of Stars would finally have to stop being such a hermit and maybe actually be happy, at last.

And, as the room melted around them, Kaz wondered if that was, somehow, what the boss had intended all along. That he'd expected this particular choice of traveling companions and thought it best. 

If so, he was a lot smarter than she'd given him credit for....

Chapter Two

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