Hibour

        The school bell rang in the distance. If Nalina had been in school, she would be lining up with all the other children. It’d be a quick walk to the tram station to ride out to the Eastside, then either walk or accept a carriage ride to the homestead. The omnipresent network of parents, tram-conductors, shopkeepers, constables and cab drivers would then monitor her daily migration home, ensuring she didn’t delay or get into any trouble on the way.
        But Nalina was neither at school or home. She wasn’t even somewhere between them. Instead, she was on the far Eastern side of town, beyond the tram lines and the paved roads. Here the trees and shrubs and grasses were wild. The telegraph lines nearby were some of the only signs of town. There were farms further out, but their fences weren’t visible from here. This was where she came to hide and feel isolated. It was a place of adventure and exploration.
        Nali trampled wind-hewn stones along the shore of the Eastside creek, kicking them about as she ran alongside the water’s edge. The shore of the creek bed crumbled, rather than eroded. Such was the way of the ancient terrain on Calphis. Accretion, differentiation, volcanism and especially wind, were the shapers of land on Calphis. Rivers and streams and lakes were especially new to the planet, only slightly older than the life that now relied on it. Two centuries ago, there wouldn’t have been water here at all.
        So new were these flowing channels that they were still carving themselves into the terrain, building their banks with tumbling stones. It was these wind hewn stones that the children of Belshire frequently picked out of the banks. Aarav and his friends had taught Nalina exactly what to look for in a good throwing rock. Now she could hone her skills, even if most of the boys were off at trade, school or reduced labor.
It wasn’t the first time she had cut class early. This was becoming a habit, especially on nice afternoons. Hardly a cloud in the sky, the water glistened and shone brightly in the taulight. It was greenish with ancient sediment running from the highlands. Like most water on Calphis, it needed to be sifted a bit before it could be drunk straight. The particulates in this creek ran from deep permafrost in the highland regolith, frozen for millennia, only recently thawed thanks to the warming climate and a restarted water cycle. 
        More importantly to Nalina, it was also fun to throw rocks into. Those wind-smoothed stones along the bank made for excellent munitions. “Boom!” She cheered as she skipped once, then twice before it smacked off a larger rock, shattering into splinters. Quickly, she hefted up another and, after pausing only a moment to aim, flung the rock against the current. This one skipped only once, then caught a rise in the water and plunked to the bottom. Nalina made a face and fished up yet another. This one she held up to the light. Smooth, mostly flat, with a chip missing on one side. Perfect. She aimed downstream this time. Lining up her throw, she took one step forward and let a rip.
        One, two, three and crack! It ricocheted off another rock. She decided she’d count that fourth landing. “Another score for the Hiara kid!” She cackled to herself. She hated that Aarav and the neighborhood boys weren’t here. A four skip was rare, especially in the creek. She grinned at her success. They probably wouldn’t even believe her. She picked up another, hopped onto one of the rocks protruding from the water, and chucked it downstream.
        One, two, three- her eyes widened as it soared another meter, gliding perfectly towards an open section of water. With a gentle splash, it skipped a fourth time, cleared the opposite bank and clattered amongst the stones there. She nearly shouted with amazement. A true four-skip toss. Even her brother couldn’t reliably perform that many skips. This had to be a neighborhood record of some kind, she wagered to herself. She was grinning. Could she do it again? Maybe upstream this time. Confident, she scooped up another perfectly sized rock, held it up and-
        It hadn’t made a sound.
        She jumped out of her skin when she spotted the wild umbra raptor halfway across the creek. Icy cold blood rushed through her veins as she fumbled the rock and took a step back. “Shit-“ she cursed to herself.
        The creature stood on a pair of agile hind legs, each tipped with a scaly foot and a telltale hooked claw. The rest of it was covered in a streamlined hide of feathers and down, tapering to a fanlike tail. Its small forelimbs were feathered like wings, tucked against it’s thorax. The long snout was mostly free of fuzz, revealing brownish, scaled skin and wide, yellow eyes. The creature was fluffed, appearing passive, but cocked its head one way, then the other, looking at her. It was only a little shorter than she was and probably half her mass. Stray animals were common on the edge of town. All the kids knew that raptors and dogs and calfauna would sometimes scavenge out here, but she had never encountered one alone. The creature unsettled her not for what it was, but for the fact that it had approached so silently. Nalina swallowed and took another step back, this time putting her foot in the water.
        The creature hopped a little closer, still eyeing her with avian curiosity. “Go! Shoo! Get out of here!” She shouted at it. The small dinosaur perked up at the sound, but did not move.
Nalina took even more steps back. This time the creature started walking towards her, its head bobbing. The fan-like tail was raised slightly, balancing the creature as it walked. It flapped its flightless wings to balance as it hopped from stone to stone. Nalina scrambled up the bank of the creek, kicking rocks as she did so, giving the creature pause. “Go! Get lost! Leave me alone- I don’t have any food!” She shouted at it.
        This time it didn’t follow her. Nalina lifted herself over the top of the bank and peered down at the creature, unwilling to take her eyes off it. The raptor stared back, yellow eyes focused, before lowering its head to sniff at the rocks for a moment, making a sort of purring sound. Still spooked, Nalina took a few steps further up the river, watching the beast to see if it would follow. It did not. It merely stared after her, ruffling its feathers impassively.
        Confident in her ordeal, Nalina finally broke into a run, heading for the dirt road that would take her back into town. More than once, she peered back over her shoulder to make sure the creature wasn’t following her.

        “I fought a raptor today!” She exclaimed at the kitchen table, perhaps an hour later. Aarav gave her a look, but her mother looked up suddenly.
        “A raptor?” Her mother answered. “Nali, no. I don’t want you near any strays. They might carry something.”
“Not a stray! It was a wild raptor!” Nalina held up her hands, adding to her fantastical story. “Big one! It was super hungry, I could tell. It-“
        “There’s no wild raptors out here” Aarav interjected. “Wild raptors live in the highlands, but it’s too dry here Nali. You probably saw a stray.”
        “I don’t care what it was,” their mother said, coming to stand beside Nalina and lifting her chin. With a careful eye she examined her daughter, looking for scratches beneath all the dust and grime. With deft fingers she checked Nalina’s ears and along her hairline. “Tell me it didn’t scratch or bite you or anything? You know those things go through the trash and the runoff.”
        “Nah, I didn’t get scratched-“ Nalina said, suddenly embarrassed. “I won. I kicked its ass!”
        “Nalina!” Her mother exclaimed. Aarav rolled his eyes. In the still that followed, Nalina glanced up at her mother. There were a lot of words in her vocabulary that she couldn’t use at home. Unfortunately, these words were of good use on the playground and at school. She had grown so accustomed to using them that they occasionally slipped out. “Sorry mom, I kicked it’s backside”
        “You didn’t-“ Aarav started, but their mother held up a finger. 
        “Enough, Ravvy, leave your sister alone. Nali, stop making up stories and stay away from strays. I have to check in at the plant in twenty minutes…” she turned back from the counter with containers of bread and a casserole of algae bake and cheese. “Nali, yours is the one with no spinach. Aarav, bedtime at tauset. I probably won’t see you before your shift in the morning, so there’s smoked chu and oats for breakfast. Make sure Nali leaves for school. Speaking of which…” she turned to Nalina with an accusing look. “There was a notice in the mail today that said truancy is on the rise. We’re going to talk if I hear you’ve been skipping school again.”
        It struck Nalina that her mother probably hadn’t heard about today, in that case. “Yes mommy” she said guiltily, realizing that her skipping of school was becoming a habit. Her teachers would probably reach out about today’s incident. Nalina would have to come up with an excuse to lessen the impact. 
She and her brother then ate their dinner as their mother departed to work through the night, leaving her children to rest in the homestead. It was a common schedule by this point. It had been years since they lost Atriv. Their supply of labor credits needed to be supplemented by work. Because, by commonwealth law, Nalina wasn’t old enough to work and Astriv could only do reduced work, their mother had to labor full time. The nights at the city foundry were long and Nalina almost never saw her mother as a result.. Even so, it was becoming routine. Mom left them right around dinner usually, then she and Aarav entertained themselves for the night and went to bed in time for Aarav to get up for day shift and for her to go to school… usually.
        After dinner, Aarav turned on the radio and pulled some blankets out for the couches. They had their evening rituals by now. Nalina waited patiently as he made hot tea, then brought her a cup. 
        “I really did fight a raptor… if you didn’t have to work all the time you coulda seen it.”
        “I’m sure,” Aarav replied, sitting next to her on the couch and wrapping himself in one of the blankets. “Believe me, sometimes I’d rather be out there. I much rather be keeping you out of trouble than running the belts in that foundry.”
        “Your job sounds like it sucks,” she remarked. 
        Aarav gave her another look. “It does not… Well, usually. I’m still young enough that I don't have to do the really bad jobs, but it’s not that hard.” 
        “You don’t get to go outside and do what you want, it sucks” she asserted, pulling her feet up to sit cross legged. “And you don’t get to work at the same time as mom, and you never get to skip rocks… it sucks, Ravvy.”
        Aarav smirked a little as he looked at his hands. “Alright, maybe it sucks a little. But you know, you’re going to be working soon too… and the foundry has the most openings in town.”
        “Nah, I don't want to work” she stated plainly. 
Aarav grinned at her. “Gotta work sis. Mom can’t work forever. We gotta take care of her credits and save up our own. Plus, you do your labor years and then you can qualify for trade guilds or university.”
        “Isn’t that more school? I don’t wanna do that either… what else is there?”
This time Aarav laughed. “Well, you can have kids… they’ll give you a ton of credits for that, but it’s still just a different kind of work.”
        Nalina made a face at that. She knew how hard her own mother worked. She was beginning to understand just how hard it had been for their parents, especially after their father died, then Atriv. It didn’t exactly scratch the childish itch of adventure. There would be no fending off wild beasts by the river if she was stuck homemaking. “No way. That one probably sucks the most….” She mumbled.
        “Well, then what do you want to do, Nali? Throw rocks the rest of your life?”
        She raised her head slightly, looking towards the radio. A thought came to her as she recalled that avian critter down by the creek. It had looked so docile, yet active. Thinking back on it now, she could almost imagine the beast perceiving her. It was intelligent. It thrived away from these rules on the edge of town. It was a respectable creature, she thought. Had she really been frightened of it? Surely not. She had merely exercised a level of caution applicable to the situation. Perhaps she even had a talent for this kind of thing!
        “I want to raise raptors!”
        Aarav turned to look at her, puzzled. “Raise them? I thought you were fighting them.” He set his mug on a nearby end table. “And… I’m not sure that’s a job, exactly. There’s ranches that might have animals to wrangle but-“
        “That’s what I want to do,” she said quickly. A dumb smile formed on her face as she grinned at her older brother. “It’s like having pets. I’m going to take care of them and train them to do chores!”
        Aarav just laughed, leaning back. Nalina sensed the humor was at her expense, but she felt elation anyway. Something about Aarav laughing just made her happy. He didn’t laugh as much these days, which made it all the more special. “Yeah-“ she continued. “I’ll name one Ravvy. The grumpiest one I can find… he’ll be Ravvy II.”
        “Oh come on” he laughed. “If you’re going to raise paleos, you’re going to have to come up with better names.”
        The two of them started brainstorming animal names while the radio buzzed quietly. Reporters spoke of the weather, the local economy, news from beyond the basin and eventually continued with special programming. By that point, Nali and Aarav had exhausted their conversations about the future. The radio went to commercials for a time, before their evenings entertainment began. They listened intently, sprawled on the couch as the program started.
        “Welcome, listeners, to Sagas of Sol” started the program. Paulipi Bine’s docile and captivating voice forever provided a blanket of familiarity to their evenings. Nalina wiggled into her blanket, listening intently while Aarav settled in on the opposite side. “Tonight we have a lesser known classic. The Lem on Rustworld, a recount of excitement and peril on the surface of the red planet. Now, listeners, I don’t expect all of you to be intimately familiar with the planet Mars… so allow me to elaborate with a little background…”

        Nalina was asleep before the segment ended, her dreams filled with paleofuana and mars.