“Apprentice Quiet-Dream, your presence is required.” A quick bark announced the arrival of the coyote Guardian at the edge of the courtyard, where the squirrel and several other humans were lounging beneath one of the awnings mounted along its walls. Heavy Storms continued to live up to its name, rendering the courtyard a drenched swamp that was horrible to navigate for everyone present outside of Song and Garden-Blessing, who were quite at home in the mud and water for obvious reasons. But the fresh air and sound of rain on canvas was still relaxing.


    “Welp, looks like it’s your turn,” Maggie said, giving Quiet-Dream a head-tilt and a sidelong glance intended to read as a playful smirk. Everyone was being called back for ‘scientific questioning’ at some point that day, and Maggie had recently returned from her interview. “Don’t worry too much about it, it’s just an interrogation with a bunch of very pointed, very personal questions!”


    “That, but without the sarcasm,” Garden-Blessing placed a supportive claw on his back. “You will do fine, little squirrel. It wasn’t that harrowing.”


    “Right.” Quiet-Dream stood up and stretched before turning to the kit that had been snuggled up against his left side. “Wait here with the others, Black-Leap. This shouldn’t take long.”


    “Okay…”


    “Actually,” the coyote huffed, just loud enough to interject. “I was instructed to have you bring your kit as well.”


    “Oh.”


    “Oh!” The kit squeaked and bounced, far more excited by the idea than he was. “I’m always left behind when important things happen! Now I get to go!”


    “Nah, it just means that this isn’t important,” Maggie teased, preempting a groan from Quiet-Dream with a wink.


    “What? No!”


    “Sorry, kid. I don’t make the rules.”


    “She’s just trying to rile you up, Black-Leap,” Quiet-Dream chirped, nudging the kit back towards the door with his head. “We shouldn’t keep the Guardian waiting, they’re annoyed enough as it is.” For perhaps the first time, the coyote gave him a look approaching appreciation for hurrying things along.


    “I know, but she enjoys when I react,” the kit responded, scampering forward a few steps before turning back. “It’s nice.”


    “Wait. She was… just humoring me?” Maggie began muttering to herself, taken aback by the revelation. “The whole time? If she can Understand that I’m joking, how am I supposed to…”


    The elder squirrel sighed and shooed Black-Leap inside, leaving a very bemused myna bird to be consoled by a large crab. Such was his life now.


    The room the interview was to be held in wasn’t that far from the library. In fact, he had passed by it plenty of times. However, since the last time he had gone in this direction, a proper, solid door had been installed, albeit not as heavy as the one on the library, with much thinner wood and some rumpled linen padding attached to the inside. Less climate control, more noise canceling, if he had to take a guess.


    “You may leave them here and wait outside, Guardian,” a simultaneously loud and emotionally subdued squawk sounded from inside the room, and the coyote silently ushered the two of them inside and pushed the door closed behind them. The room was mostly empty, with a few cushions arranged on the floor and a writing wedge slid out from the wall where various bits of office furnishings had been stacked. The scent of dust hung heavy in the air, confirming that this space had sat unused for some time. Opposite them, behind the writing setup, was a sulfur-crested cockatoo, eyeing them with an intense curiosity. “Please make yourselves comfortable.” They gestured to two of the cushions in front of them.


    Black-Leap eagerly scampered up and belly-flopped onto the rightmost pillow, while Quiet-Dream carefully approached the other one, watching the interviewer for any signs of displeasure with the kit’s behavior. Thankfully, there were none. Instead, the bird seemed to be lost in thought, its gaze having lost focus in the last few seconds.


    “Are you okay?” Black-Leap chittered, earning a swift swat from her parent’s tail. If the question bothered the cockatoo, or if they even heard it, they didn’t show it. Instead, they looked right at him, opened their beak, and spoke.


    “You’re. Quiet-Dream. Right?” The bird squawked out in stilted, choppy, but perfectly recognizable English.


    “...Yes,” the squirrel nodded, staring at the bird in baffled silence.


    “Judging by your reaction, I expressed that correctly?” They tilted their head and adjusted their wings, returning to “normal” means of expression. “I only have the myna’s vocalizations in its interview as a point of reference, but I believe I copied the appropriate sounds well enough. Replicating the natural flow of one sound to another is far more intricate, though.”


    “Maybe Maggie could teach you!” Black-Leap spoke up, thankfully breaking the tension and buying Quiet-Dream time to formulate a response.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    “Perhaps, but that is a topic for another time. Right now, proper introductions are in order. I am Lead Scholar Delving-Thought, and I am studying your condition. I hope to discover its true nature.”


    “So… you believe us, then?” Hope briefly sparked in the gray squirrel’s mind. He had seen the Lead Scholar’s name no shortage of times in the library, and Sharp-Search’s few off-paw mentions of them had been positive. “You don’t think we’re… delusional?”


    “I believe that you, Apprentice Quiet-Dream, are a separate entity from Forager Keen-Ear. How sound of mind you may or may not be is an unrelated question.”


    “That’s… an improvement?”


    “He’s very stressed and anxious,” Black-Leap remarked unhelpfully. “But we’re all doing our best!”


    “...Yeah.” Quiet-Dream sighed. The kit was basically repeating back a combination of excuse and encouragement that he had given her a few days ago, so he had no one to blame here but himself.


    “I am sure you are.” Delving-Thought nodded at the kit before picking up their writing implement with their beak. It was one of their own feathers, dipped in ink at the end like a brush rather than at the base like a pen. “To begin the interview in earnest, I would like you to give an account of the beginning of your time in this body.”


    “Well, I woke up in the woods in a different body, which I’m sure you’ve heard a lot today. Ink-Talon was there with me, and when we got our bearings, we-”


    “Stop. Go back. What was ‘waking up’ like? What did you experience? What did you think?”


    “Oh.” No one had ever asked about his experiences before. He and the other humans never really talked about it unless they realized that they differed in a noticeable way, at least not since he’d vented his frustrations to Ink-Talon weeks ago in that wagon. The natives had never shown much interest either, since the concerns of what happened and how were far more pressing.


    “Is something wrong?”


    “No, just… preparing myself.” Those initial moments of squirrel-dom weren’t something he liked dwelling on. In fact, he’d done his best not to even think about them in any detail since that first night. But he needed to put it into words. He needed to dig up that pain so he could explain it to the first person to show genuine interest in Understanding it, no matter how much it hurt.


    “The first thing I experienced was every sense I had screaming at me. Not from Understanding any of them, but because most of them are far more detailed and sensitive than what my original body had. Sounds were louder and higher pitches were audible. Every scent was clearly distinguished from every other scent. The feeling of the breeze in my fur immediately outlined the shape of my body and all of the ways it was… wrong.” The fabric of the pillow beneath him rippled as he tightened his grip with all 4 paws.


    “Take your time, this is clearly-”


    “Everything was wrong. It still is wrong. But right then at the start I had no idea what was going on and that made it worse. My senses were telling me horrific, impossible things, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop—”


    “Mom!” Something small and furry slammed into his right side, jostling the larger squirrel from the mental spiral he’d trapped himself in. “You were stuck in bad thoughts.”


    “Thank you…” Quiet-Dream squeaked out. His breathing was fast and shallow, and his tiny heart was hammering away like a machine gun in his chest. Every human instinct screamed that he was about to die, but he knew that this was just a moderately elevated heart rate for a squirrel. He was safe. But he just didn’t feel safe. Reality had no bearing on the power of pure panic. “I’m sorry, Scholar. I shouldn’t have…” The squirrel trailed off as he finally calmed down enough to look at his interviewer. The bird was just staring at nothing again. “...Scholar?” He waved a forepaw in the air.


    “Apologies, that was a lot to take in.” The Scholar began rapidly swiping their feather-brush across the page in front of them in short, considered strokes, frequently pausing to dip it in a nearby inkwell.


    “You’re Attuned, aren’t you?” Quiet-Dream chittered without thinking, still on-edge.


    “And what prompted that conclusion?” Rather than take offense, Delving-Thought turned it into another question, tilting their head and raising the rest on their head a little bit as they awaited an answer.


    “This is the second time in this conversation you’ve just… gotten lost. In exactly the same way that I’ve seen happen to Ink-Talon and the bat in our group when they’ve been overstimulated by something.”


    “Indeed, you are certainly perceptive,” the Lead Scholar nodded. “Specifically, I am Attuned to the expressions of others, Understanding them in greater detail and drawing nuance from them that would be nearly imperceptible to the average observer. Unfortunately, that left me with precious little to ‘give up’ in exchange, so I am prone to episodes like that when I am processing too much information.”


    “And you… wanted that?”


    “Of course!” they squawked triumphantly. “As a Scholar of the Gift of Understanding itself, I will gladly push my mind to its limits to learn as much as I can.” The cockatoo gestured at Quiet-Dream with a sweeping gesture of their wing. “Which is why I insist that we continue. Everything you just described is exactly the kind of data I need, so I would like to ask you about your memories prior to that event. About your life in your original world.”


    “Wait, why me specifically? You’ve already interviewed everyone else, what makes me special?”


    “The memories of Song and Explorer Garden-Blessing are unreliable, by their own admission,” Delving thought began, tapping the base of their writing quill on the ground to punctuate their points. “The fruit bat was unable to grasp the nuances of the details I want, Pearl outright refused to answer all but the most basic questions, Chase is not conscious today to give a testimony, and Explorer Eager-Horizon is only pretending to be one of your kind.”


    “Oh.” Quiet-Dream flinched at the final item on that list. Of course someone with that Attunement could see right through the Explorer’s deception. But they didn’t seem to have reported the bird yet, and didn’t express the fact with anything approaching malice or anger, just mild disappointment in the lack of the perspective he wanted. He would have to fill that gap. “Okay, yeah. I’ll do my best, then.” He took a deep breath, and caught Black-Leap staring at him eagerly.


    She was clearly curious about his past as well. It was about time she knew. “What do you want to know?”