Memory transcription subject: Valek, Venlil Tourist.

Date [standardized human time]: Sept 12th, 2136. End of 2nd Claw

“... What makes FieldFlow so special is that it doesn’t need to be cold! Even at room temperature, electrons just shoom right through it!” Voshia swung her paw through the air for emphasis, like a shuttle taking off at speed.

“We use it for all kindsa stuff! The Ring, the warp drives, FTL comms, everything! OH OH If you’re here you’ve got to see the Morning’s Light, too! It polishes itself in daylight!”

The tired father pinched his daughter’s ear. “Alright Shia, that’s enough; it’s time to go home.” - “But Dad!”

The father flicked their tail in irritation, “We’ve been here nearly a claw, and your brothers are both asleep! C’mon, we can see the other half next waking.”

“And you, predator…” His eyes narrowed, as his ears focused on Maeve. I braced for another rant, another dismissal of everything that made Maeve the wonderful person I knew her to be… but his shoulders fell with a sigh, “... thank you. With three pups, the missus and I don’t always have the energy for her. It was good to see her so happy again.”

Maeve waved off his concern, and I hoped the friendliness behind her body language was noticed, “It brightened my day to learn from Voshia, thank you! You have a wonderful family.”

The mother’s wool settled as Voshia joined her brothers, taking the youngest onto her own shoulder. Voshia looked back as the herd left the exhibit, flicking farewell to Maeve who returned the gesture with her own waving hand.

A few moments after the child was out of sight, Maeve heaved a sigh and leaned back from her seat on the floor against a nearby plinth…

Which was apparently not attached to the ground.

In a flurry of flowing white cloak, Maeve immediately righted her balance, and the plinth wobbled precariously behind her. Alvi and I stepped to try to catch the sample of aerogel atop it, though retreated as the plinth appeared to stabilize. When it finally arrested, the three of us released a held breath and tittered between ourselves.

After a moment, Maeve clapped her hands together in excitement, “Did you see that?! They were so excited for everything! Just the way that they were so eager to know and to teach! It's just… I'm…" Maeve flung her arms and kicked her legs in overfilling joy and excitement, "It is so wonderful to see someone have their Best day!”

“Sometimes all they need is someone to listen; I should know.” Alvi stepped up to Maeve and offered a shoulder to help her up, which Maeve thankfully received. “Feel like you’ve got a good handle on this room? Voshia was very thorough, after all.”

Maeve’s face lifted to look at the next display, “I would love to see what this ‘Morning’s Light’ is all about.”

At the end of the room stood a full desk display, surrounded by Venlil and their pups that were taking advantage of Voshia’s distraction. Each had a turn in handling a slightly-larger-than-paw sized burnished gold tile, before an attendant on the other side of the desk encouraged them to pass it along. The three of us stepped up to a few tails short of the crowd, Maeve’s height forcing the attendant to address us.

But she didn’t. While her ears never left our little herd, her eyes never met us. She didn’t acknowledge us, and continued to guide the tile from paw to paw, though never to us.

“Uh, excuse me?” Alvi’s voice drifted over the crowd, the attendant’s ears focusing on her, before snapping back to Maeve.

“... Miss?” They turned away from us, guiding the tile to the other end of the desk away from us.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

“Alvi, it's fine.”

“No, it isn’t! This is one of only three pieces that are open to the public, and we won’t leave unt-”

“Alvi, please.”

Alvi shifted her focus to Maeve, her tail twitching indignantly.

“I’d rather wait for another day than sour this one. It’s ok.”

The attendant’s ears stayed on Maeve, but her focus was still on the other patrons, trying to keep them away from us; her tail swayed smugly at hearing Maeve concede. Taking the opportunity, I gently pulled Alvi’s paw for her to follow, and I guided the three of us out of the room.

Memory transcription subject: Alvi, Venlil Tourist.

Date [standardized human time]: Sept 12th, 2136. End of 2nd Claw

My tail thrashed behind me as we left the counter, “Scorched headbutt of a woman; wonder what’s got her tail all kinked.”

Valek led us out of the exhibit as Maeve tittered beside, “Probably salty she didn’t get into the exchange program.”

“Oh, for sure. Everyone knows how popular it is to sign up to meet with a predator.”

Valek’s deadpan set Maeve and I to quietly laughing, our humor barely echoing off of the marble ceiling as we walked to the next exhibit past a vertical stone which read: ‘Parneksilous Dedicatory Hall of Uplifting the Venlil Farmer’ carved in Venlil script in the traditional style of a herding trail marker. False turquoise grass covered the floor, nearly clashing with the fields of ipsom and woolgrass painted on the walls. The displays in this room were over-large, as was the room itself, and were arrayed chronologically starting with the oldest on our right side; several primitive farming instruments hung on the wall behind protective glass.

A Bellwether saw us coming into the exhibit and quickly gathered her herd, rushing out of the opposite exit while the confused pups tried to understand why she was scared, not realizing Maeve was the subject of her fear.

Valek took advantage of the now nearly-empty exhibit to excitedly call out to us, “This is a record of Venlil farming! I remember my dad telling me about when he first started working for Mom’s herd, they were still using a lot of pre-fed tech; claw diggers, straight-holes… they picked most of the field by paw!”

I giggled, trying to hide my delight at the image of Valek, backlit and shining as he tilled the soil of his farm and harvested a colorful third-meal. My tail found his side as I walked past him, speaking low for the three of us, “Just imagine how much more handsome you’d be working the fields with these!”

Valek’s tail kinked in playful mischief, “I’ll have you know, Mom thinks I’m very handsome.”

Maeve and I giggled at our little Bellwether-babe, though she was the first to recover, “You’re teasing, Alvi, but I bet you’d love it if Valek tossed you around like a bale a’ woolgrass.”

“Maeve! There are pups present!” I tried to be admonishing, but I could feel the warming bloom in my ears.

Valek stepped to my side and wound his tail around what little of mine that wasn't cinched against my body, “I can attest, Maeve, that yes: Alvi is very tossable.”

I shoved Valek away from me, “No fair! That was a very different context!” but my tail held his firm. A predatory smile pulled at his lips as he pulled me to the next display. “If you’re such a big, strong…”

Gorgeous?

Quiet.

Bullsome?

Silence.

“... farmer, why don’t you tell us how these work?” I could feel my bloom deepening in its intensity, but while I was sure we could tease and flirt the whole paw through, I was actually interested in the history of Valek’s family work.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Actually the tools we used to use are really interesting!” Valek pointed out a set of wood and stone,

shaped in wedges of varying sharpness alongside rods and clubs. “Primitive farming was mostly grains and grasses, so we would use wood or stone shaped into blades to hack at the bases of stems. Then we would soften them using dowels against something hard, like logs or another stone.”

Leading us along to another display, Valek continued his lesson by showing more advanced tools, combining wood and reed handles with stone and glass blades. “This is what a lot of our current paw-tools start to look like, though the materials have definitely improved. Ugh, I hated using the root-claw!”

He pointed an accusing claw at a tool that seemed similar to the others, but its orientation was rather surprising. The primitive example had a solid wooden handle, a little shorter than the average Venlil at the shoulder and made from a single branch or sturdy sapling. It had a paw-grip midway down, in this case what was an off-branch of the main, and a broad flat end that sat under and braced against one’s upper arm. The tool ended with a sturdy tapered spike positioned to aim toward its wielder. “This recreation is made of wood and stone, but modern manufactures used hardened steel for the head, and a variety of materials for the handle, including wood. The original spike shape allowed us to loosen packed soil around the root and pull the whole plant, but there are also chopping variants that sacrifice the root.”

Valek turned his side to us, practicing the use of the phantom tool in his main-paw, “You have to stand right next to whatever you’re pulling. With one paw, you pull the bulk of the plant out of the way, and with the other you just hack at the base of it until it comes loose.” He beat his arm down to his side, like he was trying to amputate his own paw.

Maeve walked past us and looked at a diorama including a model of a Venlil using the aforementioned root-claw, while another knelt beside a false vine with a basket half-full of sturen. “It’s really interesting how different your tools look! We use something called a hoe for that kind of work, which we use by swinging down in front of us. There were some with a hook-end for pulling roots like your root-claw, but mostly we used a flat blade to chop at the root, leaving it in the ground.”

I tilted my head in confusion, “That sounds really wasteful? Why would you leave so much good food to rot?”

Maeve shrugged as she moved on to the next display, “Roots were only a small part of our diet, so they had more value staying in the ground. If it survived, it would grow a new plant to be harvested again; if it didn’t, then it would decompose and be nutrients for the soil, making planting there better later, so you win either way. Once we got to farming, we mostly harvested grain and supplemented that with fruit and veg.”

Valek brought us to another display, “That’s actually pretty similar to us! True, Venlil Prime has made gathering fruits and vegetables easy for us, but eventually we needed to make dedicated farms to keep up with population which is when we started using these!”

In front of us was a massive wooden frame, supported on a single wooden wheel, a bar handle on one side, wide enough for two Venlil side-by-side, across from a wide lateral blade. “This would be pushed by one or two Venlil through level farmland to harvest grasses and grains. It could be shoved, but Dad said some pairs could go at a full run! Several Venlil would follow behind to gather the shorn grasses.”

Maeve looked at the exhibits curiously, “How long before first contact did you guys move from stone to steel? A lot of this stuff looks… I don’t want to use the word primitive, but compared to what humans were using even 6000 years ago, a lot of this looks inefficient. I mean, this thing looks too big for just two Venlil to push.”

“Well our current machines are part of public record, and what we had before first contact just wasn’t as good, so no use recording them. This stuff shows how we developed, so it has cultural significance.” Maeve meandered to the next diorama which depicted Parneksilous receiving a pad from a member of the First Contact team, a Farsul.

Valek walked with Maeve to the diorama and described the re-creation, myself just behind the pair, “Parneksilous was an early-adopter of Federation technology. Farron, the Farsul there on the left, gave Parneksilous access to Federation research; the machines and materials the Federation gave us made farming much more efficient, and now the Venlil are a major fruit-basket of the Federation!”

Maeve froze, tilting her head at the display, “Wait… So Parneksilous was a major figure in the uplift? Made the process easier for the federation?”

“Oh, absolutely! Our old records showed that a lot of farmers at the time were very traditionalist and didn’t want to change how we’d been farming for generations! Parneksilous, on the other paw, saw the value in what the Federation was giving us. They taught him how to cycle crops most efficiently, how to select what crops to cultivate, and even how to make fertiliz-”

Valek stopped short, as his ears swiveled in thought. His eyes darted from display to display, his breathing grew panicked, and I tried to ground him. Maeve, however, was still examining the diorama, her head cocked in thought,

“Then why does he look so… afraid?”

Valek and I looked at the recreation as one, taking in its every detail. Parneksilous’s tail was wrapped around their ankles; and despite the Farsul standing tall on a shale outcrop, Parneksilous stood hunched over in mud, almost in…

Reverence?

Valek’s breathing quickened, his ears on a panicked swivel as I caught him when he lost his balance. His eyes were locked onto the First Contact display as I held him close, trying to bring him back like he did for me. Maeve joined us kneeling on the floor of the exhibit, running her hand through the wool of his mane while I held his paw. Valek’s breathing leveled out, and he began to respond to our touch with his own. He took a deep breath, and spoke in hushed tones.

“I didn’t want to believe it… I… I know the Federation lied to us; not just about predators, but… we need to find somewhere quieter. Help me up?”

Maeve took his other paw and helped him stand alongside her, myself only just behind. Valek led us from the exhibit and around the corner toward an unfinished Yotul exhibit, finding a corner of the room behind temporary partitions; in our privacy, Maeve lifted her veil and I saw my concern reflected in her worried eyes.

After a long moment to collect his thoughts, Valek told us about his time in the library. He told us about how his family farmed, and how it didn’t match up with what was in the museum. He talked about his readings, about ecological research that was hidden, and never taught. He talked about the findings of a Dr. Turin, and the produce output of isolated colonies. He talked about ‘missing’ researchers - entire teams - that discovered something they shouldn’t have. And under it all, the Exterminators were at every step, being the paw that pulled the weeds.

“It’s just… We’ve barely known Humanity for a few harvests, and so much of what is just common knowledge to you upsets everything we know about our world! And the more I learn, the more I see that it was on purpose, and I can’t understand why!”

Valek’s ears were back as his tail curled around me and him, while Maeve tried to brush his distress away. Her eyes shifted through a torrent of worry, fear, sadness, anger, and loving, before landing on ‘resolute spite’.

“Fuck ‘em!”

My eyes and ears snapped to Maeve; surely the translator was mistaken?? Valek’s despair lost its momentum as he stared up at Maeve in equal confusion.

“What does it matter what They’ve done? You are what you are because of what you have lived through, and I love… the Venlil that sits in front of me.” Her eyes held his, as her hands held his paws in surety.

“And so do I.” My tail met his as my voice found his ears, while he looked between us in a flurry.

“H-How can you when you don’t even know who I am? My-My family has been farmers for generations! My grandfather said Parneksilous was one of their biggest role models! We-we thought we had a grand history and could be continuing it! But it’s all a lie?” His voice started to catch in his throat as he started to retreat into himself, flicking his ears between Maeve and I.

“Th-The Farm! My Family! Me!! What-”

Tears streamed from his clenched eyes as he started to bleat and cough. I fell into his side and tried desperately to comfort him, while Maeve wrapped her good arm around us and pulled us closer. Valek’s sobs echoed around the empty hallway as Maeve and I held him close while he desperately clenched and twisted the wool of his mane and chest.

“I want to give you All I Am, but everything’s a lie! I have nothing! I am! Nothing!”

“No, mo chridhe, no… It’s alright.” Maeve’s voice was soft as Dacham.

It tore me apart to see this wonderful man fall apart in front of me. With no words to say, I pressed my snout under his chin, slipping my paw under his to slow the worrying of his wool. Valek sobbed between us as we sought to comfort him, allowing him the space to cry.

When his grief started to slow, I whispered to him, “I don’t think you’re nothing.” His tail pulled tighter against me and I could feel his jaw tighten; he didn’t believe me. “You have a beautiful home, a beautiful farm, and a beautiful family. It doesn’t matter to me how your great-great-great-whatever got there, or how your family started. Because however it happened…”

I pulled away from him, meeting his eye with mine, “... the man it made, the man in my arms, is everything I could ever hope for in a friend, and a mate.”

He looked over and away from me, refusing to meet my eye, but I wouldn’t let him ignore what I saw plainly! “You love me… ever since the train, you said it yourself, you love me. Even when I didn’t know how to love myself you were kind and accepted me when no one else had! And I love you Valek, because of what you are now, and what I know you can be for me; for us.”

His ears twitched and turned while still pressed in his wool, I was getting through to him!

I caught Maeve’s eye, and she took Valek’s other paw in hers as she followed my lead. “Your burrow is real. Your farm is real. Your family is real. What the Federation did was wrong, and I can’t hope to understand everything you and your ancestors lost. But despite that, you and your family are still Farmers. You still have them, you still have us, and we still have our goofy, loving, very good boy!”

Maeve’s hand flashed from his crown to his side, diving into his wool to tickle him and I quickly did the same. Valek’s cries turned to snorting brays as he tried to push our paws away, only for them to dive again for his defenseless sides. As quickly as we started we stopped for him to catch his breath, before we sunk again into our warm embrace. Valek returned our slow stroking, his claw finding its way under my chin and around the side of my face, tracing the tip of his tongue across the broadside of my snout.

“Thank you, girls; both of you. I… I don’t know what this means for my family, or the farm. But thank you for staying with me while I figure it out.”