Although she could have recited philosophical platitudes to the contrary, Delaney had always been immune to their effects, and was strongly susceptible to defining happiness in terms of the number and quality of available creature comforts. The concept of “nature” had appealed to her only as a bit of ambiance, like the candlelight and cloth tablecloths at a fine restaurant. Nature worked as a subject of screen savers and posters--a tasteful backdrop on which to affix sentimental musings or to provide photographic evidence that one has been somewhere exotic. Beyond that, she had little use for it. Certainly, she had endured rather than enjoyed her primitive wilderness experiences in the realmlands.

But on this morning she could feel the pulse of spring flowing through the veins of the shimmering new birch leaves. She could smell the lingering scent of the Creator in the soil. The bursting pink dogwood flowers, the unfurling fiddletops of the ferns, and the trilling of the warblers all awakened senses that had long lay dormant.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she said, “but, honestly, I feel like I’m inhaling life. You know, like one of those air ferns that gets everything it needs to live right out of the air. I swear, that cesspool of a city was suffocating me. These people just don’t know how to do cities.”

“My fren,” said the Morp, who had given his name as Snetrock, as he put an awkward arm around her and rubbed his check against her shoulder. He look up at her with what seemed to be a painful grimace, but which Delaney had by now recognized as his version of an adoring smile. Occasionally, he opened his mouth to reveal four widely spaced teeth sticking out at odd angles.

Dhayelle had smuggled the two of them out of the city with a group of merchants from her home country. Like all foreigners visiting Orduna of late, these merchants had run into a smokescreen of official authority. Frustrated by the unexplained absence of their former government contacts, they had ended up selling their wares--mostly luxurious robes, carpets, and tapestries-- in a series of rushed transactions with local dealers. As this turned less of a profit than they had anticipated, they eagerly accepted cash in exchange for providing cover for two refugees. Once outside the walls of Orduna, Delaney and Snetrock had crawled out of the oxcart and gone their own way with no questions asked.

“A desert would look like heaven to me now as long as it had no ratty shacks and dead-end alleys full of Ordunese sleezebags,” declared Delaney.

“Very good,” answered Snetrock, grimacing at her soulfully.

The intensity of his affection caused her to wonder if anyone had ever been nice to him before. Outside of Morp, probably not.

He pointed at the bare, gnarled oaks that had yet to awaken from their winter sleep. “No leaves there.”

“Snetrock, you are such a Danny Downer! For the first time in my life I’m getting a buzz out of nature, and you're hating on the oaks not being in bloom. What kind of a sorry excuse for a traveling companion are you?”

Snetrock exhaled a weary sigh. His skin, blotched, bruised, and scarred from the pummelings, appeared a dark shade of gray even in the bright sunlight. “Sorry,” he droned in his melancholy monotone.

“Oh, it’s so beautiful out here. Look at the colors!”

“Colors bright. Hurt eyes.”

“Snetrock, what is the matter with you?” Delaney laughed. “I’ve never heard of anyone not liking color. I mean you don’t have to be gaudy about it, but you gotta have some color. You Morps could spice up your lives and live a little.”

Snetrock grinned at her, oblivious to her remark. “My fren!”

“You know, Roland--that’s a `fren’ of mine--he had a question about your land and this color business. If you don’t have any color, then how do plants grow in Morp? I’m not real big on science but even I know that you need photosynthesis for plants to grow and photosynthesis is all about green. So how do plants grow without green?” Immediately after she said the words, she could tell it was futile. What could a Morp possibly know about photosynthesis? She did not really understand it, herself; how could he possibly have a clue what she was talking about?

“Few plants grow. Edge of Morp. Not in middle.”

The Morp’s woeful persona dampened Delaney’s spirits. Why had nature so shamefully shortchanged these people? Ugly to behold, hopelessly dull-witted, clumsier than a camel on skates, doomed to scratch out a bare existence in their desert waste, ridiculed and hazed without mercy wherever they went. Devoid of color. Even their breath stank. Morps must turn into the most beautiful, pampered of all creatures when they die and go to heaven. God owes them that for how badly he screwed them in this world.

“Oh, Snetrock,” said Delaney, biting her lip. She would have loved to mother him--give him hugs and back rubs--but she had already made a mistake on that count and did not want to compound it. On one of the Morp’s endless expressions of friendship, she given him a big hug. The creature had beamed with joy, which made her feel good. But ever since that, all he wanted to do was hug her and rub his cheek against hers. A little affection was okay, but Snetrock did not seem to know much about boundaries.

“My fren!”

“Yeah, we’re friends, Snetrock. Tell me, what do Morps do for fun?”

“Love fun,” he answered in his doleful voice.

“Yeah, me too. At least I think so. Can’t remember the last time I had any. What do Morps do for fun?”

“Play, ma’m.”

“Please, will you call me Delaney?”

He pulled close to her. “My fren!”

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“What do you play, Snetrock?”

“My fren.”

As with most of her lines of questioning, Delaney gave up. Snetrock seemed so content just to be with her; questions agitated him, especially questions he could not answer, which left very few issues open for discussion. But she was floating too high over her escape from Orduna to let Snetrock’s slow behavior discourage her. The stillness and clean, gentle breeze of the bright morning made it difficult to believe that the disaster at the Citadel was anything but the latest in a series of terrible nightmares from which she had awakened. She might have been tempted to dismiss the existence of Orduna from memory altogether if not for the pulpy, swollen face and bruised face of the gray-skinned Morp who stumbled along beside her. Whenever she saw that, she thought of the terrible cruelty of the Ordunese who had beaten him.

“Where are the older Morps?” asked Delaney, as she skipped along a dirt road that led into the Ashwauk Woods. “When I was in your land I saw 20, maybe 30 of you people, and they all look about your age or even younger.”

“Me old. Old Morp.”

“You don’t look it,” said Delaney, pleased to be able to offer a genuine compliment. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a day over 20.”

“Almost 20, ma’m,” said Snetrock.

“Twenty isn’t old, Snetrock.”

He gazed up at her with a mixture of sadness and confusion. “Old Morp. Die soon.”

Delaney’s buoyant mood crashed. “Are you serious?! Your life span is really that short?”

“Don’t know,” said Snetrock with a shrug. “Twenty old. Old Morp.”

“But why?” asked Delaney, biting her lip again. Was there any justice in the realms? “Do you have some epidemic or disease, or what?”

“My fren,” he said, pulling close to her cheek.

Delaney’s heart went out to the plucky little fellow. Despite his morose nature, his suffocating craving for affection, and his many disabilitiess, he never uttered a complaint about his lot in life.

“Why were you put in prison, Snetrock?” she asked. She was trying to avoid questions, but could not think of how to make conversation with him any other way. “Back in Orduna, I mean. You know, the city we just left?”

“Don’t know, ma’m. Go home now.”

“Of course,” said Delaney. “I don’t blame you a bit. Bunch of sickos. I wish I didn’t have to go back there, but I can’t just leave Windglow. How can anyone treat you so bad, especially knowing what your life is like?”

“Orduna laugh. Morp have no sense. Geese smarter.”

“I hope you didn’t listen to any of that!” said Delaney, growing more indignant. “You have a lot to offer.”

“What offer?”

Delaney tried to say something about Morps having talents like anyone else. But to her embarrassment, she could only stammer and clear her throat. She was not altogether certain at this point that Morps could contribute anything to society. Anything tangible at any rate She was most relieved to be diverted from the subject by a fork in the trail near the base of a large maple that had been split in half and scorched by lightning.

“Well, here it is,” she said.

“Very good. Burn tree. Way to Morp.”

“That’s right, Snetrock. Good, you’ve been listening. There’s hope for you after all.” Immediately she regretted saying it. She did not mean to be so condescending, but she could hardly help it around the Morp. “But remember, you’re not going to Morp yet.”

Panic leapt into his eyes. “No Morp? Back to Orduna?!”

“No, Snetrock, not Orduna. You never have to go back there. But we need you to do something else first. You need to find the Meshoma. This is very important. Do you understand?” Delaney talked slowly and clearly to him, as if addressing a small child.

“Visit Meshoma. Very good, ma’m.”

“That’s right.” She steered him to the middle of three forks.“ This is the road you take. Right here. This road takes you to the Meshoma villages. When you find them, give them the message. The one Dhayelle gave you.”

“My fren!”

“Snetrock stop it!”

His loving grimace dissolved into fear and disappointment. “I’m sorry,” said Delaney. “It’s just I need you to listen. It’s important. You need to get a message to the Meshoma.”

“To Meshoma.”

Delaney had major doubts about Snetrock’s reliability, but she hoped he was not critical to their strategy. They needed allies, time was short, and the possibilities were slim. The key to their success, in Dhayelle’s view was Stargo, a general and division commander in the Brooking army. It was Delaney’s job to gain his confidence, and Dhayelle suspected he might take considerable persuading. If she could accomplish her mission, Stargo could work out a deal with the Meshoma himself, and they would not even need Snetrock’s message. If she failed, however, Snetrock’s mission would would be a last resort. For if Stargo did not buy into the plan, the Meshoma were all they had left, and Snetrock would be their only link to them. Dependence on a Morp, Delaney realized, was a pretty sorry backup plan, and made her all the more aware of the urgency of her mission.

“Where is the message, Snetrock?” she asked.

He stared blankly at her, then began a thorough search of his pockets. This turned up nothing, a fact that appeared neither to surprise nor discourage him in the least. He searched the same pockets, again and again. Dumbfounded, Delaney watched him go through a fourth search in exactly the same sequence as before and wondered how long this could go on. He was beginning to remind her of a neurotic tiger pacing the same steps endlessly in a small concrete cage in a zoo.

“Snetrock, it’s in your shoe,” Delaney said at last, barely controlling her frustration.

Snetrock sat down and earnestly set about unlacing his shoe. The task took all of his concentration and perhaps two minutes. Finally, he produced the wrinkled paper.

“This is serious business,” Delaney reminded him. “You have to pay attention.”

“Serious. Not lose.” He stood there barefoot, staring at her, and then broke into his pained smile. “My fren!”

“Yeah, I like you too, Snetrock,” said Delaney, pushing him away from her. “But this is important.” She picked up his shoes. “Put these on,” she said as she sat him down on the ground and tucked the note back in the shoes.

After watching him put on the shoes and fumble with the laces, Delaney grew so exasperated that she grabbed the shoes and bent down to finish the job.

“Velcro was made with you people in mind,” she muttered. “Now, do you know what to do? Who are you visiting?”

“Meshoma.”

“Why are you visiting them?”

A long pause as Snetrock wrinkled his face in deep concentration, “Give message,” he said at last.

“Where is the message?”

As she finished tying his shoe, Snetrock took advantage the close proximity of her face to rub his cheek against hers. “My fren.”

“Stop it, Snetrock. Where’s the message?”

Again, he looked at her with the pain of rejection in his eyes.

“I’m sorry; I am your friend, Snetrock. But you have to pay attention. Where is the message, Snetrock? Where is the message?”

“Shoe.”

“Perfect,” said Delaney. Pleased with his performance, she offered him a hug.

Snetrock beamed in his grotesque way and rubbed his cheek on hers again. “My fren.”

“My fren. Now good luck. We’re counting on you.”

Snetrock kept smiling at her until she finally had to turn him and push him in the right direction.

He walked away, reluctantly, his usual absurdly straight posture sagging, his noodle arms limp at his side. He seemed weary and defeated. But then that was the way he always looked when he wasn’t grinning at her. What a life!

As the Morp disappeared, she wondered if he had enough sense to follow the simple directions given to him. Probably not. Hey, what can you do? You take your chances and see what happens. At least we got him out of Orduna before they could kill him.

Delaney tried not to think about him anymore and instead began concentrating on her mission. Stargo commanded the division of the Brooking army operating on Rushbrook’s eastern flank. It might have been better if he had been on the western flank, closer to the island, but again, they had to play with the hand they had been dealt. Although Stargo was one of Eldorean’s best and most experienced commanders, Dhayelle was aware that he had once confided to Ehiloru his concerns about the state of affairs in Rushbrook. If there was a weak link in Eldorean’s armor, this man was it.

According to Dhayelle, the odds were slim that Stargo and the Meshoma would form the alliance needed for their plan to have a bubble of a chance. Even she, who had little feel for realm history, was aware that the Brookings’ bitter hatred of the Meshoma went back many generations. But for the first time since arriving in the realms, she was on her own with a vital job to do, and she found herself looking forward to the challenge. She would show these realm creatures that she was not such a wimp after all.