After a moment, Wakinyan backs up and tosses his head in an unmistakable invitation.

When Dakota doesn’t respond to his satisfaction, he whickers, tosses his great head again, and paws at the snow, digging deep ruts into the frozen ground beneath. Breath streams from his nose in foggy jets.

Unhappy with the sudden wind that ruffles her feathers, Wiyo hops onto Koda’s forearm, then sidesteps up to her shoulder and expresses her displeasure with a loud hiss. These two are rivals of old, and Koda can’t help but chuckle at their long familiar, and much beloved, antics.

After the stallion gives a final call, Koda shakes her head and sighs. “Oh, alright,” she says, sounding more aggrieved than she really is. After taking one last look over her shoulder at the truck parked by the side of the road, she hitches in a breath and vaults over the fence, dislodging the red-tail, who hisses again and beats at the air with her huge wings, taking low flight.

“Ready, goober?”

Wakinyan nods his head, shaking out his mane.

“Alright, then.”

Another deep breath, and she vaults aboard the stallion’s broad, muscular back, threading her fingers firmly in his mane. A light touch of her heels to his flank, and he wheels, and takes off, flying across the snow-packed ground, the herd following close behind.

Dakota whoops with pleasure. Her hair, exactly matching the color of her horse’s mane, streams behind her in inky waves, her eyes flash, and her full, perfect lips split in a wide, take-no-prisoners grin. Her spirit soars as the land passes beneath her in a blur of white on white, and she feels a sense of connectedness that has been absent for a long, long time.

She is wild.

She is free.

She is home.

4

With a grunt of frustration, Kirsten wrings the glasses from her face and tosses them on the battle-scarred desk upon which her computer rests. Hours upon hours upon hours of searching and nothing worth a fart in a windstorm to show for it.

Leaning back in her chair, she rubs a numb hand over weary eyes, then looks down at Asi, who lifts his head and thumps his tail in a canine hello. The house is quiet, almost sterile in a way that only military housing can sometimes be. Outside the window, the afternoon is crisp, clear, and blessedly sunny. Looking upon the colorful parade of passers by, she once again feels that unwanted but familiar sense of dispossession and dislocation. On the outside looking in. Again.

It doesn’t have to be that way, Little K. Her father’s voice intrudes into her thoughts, frustrating her with its always maddening logic. Nothing’s keeping you locked inside. Nothing except you.

“Shut up, Dad,” she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose where a headache threatens to erupt. “Just…shut up. Please.”

She realizes that that little internal thought masquerading as her father’s voice might have a point, though. Perhaps some fresh air would do her good, a distraction that might help her subconscious continue to unravel the mystery of the code on its own with no further help from her.

“Worth a shot, anyway,” she comments to the bare walls surrounding her. They, as is their lot, stare back mutely, neither condemning nor condoning.

Rising to her feet, she steps from the room and into the short hallway. Quite without meaning to, she finds her glance drawn into the open portal of the master bedroom. There, draped across the comforter, lays the Colonel’s robe, and casually draped across that is the very shirt Kirsten had seen Dakota wear the day before.

The simple, careless, wholly domestic intimacy of the vision twists something deep inside, and although she’s completely unaware of the sneer that twists her features, a mirror would tell her that it is, in fact, there.

We’re not going there. Not even partway. She deliberately turns her attention away. Air. That’s what you need. Fresh air, and sunshine, and…damn! Tears sting her eyes, liquid accusations that she rubs away with a savage forearm, denying all they might stand for.

“Let’s go, Asi. Time for a walk.”

Asi streaks by her like a bullet, dancing and panting at the doorway as his favorite word is spoken. His antics draw a reluctant chuckle from Kirsten, and, with the sense almost of taking a dare, she grabs one of Dakota’s jackets from its post on the coat-rack. Lighter than heavy, military-issue parka she had been wearing, it also brings with it a sense of…comfort? The scent of the woman who had previously worn it permeates the cloth, and Kirsten wraps it around her in a moment of pure—and exceedingly rare—self indulgence.

Asimov’s impatient whine draws her from this reverie, and she quickly twists the doorknob. Asi bolts out before the door is more than partly opened, barking and kicking up huge fans of snow in a burst of wholly canine energy.

Kirsten follows behind at a more leisurely pace, accepting and returning smiles and nods from the soldiers and civilians passing by. Without thought, she allows her feet to take her where they will. Asimov, his burst of hyperactivity quelled for the moment, returns to her and follows along, glued to her heel.

As she walks, her gaze darts here and there, capturing isolated images that fit, like puzzle pieces, into a greater tableau.

A group of soldiers, armed to the teeth, drilling in precision step.

A small group of children—far too small, now—preparing for a battle of their own, with snowballs and snowforts instead of bullets and battlements.

Uniformed young men, bearing the scars of an undeclared war, limping along shoveled paths.

Civilian-clad young women, bearing the scars of the same undeclared war, shuffling along those same paths, their gazes lost and frightened and alone.

Others, seemingly unaffected, pass quickly by, laughing and joking with friends newly met. Kirsten yearns to scream at them, to tell them to stop, to have respect for the hurt and the grieving and the dead. The dead, who are now no more than mounds of slowly melting snow, watched over by an honor guard and a tattered flag.

Holding back her anger by the barest of frayed threads, she continues her walk past row upon row of military housing. The faces that stare back at her through heavy glass tell tales of their own, and for the first time, she feels a sense of kinship with these people, these strangers, these survivors of a war none had asked for and all had suffered through.

Another first—she admits, even if only in the tiniest corner of her heart, that perhaps it has been her own pride that has fueled her anger and frustration. Perhaps it is her own savage joy at being proven right all along, and her need to stand upon those unoffered laurels, and in so standing, further prove herself savior of this newly begotten world that has alienated her from the very people she is trying to save.

It’s not that her pride, her need to point her finger into the face of humanity and shout “I told you so!”, is a deliberate attempt to prolong suffering as a form of payback for the laughter that’s followed her these last years. No, nothing so vile as that.

But still….

Most of her turns its internal back on these newfound revelations in a sort of primative self-defense mechanism. Self-blame is an emotion this world can ill-afford.

But still….

Resolving to think on this later, she abruptly turns and begins the trek back to her temporary home, her agile mind already returning to the problem of the code, the code, that damnable code.

5

Grunting softly, Koda lowers her weary body onto the top support of the corral fence, hooking one leg behind the middle support and resting gloved hands against thighs tense and more than a bit sore. The warm spell has continued, making spring a promise instead of a fantasy dreamt only by poets. Stripped of her heavy jacket, she sits at ease in a down-filled vest, flannel shirt, and jeans. Well-sprung cowboy boots are clotted with mud and snow and muck and will need to come off before she gets within shouting distance to the family home. She smiles, all but hearing her mother’s warning tones.

To the west, the sun is preparing to set beyond winter-bare trees. The sky is a riot of color and the clouds are gilded with rose and purple and gold.

It is a peaceful time that appeals to her need for solitude.

For the past three days she has been immersed in the concerns and troubles of her immediate family and neighbors. Her family’s huge ranch has become a haven for the dispossessed. Orphans, widows, widowers, and the occasional full family unit now take up residence on the three thousand acre spread. The house and all its outbuildings are jammed with grieving people, each with a story to tell. Koda believes she’s heard them all, most more than once. A new oral tradition is forming, a history kept in the mind and on the tongue, like the history of old. Her oldest sister, Virginia, has already set several of the stories to song as a way of remembering. It is the way of their people, a way of making sure that these stories are never forgotten.

For the past seventy two hours, her mother has stuck to her as if glued, finding reasons to touch her, to hug her, to simply look at her through deep, fathomless eyes.

“The prodigal daughter returneth home,” Koda says softly, a wry laugh escaping into the slight breeze.

An answering cry sounds from overhead, and bare moments later, Wiyo lands on the fence next to her, settles her feathers, and looks up at her, head cocked inquisitively.

“Good hunting?” Koda asks, grinning at her friend.

Wiyo sidles closer until they are touching, then settles and begins to preen. Dakota feels tears sting her eyes at the simple, and sacred, beauty of the moment. It is something she will profoundly miss when she leaves again, quite probably for the last time.