by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Ursine Exchange Officer, August 2025
Grawf was largely able to return to her usual duties while Braklaw was confined to his quarters by the pain and fatigue of his gene therapy treatments. Though, she did check in on him twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening — to see if he needed anything. She felt a strange sense of loss with her role as a teacher of Ursine studies suddenly suspended. So, it was with a certain twisted delight that she heard from Lt. LeGuin that the ship’s engines were struggling against unexplained interference with their power and they’d have to decrease their speed, drawing out the length of the voyage to Ursa Minuet by an additional week or two.
Certainly, unexplained power drains were a bad and worrisome thing, but Grawf wasn’t an engineer, so it wasn’t directly her problem. And the extra time meant she’d have a chance to spend more time tutoring Braklaw after he finished recovering from his treatments and his energy returned. The Ursine found herself very much looking forward to that, and it made her wonder if there was some other way to extend the joy she felt teaching him about Ursine ways after his departure.
Grawf’s mind was deeply sunk into the question of whether she could begin teaching some sort of Ursine culture classes to fellow officers when she stopped by Braklaw’s quarters that evening and found that he was deeply engrossed in a new project as well.
“You must be feeling better,” Grawf said.
Braklaw was stretched out on the couch in his room front room, holding a computer panel and studying it intently. All the previous mornings and evenings, she’d found him burrowed under the blankets of his bed, suffering too much from the effects of his gene treatments to do much of anything but drift in and out of sleep.
“Yes,” Braklaw said brightly. “My body no longer feels like a blurry smear of pain; my own arms no longer feel too heavy to move; and I’ve been writing.”
“Writing?” Grawf asked.
“Yes,” Braklaw answered. “I don’t know if I was thrown forward in time for some higher reason, but I will do my best to live as if I was. And so, I’ve started writing about my experiences in the future so far.”
Grawf smiled at the charming way in which Braklaw still referred to the present as the future. “Will you keep your writings private?” she asked. “I imagine they’d give your identity away if anyone read them, but then, it sounds like you were never seeking the kind of notoriety your work has received.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Braklaw rumbled, placing the computer panel he’d been holding on the coffee table in front of his couch. “And while I was never seeking the kind of fame I seem to have found in the annals of history, I was writing about my experiences because they were unique, and I knew that meant they might have value. I was the first uplifted bear on Earth, and now, I’m the only uplifted Earth animal from my time period to ever see the future. No one else will see this world the way that I do, and I’m not sure it’s right to keep my perspective entirely to myself, like some dragon hoarding gold in the dark depths of a cave.”
Grawf had never seen Braklaw this loquacious before. Clearly, his energy was returning, and it was almost as if the time he’d spent recovering from his treatments had led to a buildup of words, just waiting to overflow when he felt well enough to express them. This was the benefit of hibernation in a nutshell. “You’ve gone to a great deal of effort to conceal your origins as Teddy Bearclaw,” Grawf rumbled. “I hope you’re not already regretting your choice.”
“No, no, no, indeed not,” Braklaw said. “I want to be an Ursine. I want to live among other bears in a society uniquely designed for bears, and I want to be far, far away from the kind of idolization I see among the Earth animals here. So, I thought, maybe, I could release my writings as fiction?”
“Fiction?” Grawf echoed, trying to get her head around this idea.
“Yes, I could say that I was inspired by learning about Teddy Bearclaw and decided to write a fictionalized account of what he might have experienced if he were thrown forward in time and chose to become an Ursine.”
“That’s clever,” Grawf allowed.
“Do you think it would work?” Braklaw asked, hungrily. He clearly wanted it to work. He was already attached to this plan, even if he was also worried about it.
“I don’t know,” Grawf said. She was not an expert on literature or the effectiveness of pseudonyms. “But perhaps you could try it out in a limited way before committing to it.”
“How do you mean?” Braklaw asked.
“Well, I could tell some of my fellow officers about your story,” Grawf suggested, “and we could see how they respond.” The Ursine didn’t like the idea of lying to her colleagues, but she had a higher calling here to protect Braklaw’s identity and chance at living a private life. “If any of them did see through the deception, I’m sure they would honor your secret, as the captain, doctor, Fact, and I have.”
Braklaw nodded sagely. “A limited release, of sorts,” he said. “I like that idea. The orange cat, collie dog, and rabbit who were talking about my writings in the viewpoint lounge on my first day here — how would they do as a stable of beta readers? I know they’re interested in my work, and if they don’t see through the facade, then I don’t think anyone would.”
Braklaw picked up the computer panel he’d been working on again and held it out toward Grawf. “Obviously, I have a lot more to write still,” he said, “but the first chapter is done, and I think it would work as a stand-alone short story. Would you show it to them?”
Grawf took the computer panel, typed in a few commands, and sent the relevant file to herself, so she could access it elsewhere. “Yes,” she said, handing the panel back. “I will make sure they get it. Is there anything else you need tonight?”
“Besides this delightful practice speaking in Ursine?” Braklaw asked with a grin. “No, I’m doing well enough to summon my own meals from the synthesizer now.”
“Very good,” Grawf said, turning to leave.
Before she reached the door, Braklaw said, “Wait, I do have one question: where do the zumble-bees go during the afternoons?”
Grawf’s brow furrowed in consternation. “What do you mean? Surely, they’re just in their hive or visiting your zinzinar shrub.”
Braklaw shook his head stubbornly. “No, I dragged myself out of bed the last few days to check, and there wasn’t any buzzing. Well, not to speak of. Presumably the queen and the workers tending the nursery are still in the hive, but most of them have been squeezing through the slits in the air vents and flying off somewhere every afternoon. I watched them do it today, since I was feeling well enough to really keep any eye on them. I just thought, maybe, you knew where they were going. I kind of assumed it was the arboretum.”
This was all news to Grawf. She was always away from her quarters during the afternoon, performing her shipboard duties, so she had no idea if her own zumble-bees were behaving the same way. The idea was kind of alarming. She had a responsibility both to protect the zumble-bees and to make sure they weren’t causing any disruptions to the ship. She’d sworn to the captain when he allowed her to bring them aboard that they wouldn’t cause any trouble.
“I do not know,” Grawf said, gruffly. “But I will find out.”
Braklaw nodded, but his eyes had already gone distant, like he was composing more sentences in his head, already back to work on writing.
* * *
Grawf sought out each of the three officers who Braklaw wanted his story shared with and explained it was a piece of fictional time travel autobiography that their visitor had written after being introduced to and inspired by Teddy Bearclaw’s works. She told them that Braklaw was looking for beta readers, and she’d had to demure as she hadn’t read Bearclaw’s original works. All three of them — rabbit, orange tabby, and collie — were thrilled to serve as beta readers.
Next Grawf headed to engineering to find Fact, figuring the android could help her with the mystery of the zumble-bees’ afternoon escapades. It wasn’t like mis-adventuring insects was Fact’s area of expertise, but zhe was simply one of the cleverest and most reliable individuals aboard the Initiative and Grawf didn’t know where else to start.
“That is an intriguing puzzle,” the arctic fox said, tilting zir head to the side after Grawf finished describing the situation. “The simplest solution would be to put a tracking device on some of the zumble-bees, wait for them to breach the air vents again, and then analyze the data later.”
“The zumble-bees are very small,” Grawf rumbled. “Are you sure we could attach tracking devices that are small enough to not burden them?”
“Actually,” Fact said, “the more I consider the problem, I don’t think devices in the traditional sense of the word are necessary.”
“What?” Grawf asked, unsure what this much smaller animal was suggesting. Fact had such a enigmatic quality to everything about zir from the simplest motion of zir paws to the nature of zir thought processes, but sideways thinking seemed to be called for in this situation. An enigma to solve an enigma.
“We could dust the zumble-bees with a rare but inert chemical and then use the Initiative’s internal sensors to track them.” Fact began typing on one of the nearest engineering consoles, zir delicate, white paws moving so quickly they could barely be seen and looked like more of a blur. “We have a reasonable stock of visibium aboard, which would be perfectly safe and easy to track. Shall we fetch some?”
“Alright,” Grawf agreed.
The bear followed the fox through the back parts of engineering to a store room with uncommon chemicals. Fact selected a sample drawer from a bank of similar drawers and pulled it open. Inside were vials of powder, and the fox selected one of them. Holding it up for Grawf to see, zhe said, “I can help you suspend the powder in a liquid solution that could be harmlessly sprayed on the insects in question.”
Grawf nodded in agreement and followed Fact from engineering back to the arboretum where the necessary supplies were available in abundance. The android mixed up a solution of a slightly sticky liquid that would break down after a few days, leaving the zumble-bees clean and unharmed by the whole process. The visibium powder sparkled as it was mixed in.
“Thank you!” Grawf exclaimed, taking the spray bottle of visibium solution from Fact.
“Do let me know how the results of this experiment turn out,” the fox said. “I’ve become quite invested in the conundrum of where your zumble-bees have been discretely sojourning.”
“Very well,” Grawf agreed begrudgingly. She couldn’t very well object to the request, given how much Fact had aided her. She had needed zir help. However, Grawf still felt at a deep, core level like she should be able to handle her own problems by herself, and she didn’t like having to invite anyone else into one of them. It felt like weakness to her, even though she knew from watching all the uplifted Earth animals on the Initiative that she saw teamwork as a strength, and furthermore, teamwork was the fundamental nature of zumble-bees.
A single zumble-bee cannot solve any problems. It takes a hive working together to make honey.
And with that thought, Grawf suddenly realized something: the flavor of the honeycomb from her zumble-bee hive had tasted different at the last of her weekly religious rites. The shift had been subtle — more fruity and tangy with almost a touch of the sourness of vinegar. At the time, Grawf had chalked the change up to the disruption caused by splitting her hive — different worker bees in ascendence might lead to slight changes in their strategies of preparing the honey. However, now, Grawf began to wonder if it was instead connected to their secret afternoon forays, and the change took on an ominous cast in her memory.
As soon as she returned to her quarters, Grawf sang to her zumble-bees, summoning them to her, and then she sprayed the visibium solution on them, leaving their iridescent wings extra shimmery with the minuscule droplets of visibium clinging to them, sparkling on the amber fuzz of their backs.
“Where have you been going, little ones?” Grawf asked the buzzing cloud of tiny friends. “You aren’t going to get me in trouble, are you?”
The next afternoon, as Grawf worked at her station in the back of the ship’s bridge, she kept eagerly checking the internal sensors, running scans for visibium. As the hours passed and the scans kept resolutely showing only the stock of visibium in the engineering storeroom and the more chaotic cluster in her own quarters, Grawf began to worry that it had been a mistake to only tag her own zumble-bees with visibium. Perhaps her hive wasn’t wandering around the ship in the way that Braklaw’s hive seemed to be.
Or perhaps Braklaw was mistaken? It wasn’t a stretch to believe that in his delirious state of recovering from gene therapy that the other bear might have imagined or even dreamed that his zumble-bees were escaping through his quarters’ air vents.
Grawf began to feel very silly for even worrying about this question.
“Officer Grawf,” Captain Jacques meowed, coming around to the back of the bridge. “Is something distracting you?”
“No, sir,” Grawf rumbled, trying to shut down the latest visibium scan, but it was already too far underway.
“I’ve been hearing a lot of scans coming from your station,” the sphynx cat said, peering past Grawf’s large paws at the display panel under them. “Visibium? That’s a very specific substance to scan for…?”
“It’s an experiment Fact is helping me with,” Grawf rumbled, knowing that invoking the android’s name would give credit to her work and gain favor from the captain. “But… you can hear the scans?”
The sphynx cat gestured at his large triangular ears and meowed, “It looks like your scan has found something.”
Looking down at the panel, Grawf saw that the captain was right: the chaotic cluster of visibium from her quarters had extruded itself out into a trail through the map of the ship. Her zumble-bees were on the move. Braklaw had not imagined it. “Hell’s teeth!” Grawf swore. “Those are my zumble-bees,” she explained. “They’ve been escaping from my quarters somehow, and Fact is helping me track them.”
“Hm,” the captain said, noncommittally, clearly mollified by Fact’s involvement but still concerned. “It looks like they’ve gotten into the maintenance tubes. Perhaps you and Fact should crawl in after them and see what they’re getting up to.”
The captain phrased his statement like a suggestion, but the steely undertone to his feline voice made it clear that it was more of an order.
“Yes, captain,” Grawf rumbled. Even after all her time serving aboard this vessel, it was still strange being ordered around by such a small, furless mammal. “I’ll get right on that.”
Once again, Grawf found Fact in engineering, and the two of them sought out an entrance into the maintenance tubes that wouldn’t require crawling along too far before reaching some of the visibium-sprayed zumble-bees. At this point, the insects had spread out over quite a range of the ship, seemingly keeping entirely inside the maintenance tubes which explained why no one seemed to have seen the zumble-bees flying about on the ship on their adventures and complained about them as pests. Grawf was glad of that, but she was baffled by what her zumble-bees thought they were doing.
Did she not provide enough stimulation for them in her quarters? Had she not been singing to them enough?
Fact led the way crawling through the tubes, because zhe knew the layout of the ship by heart. Also, zhe was smaller and more maneuverable, being a fox, than Grawf. Bears are boulders — able to hold their ground while others must flow around them. They are not meant for navigating narrow, tight, twisty passageways full of sudden right angles. But Grawf would do anything for her zumble-bees. And almost anything for her ship and captain.
So, Grawf followed Fact’s swishing, bushy white tail and tried to ignore the way that the closeness of the walls in these narrow tunnels made her feel like curling up and going to sleep for months on end. Tight spaces are for hibernating.
“Fascinating,” Fact whispered in a reverential tone, stopping in zir tracks.
“What?” Grawf asked. “What do you see?” She peered past the fox and realized she could see patches of green further down the tunnel, marring the perfectly, pristinely smooth gray. Straight lines interrupted by chaotic clumps of leaves.
“The maintenance tunnels seem to have become infested with some sort of species of invasive vine,” Fact said, climbing forward again. When the fox got to a junction between several intersecting tunnels where the space widened out, zhe stopped, allowing Grawf to catch up with zir.
The two officers — bear and fox — stood in the small hexagonal room that served as a junction between six different outgoing passageways, including the one they’d come from. Four of the six passageways were almost entirely blocked off by the profusion of greenery growing in them, and Grawf could hear the gentle droning of her zumble-bees buzzing in the distance.
“There shouldn’t be enough light in these tunnels to support plant growth like this,” Fact said, holding out a uni-meter and scanning the overgrown passages.
“It’s the motion sensors,” Grawf rumbled. “My zumble-bees are setting off the motion sensors, turning the lights on for the plants.”
“Perhaps,” Fact said, staring intently at the readings on zir uni-meter. “Though it seems, these plants also are more ambulatory than most vines.” Looking up from zir uni-meter, Fact stared down the opposite passageway towards the profusion of greenery. After a moment, zhe reprogrammed the uni-meter to flash a beam of light at the passage, and when it did, the vines uncoiled, stretching out toward them with grasping, light-hungry leaves.
Grawf was reminded of the pet vine Consul Tor had purchased on Ouroboros Station and had been carrying around draped over her shoulders since then. A number of other officers had been wearing similar pet vines like scarves over the last few weeks. The trend had become quite popular, and Grawf had assumed they’d all been bought at Ouroboros Station, but now, the bear began to wonder if the vine had actually been breeding, propagating itself with the aid of a population that passed the multiplying plants around like free pets.
Except, as the bear peered down the passageway at the greenery, she recognized patterns in the veining on the leaves, the way the leaves clustered together, and even the little starlike flowers. They were similar to her zinzinar shrub. Not the same, but almost certainly related.
“I believe the zumble-bees have been pollinating Consul Tor’s pet vine with pollen from my zinzinar shrub, leading to a hybrid plant,” Grawf rumbled with wonder. Industrious little zumble-bees, she thought to herself with a touch of admiration. They were certainly causing trouble, but they’d found such a surprising, creative way to do so.
Fact narrow muzzle tightened into a frown. Zhe had returned to staring at the readings on zir uni-meter, and with a slow shake of zir head, zhe said, “It looks like these vines have filled up the maintenance tunnels for nearly fifteen percent of the ship. That is substantial.” After a pause, the fox added, “I believe they may actually be the cause of the power drain our ship has been experiencing that forced us to slow down. And also the rash of allergic reactions that have been keeping Dr. Keller so busy.”
Grawf sighed. Her zumble-bees had really outdone themselves. “I suppose we’ll need to clear this foliage out,” she said, resigning herself to bushwhacking her way through narrow corridors for many, many hours in her foreseeable future.
“Not until we’ve run some more tests on them,” Fact announced. The fox climbed into one of the overgrown passages, grabbed a coil of vine, and began to yank on it. At first, the vine cooperated, like it thought the vulpine android would make a nice structure to grow around, but when it realized that Fact was trying to break part of it off, the bracken fought back, writhing and squirming until the fox’s metal claws bested it.
Fact brought the broken length of vine — still squirming — back to Grawf and said, “Take this to Lt. Unari in the arboretum and tell her that analyzing it is a priority. I will stay here and see what else I can learn from analyzing the infestation directly.”
Grawf eyed the squirming vines filling four of the six passageways connecting to the junction they were standing in. “Are you sure?” the bear asked. “What if you’ve made the vines angry at you?”
“I’m very strong,” Fact said, clearly untroubled by the idea of being left alone at the edges of a gigantic, sprawling vine-monster.
“Even so,” Grawf said to the fox android who she towered over, “I would feel better if you’d participate in singing one of the Ursine Soothing Hymns with me before I go. We use it to calm our zumble-bees, but I’ve always felt that my zinzinar shrub responds to it as well. If this plant is truly a hybrid with my zinzinar shrub, then perhaps the hymn will have some calming effect, and even if not, it should let my zumble-bees know that I desire them to calm the plant, and perhaps they can communicate to it more directly.”
“Very well,” Fact said. “Will you teach me?”
Grawf had felt compelled to make the recommendation, because she felt responsible for the existence of the giant shrub in these passageways. However, faced with the actual eventuality of teaching Fact to sing an Ursine Soothing Hymn, the bear felt a little silly and awkward. It was one thing to teach her ways to an Earth bear who wanted to cast his own heritage aside and join her people in a permanent way. It was something different to force one of her ways upon a largely disinterested member of the crew who might judge her.
Nonetheless, Grawf began singing, her voice low and clear. After a few lines, she stopped and said, “That may be too low for your voice. Could you sing the same line in harmony a fifth higher?”
“My voice has a wider range than you might expect,” Fact said, seemingly warming to this topic of conversation. “However, I’m happy to sing as you’ve requested.”
Grawf began singing again, and this time, Fact’s voice joined in, soaring above hers. The zumble-bees further down the passageways stopped buzzing, listening to the familiar song, and soon, the vines stopped writhing as well, even the broken off length of vine clasped in Grawf’s paws went limp and then curled docilely around her thick, furry wrists. Everything was the song.
Grawf sang through several verses while Fact followed along in harmony, repeating each new verse after Grawf finished it, turning the song into a round. When the bear finally brought the song to a close, an answering chorus rose up in the foliage all around: the zumble-bees singing their thanks for their keeper’s care. As always, the zumble-bees’ response warmed Grawf’s heart, but it didn’t change for a fraction of a second that she intended to solder a mesh covering over the air vents in her quarters to stop her little friends from getting out and causing trouble like this again. She hoped that would be enough to convince the captain to let her keep them, in spite of the havoc they’d been wreaking throughout the ship for the last few weeks — making all the Morphicans sick and slowing the vessel down. Hopefully, no long term harm had been caused to either the allergic rabbits or the ship’s engines.
“That was surprisingly effective,” Fact said in a hushed tone. The android arctic fox’s large, triangular ears had splayed to the sides, showing zir surprise. When zhe turned from marveling at the quieted shrubbery to look at Grawf again, Fact said, “I would be very interested to learn more about Ursine ritual hymns. Perhaps you could teach a class or start some sort of choir to include other officers in learning about them as well.”
Grawf blinked at the little white fox. Teaching classes was a really good idea. If Grawf offered classes, then only officers who were genuinely interested in learning about Ursine culture — like Braklaw had been — would take them, so she wouldn’t have to feel awkward and judged. She could simply share the best parts of her culture with an appreciative, interested audience. “I will seriously consider your suggestion,” Grawf rumbled. Although, truth be told, she had already made her decision.
* * *
Lt. Unari in the arboretum analyzed the length of vine that Grawf brought her and established that it was, indeed, a hybrid of Consul Tor’s pet and a zinzinar shrub. Furthermore, it had properties of hybrid vigor that meant it might prove invaluable to various terraforming operations as well as outposts struggling to survive inhospitable conditions, such as science stations studying toxic nebulae or the event horizons of black holes. Places where an exceptionally hardy plant could aid with everything from oxygen production to simply raising spirits.
The black cat botanist, Lt. Unari, insisted that the zumble-bees had succeeded at a task that her whole team of botanists would have failed at, and she begged Grawf to let her work with the insects to learn how they’d managed it.
Captain Jacques proved much more lenient in dealing with the escapades of troublesome, escape artist insects when he had a whole team of botanists pleading for them to be allowed to stay onboard.
So, in addition to setting up a schedule of martial arts and choir classes to teach her fellow officers about Ursine culture, Grawf also agreed to bring her zumble-bees to the arboretum and chaperone them working with the botanists twice a week. She also continued tutoring Braklaw right up until the day they arrived in orbit of Ursa Minuet, where Grawf had arranged for him to be taken in by some of her relatives until he got himself established.
Grawf organized a small goodbye party for Braklaw in the viewpoint lounge — just a few drinks with the few officers who’d gotten to know the visiting bear while he was aboard. Dr. Keller, Fact, and even the captain stopped by briefly to give their regards and wishes of good luck, but mostly, Braklaw’s small stable of beta readers wanted a final chance to see him.
Cmdr. Wilker, Lt. LeGuin, and Galen sat at the table in the viewpoint lounge with Grawf, just like they had at the beginning of Braklaw’s visit, discussing the works of Teddy Bearclaw. Only now, a breathtaking view of Ursa Minuet stretched across the wide, star-filled windows, and Braklaw sat down with them. He even managed to smile at the compliments the beta readers gave his work — both old and new — comparing the two phases of his literary development as if they belonged to two different people. Because as far as the collie, tabby, and rabbit knew, that was the case. Well, maybe Galen saw through the ruse as she actually knew about the portal Teddy Bearclaw had wandered through bringing him to a future where he became T’di Braklaw, but if she did so, the wise rabbit knew better than to let on. And clearly, neither Cmdr. Wilker nor Lt. LeGuin had the slightest clue they were talking to the original author of some of their favorite works.
“It’s just amazing how you’ve captured his tone of voice!” Cmdr. Wilker barked. His long collie face grinned with the kind of overwhelming happiness that most animals can only feel inside and don’t have long enough muzzles to actually display externally.
“Really, it is remarkable,” Lt. LeGuin meowed in agreement. “It’s not just your word choices but the very cadences and rhythms of your sentences that match his. Such skill!”
“With that kind of skill,” Cmdr. Wilker pondered, “I wonder what other writers you could mimic.”
Braklaw sipped his drink to cover a smile, and after slowly swallowing, said, “You flatter me.”
This seemingly innocuous statement only led to a further flood of flattery, and Grawf couldn’t help thinking that the Earth bear was actually enjoying the fawning of his fans, in spite of the fact that he’d twisted up his life plans to avoid these kinds of encounters.
When it was time to finally and truly say goodbye, Cmdr. Wilker stood up and pulled Braklaw into a big bear hug. “I want to thank you,” the collie woofed softly to the larger animal, “you made it feel like Teddy Bearclaw was alive again, and almost like I got to meet him. And I had no idea how much I needed that.”
Lt. LeGuin followed in Cmdr. Wilker’s footsteps and embraced the bear. The little orange tabby was utterly dwarfed by Braklaw’s bulk, and his feelings so overwhelmed by embracing one of his heroes — even if it was only by proxy as far as he knew — that he couldn’t summon any actual words, only purr contentedly as long as the moment lasted, feeling safer and more loved than he’d ever felt before.
Galen accepted a hug from Braklaw as well and said mysteriously, “The Cottontails would be proud of you. I’m sure of it. They were my ancestors, and I’m telling you on their behalf: I’m proud of you.” The rabbit smiled sadly at the one and only uplifted Earth bear as she pulled away and added, “If you write anything more, I want to read it. Now go live a good life on Ursa Minuet, surrounded by other bears.”
“Yes, please,” Lt. LeGuin meowed, finally finding his voice again, “Send us anything else you write!”
“With a little promotion and publicity,” Cmdr. Wilker barked, “I think you could become a very famous bear.”
Braklaw chuckled, but he made no promises.
After his fans had dispersed, leaving the two bears alone at their table in the viewpoint lounge, Grawf warned, “You know your backstory won’t hold up to scrutiny if you become intergalactically famous.”
“I know,” Braklaw agreed. “Don’t worry. No promotion. No publicity. I don’t want that kind of attention and adulation. This little party was more than enough for me. I’ll keep writing, but if I release anything, it’ll be obscurely dropped into the flotsam and jetsam of the digital universe without pomp or circumstance, extremely rarely, when I come up with something worth saying. Other than that, I plan to live a very quiet life tending my zumble-bees.”
Grawf nodded approvingly. She had opted for the adventure and excitement of cruising through the universe on a vessel of exploration, surrounded by busy little cats and dogs, but if the Ursine ever had to make a different choice, the life Braklaw was choosing would definitely suffice.
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