She had seldom been inside the odd buildings the smooth-faced Earthpeople kept putting up in such large numbers, and they frightened her. Her delicate features, half-hidden behind their covering of fine brown hair, showed the depths of her fear. The small girl turned suddenly and looked up at her mother. “I do not want to go to the Hairless Ones’ school!” Tharee knelt swiftly, opening the wirtl-leaf cloak that was her only garment and gathering her daughter to her hairy breast. “You must, little one. Your cousin Timmy, and your uncle the Head Councillor, are depending on you and the other children.” Micka, torn between the duty she owed her people and the pressing fear of the oddly squarish building with its harsh straight lines, so unlike the rounded shape of her beautiful waquil-home, started to cry. Timmy knelt by her side, his lean brown face compassionate. Her mother patted her shoulder tenderly, and when the tears came she gently wiped them away with a calloused hand. When she saw that the child could not be comforted Tharee closed her eyes and projected: Warmth-Comfort-Peace … Play-Happiness-Love … The warm flowing tide came rushing into the young mind like an avalanche, burying and hiding the fear, the sense of strangeness.
