~~~
When I'd first come to the earth, I'd been a frightened, withdrawn child. Part of my growth in courage and confidence had come from the Colonel's training me for the Work. Much of my growth, though, had come from Mom, a skilled psychologist, though she had no formal training as one.
She'd listened to me talk of my troubles, gotten me to talk of my feelings, and given me gentle advice that had led me through the many trials of adjusting to a strange culture in which unfamiliar, to me as a Tana, concepts of sickness, suffering, and violence hovered on the edges of everyday life.
Although I'd seen a world die, I hadn't conceived of Mom's mortality. Caught up in learning to use my gifts and in doing activities to make me successful among earth-humans, I failed to see what was going on with her. Free from sickness and physical suffering myself, I didn't know what to make of visits to the doctor, bottles of pills, and Mom's growing ever grayer and frailer. Potentially deathless on this world that enhances my gifts, I didn't think of her death.
This came to me out of the blue. One morning, as my clock-radio went off, I heard a shout downstairs, a strangled cry of "No, Annabel!" and a fearful prolonged sound that I couldn't identify. There was no reason why I should be able to identify it, as I'd never heard it. It was the Colonel's crying.
I ran downstairs to find Mom sitting stiff backed in a chair while the Colonel, holding one of her hands, knelt at her feet. I knelt by him and took Mom's other hand. It was cold. Dully, I grasped that she'd been dead some time.
The Colonel murmured to me, "She said that she was feeling tired and was going to sit down a few minutes before she began breakfast. She'd done so before, and I didn't think that things were different this time, so I went out to the barn to take care of things. When I got back here, she..."
I nodded. Surely she'd get up in a minute and start breakfast, and all would go on as it normally did.
Recalling healing Dala's foot and Kuma's chest, I resolved to try to heal Mom. Continuing to hold her hand with one hand, I placed my other hand onto her forehead and sent my crystal-shaping gift through her body. I felt her organs, her bones, and her blood vessels, in which the lifeblood was already congealing. I felt the blockage that had stilled her heart, but couldn't restart it.
"You're trying to call her back, aren't you, Belle?" the Colonel said softly. "She's not a crystal that you can shape, or a Tan that you can heal."
"Please let me do this, Colonel," I murmured.
"All right. You stay with her, Belle. I need to make calls to ... set things in motion."
What those things were I recalled from Emily's death. I won't repeat them now. After I'd failed to revive Mom, they went on to the inevitable conclusion of the Colonel's and my being driven home from the place where we'd left Mom's shell, and our entering a house now too big for us.
To have something to do, I began to prepare the Colonel and me a meal from food that kindly neighbors had brought by. As I set the Colonel's meal before him, he looked up at me.
"Belle, I need to tell you something important. Someday -- maybe not far off -- I'll have to go through what just happened to your mother --"
"Don't say so, Colonel."
"Be realistic, Belle. When I do go through it, call Dr. Ventnor at once. Before you do anything else, call him, and do exactly what he tells you to do."
"Why, sir?"
"He'll tell you why when the time comes. Will you do what I ask?"
Wanting to know more, but accepting that I wouldn't learn it just then, I nodded. I'd learned obedience as a child on Ul; the Colonel had taught me obedience every day since I'd come from there. Obedience didn't stop just for death.