"Nre'fa-o, stranger. Might you be Tailchaser?" Alarmed, Fritti leaped to his feet and whirled around. A fela, gray with black striping, sat regarding him from the stump of a long-dead oak. He had been so wrapped in his thoughts that he had not noticed her as he passed, though she perched a mere four or five jumps away.

"Good dancing, Mistress. How do you know my name? I'm afraid I don't know yours." The bramble in his tail hanging forgotten, Fritti observed the stranger carefully. She was young-seemingly no older than he. She had tiny, slim paws and a softly rounded body.

"There is no great mystery regarding either name," said the fela with an amused expression. "Mine is Hushpad, and has been since my Naming. As to yours, well, I have seen you from a distance at a Meeting, and you have been mentioned for your love of rambling and exploring-and here I have caught you at it!" She sneezed delicately.

Her attractive green eyes turned away; Tailchaser noticed her tail, which she held coiled around her as she spoke. Now it rose, as if of its own volition, and waved languorously in the air. It was long and slender, ending in a tender point, and ringed from base to tip with the same black accents as her sides and haunches.

This tail-whose lazy beckoning instandy captured Fritti's admiration-was to lead him into more troubles than his own bounding imagination could conceive.

The pair romped and talked all through the Hour of Unfolding Dark. Tailchaser found himself opening his heart to his newfound friend, and even he was surprised at what spilled out: dreams, hopes, ambitions-all mixed together and hardly differentiated from each other. And always Hushpad listened, and nodded, as if he spoke the dearest kind of truth. When he parted from her at Final Dancing, he made her promise to meet him again the next day. She said she would, and he ran ail the way home leaping with delight-arriving at the nest so excited that he woke his sleeping brothers and sisters and alarmed his mother.