The bear is back.

He was standing a little way along the road when we set out for Kethra.

When we spotted him I felt a warm flood of emotion from Elyr, a sort of happiness mixed with relief, similar to what I was feeling, the bear thinks we are doing the right thing.

When I mentioned it to Elyr, they maintained that they know nothing about the behaviour of bears. But whatever they claim, I am secretly very pleased that they are as happy to see the bear as I am!

We have a lot of distance to cover before we get to Kethra, as we walked on this first day we talked. We started out talking about Kethra and what we thought we would find. Neither of us has ever been there before and I have heard some interesting things. It is supposed to be the city of innovation and experimentation. Davin told me that they do experiments where they try to integrate skein fibres into humans but I think he might have been pulling my leg! When I told Elyr that, they said that there are Aethri there that integrate with skein tech and mechanical tech to try to augment themselves. I now have no idea who is pulling my leg, so I will just have to wait and see!

As we walked we came up with wilder and wilder theories about the sorts of things we will find! We laughed so much at times that walking becaue tricky and the bear looked at us in mild puzzlement. Or at least that is how I think he was looking, I don’t read bears as well as I read Elyr!

When we had paused for the evening and had eaten our meal, I decided to ask Elyr about what it means to be Kith.

All Aethri can communicate over short distances and with the sodality as a whole, but a Kith group is something stronger. It is a tricky concept to put into words, when Elyr explained it it was accompanied by waves of feeling that don’t translate quite into human feelings.

The closest I can get was a feeling of friendship but more solid, sort of unbreakable. Under that though there was more, there was a layer of loyalty and mutual protection, and a layer of something like belonging.

Elyr said simply “The closest comparison is a family you chose, often unconsciously”

“kith groups are generally small, and not all members are kith with each other”

It seems complicated but I understand the feeling of the feelings if not the articulation of them.

I asked Elyr how many there were in their kith group, and they said that there was one other, but that they were lost to them. So much sadness came with this statement that I didn’t ask more. They will tell me if they ever feel ready.