Dawn of Hope - Folician Chronicles 7

Chapter 11 - Trial for Hands begins

Gloria and Storm had decided to go on a retreat now since neither pack needed the worry of her being there. It was something Storm had mentioned shortly after Gloria had arrived and they had finally decided to go for it. To be honest Gloria was thankful they had taken the chance since they had arrived just before the raid had happened. That had horrified her and especially since she was coming to see what males and packs meant to the Folician's.

The closest she could come to think of it was on a tribal level. It was more than that though. She had been paying a great deal of attention to how Ray dealt with the pack in the short time she had been there. They definitely weren't human with odd body parts. They literally reacted differently to Ray than tribal members would react to a chief or elder. As far as she could tell it had something to do with his being a Pack Father and not just a chief. There were bonds that drew them together and kept them together. What that really meant she wasn't sure of but it did seem to give stability to the Pack which humans wouldn't have.

Storm was watching Gloria as she was thinking. At the moment, they were in an enclosed hot spring looking out over the forest scenery. The enclosure wasn't obviously enclosed since there was a force field keeping the snow out and the warmth in. You could easily step through the shield so it was rather like being outside. As Storm was watching Gloria she couldn't help but lean over and lightly tuck a strand of hair behind one ear. She was pleased that she had been assigned to be Gloria's Liraque. Storm was even happier when Gloria had accepted her request to be her Liraque. She was a very interesting woman and Storm was having a great time getting to know her.

When Gloria felt Storm move the strand of hair, it broke into her thoughts. She smiled at Storm and leaned against her and rested her head on Storm's shoulder. Once Gloria was comfortable she sighed, *I am so sorry about what happened. I can't believe anyone would do anything like that.* Even on earth she couldn't believe people would do some of the things they did. After that both had decided to remain on retreat until the trial or just after. It was one reason she had consider staying here but it just wasn't for her. She had family back on earth which she was very close to and didn't want to lose contact with.

Storm turned slightly towards Gloria and rested her cheek on the top of Gloria's head, *Thank you Gloria. It shocked me down to my soul. It hurt knowing a few people were willing to do anything to stay in power.* She sighed again and closed her eyes and looked very sad, *Let's just enjoy this time as best possible. I will have to deal with it when I go back once our retreat is over. For now I simply want to enjoy being with you.*

Gloria could feel the horror in her sending and gave her a good hug, *We can do that. I think I will make you dinner tonight. I think I have everything I need for something similar to a meal from home.* She wanted to do something to make Storm smile even slightly.

~~~

The Instructor had started the testing for the pups. She started with the youngest pups and slowly worked her way to the older pups. The reason she did this was to see if she could identify where any changes to the education started. Normally with the testing learning software was used by it was strictly for identifying the education level of the child. In this case as the data was being generated it was going into a second program which compiled all the results. It then processed it into a vast number of different graphs and charts.

This allowed her to compare different ages, genders, even rank in the pack at the same time. She could also compare them to the standards expected by the government. There weren't a vast number of children to process thankfully. Even if there were, with the processing power inherent in their computers it wouldn't have mattered. By the end of the day she had the pups from five to nine years old done. The balance would be done the next morning. It was enough data for her to start with and already she was seeing discrepancies.