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to stand.
    "He seems quite strong," said Lee-La, "but what is wrong with his color?"
    "The Gods only know!" was Baka's irritated reply, annoyed by anything he didn't understand. And he was a hundred times more annoyed when something unprecedented happened to an expected normalcy.
    The five remaining brothers came running, balgar grime still clinging to the fringes of their clean faces. They too had to stand in awe before the glowing small puka.
    Gingerly Baka placed the bright little creature beside its mother. He brushed his hands raspily against his coarse shirt, as if to rid them of some contamination. The mother puhlet didn't seem to notice any abnormal difference in her offspring. She nudged him with her soft purple nose, until he was snug in her fur that covered him almost completely.
    In the long hours that followed, five more times did Baka call out, "Why here's another of those shining pukas!" Baka wondered, just what new devilment had been sent to needle him.
    The pelting rains, the devastating winds, were long gone by the time the last puka was born.
    Wearily, Baka and his family emerged from the caverns into the daylight. In the silence bred with long experience with storms, they stood without speaking to survey what was left of their home, their fields, their fences, their barns, and their storage bins. Not much was still standing.
    Already the deluge of water had completely disappeared. The cracked crusty surface gave no evidence at all that it had so recently tasted water. In the cultivated meadows where the top crust had been removed, the soft, boggy inner-earth was watered every day by a series of connected irrigation ditches. Now all the little plants that had stood so firm and straight a few hours ago were flattened down into the mud, or washed away.
    No good to stand and sigh or cry, he thought. Baka left his sons to save what they could, while he and his wife and daughter hurried on to see what repairs would be needed on their home.
    Left alone in the underground caverns, Far-Awn fed the fires to keep warm the baby puhlets until they were strong enough to walk. Already the little ones who were born first were satisfying their hunger, while the newer ones lay weakly pink without moving, just looking bewilderedly around. That is, all but the six little violet ones who still glowed luminously. They were nursing greedily, able to stand and run about from the very first.
    To Far-Awn, there was something familiar about the halo of bluish light that radiated from them. From the pocket of his fur jacket, he pulled out the small white blossom he had plucked from the ice of Bay Gar. It lay in his palm, pure and opalescent white, as fresh as the snow that frosted the peaks of the Scarlet Mountains, although many long hours had passed since he took the flower from the ice. However, the glowing radiance had faded. This disappointed him. He had intended to show his father the significance between the flower and the shining pukas. Nevertheless, he put the flower back in his pocket for future consideration.

The Beginning of the End
    I t seemed to all the bedeviled, beleaguered people of El Sod-a-Por that every year the weather grew worse, not better. The horrendous storms blew in with increasing frequency and ferocity. Worse, when they came, they stayed longer. The families waiting for them to abate in the safety of the underground passageways dreaded to go out again into the sunlight and see what had been taken from them, and all that they would have to begin again.
    Although everyone knew the underground offered only temporary refuge, some gave up life on the surface land and tried to stay under. They dug shafts into the cavern rooms to let in some light, for they knew that without some sunlight, they couldn't live for long. This seemed a solution of a kind, so more and more of the beleaguered people moved down into the dark tunnels. Their fields on the surface were left unattended while they concentrated on growing