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The day, bright, cool, clear, was not what many would call "proper" for a funeral. It was an anomaly in this rainy spring, being the third in a string of dry days with little cloud cover. The mourners could not help but comment on how beautifully the various flowers and greenery were breaking out. They, clad all in black and dark colors, their genuine grief mantled over their shoulders, were all but shouted down in the burgeoning ecstasy of new birth. In a way, it was unseemly to have such a dark procession in the midst of this vernal celebration, but time would not pause, ceremony could not wait, and the living had a need to sever themselves from the dead.

In the passenger seat of the dark green Jeep parked a discreet distance away, a lithe young fennec, silver from tip to tail, trembled from something that wasn't to do with the cool of the weather. In his lap, a stack of parchment paper, self-bound with strips of softest amber hide; in his left forepaw, the right forepaw of the older black bear who was his lover, his choice, his rock.

"You gonna try to talk me out of it?" the fennec's voice shook.

"No. I love you better than that. I also know that you want to go alone, and I won't try to stop that, either. I'll wait here for you. If anything happens..."

"...I'll turn tail and run. I'm not stupid. Nor proud."

"Kris... you didn't do this."

The fennec nodded quickly. "I know, Micha, I know. It just..." He swallowed audibly, remembered to breathe. "We've been through this."

"And will do again, as much and as often as you need." The bear leaned over, his golden caramel muzzle moving to nuzzle the ears that appeared as if they'd been starched stiff by raw fear, then planting a kiss to his cheek. "Come back when you're ready."

"Always." The fox's forepaw squeezed his lover's, then he opened the door and got out before he lost his nerve entirely.

The mourners had already gathered inside. Bound pages in paw, the fennec approached slowly but with determination. His dark suit (the only suit he owned, actually) was warm in the spring sunlight, and he was already perspiring from sheer panic. He entered the church, padding silently into the dim vestibule where even the ushers failed to notice him, intent as they were upon the altar at the front. Candles burned, flowers spread their delicate scents upon the air, lavish wreathes and decorous tributes that had arrived for her all at once... too late. The priest, a lean Irish setter, his brick-red fur contrasting sharply with the traditional vestments, swung the smoking censer about the coffin, the sweet smoke rising as a symbol of the spirit, so hoped the faithful, so help them God. The Latin words, soft but clear in the fennec's tall ears, were familiar for reasons sacred and profane, from youth and from school, from litany to poetry to academic curiosity.Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine: et lux perpétua lúceat eis. It was a fearful office for the day, depicting judgment by fire and the rending of the world, as the attending mourners petition their Deity that the soul ascending be spared from the_dies irae,_ the day of wrath. On this, of all days, when the living must set the dead to rest, when the spirit is already wrung bitterly, agonizingly, with loss, why was it supposed to be a comfort to hear of such horrors, and by your leave O Lord, let them be spared, as You have not spared us their departure from our lives.Gratias tibi ago, Domine. Cruciatus in cruecem!

"Did you wish to be seated, good fur?"

The hushed, nearby voice startled the fox. An elderly gopher looked at him with a kind, soft, patient face. His suit suggested that he might be with the mortuary service. He held his forepaws together, looking up with an expression that radiated carefully practiced sympathy without leaking into the maudlin or melodramatic.

"No," Kris said, equally quietly. "Thank you, no. It might... disrupt the service."

"That's very considerate of you. Shall you be attending at the graveside? I can include your vehicle in the motorcade..."

The graveside. That might have been at least a little more sensible of him. He wouldn't have had to have seen anyone at all, if he timed it right. "No, I... just came to pay my respects."

"Most kind," the gopher bowed slightly. "I'll be just outside, if you wish anything."

The fennec hovered in the quiet of the vestibule as the priest, seemingly an endless distance away, stepped up to the pulpit to speak. The well-designed acoustics of the church's interior provided all the support necessary to throw the words to the back and to the ceiling, to the mourners and the almighty reaper of souls. After a long, silence-filled pause, he began.

"Dawne Olympia Torelli," he intoned somberly. "I knew her but little, I fear. A fine young vixen, taken from us much too early, through nothing more than an accident of the simplest sort. Herself a student of the medical arts, she gave selflessly to patients and family alike, caring for all, after the flooding that overtook the town so brutally in these weeks past. The poor kit exhausted herself beyond recovery, and God knows that she truly gave her life for so many others."

A chill ran down the fox's back. What she had given, and how, and why, were all too clear to him. The pages in his paw burned as a reminder, every word that he had bled onto the parchment crying out for him to say something, but it was not right, not now, and not for him. He was all too aware that this ceremony was not for him, that this day was not about him or his words. They, like the flowers, were too late.

Kris bowed his head, not out of respect or tribute to any deity who would have let this pain happen, but in an attempt to keep his own pain silent. He breathed as calmly as he could, again questioning what he was doing here, what he could hope to accomplish, for himself, for Dawne, for anyone. He felt the parchment in his forepaws, had to fight against the urge to crumple them, throw them to the floor. These pages were, after all, the reason that he was here. He couldn't share them with her before she died, so he had to give them to her now and hope that, somehow, she would understand.

Long moments later, the fennec raised is head slowly, glancing once more into the sanctuary, realizing that there was no way that he could face any of them in there. If he could just...

He looked around him, finding something that he somehow knew would be there: A guest book, set to one side of the vestibule, as if in its own shrine. Padding to it silently, Kris looked forlornly at the registry of names, each invited to say something in a space on the opposite page. Some few had made a note, either to Dawne or to her parents. The fennec felt that it would be somehow rude to look at the pages previous, as if taking inventory of mourners and their sentiments, as one might do for a high school yearbook or a wedding book. He looked at the few comments --"In deepest sympathy" ... "we share your loss" ... "so tragic to lose one so young" -- and, for the briefest of moments, felt a flash of incandescent rage. Banality, safety, distance, socially acceptable and wholly facile expressions that said nothing beyond the acknowledgement that something, at least, must be said. Emptiness. Vacuity. Simple, hideous nothing.

Was that what had taken her?

Fresh tears threatened to leave their truths on the page before he stopped them. In frustrated haste, he grabbed the pen and scrawled_E.A.P._ to one side, and next to it, And this maiden she lived...

He had barely replaced the pen, sniffing back the last of tears, when he felt himself grabbed by the back of his collar and thrown to the floor. He barked out a sharp yip of pain as he crashed against the cold marble, then buckled as he felt the punch to his jaw. Somewhere in what felt like a huge distance, shouts and cries accompanied a confusion of movement, more blows to his head and stomach, a wrenching of other paws pulling something or someone off from above him, until a single word cut the air.

"STOP."

Kris lay still, eyes clenched shut, gasping to get his breath back, only faintly aware of the silence that had consumed all the air around him. Cautiously, he squinted one eye open to see a fox perhaps his own age, held back by three other mourners, the todd's muzzle contorted in a ferocious snarl that revealed teeth grimacing in a rictus of feral fury. He knew the face, although he'd never seen so much hate in it before, particularly not toward him. It was Bert. Dawne's brother.

"How dare you come here?" the todd spat.

"Enough."

The owner of the calm, powerful voice padded steadily forward, an older vixen, black-clad, silver-tipped, gray-muzzled, leaning only slightly upon her ebony walking stick as she approached. Kris had the feeling that the only reason that she looked down upon him was because that was his relative physical position to her. Her manner and bearing, suggesting something regal, did not regard him as somehow less than she.

Looking up at the others, she spoke quietly and firmly. "Bertram, you will leave. If you young furs would be so kind as to take him home..."

"The grave, I'm going--"

"You are going home. If you cannot comport yourself any better than this, young todd, you shall not be a part of these proceedings any further. I will speak to you later." She turned to someone that Kris could not see. "Please fetch a damp cloth; we must tend to this fur's wounds. Everyone else, if you will please gather outside; we will travel to the cemetery shortly."

A few curses from Bert, followed by the movement and susurrations of the crowd as it moved to leave the church, and then the vestibule regained its former quiet. Trying to sit up, Kris' protestation of_I'm all right_ never escaped his lips; trying to move his jaw brought a wave of fresh pain and his own forepaw up to touch it gently. The older vixen moved into his range of vision again.

"Please forgive my staring down at you, good fox. I am unable to kneel."

He managed a small nod and tried to make his face express his thanks. The vixen made no other move or statement until a young raccoon, still in the surplice of a priest's assistant, knelt next to the fennec's side and began a careful daubing against Kris' split lip and bruised forehead. Moments later, the Irish setter himself knelt to his other side and made a closer examination. "Time for a stupid question," he said. "How do you feel?"

The fennec touched his own muzzle gently and decided that nothing was broken. "Mostly the shock, I think."

"Can you sit up?"

Kris nodded gently, and the setter and raccoon provided enough assistance to get him to a sitting position. This allowed him a modicum of dignity and the confirmation that he'd probably bruised his bum during the fall. Considering what might have happened, it was a very small issue to be troubled with. The young 'coon offered him the cloth for himself, and he took it, applying it gently around his own face to places that still stung a bit. "Thank you," he managed.

"Do you need further assistance, good fox?" the vixen enquired.

"I think I'm all right, thank you." Balancing with the priest's help, Kris got his knees under him, then managed to stand. He felt a very brief wave of dizziness, pressed a forepaw to the wall.

"Steady the buffs, kit," the priest offered quietly. "Might be concussion. Do you want a proper doctor? I know a few on call..."

Gently, Kris shook his head. "Just memories of high school, I think."

The setter laughed softly. "Got your humor left, at least. Good sign."

The fennec turned as the old vixen approached him quietly. "I'm glad that you are whole."

"Thanks to you, Mrs. Torelli."

Nodding formally, the grand-matron of Dawne's fox clan kept her muzzle as unreadable as it was famed for being. Even though she stood a half-dozen centimeters shorter than he, Kris felt as if he were looking up at her. Her stately bearing held its own superior height. "Perhaps you'll now be good enough to tell me why you have come here?"

The obvious answer would not have been sufficient. No one in the Torelli clan, not even Bert, would dare tell anyone not to come to this service; however, as even Kris had known, there were certain people who would not be considered welcome. A century or more of protocol and good manners would demand that any and all who came to pay their respects would be allowed to do so; those same qualities would, the fennec supposed, inform the minds of those who would simply not be expected to attend.

"I'm expected elsewhere, young fur."

Showing good intuition, the priest bent to retrieve the parchment packet from the floor and hand it to the fennec. Kris hesitated slightly, nodded at them. "These. I came to give her these."

"What are they?" Like everything else, the question was asked quietly, with long-practiced poise and exquisite inscrutability.

"Words. Poems. Apologies."

"You are he."

A whisper: "Yes."

Long moments passed without sound or movement. Kris dared do little more than take breaths as slowly as he could. After several of these, during which the vixen seemed not even to do that, she at last spoke. "How did you come here today?"

"Micha brought me." The words were out of his muzzle before he could think better of them.

"His vehicle?"

"Dark green Jeep."

The vixen merely nodded briefly before turning to one of the liveried ushers. "Please see that he is included in the procession; explain that he is to wait in his car when we arrive, and that this young fox will join him while the rest of us are at the graveside." She turned back to Kris. "Come; you shall ride with me. Speak to no one else."

She turned smoothly, as if on one hindpaw, and moved toward the door. Dumbstruck, not knowing what else to do, the fennec followed.

The ushers tended immediately to their duties. The gopher who had spoken to Kris earlier moved directly to the Jeep; the fennec noted the curious, worried look from his black bear. Two other ushers quietly, respectfully, and efficiently urged the other mourners to their vehicles. Various members of Clan Torelli cast glances ranging from incomprehension to shock as the grand matron strode directly to the limousine at the head of the line and announced, in a voice that brooked no disagreement or challenge, that she and "this young fox" would be riding alone to the graveside. She entered the great, shining black vehicle and, without choice, Kris followed.

The lean young leopard, clad in full chauffeur's livery, stood respectfully and silently at the open door of the limousine. Already seated inside the immense interior, the grand matron indicated, with a smoothly restrained jutting of her muzzle, where the fennec should sit. He did so, parchment clutched in his forepaws, looking across at the vixen with sensations between dread and resignation. The door closed, sealing them in luxurious silence.

"I cannot keep referring to you as 'young fox.' Your name?"

"Kris Branson."

"We did not have an opportunity to meet."

"No, ma'am."

"Strange how these things work out. Or fail to. One would think that I would have had the chance to have met my grandkit's fiancé."

Kris clamped his muzzle shut hard, refusing to let the oft-said defense escape his lips. When he could trust himself, he said only, "Yes, ma'am."

"You are to be commended, Mr. Branson; you are keeping your manners in the face of the unknown. Many, as this morning's events have shown, are incapable. I apologize on behalf of my hot-headed grandkit. Bertram has some fine qualities, but none were in evidence today."

"You needn't apologize, Mrs. Torelli."

"I do so on his behalf, not because I have erred."

Feeling himself chastened, Kris only looked down. Movement surprised him; the electric motor of the limousine was wholly silenced by the carefully-crafted interior.

"We now have approximately fifteen minutes," the vixen intoned softly. "Let us use them wisely. What have you to tell me?"

"What do you wish to know?"

"Do not play games. Neither of us has time for them."

Kris felt his large ears splay back and flatten against his head. He felt himself wanting to cry again, and he knew that there was neither time nor ability to tolerate them. Gathering what was left of himself, he blurted, "I never meant to hurt her."

"I would not think you did." The grand matron shifted slightly in her seat. "I know but little of you, Mr. Branson, but you show too much raw emotion to be a practiced cad. Had you ill intent, you would not have dared show your muzzle at Dawne's funeral." She paused. "What did you mean to do?"

"To love her," he said simply. "To share our time, our hearts together. She was so lonely, and I never knew why. So much going for her... Forgive me. That's a cliché phrase, but it's also true in Dawne's case. Bright, beautiful, caring..."

"You needn't list her attributes to me." This was said not as a rebuke, but in a soft voice that, for the first time in their meeting, let emotion show through. "It seems to me that you cared for her."

"I did, ma'am. I did indeed love her."

"And she misunderstood you."

It was a statement, not a question, and the fennec simply nodded.

"Do you love another?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"May I know her name?"

Kris hesitated, his tailtip betraying him even more than his silence.

The vixen nodded slowly. "This explains much." Drawing a deep breath, she continued. "It sounds trite to make the obvious observation. Dawne was not terribly popular with males in her time, nor even with females, as friends or anything further. Sad to say, even females tagged her with the unfortunate label 'high strung,' and most males thought her flighty or, to use another terrible label, 'moody.' It followed her long past high school." She paused again. "Tell me how you met."

"Campus. I was researching the Lake District poets for a graduate thesis. She was preparing for her advanced nursing certifications. We were at the Student Union. She was in a quiet corner, trying very hard to look like she wasn't crying. I asked her why."

"Do you make a habit of rescuing weeping females?"

The fennec bristled. "I hope that my heart never hardens enough that I stop caring about someone who appears troubled."

A smile crept upon the old vixen's muzzle. "The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness andlove."

"Wordsworth."

"Why, I wonder, are there no modern males who can be so romantic and remain heterosexual?"

Kris smiled a little in spite of himself. "I doubt that I'm the right one to ask."

"Mr. Branson, I was told next to nothing, beyond the glowing and ever-escalating reports from my grandkit of her glorious and impassioned times with you. I mean no disrespect either to you or to her if I say that I'm unsure how much of it to believe."

Breathing slowly, the fennec replied as evenly as he could. "I liked being with Dawne. When she let herself, she was good to be around. We met at the Student Union often, shared meals, talked, laughed... I liked making her laugh. She was enthusiastic about her study, about her time with patients, her volunteering. I enjoyed her company. I liked being her friend."

"Did you tell her?"

There was no need to ask what the question meant. "I wasn't exactly 'out' when we met. Not that I wasn't sure, but I was afraid to be too open."

The matronly vixen considered. "You had no lover?"

"No. Not at first. I'd been friends with Dawne for about three months before I met Micha."

"It was he who brought you to the service."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I do not wish to assume, nor do I wish to pry."

"But you want to know if your intuition about me is correct." Kris lowered his muzzle a little. "The answer, Mrs. Torelli, is no -- your grandkit and I shared nothing beyond hugs and affectionate kisses to each other's cheeks. She wanted more, and I knew that I could not give her more."

The tiniest of smiles managed to exercise its way onto the vixen's lips. "Dawne was both persuasive and persistent. How did you manage to keep her attentions at bay?"

"It was difficult for me, in more than one way." Kris felt himself open completely to the matron. "She deserved someone better..."

"No, young fox. Someone better-suited, not better. You are proving my intuition to be correct." She glanced out the dark-tinted window of the limousine, then back to the fennec. "We have little time. I think perhaps we each have a question to be answered."

The todd nodded. "When Micha and I were sure. It was only a few months, but we knew that, at the least, we wanted to be together, to be a couple. We talked about my finally being 'out,' and I agreed that it was time. I waited until I had someone that I could rely upon, to help me face my doubts and fears. When we were sure, I knew it was time to tell Dawne the full truth. I had not led her on in any way... or at least not in any way that I could see. I had tried to be a good friend to her, as good as I could be, and I wanted to remain her friend... and she couldn't..." He swallowed. "This will sound defensive: I never proposed to her. When I discovered she'd told others that I had, I knew that I could wait no longer. I tried not to hurt..."

Seeming to suppress a sigh, the matron spoke softly. "We had all tried to talk to her. I was brought down from the family seat to try to talk sense to her. I told her of my own losses in love, although not for the same reason... so far as I know. Nothing consoled her. As you observed, we could see nothing wrong, not in what we did, and not within her. We cannot say if she suffered, although we think not. She took what she needed from the pharmaceutical stores at the hospital where she tended her patients." She looked him in the eye. "We have broken no laws that result in any gain, other than what I hope is a modicum of privacy about her end. The story of exhaustion is not inaccurate, merely incomplete. I hope you will keep her memory as wholly as you kept her body and her heart, as best you could."

"I could do no less."

"I was right. You have honor."

The sensation of movement changed so subtly that Kris was uncertain, just for a moment, that the limousine had actually stopped. He glanced again at the parchment in his forepaws. It seemed that the matron caught the movement.

"Mr. Branson, I would not bar you from making your farewells at the graveside, but in view of the upset from earlier, I would consider it a courtesy if you would, perhaps, consider coming at a later time. You can stay here, out of sight, until we've all gathered there. You could then return to your lover's side and depart quietly."

"Would you..." Extending his arm gently, he offered the sheaf of papers to the matron. "Would you give these to her?"

A long moment passed as the old vixen considered the parchment. "I want you to keep them a little longer." She looked up into the fennec's eyes and spoke softly. "I think those words need to be heard by others."

"But I--"

The door opened, and the leopard chauffeur stood politely to one side. She looked to him and asked softly, "May I have another few moments, please?" The door closed again, and she turned back to Kris. "Mr. Branson, I hope I don't sound cruel, but I must be brief. Dawne could not hear your words when she was alive; I don't feel that she will hear them now, at least not directly. Know that what you told her did not kill her. It was what you couldn't tell her... but even that did not kill her. She took that path as her own choice. What I feel is that others may be facing these choices, and they may make them in a vacuum, without experience to fall back upon nor guidance to assist them. That, good fox, is the crime here; that is the fault, and nothing else.

"Make your words heard. Make your cries carry upon the wind, so that they might be heard by someone who needs to hear them. Tell the story for ears that can listen." She reached out her forepaw to touch his arm. "Never again feel shame at what you are. Carry that message forward."

Kris swallowed hard. "I will, Mrs. Torelli."

"Good." The grand matron tapped on the window glass, and the chauffeur opened the door for her again. "You needn't wait long. They will follow me directly." She paused only once more. "Kris... I would be very proud to have a copy of your book."

She set paw outside the limousine, said a few soft words to the chauffeur, and left.

The door to the vehicle remained open, and the black-clad leopard stood just to one side of the door as if protecting it from anyone who might enter; Kris realized quickly enough that the driver also conveniently concealed the presence of anyone remaining inside. The silver-furred fennec felt that he was, for the moment at least, past shedding more tears for the day. He felt something different from mourning for the young vixen who had taken her own life. Leafing into the pages of parchment, he turned to the place where her letter, her last note, had been pasted into place. He had no need of rereading it; he had memorized it by now. The words had not been kind, and even now, they raked furrows red and deep into his mind. Behind the anger, however, there was a sentence that rang more true than the rest.

I damn you for hiding, Kristofur, and I damn me for believing you could be anything else.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Kris looked up with a start at the face of the leopard who had leaned into the limousine.

"They've gone, sir. I can see the dark green Jeep that the matron mentioned; you'll be unobserved by the mourners."

The fennec stepped out into the sun, briefly shaking out his silvery tail and shifting uncomfortably in his suit. He thanked the chauffeur, who simply nodded. First risking a glance behind him, over the roof of the car, Kris ducked his head and padded quickly toward the Jeep, a desperate refugee leaving the silent battlefield behind him. He fell into the vehicle, pulling the door shut quickly, turning to grip the big black bear tightly in his arms, feeling the embrace returned just as fiercely.

"Kris? Love, are you okay?"

"Will be." The fennec took a deep breath and released his grip on his lover. "Let's not linger."

"No argument from me." Micha started up the engine and, as quietly as he could, pulled the Jeep unobtrusively from the depths of the cemetery, around curving lanes that wound through hundreds of monuments to someone and something, out onto the main road and back toward home. Kris' home. Their home. The home that he and Micha had made and begun to share together. The future that had they had dared to choose. Kris smoothed out the parchment in his lap, the pads of his forepaw stroking gently the title on the top page:Breaking Dawne.

The bear kept his eyes on the road, glancing occasionally at his lover. "Here when you're ready, love," he said softly above the sound of traffic around them.

"Home," the fennec said. "Let's get home first. I want to get out of this ridiculous suit."

Less than a quarter hour found them returned, safe and sound. Behind the closed door, they embraced once more, kissed, reaffirmed their love and their life. Pulling back gently, the fennec reached up to cup his lover's cheek. "Micha... I want to take off these clothes, take off this morning, and hold you close. I need you."

The great black bear kissed Kris' palm gently. He nodded to the parchment. "Did they not let you give that to her?"

"I'll tell you when we're safely together. I just need to do one more thing before... then I'll tell you everything."

He took the bear by his forepaw back to his writing room and set the papers on the desk. Taking a pen, he made a change to the title page, then set the pen back down. Micha looked at the change, then to Kris, and he smiled softly. "Come with me now, love," the bear said. "Come tell me everything."

Warm in each other's arms, Kris told Micha all that he had said, had learned, and had planned for the collection of poetry that would become known as_Brave New Dawne._