Lyn felt a little silly, sitting behind a rock, under a blanket, holding hands. They wondered if this was really, truly necessary. Moira could be a little prone to including extremely unlikely possibilities towards the bottom of any list she compiled. Maybe she was just trying to be complete — to show the bounds of possibility. Or maybe she was trying to prompt further discussion, or maybe she was just bored and livening things up. Lyn could never be certain, and asking was futile — Moira would deflect, often as not, when asked about what she really thought.
It might be a total non-event. Aetheric fields were sweeping over the planet constantly, day and night, usually every few hours or so. Vast pockets of energy and particles would form and burst and reform in the skies as Enkoet rotated around the sun. Those fields that swept through at dawn and dusk were naturally more powerful, for the same reason that auroras coalesced and shone brightly in the sky. The aetheromagnetosphere was a complex system to say the least, due to the intricate interplay of sun, moons, and planet.
The concern was the schisms — relatively new phenomena that had struck Enkoet well over a century ago. Schisms were strong, localized fields, but always dissonant; thus the name. Unlike normal fields, they grated on the nerves, causing discomfort, irritation, or worse — based on a number of factors. Pulses happened when a schism overflowed its capacity and released the stored energy in a spherical burst — no different from the usual energy they radiated normally — just more of it, all at once, and reaching further.
Schisms built up and released their energies reliably on a schedule, following rules that were not yet well understood. Some might pulse the fifth dawn or dusk, others every third dawn, others maybe once every few months. Laster was in this last category, and while other Ber might pay attention, Lyn wasn't bothered by them nearly as much, and didn't usually bother to track its oscillations. Most Ber would track the schedules of nearby schisms out of necessity — avoiding the area when a pulse was expected, to return later for work or trade.
An unusually vibrant, low-latitude, or unseasonal aurora was a strong indicator that an irregular — or unexpected — pulse might happen. The increased inbound energies would effectively overfill a schism, and it would pulse early. Schisms might skip their next scheduled pulse in that case, but would naturally return to their normal schedule over time. Whatever cosmic force filled them had a regular oscillation to it, and its ebb and flow was more powerful than the energies that influenced them from high above.
Many humans had somewhat of a misapprehension about schisms and how they affected Ber, thinking that Ber were incapable of tolerating them at all. The reality was a bit more complex. The fields which swept over the planet constantly were both a natural process, but also one utilized by the terraformation control systems. Even if Ber couldn't perceive the fields directly, aetheric receptivity had been engineered into all Ber by the progenitors quite intentionally. As a result, aetheric fields pressed on the senses of Ber and could be felt, if only vaguely.
For a Ber, a normal pulse, from a smaller schism, might simply be uncomfortable, but having three nights a week of anxiety and fear, the kids woken up in the night, getting suddenly irritated at work; well, it wore on Ber, and so they had slowly migrated away. Even just being in their proximity — tens of kilometers away — was distinctly uncomfortable at all times.
Larger pulses, from the greater schisms, such as the cluster that occupied the southwestern arm of the continent were a different story. Their pulses could be an order of magnitude worse, and more frequent besides. A particularly strong pulse might outright kill every Ber within ten kilometers, then drive everything in the next ten wild in a mindless rage.
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Schisms were, simply put, the cause of the great cataclysm. The decades long chain of eruptions, which forced established Ber centers of civilization or population to be abandoned. Sometimes entire nations became uninhabitable in days, or even hours. Uncounted millions died. Some by rampaging Ber, or even Ber'Duun, when a schism opened unexpectedly nearby. Others were driven mad or forced to flee when an existing schism suddenly doubled, or tripled in size. But starvation was what had done most of the work — one cannot simply abandon farms and ranches without consequence, but frequently there was simply no time to prepare or migrate safely.
The lesser cataclysm had come almost a century after the start of the great cataclysm. A resurgence, or perhaps continuation of the great cataclysm which had never truly ceased, some argued. Others noted that it had struck more broadly — almost entirely in new areas, and had both started and ended suddenly, and so was unlikely to be a direct continuation of the same event. Rifts which had erupted a century before often strengthened, or even fractured, like shards of a mirror struck with great force spreading out over great distances.
At least the lesser cataclysm had heralded a period of extreme quiet afterward, when no new rifts appeared, something that was entirely unlike the great cataclysm. Lyn had filled in a number of the gaps just through Moira's sideways commentary around the topic, but the discussion would inevitably send her into a dark mood, so Lyn refrained from further inquiry. It hardly mattered — after all, if what Moira hinted was accurate, there would be no third cataclysm for at least an age.
Then it was time; a spark appeared on the horizon, and Lyn observed the aetheric field sweep forward, its speed such that they would have only a moment to appreciate its advance. It was beautiful beyond words as it approached, as it always was; the quick thought was merited, each and every time.
The curtain of light and motion — twisting and scintillating — appeared as a wall rushing forwards from the sky into the ground. Lyn knew that from higher up it would be seen as a sphere, expanding until it reached into the sky, before weakening as it pushed outwards. The hurried rush would become a leisurely stroll, and then soon it would vanish; its energy spent. This one, though, was clearly more forceful than most — it would go far before it ultimately dissipated.
Lyn's ability to perceive the phenomena was provided by a gestalt of senses; a combination of vision and something akin to proprioception. Lyn could both see the field, but also feel its orientation, strength, and direction. The capability was partly natural, the remainder enabled by structures engineered into silverpaw bones by the progenitor races. A mixed blessing, but a useful one, it had to be said.
Thousands of tiny sympathetic waves resounded in that wake; every nearby Ber resonated in answer to the pulse, as they had countless times before, unknowing participants in a celestial choir. Few Ber could perceive it, though they might sense it subtly. Humans and Brin were all but deaf to it, though some had been granted the ability by AMA for reasons unknowable. If the fields had a sound, it would have been a call and response of voices lending themselves to a vast chorus for a moment; a song that would be sung for mere seconds as the wave crested over the singers.
Strangely, the passing of the wave was immediately followed by a dark cloud of fliers that scattered into the air from the trees and shrubs where they had roosted for the evening. It almost looked like the oncoming wave was lifting them into the sky in its passage. The ground and trees had similarly come alive in stark contrast, as a thousand bioluminescent Ber of multiple species lit up, flashing or strobing warning patterns.
And then the wave reached Lyn and Nat and Lyn understood the animals' response, as it washed over them.
Lyn was, ironically, only weakly affected by aether flows — one could not measure something effectively if the measurement device was overly influenced by that which it sought to examine. It was this that insulated them from the worst of the effects.
Lyn's entire body shuddered as it passed over and through them. It felt like an eternity, somehow — like the wave had caught and taken them with it, or perhaps that they were somehow still ringing; like a badly wrought bell that rang in sympathy with its neighbors, echoing discordant harmonics instead of its own pure tone.
They heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing concrete. But in some real way, the core of their being heard the faint tone that was the aetheric vibration, and it carried notes of fear, sadness, and despair.
