Most humans are bigots. They think cat people can't handle machines. But Karina can--I know, I work with her.

Today she planned to bring in a device that'll change all our work patterns, but she's late. I wait, worried. Last-minute trouble with the machine?

A water-bubble rolls by. The merfolk recently invented a device they call a land-well--a machine setting up a field so water-breathers can swim in the air and breathe it as if it's water. They'd hoped for something wearable like a scuba rig, but the well generator's big, not easily portable, and the field can't be smaller than 4-5 meters across--and that's inherent in the physics. More like a car-size submarine, not the small personal bubble everyone hoped for. Damn.

Still better than no land-legs at all.

Why's Karina late? At last she calls in. Her youngest sister Saba, the fragile, thoughtful one I had a crush on, was killed in a sailway crash. Karina took the new device to try and revive her--and it worked! Saba's alive--tired but awake, ambulatory and healing.

But the felinas, her own people, are shunning her. They fear she's a zombie, half-alive; her voice is a husky whisper conveying no emotion. She gives them the creeps.

"Yeah, for now," I think. "It takes time to recover your voice, recover from death! Don't write off Saba. She'll make it back."

• felinas like Karina and Saba, sailway crash: from Michael Coney's kooky sf novel Cat Karina, 1982, one of the earliest depictions of catgirls (though Cordwainer Smith wrote The Ballad of Lost C'mell decades earlier).
• Saba revives with a husky, whispery voice: echoes my dream Dead Rights. I revived from death, but at first I could only whisper. I knew what that dream meant: I was sick for a decade, and recovery from long-term illness is slow. I'm still fragile as Saba--climbing out of a deep well. But even friends who should know better think I'm lazy or weak. No, I'm convalescent. This dream's a reminder.
• Karina versus Saba: probably mind versus body. My mind, Karina, is busy; I've had to figure out through trial and error what heals and hurts me. In contrast, Saba (emotion, social activity and my body) is still recovering from near-death.
• Merfolk explore in fishbowls: I do feel like I'm in a bell-jar. My dayjob's at Stanford--land of the privileged. Planned, materialistic lives. And among them... one wounded shaman.
• Well: a pun? Well as a tiny life-oasis in a desert... but also, well versus ill.
• Action: Patience! Ignore others' judgments. If they find me reserved, off in a bubble... that's not a character flaw, it's a survival tactic. Let 'em sneer. I'm busy healing.

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