Lucy sighed, absorbing the comforting atmosphere of the bustling mixed-class shopping center where all the chattering voices could meld so seamlessly into a sensory cornucopia with the brisk autumn breeze and nearby scent of smoky grilled sausage.  She flattened the palm of her left hand against the glass picnic table, splaying her fingers outward and catching every vibration as other Alphas scurried past with their crinkling department store packages in tow.  It was like a quiet symphony for just her fingertips, while the rest of her had everything else to feel.  Coiling her fingers gently around her neatly tied braid, she shifted the dark, silky tresses over her shoulder and smoothed out a few hairs that had come loose during the walk over to the table.

            Suddenly a soft twinge was experienced in her thumb from a pinpoint-sized source, something so slight it might easily have been the tip of a wind-swept dandelion seed alighting on her skin, but Lucy could tell the difference beyond even the shadow of a doubt.  She muttered an amused chuckle under her breath as a knowing smirk spread over her lips.

            “You got here sooner than I thought,” she said, politely tilting her chin down in the direction of the Beta who’d touched her finger, and trying not to let too much gleeful smugness come through in her words.  “With all the traffic on those trains at this hour, I’d have thought another ten minutes at least.”

            “No.  No, no, no,” Neil groused as he took a step away from her enormous hand, crossing his arms and pouting playfully.  “There is no freaking way you felt that one!”

            “Sorry,” she said with the slightest of shrugs, no longer trying to hold back her pride in this victory.  She twiddled her braid between the fingers of her opposite hand.  “What did you use?  Pinky?”

            “Yeah,” he muttered.  “I don’t know why I even try anymore.”

            “Me neither,” she agreed, as at last both dropped their pious acts with a snort of laughter.  Lucy slowly turned her hand over on the tabletop so that her palm faced up, inviting her friend in.  A moment later she felt the familiar little rubber-soled shoes of the Beta padding across the length of her middle finger like a balance beam, followed by the tiny plop as Neil took a seat in the center of the girl’s hand.

            Steadily the Alpha’s appendage ascended off the table.  She propped her elbow up on the glass surface, allowing Neil to rest nearly at eye level with her as she reclined in her chair.  The sun had shifted overhead in the past few minutes, providing some welcome shade, courtesy of the broad umbrella that stemmed from the center of the circle, and Lucy ensured to halt the motion of her hand where she could feel the warmth beginning, to avoid placing Neil in its direct rays.

            “So what’s up with you?” the Beta questioned.  “Wasn’t today they day they were supposed to get in those fancy new readers for your campus computers?”

            “God, yes,” Lucy drawled with some sporting exasperation, letting her tongue hang out of her lips as though to pant.  “Finally I don’t have to deal with that annoying voice reading me everything on the screen, I can just plug in with the reader and get it all.  I think I only got about half the notes in class because I was too busy screwing around with all the features.  I don’t know how much Aegis spent to put it in, but it’s totally worth every penny.”

            “Sounds like it,” Neil mused.

            “Well, are you going to tell me what you did in classes today, or do I have to use my mystical powers again to pull it out of your head?” Lucy asked cordially after a brief silence, then added in a hushed tone: “Because I told you I won’t use them in public anymore.”

            “No, no, anything but that,” he said sarcastically, pounding his tiny fists mockingly against the Alpha’s palm with just enough delicacy that it tickled.  “Nothing huge.  History exam, then a lecture about Mars or something.  I think the only reason anybody stays awake in there is because of the professor’s coffee breath whenever she leans over the class.”

            “Maybe you should bring her a breath mint,” Lucy suggested with a half-smile.

            “Yeah, I don’t know about that.  I think I’d need at least a gross for it to make any kind of impact on a mouth that size, and by that point she’d probably just be insulted,” he concluded, earning a giggle from the Alpha.

            Having settled in, Lucy’s thumb curled slowly into the center of her hand until she rested it across the Beta’s knees, which was answered as he hung his arms over the soft finger and leaned his face against its curved surface.  Lucy’s hands were almost always warm but never became clammy no matter the weather or temperature, something that made her particularly popular among her Beta acquaintances if extended carrying was required.  Of course, none experienced being in her capable grasp quite as often as Neil, and he wouldn’t have traded this kind of embrace for anything.

            “What about after classes?” she asked.

            “Definitely not as bad,” he said.  “Some of us from the volunteer agency went down to West Brook Elementary a couple hours ago.  Today was one of those meet and greets for a bunch of the Beta and Omega kids and they wanted chaperones there in case anyone needed help getting into their hands.”

            “That’s sweet,” Lucy said genuinely.  “So did they?  Need help, I mean.”

            “Barely.  It was really nice to see,” he said.  “The whole process is so friendly now.  I mean, not that it didn’t used to be, but with how excited some of those Betas are to step in now, you’d think they were on their way to the carnival instead of some hundred-foot seventeen-year-old’s hand.”

            “Get any naysayers?”

            “A few.  This one kid, Brady, he was having trouble looking up from the ground.  Not like he was scared out of his mind, just super quiet, reserved.  The Omega who was assigned to hold his class was really sweet, but good grief did she have a wide smile.  Kind of intimidating if it’s your first time stepping in for lift-off.”

            “No kidding,” Lucy uttered, twiddling absentmindedly with her braid.  “Did you bring him around?”

            “Eventually.  I just sat him down and told him I’d be with him for the whole trip up, and he seemed cool with it after that.  So I held his hand and he took his first ride with an Omega,” Neil said.  “Real smooth, too.  The girl knew how to handle a group.”

            “That’s good.”

            “Once we were up in her hand, the Omega… Sylvie, I think… she could tell he was having some trouble, too, so she just started talking through this little song, like the kind you’d do around a campfire.  The whole class got into it after a minute, and even this kid who was hanging onto me for dear life started humming along,” the Beta concluded, and received an approving sigh from his handler.

            Tenderly, Lucy’s thumb lifted from Neil’s lap and moved up to his face, completing its normal ritual of motion for every conversation she had with the Beta by touching his countenance: her best way of seeing him.

            With her finger pressed easily against the tiny college student’s cheek, normally swelled up with an ever-present smile, the Alpha instantly recognized that Neil’s skin was cooler than normal, and pulled taut, like he was about to become sick.  His tone may have been questionable earlier, but there was no mistaking this distinctive disruption in the norm.  To Lucy, it might as well have been a third eyeball she’d discovered on Neil’s face.

            The smile faded from her lips as her quicksilver eyes darted invisibly over the Beta, who seemed to immediately sense the issue, because he was smiling an instant later, but this couldn’t fool Lucy either.  It was a forced, artificial grin, and only enhanced her sinking feeling of unease to realize that something was not only different, but that Neil didn’t want her to know about whatever it was.

            “What?” she whispered with urgency, furrowing her brow a little as she leaned in closer.  “What is it?”

            “Hmm?” he intoned pleasantly.  He patted a hand against the thumb as it continued resting against the side of his head like an enormous fleshy pillow.

            “What’s wrong?” she asked.  Her voice was soft, but the question poked with the intensity of a concerned demand.  Lucy steadily began to slide the end of her finger the differential of fractional inches up and down the length of Neil’s little head.

            “Wrong?  Why would something be wrong?”

            “I don’t know,” she said solemnly.  “That’s why I’m asking you.”

            “Luce, nothing’s… I mean, I’m fine.  What makes you think I’m-”

            “Please,” she cut in, pursing her lips.  She caressed the cushy tip of her thumb down Neil’s cheek again.  “Just talk to me.”