When little birds started to build nests, my restlessness reawakened. The kits were growing large now, crowding each other inside their mother.  Birth was near, but I had no desire to witness parturition again.  The woman's labor was still fresh in my memory, though she'd had help and the vixen would whelp alone.  It was time to watch for another host. I had to move on, always on.

 I lapped water one day at a sparkling brook that flowed into a pond, grateful for the easing of my thirst. Small ripples near the water's edge attracted my attention. Tiny insects, nearly mindless, whirled on the surface tension, dancing their brief lives away.  They were little more than impulse: eat, eat, fight, eat, mate, eat. I left the vixen and flitted from one bug to another, until I found one that dove under the water to lay its eggs.  Under the muck and mud I found a frog, sleepy still with antifreeze in its blood, waiting for spring.  I slid into its miniscule mind and endured until the end of its hibernation.

The waters warmed fractionally as the sun rose higher each day.  The thick layer of ice thinned and shrank from the shore.  Still I waited, dreaming froggy dreams of moist heat and the snap of insects on my tongue. I dreamt my memories of yearlong summers, of thunderous beasts with ferocious teeth and the small terrified creatures that fled from my approach; I dreamt of choking dust and ash and a sky on fire. Eons passed through my memory as I lay dreaming, reviewing the parade of new species that arose one after another to take their place on this world, only to die away when their time came. I galloped on the plains, climbed the new trees, burrowed under the soil, swam the seas.  Flying was a fierce joy, eating a pleasure, the company of like beings a solace.  I hunted and was hunted, spawned and died, over and over, until at last all that was left was memory and the urge to move on.  Long ago I had given up grief; all things come to an end. 

Most of all, as I lay suspended in the frog's hibernation, I dreamt of the woman. Many years I had lived in her and much I learned.  Her kind is dangerous, strong beyond its knowing, yet curiously fragile.  Gathered together in their billions they may destroy their planet, or reach the stars.  It is too soon to know. And my task was only to remember, not to foretell.

On a spring night, when the moon was dark and the ice not yet completely thawed, I stirred, the restlessness upon me once more. I stretched my webbed toes, beat the water with my fine strong legs, and swam to the surface. My throat swelled like a glistening glass bauble, and I joined the chorus of males calling for their loves.  Our voices echoed in the darkness.

Suddenly there was light and tremendous noise. The water churned with heat.  Frogs scattered, my host among them, but I remained, hovering bodiless between air and water.  There was a glow, quickly quenched, deep under the surface.  It pulled at me.  It pulled hard, and yet I resisted.  This lovely world, so full of life, had much still to offer me.  How could I leave so soon?

And yet—and yet, I approached.  The hard rocky intruder, orb-shaped and still warm from its fiery passage through the air, beckoned to me.  "Come back," it called. "It's time. Come, come!"

I caught a swirl of moving water and floated toward the orb.  How pleasing it was, how familiar.  A portal opened, and a faint but powerful scent drifted toward me.  I could not help myself; I was drawn in.  The portal closed.  I found my place, the one reserved for none other but me, and the long restlessness was soothed at last. I opened my mind to report the terrors and beauties I had known during my sojourn on the watery world I was leaving.  As the orb rose slowly out of the pond and past the atmosphere, I recognized the cold clean scent of open space, and I came fully back into myself.  The dreaming was over; the probe was done.  It was time go home.