One of the first things Dawnstar learned as a Legionnaire was that the extraordinary was commonplace, and that the ordinary was, well, quite a bit more boring. She felt that she was learning the latter lesson this particular day, over and over again. Instead of being allowed to hunt for survivors of a space wreck in the asteroid belt or anywhere, she was stuck with Element Lad, sorting the Legion's overly abundant mail.

"Could not the mail room's computer do this?" she asked irately after the second hour.

The blond man shrugged. "It could if it wasn't so clogged up with letters that are handwritten in non-magnetic inks or that are just plain illegible." He picked up a letter in a powdered orchid envelope and sniffed it. Without looking at the address, he surmised, "Another proposition for Dirk, right?" When he flipped it over, he shook his head. "No, it's for Ayla."

"I cannot believe you are joking about this! This is a monumental waste of time, Element Lad, and you are deputy leader! Surely, every Legionnaire has something more important to do than--this!" With both wings and arms, she gestured wildly at the tremendous piles of letters, boxes, and cylinders of all shapes and sizes. "You could at least of the decency to turn that machine off. It keeps producing more of this garbage!"

Jan laughed. "You've got to look at this like a game, Dawnstar. Or look at the spirit these things were sent. People feel for us a sense of wonder, and of love. This is just part of the way it's expressed."

"Then perhaps it would be better if they did not love us so much," she decided. "There could be something important in here and we would never discover it."

"That's an odd thing for you to say," Jan observed as he leaned back in his chair and grabbed another large handful of envelopes.

Dawnstar was learning to recognize that tone of voice, but was surprised to hear it from the Tromian. Surely his culture did not recognize sarcastic irony as a form of humor too? Then again, Jan had lived a great deal of his life with representatives of the more aligned worlds in the United Planets. "How do you mean?" she asked in answer to his vocal challenge.

"Your powers. You're a tracker, a seeker of lost items. Try to find something important in this muck."

"That is not the way my powers work!"

"You'll never know until you try," he deadpanned. "Maybe this is an aspect that you haven't practiced yet."

"I can think of grander things to do to test myself," she growled, but she was beginning to understand her companion. If one did not develop a sense of humor about the mundane, one could become very bitter about it. Surely, if a man who understood the universe as intimately as she herself did could laugh about the millions of pieces of paper in this room, she could too.

"All right. I'll look for a...love letter to Wildfire."

Jan laughed again. "No offense to your talents or Drake's considerable charm, but I thought you'd look for something hard to find, not impossible!"

"Hard to find? Where is the challenge in that?" she asked, trying to emulate his tone as she grabbed her own pile of letters. She was halfway through her stack when she found one addressed to her in the written language of Starhaven. A letter from home was a rare occurrence, and not one to treasure. Carefully, she opened it and began to read.

Jan watched her as the pile of letters fell from her lap. Her face held the look of intense concentration, but her deep, brown eyes were filled with shock. "What is it?" he asked when she looked at him.

"My great-grandfather. He died last month." Her nerveless hands were holding the letter in her lap, her eyes staring at it, but not seeing. "It is not fair!" she shouted. "If they told me he was ill, I would have gone to him! I could have told him good-bye and what he meant to me--" She could not allow herself to begin the keening wail of grief, not in front of a stranger who would take it as a sign of hysteria.

Jan got out of his chair and kneeled in front of her. He began to try to embrace her, to enclose her.

She bolted away. "What are you doing?" she demanded, and then saw the hurt in his eyes. He was only reacting to her the way that he learned, on his distant world. Surely of all the Legionnaires, he would understand the shock and anger she felt? "I am sorry. We do not touch each other unless we are family." She tried to explain and realized those were the exact wrong words to say.

"No, please, forgive a man ignorant of your customs for offending you, Dawnstar. Can you speak of your great-grandfather to me? I would think he was an extraordinary man to have affected you so."

She accepted Jan's offer and returned to her seat. "I do not know if he was so extraordinary, so much as he had time for me. My parents had to do what I did before I joined the Legion. He was an archeo-biologist who was dedicated to bringing back to us the animals of our legends. Every few years, he would go through time and bring back some specimens and cell samples of the animals we heard about, but had never seen. Then he would develop them and breed them. He brought back little mammals who lived in colonies in the Great Plains. When they heard him coming, they would all stand up on their hind legs and chatter before they disappeared into their warrens. My grandmother would tease him and say they could hear the Angry Buffalo from a dozen star systems away. He brought back a lizard with a blue tail that I got to hold. He said, that if I scared the lizard, it would run and leave his tail as a souvenir. He would not let me test that story. He wanted to bring back his totem next. I can't believe he will never see a real buffalo." Underneath there were the words, I can't believe I'll never see him again.

"Would you like to take a leave of absence? Go see his grave?"

"There is no grave to go see. He was--what is the word?--cremated. No, I want to do something to honor him, something that is worthy of him." Her head sagged. "But I have no idea what it is."

"Will you trust me on this, Dawny? Will you listen to me? You will find the right way to honor your grandfather, but you must think about it. Your answer may not come soon, but it will come. Have faith in this."

"Thank you, Element Lad," she whispered hoarsely as a few tears slipped past her control.

"Take the rest of the day off. If you choose to leave, leave us a note where we can find it. I'll clear it with the fearless leader."

"Again, thank you." She paused at the door. "Are you going to stay in here?"

"For a little while longer."

"Not too much longer, I hope. Or I will need my tracking skills to find you!" She hoped that the show of humor was appropriate. There was so much to learn about being around other people during such long stretches of time. She could be tactless and arrogant with her grandfather and he'd correct her when he felt she needed it. Then there were the months in deep space, where she spoke to a navigator or more likely, a navigational computer. She found she preferred her grandfather, but he would never be there for her again.

She slipped out of her uniform, and showered. Her tears mixed with the water. She wanted to hit her mother. Obviously, her abilities to make money far outweighed any feeling she had towards family. "It should have been my decision to make, mother!" she yelled, knowing the sound of the water would drown out the sound of her rage. "Oh, grandfather, tell me the thing you most wanted," she begged when her rage subsided.

She stayed awake for most of the night and the next few days too. A body that could survive days-long flights in deep space did not need regular rest during the limited span of twenty-four hours. Before those hours were over, she knew what she would do, and began by seeking out Superboy and Mon-El.

***

She began her tribute to her great-grandfather during her own special time, the dawn. The sun still colored the sky a hazy pink as the woman left a message for her comrades and parents. Then she opened the patio door and rose to touch the sky with wings of purest white.

One of her comrades, Jan Arrah, was half-awake and reveling in the peace of the sunrise. He saw Dawnstar's departure, imagined the joy she felt to see the world fall away and wondered how to capture it in song.

She sensed him as a bright speck among a sea of indistinguishable life, but even he faded as she reached the outer edge of Earth's atmosphere and dived away from it. This was her greatest challenge--she was going to pierce the time barrier--and failure was not permitted.

Hours of research went into this attempt. She probed Kal-El's knowledge of this impossible feat and then swore him to secrecy when he discovered her goal and failed to dissuade her. In turn, he made her swear that she would not do anything to affect the past. She had the basic powers needed for such a journey: Speed, invulnerability to both friction and radiation and most of all, desire. What she didn't know was whether she had control. To time travel, one needed to vibrate at a certain frequency. It was essentially the same technique she used to enter a space warp, Dawnstar discovered, and that goaded her even more into testing that limit.

She flew with Earth's rotation. Daylight, sunset and darkness passed her vision over and over again. Suddenly there was a burst of color and confusion. Dawnstar sensed everything she knew--except the Earth--disappear.

The sky regained its proper color. A wing shifted against the thinnest of air and she dipped down towards the Mississippi River. The freshness of the air made her dizzy as she touched the ground where no one was near. With eyes a hawk would envy, she saw a variety of animals she never saw outside of the animal preserve where she went to see her great-grandfather and his work with the animals that were so important to the various nations on Starhaven. For all his work as an animal geneticist, he never saw the animal he was named after. This was the way she chose to honor him. Dawnstar promised herself she would see one for him.

She sensed a group of people coming down the river and watched as a boat with a large wheel attached to its end came into view. Slowly, slats on the wheel's rim slapped the water. The was a paddle boat, she realized. No, it was called a sternwheeler.

"I did it!" she whispered, taking in another mouthful of the heady air. "Great Spirit, your daughter from the future has come!" When no human eyes could see, she left the dirt in favor of the sky. People wondered about the crack of thunder on a clear day as she shattered the sound barrier.

Dawnstar flew high enough to be mistaken for a large bird and wondered at the natural beauty of the deep wooded Appalachian Mountains and the golden sea of grass that was the Great Plains. A little further, she saw the untainted beauty of the Grand Canyon. The world was as beautiful as Xanthu, she discovered, or even Starhaven.

A wave of homesickness reminded her of her mission in this era. Reluctantly, she left what would be an amusement park in her era. Within minutes, she found what she was looking for, even though she had never seen one before. There were literally thousands of them, a tidal wave of deep brown against an ocean of gold. "Buffalo," she named reverently. "Ka-Tonka," she remembered her grandfather saying in the Lakota dialect. Those Lakota ancestors were hunting part of the herd that spanned miles. While watching the pride and joy of the hunters who knew their tribe would eat for another winter, Dawnstar felt her own pride rise. These were the ancestors of her ancestors, uncrushed by genocide, poisons and prison reservations of the invaders' designs; free to live and hunt in the lands of their ancestors.

She did not stay to watch the preparation of the kill, since she wanted to remember the animals as the majestic beasts of that awesome brown wave. "But," she chortled to herself, "they are so stupid!" Miles ahead of the Lakota, the herd was thinner and chaotic. Guns firing bits of lead and burnt powder added to the stench of slaughtered meat going bad in the sun. Here too, the buffalo were hunted. However, they were being killed indiscriminately and their skins were being pulled off while the flesh of the beasts was left to gather flies.

A man who smelled as bad as the buffalo aimed his gun at a mother and calf who were paralyzed into stillness. Other calves were crying as their mothers were skinned.

"NO! What are you doing!" Dawnstar demanded in English as she landed. What am I doing? she asked herself.

"An Injun girl!" one of the hunters shouted in surprise. "How'd she git here?"

"Who cares? Let's have some fun with her," one with a rifle suggested.

With a contemptuous gesture, she disarmed him with a flip of her wing.

"Good God A'mighty! She really has wings!" one of them realized.

She stretched those wings and broke the sound barrier again. The boom was thousands of times louder than the cracks of the rifles. "I am J'Nara, the Dawn Star, the Shining One! These buffalo are under my protection, scavengers! Harm them again and I will hurt you myself!" She gave the men a withering glare. "Go! Before I show you the mercy you deserve!"

The "hunters" took her advice and left her with fifteen skinned buffalo, and two corpses barely wearing their hides and three bleating calves. Tears filled Dawnstar's eyes as she fell to her knees. She had violated the law of time travel: Never interfere in the past, and what had she accomplished?

If she was not deemed as an illusion, five less men would kill buffalo for their skins. Five men would be replaced by fifty or five thousand. The calves would die of starvation and the buffalo would still be dead.

"Dawny! I've been looking all over for you!" a welcome familiarity exclaimed.

"Superboy," she sniffed as she blinked back her tears. "I am surprised Wildfire is not with you."

"Drake didn't know if he was going to hug the stuffing out of you or wring your neck for trying a fool stunt such as time travel," Kal answered affably. "Ready to go back?"

"No," she replied, looking at the calves.

Kal patted one on the head. "Poor little fellas, lost your moms, didn't you?"

"Help me take them back to Starhaven," Dawnstar begged.

"We can't do that!" he objected automatically.

"Why not? Their lives are over now. How is history going to change because we take three calves from a slaughtered herd with us? There's too much meat for the vultures now!"

"Dawny, you don't understand!" Kal began.

"No, you don't understand!" she shot back. "These animals will be murdered indiscriminately! Look at them." She pointed to the skinned adults. "Now picture that millions of times over! Think of the people who will starve because this fur is worth a few "precious" dollars! By the mid-twentieth century, there will be less than ten thousand buffalo and even with conservation efforts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the species will be extinct by 2150!" The tears no longer remained in check as Kal watched, and spilled down her high-planed cheeks.

"How are they going to survive if you take them?" he asked.

"If our geneticists can give me these," she answered, flexing her wings, "and heighten my senses until I could find an insect halfway across the galaxy, they could come up with the proper nutrient mixture to feed them, and find ways to breed these three and their descendants without the failures of in-breeding."

Kal sighed. "Ma always said I had a soft spot when it came to pretty girls, and homeless strays. All right. Let me put something together for them to travel in. I'd break their legs if I just wrapped them in my cape." He left for a few minutes and came back with a large metal box. "Sorry it took so long... I didn't want it to lose its shape while it was cooling. We'll get a zoo ship and fly to Starhaven at top speed, once we get to the thirtieth century. Okay?"

"Yes," she replied. She was thinking of the gift she was bringing her people, especially her great-grandfather who hadn't lived to see it. Hear me, My People, she prayed. The buffalo are returning to the plains!