Crosswind has discovered a new tribe of people. This is exciting, but not momentous. After all, there are already five tribes of feathered people who live near enough to trade with. This new tribe, however, has no feathers. They are mammals, and if the individual had not succeeded in teaching her bits of its language, she would not have believed such a thing possible. When the mammal found her injured and grounded, it offered food, protection, and the fundamentals of its language, allowing her partner, Quickwit, to return home and seek help. Mark Rollins has come with his parents to settle on a planet the government of Earth calls Tigris. It's a great adventure. Full of exploration and helping his parents build a new life. Then he found Crosswind and discovered she was a person, with feathers. The friendship between them grows, spurring efforts to link their two cultures. Yet differences hold hurdles to true peace between their peoples, and in the end, Crosswind will betray her human friend by destroying the human colony's technology, and Mark will have to decide whether to take revenge and subject her to punishment or to choose forgiveness and keep her secret. In the end, he chooses to keep her secret and let the hardship inflicted on his own people go unpunished.