The Word Painter
Chapter Nine--The Ingress
by D'Alaire

 

The Ingress

 

    "One in life...that which surrounds us, that which precedes us...and which shall be..."

    To see another rain season, to see the triblas bloom again, share a meal at the table or in the streets or only visit with friends...to meet their newest great-great-great grandchild, to watch all the others grow but another year, another month, another day...

    Their spirits would see it, she knew, and they had so many memories of all those things already, she wondered why she yet imagined the future. 

    There was so much within her already, memories of centuries past, which had been thrust upon her when she was completely unprepared for such a burden.  It had changed her; it had changed her bondmate.  It had made them so much more than what they were that for a time they did not know who they were--or were supposed to be.

    In time, they recovered, enamored themselves to one particular goal, something to focus on, from which to derive their very beings.  Through that purpose, they came to know their spirits again and grew able to continue and thrive.  And so, they had, gladly, gratefully.  They had loved life, had grasped every thread of it dearly and lived it fully.

    Perhaps this is what Bihla and Sa'alli felt, she mused, leaning on her arm on the bay of the open windows, staring out at the softly rustling trees, listening to the kyeps' song within the lush leaves.  It would rain soon, but they would not see it.  Ara was half asleep before her, his bare head pressed against her breast, breathing tiny breaths.  His thin fingers twitched against her palm, trying to caress.  Anai knew it was a caress.

    And who would we be to follow them now, even as continuance tempts us?  It is for the balance of nature and the peace of two spirits, now, that we no longer need to live...here.

    Most among the living were rightfully greedy for their race, Anai knew well.  By nature, the living clutched at survival, at memory and growth, procreation and other experience that would fill their spirits while still among the living.  Even with the promise of completion among the spirits, bodily life was so much prized that those like herself and her bondmate would indeed tempt the very teeth of Prihar, call fate on its challenge, to maintain it.  They often had.

    "All in the living," she whispered, caressing Ara's soft head,  "are what we are, equal and undying...bound in time, for only time....  We are brought from the spirits, and are completed in eternity, one among all...having tasted the soil and water."

    Her eyes closed slowly upon the view, feeling the cool breeze, scented with daknal sva, blend with the warm sun, then opened again to feel his breath catch, his fingers tighten.  He trembled to inhale, gasped it out in a soft puff.  His lips moved, but he could not speak.  He did not need to.  She already knew.

    She felt the mist in her eyes as she lifted her bondmate's chin enough that she could meet his stare.  It was apologetic.  How amusing, she thought, that he would be that way, even while he did not surprise her.  To answer him, she leaned down and kissed him softly.  His lips could barely move against hers, but they did attempt it.

    "Ka, my spirit," she breathed upon his mouth, "it is time to see what awaits us."

    She felt him relax against her, back into her embrace.  Thankful.

    The trees stirred again, and a pair of spotted squirrels was chasing each other through the heavy limbs, squeaking with animal laughter.  Outside, the sounds of the children, returning from their lessons, echoed upwards.  They called their hellos to the elders, knowing they were likely up there.  Anai smiled, but said nothing.  Ara gurgled a slight laugh.  He always did so love to pet on the babies, had spoiled them so.

    An hour later, Havetsi's youthful form appeared before them, bringing their afternoon dvilas tea, some soft bread, conserve and an update on the visitors' ship.  She had, as always, also picked some vines and flowers from the garden to scent the tray, folded the napkins prettily, as Anai had taught her when she was a small girl.  But as she set it down, her usual smile stilled to catch her elder's eyes, gazing surely to her, unblinking, telling her. 

    Havetsi put the tray aside to have another, better look at the two who rested against the bay of the window, if only to be certain.  But in only that look, her tola's stillness...

    "It is time, Havetsi," Anai whispered.

    Hearing the words, a slip in the fragrant air, the younger woman nodded slowly, collecting her breath, summoning her strength.  She even tried a smile for them, well aware that their passing was not premature, that the spirits would be good to them and fate would bear them well.  Anai believed her sentiment, and yet she knew more of it.

    So, wordlessly, she opened her hand to the girl, who leaned into her lap and embraced her elder-mother around the waist, and then more tightly as she exhaled a silent cry.

    Acceptance of passing or not, it was yet for the living to miss the body, the elder knew.

    It was only natural.

---

    "Captain, I think I have a solution to the problem," she'd said, full of fire and life, her entire being emanating from the spark in her dark eyes.

    Walking into engineering, Janeway's mouth turned up only slightly to think how little the bright yet troubled young engineer had known of what was in store for her.

    B'Elanna had made her choices.  Tom had too.  They had let down their defenses only to have an entirely new existence open up to them.  And in but ten years, the two had managed to gain what their previous lives could not have provided:  A dedicated family, a beautiful child, spiritual awareness and peace of mind and heart.  They had taken on possibly the greatest challenges of their lives--socially and emotionally, psychologically and physically--and followed them all through. 

    They had truly succeeded, just as Chakotay had told her their first night on Desalia.

    Or perhaps it was just time for them to succeed.  Though, Kathryn knew that they may well have never had such a chance on Voyager to do so much with themselves.  As for what they did for all the others in their lives, they had given literally everything of themselves to their people--to a region, really--and helped to save them, while also saving themselves.

    They hadn't stopped there.

    She should have expected that.

    Carey looked up from the warp diagnostic panel to give his captain his full attention, opened his mouth to greet her, but Janeway waved it away and continued her slow pace through the engine room.  She was only there for a visit, had only needed to walk.  It was a long way out of her way, but something had compelled her to call for the deck when she entered the turbolift, stroll around the warp core before committing to her duty.

    She wished she could only keep walking for the day she knew she had ahead of her and some choices of her own to make.

    She still had no idea what to do.

    A month after the paintings had concluded, the ship was in pristine condition, actually in better shape than it had been when they left on her maiden voyage.  They'd gone ahead and taken Voyager to Ivlisa for drydock repair, and in addition to fixing everything that was broken, they were given a great deal of ethically approved technology to install or at least play with.  Their cargo bay was full with as many supplies as they could fit into it, their shields were upgraded beyond what Starfleet could have envisioned, and their transporters were going to be an interesting study in capabilities for some time.  Their warp manifold had been given enough tuning to shame even the most self-assured engineer.

    Once the Institute scholars had gotten a look at Voyager, they had certainly done some excellent analysis then put Carey and his staff to a bit of school while they were there.  Even Janeway had been surprised at how much the Desalians could interpret and suggest just by looking at the ship's schematics when their own systems were configured quite differently.  They had even studied and proposed several excellent solutions for Voyager's little quirks--a term they were much a amused by.

    "K-wirk?"  Nralldali, a young novitiate from the Ki'ial had tried to pronounce the odd word and giggled as she realigned a gelpack input balance.  "K'wirk is a sour root used for dyes."

    "About the same thing," Harry had grinned back at her with a shrug.

    The captain couldn't help but smile at that.  It was good to see Kim start to look like he was feeling better.  Day by day, and though it was clear he still missed them, he seemed to be stronger, as did many on the crew once the stories had concluded.

    She left the new upgrades in his hands until Carey came on duty, since he seemed to be interested in it and anxious for the work.

    Then again, if Starfleet technology was that simple to them, Janeway probably didn't want to know so much, though she could understand why it would be.  The Desalians had been in possession of it for over a century, after all, and their warp configuration had been at least technologically equal to Voyager's before the Unar overthrew them.  They just didn't need the warp capabilities that Voyager did, considering the size of Irllae.  They rather concentrated on making their journeys through their rocky, nebulous space shorter and safer.  Even so, their engineering and spatial theories were excellent, their technology enviable, and their offer was too generous to pass up.

    So, they had docked Voyager at Ivlisa and Janeway encouraged everyone to take some shore leave in their off-duty time, travel, meet some of the peoples they had heard about--the more subtle message being to come to terms with their losses in what ways they needed to. 

    After helping Janeway settle at the drydock and arranging the crew rotations for their stay, Chakotay had gone to the rainforest cities of Maha'aje.  While there, one of Ara and Anai's great-great nephews took him through what Chakotay called "an extraordinary display of artifacts and history--this aside from the rest of the planet."  Janeway took his word for it, having made herself busy with another Allanois relative in the various nebulae while procuring supplies--an incredible journey.  The data she collected there would keep her scientific curiosity occupied for some time to come. 

    She had also gone with Havetsi and Cera to the new exhibits at the Regents' Museum, easily losing herself there the entire day.  True to Anai's words, Desalian art was rather realistic throughout time, with stylistic differences between individual artists rather than periods making the works unique.  When Cera pointed out what to look for, though, and offered a beginner's lesson in the subtleties of Desalian art history, Janeway found herself appreciating the works far more than she'd expected.

    "Kra'alba?"  She asked while looking at a portrait of onlookers, painted long after the war but depicting the night of Be'i and Toma's plea to the masses of Azlre.  In fact, many pieces detailed things Be'i and Toma did.  It was interesting for her to note, however, that there were no portraits of them hanging in the open exhibits.  Though she wanted to know why, she chose not to ask Cera.  "I remember him from the word painting."

    "Born in the internment," Cera acknowledged, also staring up to the heavy lines and shading Kra'alba was known for, "yet finding freedom at Azlre, his work with but claystone and brrint pigment until past the Unar War had been his standard.  His subjects are of change, forward movement, light and shadow among one.  --He had been an outward supporter of the resistance from the night of the call to the masses; it became his great inspiration.  Note his botanical hues and thumbstrokes."

    Janeway bent closer to the painting.  "He did this with his fingers?"  She would not have thought it, with the detail and emotion...the hope pressed into their heavy eyes and sunken faces, a fair-haired child holding his mother and peering towards the firelight where the plea was being made.

    Cera smiled.  "He bore no other tools with which to train, and so his habit was retained throughout his life."

    She nodded.  "Aratra had said that you have to teach a Desalian once the right way."

    "Ka," Cera said, "and this way was correct for Kra'alba, as it was utilized so well."

    "Agreed," Kathryn smiled.  She moved with him to the next display, where Havetsi and a few of her cousins and friends already waited.

    She gladly returned the next day to better study the more recent periods, though she realized by then that she was trying to distract herself from the hole Anai had dug for them but left unfilled.  The story was somewhat complete.  Everyone on board understood it was painful for the elderly lady and politely didn't broach the topic.  Havetsi had answered their remaining questions in the end, which was enough, they thought.  They could get past their crewmates' very meaningful lives, two of which had ended too soon, yet as nobly as anyone might have imagined of them.

    Kathryn knew otherwise.  Worse, she knew she knew otherwise.  The more time passed, the more she could not force herself to let it go, to leave them in peace.  But Anai had been so upset that last night, Kathryn couldn't bring herself to ask all the obvious questions.  The look the elder gave her when she was leaving had torn into her, made her see, made her know the truth--whether or not she meant to.  Anai had gazed into her very soul, her eyes filled with tears, so regretful, so determined and at the same time vulnerable.

    She had asked her forgiveness.

    For what?  Janeway asked herself yet again.  For not completing it?  For not telling them in the first place?  For running away at the end from what she obviously had intended when she began?  What had changed her mind in only a few days?

    In the garden, when they first spoke intimately, Anai had been warm and clever, decided in her duty.  Only two nights later, she simply could not finish, could not bring herself to give them what she had promised Janeway she would.

    Maybe because she saw it had no purpose? 

    Janeway was angry--or would have remained furious for the deception, realizing it as she had, in that flash, in that look, in those sorrowful words. 

    Fine, she'd thought, stiff-jawed as she walked back through the city with the others after the last story, silent beside the commander, let them die the way they want.  They've lived long enough, and it'll have made no difference to us in the end.  The crew already knows Tom and B'Elanna are dead.  They took so much trouble to make us believe it, they should die as they please.

    But striding into her quarters that night, shaking her head, telling herself aloud it couldn't be right, all she could see was Anai's sadness, her genuine, humble need for forgiveness for the very deception she was both upholding and trying to explain in her duty.  Then Kathryn became annoyed that she couldn't stay angry with that poor old woman, who had obviously tried to spare them.

    Anai had been helping them mourn, and helping the crew let their friends go.  She must have discovered that the best way to go about that was to not tell them everything.  Even so...

    How can't they know?  Janeway asked herself as she paced through the engine room and overheard the crew's chatter.  Having realized the truth, she wondered how in the world she hadn't seen it from the start.  Certainly, Ara and Anai were both very old:  Their bodies were shrunken, their voices creaked in trilled dialects; for both color and reflection of self, their eyes were simply unrecognizable.  The customary scarves and braids covered a good deal of Anai's brow, or what was left of it, and Ara's scarves covered half of his head.  From their markings to their mannerisms and everything in between, they were without exception Desalian.

    But now, knowing the truth, Janeway could see through those elders so clearly, she couldn't believe she hadn't figured it out upon first glance.

    From day one, she'd had a feeling that Anai was more than she claimed, had a gut feeling about the regent's simply tossing out information and letting the pieces fall where they would, in admittedly Allanois style.  Janeway knew from the start that there was more to it than the stories, a hidden purpose, a poorly kept secret among the family.

    If anything, she could blame herself for not chasing her instincts, but instead, relaxing around the ancient woman who had befriended her.  Indeed, the lady had become her friend and Kathryn truly believed that part of it was genuine.  Maybe Anai needed to have that closeness to paradoxically burn her bridges.  Maybe she and Ara had really wanted to see them again.  It seemed so.

    A month later, it was time to say goodbye to them both.

    Standing in engineering in her dress uniform, she was guiltily relieved to soon part with that beautiful, peaceful, welcoming people, that intriguing "pin dot" in space.  Knowing what she did, she wondered whether she should be either--guilty or relieved.  Had she and the crew no home to go to in her own lifetime, she would remain at Irllae without hesitation despite it all--and even as it was, thought had tempted her.  But though so little time passed outside the region, she would age without reprieve--and already she felt like she'd put on a few years.

    She would miss them all dearly.

    During the time that Voyager had been at Ivlisa, Havetsi had taken a leave from her duties and seen to all their "procurements."  Gentle, watchful, but busy and cheerful as ever, she put herself at their disposal--insisted she take responsibility for their honored guests and friends.  Not surprising, really, her care of them, though Janeway could tell her presence was as purposeful as Anai's entire telling had been.

    "She shall be named for Nali," she'd proudly said as she rested against one of the panels those few weeks ago, placing her long, thin fingers upon her flat belly.  "And her eyes shall be brown, as mine once had been, and her long hair shall stubbornly be braided each sunrise--merely to tickle Tola's blessed spirit.  How I would wish Nali and Tola would remain enough suns but to touch her....  Yet they have, in their spirits.  It pleases."

    "How are they?"  Janeway asked.  Since the last evening of the painting, she hadn't seen them, couldn't even bring herself to ask to see them.

    Havetsi seemed to understand.  "They prepare for the spirits with contentment despite their concern and little pain, Kathri.  They wish you would attend their passing ceremony, should you be present when this sun arrives."

    Despite her mood of late, Kathryn would have been the last to ignore that particular honor.  "You can tell them I'll be there, even if I have to be the one who waits this time."

    Havetsi's smile flicked up in acknowledgment, but little more as her fingers lightly stroked her uniform coat, deep blue with black embroidery at the hems.  She seemed to know where each stitch was, the way the touched them.  "Kathri..." she whispered then looked at her, "...you would bear awareness, ka?"

    "I think Anai made it pretty plain, don't you think?  She did everything but tell us--tell me."

    "Ka, there was more purpose with you than Nali's painting her promised words.  Yet it surprises me that you do not ask of it now."

    "I got the impression that whatever it was," she said, another half-truth, "I'd be told if I needed to be--that it wasn't my business to ask."

    Havetsi turned her glance at that, gave her a look Janeway immediately recognized.  So much Havetsi seemed like B'Elanna, in small ways, here and there.  Her hair, while quite long and stretched with length, was a rich, dark brown and braided just so.  Though taller, more angular in her features and generally far more cheerful, she reflected a similar intensity when she had something on her mind.  Her gaze, though bright hazel, was very like, .  Three generations worth of diluted DNA could not remove that particular presence.

    Anai had been so amused to compare them, Kathryn recalled with an irksome flash.

    In her own memory, she had seen that expression recently, when a young lieutenant had to make a rather difficult choice.  B'Elanna had been forced by her strong conscience to destroy a life she created.  Janeway could hear the engineer's voice all over again, quietly insisting that it had been necessary, despite her own mixed feelings.  She had tried to make it sound simple, even to herself, sipping at her coffee, staring at nothing only moments after she had been filled with the passion of her doings.

    Yet, she had known--realized--what was the right thing to do.  Janeway believed she did not regret it.

    Looking at the chief's descendent, it seemed so obvious it was embarrassing.

    "It is not for my elder-parents now to choose," the young woman told her.  "The stars pass them without their reaching--and nor should this be required of them.  They have worked too diligently for this privilege."  Havetsi reclaimed Janeway's stare at that.  "More, fate's blessings cannot be charged by them.  They have lived to make possibilities, not certainties, as do we all."

    If her last night's sleep had given her enough time to settle her unanswered questions into their little mysteries, Havetsi's words and stare brought them all to the forefront again.

    "Then what do you suggest?"

    "Your own fate," the woman replied.  "It is but for you to reach to, Kathri.  Your choice can make a fate possible.  The results of this shall be accepted by us unequivocally .  This may well be known of Desal and the Allanois.  It remains truth."

    "What choice do I have, Havetsi?"  Kathryn asked.  "I don't recall being given a choice in any of this."

    "It is not to be given," she answered,  "but procured.  Kathri, it is but for you to derive the lesson of Nali's words--all her words, her life and Tola's.  Or I would hope when you are touched by fate, your instinct shall be your guide.  While Nali and Tola are worn of their life's journey, it should be known that their promises were not always a burden...."  She stopped, smiling gently at Janeway.  "You shall understand this another sun.  Only hear me now, my friend."

    She heard.

    By the time she and some others decided to visit Cezia, Janeway didn't know exactly how she should be reacting anymore.  Like a dumb fact, it burrowed in her mind, festering yet useless to anything she might otherwise make of it.  So, she decided to simply try to start putting it behind her.  Clearly, Anai and Ara had intended that they all did and Havetsi suggested that she should for the present.

    She knew better than to think she could do that.

    When they stepped off the transport at Dviglar, she found herself immediately transported back into Anai's painting, complete with busy citizens and Irllae traders.  The base alone was remarkable, especially as Janeway recalled it had been little more than an Unar junkyard during most of the occupation.  One hundred and ten years after Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres came to Cezia, however, Dviglar seemed to deserve its continued regard, from its vine-decorated research facilities and trading circles to engineering and science buildings.  The wide avenue through the flat of the gorge that hosted it led to the drydock repair fields and ship museum.

    There, they were directed toward the famed Azallis, which was preserved at one end of the landing facility.  The sight stopped them all.  Smoothly angled from bridge to stern, short and broad winged, the small white ship was obviously designed to move in and out of atmospheres, maneuver through the rocky, nebulous space, not meant for long periods of space travel.  Most remarkably, the Azallis was a monument both to the war that freed its people and to the gentle time that bore it.  Seeing it there, grounded but noble, simple but packed with history, it inspired a respectful silence in them all as they finally moved on.

    Even so, Janeway couldn't help her inward grin as they crossed back through the bustling station.  It was little wonder Tom and B'Elanna refused to take it apart.  Their adopted people could not have understood that part of their natures...at the time.

    The path to the city was equally fascinating, though in a completely different manner.  There, it was noisy with nature, the balking joth, the long blowing grasses, the smell of rich earth and the hums of insects deep in the thrush beneath the warm, white sun.  The others who came appeared as entranced with it all.  Harry, Kes and Neelix ran a steady replay of details they knew from the paintings, relating the reality introduced through another's eyes.  Looking over, she saw on Chakotay's face a similar smile, one of wonder and memories finding a home.

    If the fields were interesting, the city proper cemented their attention.  A "rural city of both steady warmth and reserved rain," as described by the family on the homeworld, the Azlrelians' dress and scarving was notably different to that of Desal's capital: more often tied than buttoned, lightweight and subtly embroidered muslin in shades of white, cream and pastels.  The jewel tones and tailored silks of a capital city denizen would stand out clearly among that colony's day clothes.  The Azlrelians' movements were somewhat freer, as well, their lilting noises not so much a steady buzz as a flock on a swift breeze.  That too took their proper place among Anai's stories as they wandered the streets once frequented by Be'i and Toma, Sashana'i and Aratra, Miztri and Dalra, and their elders, all those good people who had loved that city, their chosen home, so much. 

    Like ordinary tourists, casually dressed and without immediate direction, they stared around at all the corners, the white sandstone buildings and ivy-trimmed streets.  Even Janeway felt herself detach from her concerns as she pointed out the places they'd heard about.  They took water at the public well, smelled the incense lit upon corners in respect of the ancestors, heard the strolling vendors singing their trades, untranslatable usually, but melodic in a minor key, echoing through the neatly curved streets.  Some of their customers gamely sang along while collecting their trade from their woven fur purses, which hung on their waists along with their other ornaments.  Children danced along to the lilting beat as they passed, giggling at some of the lines. 

    A vendor at a nido'ev stand told them the "milk of Sa'alli" was yet to come that year to bless the fertile land.

    In their first planned diversion there, they came upon the district of Trisjorr, most of which had remained a sprawling park with memorials, statue scenes of the war and plaques around the remaining rubble.  Most notable was the memorial of the first meeting of the Irllae resistance.  Janeway leaned back on the short stone wall beside where the elders, prichava, assistants and young regents had been recreated.  Some other statues around the area finished the circle of citizens looking at another group of cast statues, namely Novren Pridalar, Medrove of Suresha, Eneprae of Brija, Acilg of Iaskeb, Vabrimir of Koba and Be'i and Toma of Azlre.  For lack of pictorial evidence at the time, none of the figures could have been precisely detailed, though Janeway chuckled softly to herself when Harry moved close to see if he might recognize something.

    Still, she could picture it, and she found upon steadier examination that the portrayals were closer than she thought at first.  Beyond the heavy cloak draped over the female's head, the artist had gotten the woman's pride and will across in her solid gaze, her full mouth, slightly parted, her posture and the way her hand floated a bit forward, palm up--an unconscious gesture of B'Elanna's for certain.  The man's sidelong squint below his headdress was perfect, as was his little grin.  He seemed poised to say something smart to Novren Pridalar.  Tom's slightly off-kilter stance was unmistakable.  His hand seemed to fit on the curve of his lady's back.

    It was eerie, Kathryn realized, to think they were right there.  Her crewpeople, almost a hundred and ten years ago, had made the deals to start a war that would free an entire region.  Much longer than Voyager or even the Maquis, Azlre had been their home by that time, and now, in that present, on Cezia as well as throughout Irllae, they were remembered as heroes.

    Moving along in their unofficial tour, she could see them everywhere, almost expected to see them coming around a corner, bowing briefly with a touch to their temples.  She could also see them continue on their way, disappearing into the crowds like any strangers on the street...

    After a trip through the north section of the city, where the commune gardens filled the entire row inside the gates and the tenements rose plainly from their gracefully stenciled bases, the small group continued westward.  With some better directions from a lady kneeling to work in her doorstep garden, they turned into the streets again towards the historic Adavill district.  Thirty minutes later, as homes grew shorter and wider, and gardens grew more lush, they came to a well-preserved circle of relatively small estates with a flowering tree decorating the center.  At the north side of the cul-de-sac sat the Onistra house.

    Though still quite tall and not as wasted, Yasis was as elderly as Ara and Anai and unashamedly thrilled to finally meet Kurt's birthpeople.  It was at her request, in fact, that they'd made the point to visit together.  She greeted them personally at the entrance only moments after they pulled the bell, begging them in and calling to her granddaughters for refreshments.  Upon her decided invitation, they shared a lovely lunch on a tree-shaded, second-floor terrace, with bread and fruit, tea, warm joth milk and memories. 

    "Kurt..."  The Antral woman smiled, then she coughed as her great-great granddaughter Esherri, a slender, red-haired lady fashioned and marked in the Desalian way, placed a cup of steaming joth milk in her trembling hands.  Yasis offered her a grin of thanks then continued, "My fine husband.  I could not give him a child but our three I found orphaned when we returned to Azlre after Desal's liberation.  But we loved them as though I had nursed them myself, and he renovated this house for us with his bare hands after Anai and Ara left for Desalia."

    Janeway glanced back into the long gallery, lit with the noontime sun.  The open beams and interconnected rooms were evidence of Federation-like design, not to mention what little she had learned about Antral housing.  The eclectic but comfortable furnishings were telling, too.  "It's obvious he loved it," she said.

    "He did," Yasis whispered.  "As do I."

    "I can see why all of you loved Cezia, too, even Tom and B'Elanna," Janeway said, soft against the rustling breeze around them.  "Azlre is a remarkable city."

    Yasis turned her gaze, which had greyed with age but shone brown-green in the light.  "Be'i and Toma?" she asked, a small smile pulling at her thin, crinkled lips.  "Yes, they once said they had found their true spirits here.  More than once, they did.  More than once..."

    Janeway did not mistake the lady's allusion.

    Yasis sipped her milk carefully, closing her eyes momentarily.  When they opened again, they were pointed toward the floor for several seconds before finding her guests again.  "Have you seen the old clinic?" she asked.  "It is here, in Adavill, preserved for history as are most the residences in the square."

    "Mar'lli is going to take us there later," Chakotay told her.

    "Ah, Mar'lli.  A just prichava, and an superior player of ba'akull.  I would not recommend you challenge her.  My grandson, Tive'a, is continually humiliated."

    He laughed.  "I'll try to avoid it."

    Yasis paused to consider the man anew.  "Mar'lli is not present yet," she said.  "Tell me of my husband, what you remember.  Kurt told me so many stories of his birth.  I always wished I could hear them from another's lips.  --Not that I think my husband exaggerated," she added, earning another chuckle.  "Indulge me, please."

    Leaning back into her chair, she smiled upon each anecdote Chakotay managed to recall, even when he apologized for not being much of a storyteller.  But Yasis was indeed interested to hear the old stories from another man's view.  Even as he spoke, however, the old woman seemed as curious in examining her guests, shameless in her microscopic stare.  Whatever she deduced, however, Yasis shrugged away, likely already resolved to her own part in the silence.

    Janeway understood, remembering when Anai, on the day Voyager arrived at Desal, admitted that Kurt's wife still held in her heart what only Ara and Anai's memoirs would reveal at that point.  She did just that, seeming to be pleased with that honor and obviously not about to break it for any sentimentality they might have inspired.  For her own reasons, Janeway didn't bring it up, either--not there.  Somehow, at that point, if they didn't want to say it, she didn't want to hear about it. 

    She did enjoy hearing the stories, however, and the tea.  Had she been able to push the rest aside, it would have been a very pleasant visit.

    Later, as promised, Mar'lli came for them.  A sprightly one hundred and one year-old with a soft, high-pitched voice, ornamented scarves and all the goodness of one of her kind, came in with Esherri and showered her respect and love on Yasis as would a child on any elder.  After a long round of goodbyes and thanks, she then took the honored guests for a tour through the square and to the clinic.  Though returning greetings and bows throughout their walk, her pace was almost as brisk as Havetsi's as she explained how her people had preserved many of the living spaces in the square after the war; then she described the conditions of the time.

    "Of course, this is known to you," Mar'lli smiled.  "Yet it is always another matter to see its truth."

    Janeway didn't say a word.  Instead, she studied Mar'lli all over again, as she had the rest of Ara and Anai's children.  It was hard to tell, the captain noted.  The woman, fair-skinned and wrinkled with her long, busy life and copious amounts of reading and writing, probably looked only vaguely as she had in her youth.  Her eyes were like Ara's--dark bluish hazel, not any exact color.  She was bonded, like her siblings, and therefore her eyes had changed from what they had been in her youth.  Her long, neatly draped scarves and braids, like all other Desalian women's, covered a good part of her forehead; under them was a thick mane of flaxen white hair.  Janeway guessed it had once been blonde.

    She wondered what Mar'lli's birth name was.

    Even then, Kathryn said nothing, but continued with the tour.  She had wanted to see the old clinic since Anai had first spoken of it.

    Explaining as she led them, the prichava of Azlre took them into the surprisingly plain clinic foyer, a long, brightly lit galley with old but clean tables and glass-doored storage hutches, two battered surgical beds and a tiny, portable replicator in the far corner.  On the back wall of that room, a tall, quarter-circle staircase led up to an arch, where Mar'lli led them into and through Bala and Bakali's well-worn residence.  Its array was equally sparse, boasting only gently tended sideboards on a sandstone floor, yellowed plaster walls and an array of mended pillows around a colorful floorcloth below the shuttered windows.  Farther in sat a large stone fireplace with low-set stone plates for cooking and an urn of tools to the side.  A couple of thick metal pans and a soup pot were set on the grate; a kettle hung inside, where the fire would have crackled and glowed. 

    Just behind the mantel and up a row of handmade steps was the three-by-three meter attic that had been Tom and B'Elanna's residence.  The even smaller space that belonged to their son was on the other side of the floor flap, partitioned by only a drape that hung on a high hook in the plaster.  They all barely fit in the open space there, and Harry noted with some astonishment that it was amazing they didn't kill each other in such close quarters.  Mar'lli smiled and told them their bed was both comfortable and diverting.  For that matter, much of their lives were spent outside of that space when not in that bed  They did not require so much space to sleep and dress.

    When the others returned to the ground floor, Kathryn remained, turning a circle before she numbly sat on the before-mentioned bunk, which took up a third of the room, nestled into the alcove behind the chimney stones.  Looking over, she noticed the solar-generated glowglobe hanging on the short bedpost, a glassy sphere about the size of a grapefruit with small geometric shapes cut into the shell.  The bed itself was soft--maybe a bit too much so.  The knotted scrap blanket on it was not very ugly and would have been colorful had it not been so faded.

    They had lived there.

    The Desalians had kept it so preserved, it was almost as though Be'i and Toma had left to go for a walk, or off to Dviglar, or might even have been downstairs, rolling their bread around a piece of goat cheese with their son and their elders...

    Drawing a deep breath, she let her eyes fall across to the small, scratched oval mirror sitting above a well-worn floor pillow, the piles of paper and equipment on the top shelf.  One of Be'i of Azlre's gowns--the beige one with blue vines embroidered on the skirt and sleeves, her favorite--hung on stiff, braided reeds at the end; Toma's worn brown wrap shoes sat unceremoniously next to a trunk below it.

    She touched the blanket and tried to remain composed as she felt, so deeply, the presence of those two.  Somehow, they were still there, almost a ghostly presence.  She could even hear their voices...

    So much had happened there, so many choices, so much discussion and development and realization, all in that tiny space and beyond...

    Collecting herself, Janeway stood and shook her head.  But then a moment later, she found herself kneeling on the bench below the window to peek outside.  There wasn't much to see from there, just a sliver of the square blocked by another building.  In the beginning, B'Elanna had shielded her eyes from it--or rather the light.  Later, she would sit on the bench to brush her hair while Tom, leaning up in the bed against the dull white plaster wall, worked and read aloud.  When she was done, she would crawl onto the bunk to join her mate...

    Janeway exhaled, her eyes closed.  She could see it, B'Elanna's little grin as she tucked herself into Tom's arm, see him kiss her head, share the datapad he was working on, or perhaps put it aside... 

    She left the room, trying hard to avoid looking at anything again.  There were too many memories there that weren't even hers, too much to come to terms with, too few answers, too much she wanted to ask and say--even order and command--but simply couldn't. 

    Maybe it wasn't for her to know and she should just leave it be.

    Three weeks later, Kathryn stared at the glowing blue core and sighed heavily.

    Poor Anai had tried so hard to save their feelings.

    Why? crossed her mind yet again, and she stifled her tears, shook her head of it, turned away from that calming aura that she'd felt some strange need to see before returning to the bridge.  A need to pay her respects, maybe.

    Still trying to come to terms, she believed more.

    Nothing seemed real now as she moved into the turbolift and called for deck one.  The soft greys blended together in the sleek, sure lines of Starfleet design, and the lights that passed noted the destination as steadily upwards.  Everything seemed so far away, the clothes on her body, her voice when she had spoken, the soft "whirr" of the lift. 

    She could not believe she was doing what she was.  Her denial was almost as strong as it had been when she first heard Anai tell them that their crewpeople had died.  At the same time...

    Janeway walked onto the bridge without disruption, pausing a moment as she stared down at the presently unmanned conn.

    Tom Paris.  She could see his face so clearly, the way it looked the first time she'd addressed him, the wonder and caution she thought she saw in that first glance.  He'd been so young, for all his pretenses of worldly wisdom.  He'd been a boy looking for a future, looking to redeem the hell that he had made of his life, to be accepted and loved and to believe in that utterly.  He did just that and so much more--more being matters he likely had never planned and wouldn't have believed possible for himself, even things he would never have sought.

    And yet, once achieved, it had suited him, Kathryn thought.  His father would be proud to see so much had come of his son.  It would give the admiral some comfort--or at least she hoped it would, when someday she would have to face the man...  If they got home, she would have to tell the admiral.

    My God, where would I start? she suddenly asked herself, but breathed against that.  Definitely, it was a thing to consider some other time.

    Moving to the main of the bridge, she met her commander's eyes.  Chakotay's gaze was gentle, understanding, equally involved--equally pained.

    A couple of weeks ago, they had met while walking to the personnel transport that would take them through the length of Desalian space to Antral territory.  There, they would spend a few days in the capital city with Marise Kichyrn, who like Yasis had gotten word of the crew's presence the day they had arrived, but had patiently waited for Anai's duties to be completed before inviting them to meet her.

    Though he seemed to be anxious to see Nicoletti's elderly daughter, Chakotay was visibly tired, or at least tense.  Having fallen back into her poor sleeping habit, she had to ask after him.

    "I usually don't go into details about my vision quests," he explained then noted her polite nod.  Considering it a moment, he shrugged.  "But we've talked about this.  I'd said that maybe it was time to stop trying to find them, but now...  It's time to let them go, Captain.  The story is over, and Tom and B'Elanna died doing exactly what they wanted--they died happy.  Kurt and Sue had full lives here, families, careers..."  He sighed, full of the resolution he was still trying to accept.  "They met me in my quest this last time to say goodbye."

    Janeway nodded slowly.  "I suppose it is time to."

    "They said we couldn't turn things back to the way they were," Chakotay continued, his stare on the path before them, too, "and so there's no use in creating empty hope.  Sashana'i had tried, but what she wanted couldn't be done.  The stories were painted to return them to us as best they could, to balance fate in the only way left to.  So, you can only let go, take their lessons with you and move on."

    She knew at least one of those lessons.

    But she couldn't do it.  She couldn't keep it inside as Anai had, so patiently, all that time.  Telling him could have defeated Anai and Ara's purpose, it seemed to her by then.  Still, Chakotay eventually would have to know.  He deserved the truth, would want it.

    Of course, she'd wanted truth, too.  And look what that got me, she thought, but decided on her instinct, anyway.

    "When we return from Antral," she said quietly,  "meet me in my ready room.  I'd like to talk about this, privately."

    He furrowed his brow.  "Something wrong, Captain?"

    A week after she brushed aside the query, Chakotay looked as pale as he had when they came through the Barrier--and as much at a loss for words.  For some time, he didn't say anything, but leaned up in his seat as if to stand.  Then he rethought the move and simply stilled, let out his breath slowly.

    "This is going to take time," he admitted. He stared at his hands as they flexed and straightened then fell to rest on his knees.  "They won't see anybody?"

    "They're preparing for their deaths," Janeway choked, her face tight as she related it, and then falling as she realized what she was saying to him.  "I'm sorry."

    He paused, considering some unknown point across the room.  Silently resolving to deal with it--there was little other choice but to, as the elders probably knew well beforehand--he looked up at her and finally said,  "It's going to be hard to keep this between us."

    "Consider it their dying wish," she told him.  "Angry as I am with them for deceiving us, I'm not about to overturn all their efforts, Chakotay.  I hate what they did, but I know they didn't do it to hurt us."

    "They were looking out for us, protecting us...maybe even protecting themselves, too."  He had spoken from his sunken heart, still reeling with the realization.  It all--all he had seen in his vision quests--suddenly made sense.  To his shame, he didn't see it sooner.  The captain seemed to share that sentiment, seemed to have already been where he was--if she wasn't there still.  "It's probably been hard on them, seeing us."

    "Or maybe there really is nothing left of Tom and B'Elanna but the memories," she said emptily.

    Chakotay did not reply.

    Standing on the bridge eight days later, looking towards the viewscreen, she believed it more.  They had indeed let go and moved on when they needed to decide on their future--and Kathryn knew she would, too.

    She didn't have a choice.  She didn't want to accept it--couldn't accept it.  How many times have I had to do this? she scolded herself.  As an officer alone, I've had to go against what I wanted almost on a daily basis, lost young officers before, made tough choices.  This should be like any other command decision.

    That wasn't a "command decision" and she knew it.  There was nothing to decide and no way to change what had been done.

    She had no choice but to simply make Ara and Anai's long-standing purpose worth their trouble by thanking them for all they had done.  Though Anai never finished her painting and avoided company after that last night, she had done what she could to help Voyager, the crew and had done exactly what she and Ara had promised.  They had shared the stories of Be'i and Toma and Kathryn could at least acknowledge that the elder had given them more than any record could, brought that history alive for them.  Anai had also given her friendship, which though short, would never be forgotten.

    Kathryn felt almost as though she was losing her own family.  In a way, she was--and not just for losing her lieutenants.

    But if she had it to do all over again...

    "Captain," said Kim quietly,  "Captain Havetsi has contacted us from the east gate.  She's ready to transport."

    Janeway glanced back, blinked a nod.

    As she had when Voyager arrived at Desalia-Four, Havetsi would be the escort, though that time, only Kathryn had been invited to the family ceremony.  Havetsi was quick to say that it was not an insult.  The family passing ceremony, like kraja ceremonies, was an intimate event:  It was rare to populate them excessively.  Only during Unar occupation had it been a communal practice; there were usually many corpses to tend to and because it was a method of sharing and teaching the tradition.  After the war, the tradition swung easily back to the older and more private way.

    For that matter, the public honors had already been celebrated a week before, in Desal and throughout Irllae.  Dignitaries and other leaders, even a few old friends--very old friends--had come to grace their last public appearance, wrought with all the pleasant formality and gentle dignity that the Desalians were known for, making a celebration out of a sad event.

    Aside from that gathering, the elders had kept themselves in solitude.  Ara's meagre strength was fading quickly, the family said.  Having ceased supporting him, Anai had finally allowed his illness to claim her, too.

    "In other cases," Beshelli explained gently as they walked through the various gatherings in the Institute mall,  "the bondmate would permit the illness immediately.  When my nali-Tejani, my grandmother, was first afflicted with her illness twelve years past, Be'otala allowed it within him, too.  They passed together, in peace and without suffering, to our blessed ancestors two du'ave after.  For their duty, Nali has persisted with Tola for ten rallkle, using her remaining strength to maintain them among the living.  To resist passing at such an age is rather unusual among us."

    "They remained alive for us," Kathryn nodded.

    "There remained a promise to serve, were it possible to fulfill it," Beshelli confirmed.  "It was not known when you would arrive."

    Kathryn's jaw tensed as she exhaled.  Much as she understood, she didn't like it.  "Beshelli, just tell me this:  Why did Anai, Babaki, Havetsi--all of you--say that Be'i and Toma were dead?"

    "Dead bears no meaning among us, good lady.  I would think the word you seek is 'passed.'"  Patiently, Beshelli met the lady's eyes again to try to explain it.  "Kathri, the life of a scholar is utterly separate from that of a child.  When one becomes a novitiate and chooses their name of being, they relinquish their youth utterly.  We may recall that earlier time and continue to take lessons from it, yet we are equally divorced of it.  It is another life, which is sacrificed for the assent into the novitiate and, afterwards, a life of learning and teaching. 

    "All Desal accepts this as truth, and thus what you see as a lie is to us a simple omission of origin, one which is entirely customary to all but parents and siblings.  Thus, you cannot rebuke us too harshly.  Nali and Tola's sacrifice was far more necessary and complete, for the trauma they suffered in bringing themselves to that place in life was severe.  More than any other scholar at present, Anai and Ara of Cezia are parted absolutely from their childhood beings.  In a manner, that Be'i and Toma passed on the field at Desal is truth.

    "There has been deception and secrecy--this is a truth--yet it must be known that Nali gave herself to you truly, without pretense.  The lady you have seen and spoken with is the same we have loved through our lives.  Nali's asking us not to recall their origins to you was a crime of duty to what she and Tola felt was best, which we trust explicitly."

    Beshelli kept the captain's stare solidly in hers.  "This sun, had I not earlier, I see they showed wisdom in their decision.  You already bear the pain of your most natural weakness--the power you lack in this matter.  Nali and Tola wished only to shield you from this while bearing the fruit of their promise and deciding what is meant of their passing.  --This was the whole of it, Kathri.  No more.  Had they cared any less, remembered you any less dearly, such pains to protect you in this matter would not have been taken.  Nali would have borne little trouble in completing the painting as planned, would they have remained among the living so many rallkle at all."

    When Beshelli excused herself and returned to her family, Kathryn turned and stared at the procession she had come to see.  The elders, supported by their eldest daughters, made their way through the paths cleared for them to the prepared seating area.  Once they had arrived and settled there, the memorials began.

    What had Sashana'i and Aratra been planning?  Janeway wondered as Mar'lli began to speak of her parents, of their strong yet gentle hearts, their dedication, their mass and variety of teaching. 

    The near desperate need for redemption of her "criminal acts" had produced a plan once Sashana'i began to use B'Elanna and Tom's natural gifts for Desal's gain.  What balance did Sashana'i want to attain by trying to return the four to their birthpeople?  A balance of fate...  It was more like arranging for Tom and B'Elanna, Susan and Kurt to live out their "originally intended" lives, a life in process before Sashana'i had interfered and begged fate for the diversion that indeed had helped rescue Irllae from its doom.

    But how?  Anai had never confessed it completely, had only mentioned the transporter technology that Novren had been instructed to dig up from the floating scrap yards.

    Did they discover it to be unsuccessful?  Did Ara and Anai incur difficulty or some untoward effects in the plasma field and so gave it up?  Be'i and Toma both were noted as not wanting to return to their previous lives.  As the years passed, it would only be logical that those feelings would grow stronger.  The two known as Susik and Derra had already found their ends after good lives they seemed to have chosen freely.

    They had, however, mentioned wanting to meet their former crewmates again.  Why the elders allowed themselves to remain unrecognized was still somewhat troublesome for Kathryn to ponder.  Then again, the elders certainly had gained enough years to have plenty of time to think about it, to reconsider the options.  Maybe they decided that it was better for the crew to remember people they knew at least a little, rather than two aged, alien regents.

    Janeway could see them thinking something like that up, though the reasoning still didn't seem quite right.  Of course, nothing did just then.

    Ara and Anai looked so frail, so tired, she noticed, much paler and slower to move.  Each time one or the other held out a hand, it shook; their eyes wandered, their heads bowed easily.  And yet, dressed in all their regents' finery and ornaments, essentially attending their own wake for their people's comfort, they still were cheerful, laughing easily and remembering often, humbly accepting the thanks of their people when they gave it.  The stories of their work in Desalia-Four alone lasted well into the evening for there being so much to tell of their century.

    Janeway could barely watch it, torn between joining them and wanting to return to her nice, safe ship, crystal clean and almost complete--just about ready to go.  The cool streams of stars as they traveled at warp nine, pointed at sector zero-zero-one, were suddenly so inviting to her...

    What in the hell happened that day that it would bring them, a century later, to this?  she finally wondered.  A beautiful, full life, society, family, but consumed with that one lingering desire...

    Before they moved into a more private "celebration," Ara and Anai publicly thanked all who had come--and all of Desal and Irllae for their goodness and peace. 

    "No greater contentment could have been achieved," Ara said, his voice but a sliver, but warm with genuine regard, "than with the peace and prosperity which speaks of Irllae now.  Once a dream, long prayed among our spirits, it became truth, our lives' work, and our family's single desire.  Yet it is for you this truth exists, and through you and our openness to all our ancestors' blessings, teachings and sacrifices, this shall continue.  We bear faith in this, good friends, family, and Irllae.  The spirits guide us all, as always...until the stars reunite us among the ancestors."

    She could have cried right there for that--almost did.  She wanted to call them out, demand her answers all over again.  She wanted to know more than she had in the beginning and just couldn't understand...

    She turned and walked away.

    It wasn't the time or the place.  Maybe it never was.  Maybe it truly was futile to even consider wanting more.

    They did deserve peace.  They'd more than earned it.

    Kathryn grit her teeth all the way back to her ship, and then to her quarters, where she might have paced a hole in a lesser floor.  There was something else going on and the elders were being stubbornly silent--again.  More, she didn't want to let go of them now that she knew who they were.  She hated them for making her accept it, nearly fooling her into thinking Tom and B'Elanna had died and for making her like them so much.  She hated herself for letting it happen in the first place...even if she wouldn't have changed Desalian history if she could.

    They certainly wouldn't have, either.

    The stories were done.  Now they could die.

    She couldn't accept that.  She finally decided that she couldn't accept it.  Not again.

    She would have to live with that, though.  As much as she wanted a choice in the matter, she would have to be like any good Desalian--or like the steel hearted captain she could be--and let them go, put the ship into warp and move on.  They got on with their own lives.  She would too.

    That was a week ago.  A few days after the ceremony, Ara had begun his final descent as he and Anai took their afternoon nap in their chamber, reclined against the pillows.  The family had been preparing for their passing since.

    Their great-great granddaughter's eyes were still tired, slightly swollen, when she contacted Voyager.

    Later, in her ready room, Kathryn found herself staring at a point on her desk, unable to think at all, or cry, or spite it, or even force the issue.  There was no issue to force anymore.

    Beshelli was right.  It hurt like hell, and she was back to step one.

    Her people were dying all over again.  She wished she'd never figured it out.

    She wished she'd listened to Tuvok in the first place and not taken the risk of coming into the plasma field, of ever knowing the Desalians.

    But obviously, it was fated to happen.  She cursed that, too, wondered how the Desalians could live simply accepting fate as they did, how Tom and B'Elanna had ever, despite their circumstances, learned to be at peace with it.

    Despite her responsibility as the blood heiress of Allanois, Havetsi had requested the duty of bringing the captain.  Kathryn suspected that had she any of Tom or B'Elanna in her at all, she would also want to get away from the formalities for a while, even in those last hours and minutes before taking on the lifetimes of generations.  Then again, Ara and Anai would understand that, as well.  They probably encouraged her to come when the idea struck her.

    The transporter shimmer was a silent one.  Typically Desalian, it bothered nothing and was as aesthetically pleasing as it was an example of their stable, assured technology.  In the wash of blue, Havetsi's form appeared in the center of the bridge, her fair hands held before her.  But though everyone there had seen her every day for the past six weeks, the bridge crew paused appropriately when the soon-to-be regent of Desal appeared.

    Though not lavish by any means, she looked the role in her formal, well-fitted coat of embroidered blue silk, open around the collar and shoulders.  The slits up the sides parted to reveal an amber undergown and dark leggings, and her white robe hung upon her arms.  Hung around her waist and pinned into her thick brown braid tiers were simple orange beads on thin chains.  A full complement of white scarves, woven into her braids and around her head, completed her ornate headdress and drifted nearly to the floor behind her.

    Aside from a touch of balm on her lips and cheeks, she wore no cosmetics, and her posture seemed at home in that array.  Her gaze was content, aware; her smile was bittersweet--accepting but hopeful.

    Simply, the regent Yusi would have approved.

    "Zha llast nya'o," Havetsi said, touching the indigo on her temple with her left hand and bowing, her gown and robe pooling onto the floor as she did.  A full moment later, she drew herself upwards, circling her temple then offering her fingers to those watching her.  Then, she offered her hand to the captain.

    Kathryn took another breath, stepped forward.  "Thank you for coming, Havetsi."

    "My honor to bring you to my nali and tola now, Kathri," she said, drawing from her robe a long, embroidered sash.  "Yet not as an outsider.  You are a sister among us and shall always be remembered as such."

    She moved forward and reached around Kathryn's torso to tie the sash at her waist.  "I shall not bind you tightly, good kini'isi," she said lightly, and then smiled to hear the captain's small laugh.  "Ka, Kathri--this is a time to celebrate memory and life, to bear joy and learning in our recollections."

    As Havetsi's stare met hers again, Kathryn sighed through the same smile.  "I haven't been doing this as long as you have," she said, trying.  "You'll have to forgive me if I'm not as accepting."

    "This is understood," Havetsi replied softly.  Turning to her right, she opened her arms and moved to embrace Chakotay.  Her smile grew to feel his strong, warm arms return the gesture.  "We shall meet again," she said, a traditional Desalian farewell,  "when the blessed spirits call us as one."

    "It's been an honor, Havetsi," he said, managing a grin for the woman...B'Elanna and Tom's descendent. 

    The deer, darting in the path of his vision...  It seemed too plain to him then, especially in her expression, so direct yet with a touch of mirth, that little curl on her full, red mouth.  If he hadn't given his word to the captain--and for that matter, were there time--he would rather have taken Havetsi aside just he used to do with B'Elanna and get the answers that he and Janeway both wanted.  On the other hand, he suspected that was why Janeway was going to the surface, why the elders had asked her to come.

    A part of him wished he'd been invited as well, though.  He wanted to meet them again, knowing who they were.  But he could see why they would only want the captain there.  It'd been difficult enough for them just to tell the stories.  So, he just took a breath, held his small smile and said,  "Coming to know all of you has been very important to us.  Thank you...for everything."  He did mean that.

    Havetsi understood.  "It was my honor to share, dear friend."  She reached again into a fold in her robe and extracted a slender bound file from a hidden pocket.  "To aid your memory," Havetsi told him, placing the file in his hand.  "Yet only when I am left just now, look.  We would wish no thanks for it, only acceptance."

    "What is it?"

    "Patience, Chakotay," she smiled, reaching up to touch his marked forehead.  "As I have at times managed such an art, it would be certain you might bear similar potential." 

    His responsive laugh, short but real, was pleasing enough a goodbye for her.

    Without further ceremony, she touched her comm pin and looked around to all the faces she had come to know over their time there.  "With peace and as one, all my friends, take yourselves.  You shall be remembered well and dearly."

    With that, she took Kathryn's hand and touched her pin again.  A moment later, they dematerialized, as silently as Havetsi had come.

    Chakotay waited for the beam to disperse completely before turning his eyes down to the file.  When she handed it to him, he had hoped it might be what he wanted.  But they had been told that there were no images from the occupation in the open archives...

    In the *archives,* he thought again and felt his lips twist upwards.

    Turning up the catch and opening the cover, he first found a few replica pages of etchings--schematics with half Federation standard and half Desalian characters and notes on the edges, all drawn out by hand in dark red ink.  Tom and B'Elanna's plans--one replicator, one ship's systems, another thing that looked like a power node.  They had both written on them, front and back, a little sloppily, certainly not thinking that it would be an artifact someday.

    When he flipped the last page, he had to squint at what he suddenly saw...

    It was there again, that eerie feeling of presence that had never left him since they arrived in that region, when he listened to the stories, when he took his vision quests and came away empty handed.  Then, when Captain Janeway had asked him to her ready room to tell him about Ara and Anai.  Or at the elders' wake, when he numbly watched from his comfortable distance, knowing he would not disturb those near-strangers' happy community as much as he'd wished he could.  He hadn't sorted it all out--as much as he knew Janeway hadn't, either.  But that time...

    "You might want to see this, Harry," Chakotay said, unable to draw his eyes away from the images, and even less able to collect the choke of breath caught in his lungs.

    Below at the gates of East Desal, Janeway turned a look at the younger captain.  "You gave it to him, didn't you?"

    "A copy of it," Havetsi grinned as she bowed to the greeting of another there.  "I thought he might appreciate it."  She took the lady's hand again.  "Ab, Kathri.  Nali and Tola await us."

    With that, they began, their pace respectfully moderate.  That particular street was not busy, but people still cleared the way for the women, knowing what they walked to.  Though offering a small smile, the various denizens did not disturb their motion but with a breathed prayer for the easy passing of their beloved regents, and then respectful quietude.

    Havetsi held her head pleasantly proud for the tradition and their sentiments.  Indeed, the street became quiet enough that the rustle of her heavy garments echoed against the whitewash structures around them.  Her left hand remained at rest on her upper abdomen, her eyes thoughtfully pointed towards the flagstone pavement, all as was proper in her place.

    Kathryn still did not know what to say.  What was there to say but "thank you" and "I'll miss you" and other empty sentiments, which really wasn't what she wanted?  Rather, she wanted to cry, to debate it, to find options and methods--order them to...  To do what?

    Almost a week ago, the day after the memorial, the Ki'ial came with yet another batch of deuterium and various other supplies.  While her co-captain Dejorra assisted Tuvok with the inventory and the crews unloaded the canisters and crates, Havetsi took Janeway aside for a cup of tracha.

    "You have not viewed a portrait of Nali and Tola in their youth," she said quietly, setting aside the lists they had completed.  "Nor has Desal but those who happened by the study and spied this.  It was retained as well by Nali and Tola, with their memoirs."

    Havetsi meant it as a kindness, she believed, but Kathryn felt her heart lurch to see how very much they had changed, how much they seemed to belong there...and not on Voyager.

    Holding their brown-haired and properly fashioned son on the steps of the dais in Azlre's square, Be'i and Toma of Azlre were certainly older than the officers they had been.  As tan as he had grown, she had remained fair for her many years in the shade of her cloak hood.  Their broken bones had healed but their facades were changed; their temple markings were crinkled with their grins.  Their day clothes were native Cezian from their cloth wrap shoes to their lightweight, fitted coats and casual muslin scarves.  Beside them and a step above, two similarly attired Desalians sat in a partial embrace, likewise cheerful for the portrait.  The woman's intricate brown braids and scarves and the man's red-blond spikes poking out of his headdress told her it was Sashana'i and Aratra.  Kurt was sitting on the other side with Yasis on his lap; both were attempting to stop snickering for at least a moment.  Susan, long haired, wearing a thick wrap dress and straight boots and kneeling by a girl--Marise--at the bottom, was pointing to the imager.  She was smiling, but her eyes were far older.  Placid and well postured in their airy clothing and handsomely tied white scarves, an elderly couple, Bakali and Bala, sat on the flagstone street beside them.  A grey-haired man and a strawberry-haired lady, likely Dalra and Miztri, stood at the corner of the steps, patiently allowing the image to be captured.

    The four there she recognized--barely, at that--were not the people she knew.  It'd been too much time, too much life on their own in the alien cultures they'd adopted, too many struggles and acceptances that molded them into what that portrait boasted.

    The people Kathryn knew were gone.  They no longer existed.  The Unar had cut them off them ages ago and Irllae had taken the wilted branches and set them into their waters.  There, they formed roots and flourished.  The original plant was dead--and necessarily.

    There was nothing she could do--no hope to be had. 

    She wanted that hope, though, at least some way to try, to try to find a way...to do the impossible:  To turn it all back again, erase the past.  But she'd known that she wouldn't do that, either.  It had been worth all the sacrifices, every one of them.  Anai and Ara both knew that, knew that continuing and upholding what they'd helped to do was more important than anything.

    The trees and thick coral daknas, the typically white houses and corner glowglobes all passed slowly, blurring in her peripheral vision.  She had become used to that walk and those buildings, the breezes and scents, and even the people on that street.  The style of the city was much like Azlre, except that most of the Cezian city's structures were a combination of flats interconnected in three and four story buildings.  More stately and carefully planned, housing in Desal usually meant three-story mansions with ample gardens stretching back from the street, suitable for a few generations of extended family.  The rains, more common, allowed more lush flora and trees.

    Ara and Anai had watched the Voyager crew carefully, made their decision not to reveal themselves.  Taking example of their own honored spirits, they gauged their guests' responses then chose to give them a better chance to let go.

    Unwillingly, Kathryn also made her choice, just as they turned at the fork in the street to another, where on the next corner sat the sprawling Allanois residence.  It was tall and typically whitewashed, with arched, flower-draped windows.  A short set of half-circle steps lead up to its large, windowed doors, and to the side and behind sat its exquisite garden.  In all, the Allanois house was another example of everything they had worked for:  A well-kept home on a stable homeworld, a happy, relatively carefree but upright, educated family, a place for friends, community and love--and secrets kept for what they felt was the better good.

    As they approached the steps, Cera appeared at the entrance, dressed, like his bondmate, in his bonding day's clothes: red and umber silks and a robe of white that trailed slightly behind him as he came down the stairs to take his lady's hand and bow deeply to Kathryn.  Havetsi in turn touched the captain's arm, asking once more with her eyes.

    Taking a deep breath, straightening the sides of her uniform, Kathryn knew the one thing she wanted to say.

    The house was decorated and filled with family, all in formal attire.  Somewhere in another room, a soft song was playing and the essence of some rich spice was heavy in the air.  Babaki came forward first to embrace and kiss her, and then Mar'lli and her twin sister Kyori, then Kolana and Petalla--Ara and Anai's five surviving children.  The younger family members also greeted her, all in peace and gentle thanks for her presence, in friendship and love.

    "We have visited them," Babaki told her as she helped Kathryn through the front hall,  "and received their blessings.  You and their heirs are all who remain in their wishes."  The woman, glancing back to Osna for a moment, touched Janeway's temple softly.  "I promise, good lady, at the start I was ignorant of you and yet willingly remained silent upon realization.  I hope someday we may be forgiven...our own wishes."

    Kathryn shook her head.  "No, Babaki," she said quietly,  "I think I understand why."

    The older woman smiled.  "Perhaps."  Touching her again, she bowed her head respectfully.  "Take yourself with peace, Kathri.  We shall meet again."

    Kathryn had to clear her throat for the lump forming there as she stepped onto the stone staircase, following Havetsi and Cera slowly upward, around the natural turn in the steps and up to the second level.  At the end of a wide hall there sat two doors, draped with embroidered cloth and trimmed with flowers.  On the floor in the corner, a bowl steamed with essence.

    Her breath caught, but she forced herself to relax, to straighten, pull up her head and put on a face that would be more proper for saying good-bye, for wishing them well.

    Havetsi and Cera stopped before the door to kneel, their heads bowed, wafting a stream of the essence to their faces.

    "Tsa alji'irra mo'enad alv," they said in unison,  "ke'em ra'is zhatsoll abil."

    Janeway felt her entire body numb to view the scene, so beautiful with all the lush fabrics and gentle motions.  It almost didn't seem real.

    But then they found their silk-wrapped feet and, looking back, Havetsi offered Kathryn a smile--a pure, sweet smile beneath her clear gaze.  Gesturing with a turn of her hand, she helped Kathryn forward to the threshold, where she led her to kneel, helped her bathe her face in the cooling, fragrant steam.  Kathryn closed her eyes to feel it penetrate her, the scent and the moisture.

    "Within this chamber, I find spirits on the edge of eternity," Havetsi whispered for her,  "thus the stars shall bless our way here."

    With Cera's polite assistance, Kathryn stood again as Havetsi pressed upon the doors.  They eased open without noise, revealing the bright, airy room within.

    She swallowed against her tears, even if they came anyway, to see the tableau.

    Upon a bed of knotted blankets and several soft, embroidered pillows, at the far corner of the room, next to one of the wide-open windows, lay the bondmates, utterly still.

    Kathryn stepped nearer, her eyes roaming up the white robe and maroon coat draped over the side of the bed and pooling on the floor.  Beneath it, covering a tiny body and accented by ornaments, was a sap green gown etched with same-colored embroidery.  Its length did not completely cover her dark wrap shoes.  Braided into and around a crown of deep silver braids and long, jeweled hair was a sheer blanket of scarves.  Beside, under a voluminous white robe, was a noble, dark green coat with blue embroidery, tied at the waist with an equally ornate sash.  The long, blue tunic beneath was laced to the collar with colorful braided rope.  The boots below the dark umber trousers were wrapped to the knees and tied with thin chain.  The white headdress above it all was slightly crooked.

    The two within it all looked at peace; their eyes were closed, their mouths pleasantly turned in their rest.  Anai lay on her back with Ara spooned on his side beside her, as if they slept.  So ancient.  So kind.  Almost gone.

    Kathryn breathed a heavily controlled sob away, forcing herself to remember the Desalians' way.  It was for them--not herself--she was there.

    She had to let them go.  She owed them that much.

    She didn't want to; she had to ask, wanted another day, another month.

    Kathryn sat, hardly moving the soft mattress as her weight depressed its side.  She blinked a set of tears, staring at those ancient faces, loving them somehow, too, even if she could honestly say she barely knew them, despite everything she had been told.  Those gentle, beautiful elderly people had remained alive for her and her crew, had wanted so much to give them all they had, while also protecting them.  How she wanted to know them more, know them again...

    Reaching out to touch Anai's cheek, Kathryn cupped her chin tenderly, seeing all over again the difference, feeling it through the cool, sallow skin.  The lady breathed a little more at the contact.  Kathryn's lips turned up slightly to see it.

    Anai of Cezia's bright hazel eyes pulled open, her drooping lids like weights upon the motion.  But it was not enough to prevent her from taking in the sight of the pretty captain, sitting there in her neat dress uniform with her hair pinned just so.  Put together so properly and there to say goodbye, yet full with tears for a loss she completely understood that time.  Knowing, but not accepting, the elder could tell.  The child could not go that far.  Anai had not expected her to.  Indeed, she remembered her former captain all too well.

    Anai pulled her hand up to the younger lady's fingers, paused, and then patted it.  The tenderness of the act nearly erased the remainder of Kathryn's self-control.

    "Oh Anai," she choked, shaking her head as she stroked the woman's cheek, "why didn't you tell us?"

    Anai sighed through the tiny smile she managed.  "I could not...make you hope," she whispered, "for a thing impossible.  We could not...disappoint you...in such a way."

    Kathryn breathed a short laugh for that, having her suspicions again confirmed.  "I'd have had a little something rather than nothing," she told her.  "You should have remembered that much about me."

    Her smile turned a bit aside.  "Ka, Child...this is truth.  And yet, we have pained you exceedingly."  Her stare grew wiser still as Kathryn shook her head again.  "Gye, we have....  Forgive us.  We wished only...to see whether it was meant."

    "If what was meant, Anai?"

    "Beneath this sun, Kathri, your forgiveness for the pain we have brought...and shall bring.  I lie here with my bondmate yet wondering whether it should be meant.  Even at present, you ponder possibility yet again.  This has not been a simple matter for us."

    The captain shook her head.  "I still don't know what you're getting at," she said.  "Why can't you just tell me?"

    "Sashana'i wished we return to our birthpeople," she said, her thin voice but a rough rake in the air,  "our bodies and minds restored to how you knew us.  She labored and planned diligently for our sakes, and upon her and Aratra's passings, the remainder of the research was left to us.  It shall not succeed as planned, however.  It was attempted, in her honor, and perhaps...perhaps for our own curiosity as well.  We did see the sense in it...a good thing, a completion.  Yet this was not to be.  Ara and I both now regret this.  Your forgiveness, Kathri..."

    Kathryn swallowed, seeing the apology in the lady's eyes.  It was so clear just then, the captain could remember precisely the last time she had seen the expression.  Blinking her tears away, she stroked the old woman's wrinkled cheek again.  "B'Elanna..."

    "Gye, Captain."  Anai's thin fingers closed over those young, warm ones, softly though her gaze had grown solid.  "She no longer exists, and she could not be resurrected, nor could Tom.  Thus, the deception continued.  We wished...wished that you recall your friends as strong and noble and as they were when they truly were themselves.  I did not wish to tell you they still lived in our bodies, deep within us...yet were not our selves, not our truth.  That which makes us Ara and Anai shall never be erased or buried.  We would have given ourselves back to you had it not been for this.  Forgive us, Captain, as our insecurity in this matter...has given you such pain.  It was not intended."

    "There was nothing to forgive...  Well," Kathryn paused to reconsider that, and also how honest she wanted to be just then, "maybe I was angry for a while, but--"

    "You bore awareness," Anai whispered, watching the lady's expression betray her again,  "yet you have not asked.  Havetsi has told me you struggle...with your own acceptance."

    Kathryn's eyes turned down as she nodded.  "I wanted to hear it--your explanation, like you promised me.  But I couldn't ask it of you."

    "Ka, I did promise you...so much promised...so much in my life."  Anai's head turned up as her gaze drifted.  "How much...happiness, anxiousness, we bore when...first we saw you."  She blinked slowly, controlling her own emotion well for all her practice.  "So strange, to see you again, like another's dream, and yet, ka, it belonged to us.  Ara and I had wished, but to bear knowledge of you all...but once more....  For our histories to be heard by our family--both our families--promised more importance to us...than even you might suspect.  It was our closure."

    She almost didn't say it, but Anai stroked her thumb again, turned her head into her hand, staring up at her with a regard that she couldn't interpret.  "Anai, to be honest," she said thickly,  "you were right:  I don't think that's going to be enough for me.  We'll have lost you all over again--and frankly I didn't handle the first time well."

    "Kathri, those youths cannot return.  We attempted to make the balance our siblings had desired.  It simply was not meant to be."

    Kathryn started to hear her repeat it, to realize that the two had tried whatever they'd planned, tried to make it work--and not so unwillingly as she might have thought.  She leaned closer.  "Then we can try again, find another way.  With all our people working on it, maybe we can go about it differently, maybe--"

    "My people shall not recall such unnaturalness in Ara and me," Anai stated.  "This sun's outcome shall be made by your place in fate.  No more shall be done by us."

    "What fate, Anai," Kathryn asked her, "when you won't even let us help you?"

    "Help us?"  Anai laughed, barely for her state, though her eyes shone with it.  "Our memories of you bear more clarity than I once believed.  It was Sashana'i who begged us...bade we swear upon her passing moments to continue...with you.  For the sin of it alone, it would not have been considered had it not been for that plea.  And yet...her desire was pressed upon us; its purpose through her eyes could be seen when her memories settled within us.  For that reason, we wished to see whether her desires were meant, were possible.

    "Yet the outcome offered far less importance to us as it did her.  Her desire, inescapable within us, drove us.  She truly believed...that it was meant, the balance of fate, as did Aratra.  It tempts us even now, as...as I still hear her pleas....  It has never left us, Kathri.  We promised, upon her and Aratra's passings.  And we accepted it."

    "But you couldn't commit to it, because...?"

    "For it would not succeed as planned.  It was impossible...for Ara and me.  It was kept from you to prevent your attempting an impossible thing--for you would attempt it.  This much of your nature is indeed well remembered.  Yet you would only find disappointment in our denying your efforts.  We would not have that...when you have felt the losses of your own enough, as you yet admit now."

    Janeway sighed heavily with the truth of her statement and the understanding of her position.  "Yes.  But I would have at least liked to have had the chance to try."

    Anai exhaled; it was as much a sigh as much as a realization of exactly what she had put upon the lady before her.  It was not as much a hope lost as a hope disallowed.  "My apology...sincerely, Captain.  Again, it must be said, we never wished to bring you pain."

    Kathryn nodded, squeezing Anai's fingers before wiping hastily at her eyes.  "I know."

    With a soft stroke, Anai's fingers softly fell away from Kathryn's while her other hand tugged on Ara's fingers.  She nuzzled her head against his neck, closed her eyes to rouse him.  With a tiny, clicking inhale, he proved himself alive.  She pressed her fingers in his palm. 

    Kathri has brought herself, my spirit.  Have you heard?

    I have listened...

    With a greater effort than Anai's, Ara's eyes opened, first upon nothing, and then upon the captain.  He too felt that teary stare.  She knew exactly what she was looking at:  Corpses, really, of two youths she had taken under her wing, hiring one from a prison, giving the benefit of the doubt to the second.  It had not been very long ago in that captain's mind, only a year ago. 

    Ara understood in but that glance what Anai had sensed just then:  The woman's silent lament, far more acute than before, overwhelming desire knowing its own futility.  This time, Janeway knew precisely what had been lost.

    Kathryn had to swallow again to see the old man, Ara, his little smile unchanged as his eyes flickered over her, examining her briefly then finding her gaze:  So familiar, even then, and yet totally foreign in both hue and presence.  There was no trace of youth, uncertainty, or ignorance in him, without a doubt.  But the former pilot's peculiar intentness had not waned in the bargain, not with age, nor on his deathbed.  For the familiarity of his perusal, she half-expected him to grin and formulate something wry to break the gloom.

    The other half of her expectation held more truth, however.  He did not speak.  Instead, his fingers tightened upon his lady's palm as he watched Janeway try to keep herself together, try to smile back in a way he might recognize.  But she did not need to display such airs.  He recalled her well enough, and he had indeed been observant of her during the crew's visits, this aside from his bondmate's memories, which he shared in full.

    We did suspect she would know our truth, he sadly knew, and regret her desires.

    She aches anew, Anai agreed, yet more than the first time.  Our wisdom this past du'ave considered our difficulties, not this reality.

    This us agreed.  And yet, it is done.  It is what shall be next which matters now.

    Anai blinked as she felt Ara's finger tremble in her palm, pulled another hard breath to catch Kathryn's attention again.  "On the bureau, child," she rasped softly,  "there is a box...and within, the same gift I and Ara have bestowed upon our family."

    Breaking her stare at Ara, Kathryn looked.  With another glance at Anai, who nodded, she rose to move across to find a hand-carved box about forty centimeters square and twenty high.  Peeking inside, she saw a neat storage of data chips and a viewing device. 

    Their memoirs...all their stories, she understood.  The answers she sought, had wanted at first to demand from the old woman, had been annoyed not to get.

    Suddenly, that wasn't important anymore.  Not there, not with what was happening just then.  Two of her people, good people, well liked and talented, were dead.  Another two, young, troubled bridge officers whom she had taken a personal interest in, now only just discovered, were dying twice over. 

    She had come into the Barrier seeking those people, but she had missed their entire lives.  They had watched her, told her...

    Anai watched the lady's shoulders sag, tremble slightly, and she clutched her own small breath to see tears drop again from Kathryn's cheeks onto her pretty uniform.  Havetsi stood aside with Cera, politely silent.  The children's spirits were troubled at the sight as well, longing, hoping, knowing what could have been...yet would not be, because of their elders' rightful hold upon that fate.

    They care but for to hold onto what they know, should they be able, Ara's thoughts drifted within her.  She cannot accept.  She shall move forward, yet memory of us shall always bring her pain.  A commander's conscience...one sort known well here.

    We shall continue here in blood and spirit, Anai acknowledged, yet the others shall continue depleted.  We may have released them, yet they have been given no choice in the same.  For her and Kes the manner of it has been far more tragic.  We are needed, and yet we withhold.  The child wishes chance so.

    Kathryn turned, the box in her pale hands, thanking her with a small smile, still longing in her misted eyes.

    Perhaps we have acted wrongly for good reasons, as it is said.  Thus...?

    You cannot tell me you bear no mind about this, Ara.

    You know well how much I do.  Is this what you imagine to be meant, for all our consideration of the subject?  For all our stubbornness and silence?

    It is for her alone now, I would think.  She continued to regard the captain.  Her hands clenched the box as she swallowed again.  Or should it be that we toss one more element into the breeze for the chance of rain?  The fate we gamble remains ours this moment.

    One tightly held according to our desires.

    Far be it from us to be selfish.

    Had he the strength by then, he would have grinned at her point.  He could almost see her little smirk.  It shall not be an addition of pain, I would suppose, for her to bear at least the attempt, as she has said.

    Giving them all our truth was what we originally feared, however, she reminded him.

    That singular hesitance has not been relinquished, as well.

    And yet, it could be said little may be lost.  We have ended here.  All that was needed of us here is completed...

    And to pass with debt is what was least wished by us.  Yet our deep wishes remain.  Which shall be?

    The captain took a step back towards them, Havetsi and Cera's attention had returned to them as well.

    Fate must choose, ka, as there shall not be contentment in us to leave knowing we have bequeathed her such conscience.  To offer her the remainder would pay our debt.... Yet I so desire our passing.  This is truly felt, Ara.  I bear such tiredness, and so much has been done by us; we have worked so relentlessly these many years.  What purpose would be possible?

    I too would wish we would find our passing presently.  We shall rest, Anai...and in other manners, we never shall.  Our spirits shall remain unchanged regardless.  What their fate would make of us is the question.

    Turning her gaze, Anai found Ara's eyes.

    Not that our choices have ever been directly procured.  This is a risk for us to choose.

    Again--truth.  Yet we make of fate's response all we can, I should believe.

    As it has always been.  Only what is meant...

    Shall be.

    Her eyes closed.

    "There is another," Anai said and swallowed at the finality of their decision.  "The way must be cleansed, as a way yet exists."  Feeling the pains increase in her chest, she decided to carry it through.  "Upon the first shelf," she whispered,  "the small carved box.  Bring it."

    Havetsi and Cera both released their breath.

    Kathryn turned, confused by Anai's quick words and the two behind her, but soon found another, smaller case, about fifteen centimeters square.  Anai gave her a single nod.  Moving back to the bedside, the captain sat again.  Her swollen stare asked the question.

    "The first box," Anai answered softly, feeling a tremble begin in her and Ara's soothing thoughts follow it, "contains all our histories...our memoirs, all the answers you seek and far more:  In the front...coordinates and a program lie...which Kes and the Doctor have been endeavoring with--"

    "Kes?"  Kathryn looked at them, shaken from her tears with that little surprise.  "What--"

    "Hear me, Child," Anai cut in, painfully dragging her air.  Ara was trying, but his body possessed no strength; she had little left to hold him.  Nor did she attempt to, despite the ache.  "The first program is for...Susik and Derra.  The second case...open it."

    Kathryn placed the second box on her lap and pulled open the top--then stopped.

    "Beneath the charm, Kathri," Anai instructed in a halting whisper.  She did not have time to allow Kathryn a full perusal of the commbadge Gychak had carried, interesting as it might have been to the lady.  "Place the charm aside...for my children; look...to the rear of the box.  Behind the data chips, lies the other program Sashana'i...would have you possess, and what...we now give."

    Looking--glancing to the elders who watched her, glassy-eyed--Janeway found a small PADD tucked in behind the rest and extracted it.  With Anai's blink, she activated it.  In but a paragraph, she found her eyes widening at the summary explanation. 

    In that second, recognizing what the technical information was saying, she felt her tears stopping, her heart beating faster.  She turned a stunned stare back to Anai.

    Feeling her bondmate's cheek twitch, Anai decided one more time, resolved with what she knew would likely happen should she say it...

    "Use your best judgment, Child," she breathed, her smile faded, her eyes blankly set into Janeway's.  "What is meant to be, shall be done."  Her small hand turned with a shudder to take Ara's fully into hers.  "This is...no longer our fate...to grasp.  You have been...given the remainder, all which we initially were asked to give...even hope."

    Kathryn looked at Havetsi.  Her eyes had misted above her smile.  Cera, too, smiled and embraced his wife from behind.

    "Take yourself," Anai breathed, regaining the woman's attention,  "quickly, Kathri.  Or know...the spirits shall greet...ones who welcome them.  Know this most:  We regret nothing...have completed all that has been wished.  We have lived fully, most happily and are...at peace, now."

    Kathryn took up the PADD and the first box, clutching them against herself as she looked at the elders once more.  Their faces were indeed peaceful, and they no longer looked at her.  Ara's hand twitched in Anai's, his eyes fluttered as he tried for another breath.  Anai, breathing just before him, seemed to be keeping them alive at that point.

    "Thank you," was all Janeway could say before standing.  She would have touched them, embraced them, but there was no longer time, she realized, and her hands were full...in more ways than one.  The elders had just put their bodies and spirits in her hands--an undeniable act of trust, she understood completely.

    What in the world do I do with it now? flew into her mind...

    But then she saw the small, secret smile Anai gave to her spirit-children, still standing by.  Kathryn turned to see Havetsi indeed filled with relief and pride; in Cera, there was satisfaction.

    "Havetsi, Cera..."

    She shook her head and stepped forward to kiss her farewell.  "Obey our elders, good sister," she said, smiling.  "See after them with love, as we all of Desal would have it.  And remember us always, as we shall you."

    Kathryn looked again to Anai and Ara.  The former blinked a tiny nod of approval; her bondmate's lips twitched slightly.  "I promise," she said.

    With an embrace from Cera, an affectionate touch to her temple as well, Kathryn started out, taking one last look back to the unmoving bed, where the heirs already had arrived to receive the Allanois legacy.

    For all the time that had passed since she came to Desalia, there was so little left.

    "Zha hevrra," Kathryn told them.  Then she turned to leave, hurrying through the doors and to the stairway, already mentally plotting how long it would take her to get back to the gates, back up to Voyager, to the transporter controls, calling Kes and the Doctor...and she would definitely be having a talk with Tuvok for keeping that from her, too, promise or no.

    But first was activating the program and setting in the three separate coordinates...

    A little surprised but rather pleased when they saw all she carried, the family let her go without disturbing her path. 

    As she skipped out of the house and down the front stairs, pulling out the PADD again to read en route, Babaki and Osna found their way into the open door.  Smiling after the captain as she quickly disappeared in the street, they turned back to their brothers and sisters, who stole their last glance at the departing lady through the front windows.

    "Perhaps it is meant after all," Babaki said, leaning into Osna's arm.

    "Yet to what effect?" Osna mused.  "It would be interesting to know what shall come of it."

    "We shall see, among our ancestors," Mar'lli grinned back, turning her gaze up towards a point beyond them all.  "Yet, in all, it is done, and their spirits finally have acquired peace; their conscience is at rest, regardless of how their desires are tended."

    "Yes, my sister," Babaki agreed.  "There would be acceptance, were there nothing more."
 

    As a soft breeze tickled the chimes outside the window and rustling leaves teased dots of sunlight into the chamber, Cera carefully maneuvered himself to sit comfortably beside Ara.  Havetsi had already taken Kathryn's place on the other side of the elders, embracing Anai's left hand in both of hers.

    "You are beloved by us," Anai whispered, simple in her farewell.  "We shall await...our meeting again with pride and...contentment, in all of you.  Live in peace, with humility...yet strength...and with love...as always, Children."

    "We shall carry the line wisely, as you would have seen fit, Nali," Havetsi answered, "and shall leave it to the same.

    "Our child and all children present and following shall know and honor you both as we do," Cera added.

    Anai was pleased enough with that; she twitched her fingers.  Havetsi and Cera both got the message.  Respectively, they placed their hands atop their elders', running their center finger down the correct line of nerve, blinked slowly.  In return, both elders did the same, far more practiced in the art.

    "Zha hevrra," Ara breathed, the last of his strength saved for those final moments.  "This...sun...all...we bear...we give you..."

    "In the name," Anai finished,  "...of Allanois."

    The first thing Cera and Havetsi felt, however, was their love.
 

---

    Kathryn nearly tripped in her pace, but continued on, reading as she walked just under a run down the stone streets of Desal. 

    Nicoletti and Bendera, upon their deaths, had been placed in stasis by their families, knowing precisely what could come of it.  The bodies had been stored at a small medical facility just outside Desal.  The directions were relatively straightforward; the procedure was difficult but possible--with the proper modifications made to Voyager's transporter systems, as it were. 

    Little wonder Havetsi was so concerned about our transporters, she thought, glancing up to see the gates looming at the end of the avenue.

    Nicoletti and Bendera did not become Desalian, Janeway suddenly realized as she scrolled down.  For Paris and Torres, the kraja, their bonding, their meditation practices, scholarship and the resulting physiological reconfigurations from it all had made their neurological framework impossible to revert without significant risk to them--made tampering with the memories they possessed an unmanageable hypothesis at best and an even more complicated procedure if attempted.

    Anai and Ara gave her the plan anyway.  Out of pity?  Out of a sudden change of heart?  Out of their unending habit of tossing fate to the wind?  --Most likely the first.  Anai did not seem anxious to tell her about the second box, but had rather needed to decide on it...to commit completely.

    Now it was in their former captain's hands to follow her heart, too, to actively hope their promise was meant.

    She had little trouble with that.  She'd be damned if it was an impossible hope--a sentiment they had predicted.  Good thing they still know me.

    "Janeway to Bridge, prepare one for transport.  Send Kes to transporter room one and alert the Doctor to expect patients from the surface.  --He'll know what to do.  And instruct engineering to bring the upgraded transporter systems online."

    "*Captain?*"  It was Chakotay, predictably taken off guard.

    "I'll explain later," she returned, skipping up to a jog as she neared the gates.  "Just do it."
 

---

    A rain of consciousness, as like their bonding, or like the first memories they collected as scholars, but it was a rain that seemed unending, gently filling every crevice of the paths within them, pooling in corners, sinking into the rolling land...

    Havetsi collapsed into Anai's robes shortly after Cera had drooped onto the pillow beside Ara.  But the elders were not completed.  Far more careful in their transferal than their own inheritance had been, they opened each pathway using every proof of their training and century of experience, eased in the memory of one, paused to assess its stability then proceeded to the next.

    It progressed steadily, however.  Barely ten minutes into the procedure, they were nearing completion.  Naturally, the children were exhausted, overburdened, deluged with knowledge and details no training could have perfectly prepared them for.  Twenty-nine Allanois, plus several more collected along the way, the oldest ones slightly dimmed with time, the most recent quite vivid, the elders knew all too well how much it was to give--and receive.

    However, the children had borne their preparation well and did not resist, even by instinct.  Their bodies were limp, but their minds and spirits were open.  They drifted in and out of each moment, willfully not catching onto anything of interest--which was much, both in pain and pleasure, male and female, child and elder; one incomplete, all others ending at the point just before the passing, the histories poured in.  Indeed, the youths welcomed them all, felt them fill them seemingly to the edge of capacity until, finally, the lengthy bath of memories belonging to the elders was completed.

    Then, as suddenly as the wash of knowledge began, it stopped, and both pairs were left staring into each other's eyes on the plain of their consciousness and on that bed, knowing one another in every moment.  The elders held nothing but adoration in their regard; the new regents struggled to pull their heads upright, but did not force their responding smiles.

    You are the future...and we are of Desal's past.  You are the Allanois Regents, Desal's center among all and teachers of all that has been.  Be wise and kind in humility and giving, always, our blessed children.

    Upon all you have given, all yet to be gained in our futures, we promise you we shall.

    Until we meet again among the ancestors, Havetsi and Cera, be at peace, as we, Anai and Ara, now are.

    With that, Cera and Havetsi gently disengaged their contact, placed their elders' hands within each other's then positioned them again in the traditional manner for bondmates, curled into each other.  Before she stood away, Havetsi kissed them both tenderly in farewell.

    "Zhra'i ka, Nali, Tola...Anai, Ara Ceziati'o," she whispered and almost fell when she got to her feet.  With Cera's help, they managed themselves over to the pillows, where they gladly kneeled to pray for the spirits of their elders, and for their own in their new duty.

    Ara exhaled deeply, taking in his lady's scent, the perfume of her hair--just a tiny breath before his lungs allowed it to escape. 

    Anai's eyes drifted over briefly to the children, who prayed silently, and then to the mural of Mecrisop, looming past.

    They both saw it, the place where they knew...finally knew what their being would be, nearly a moon after the trauma of their creation....
 

---

    "Toma!  Be'i!"

    Sashana'i turned right after Aratra had, laughing aloud and waving roundly to the figures moving across the field, outside the gates of Desal.  "We have succeeded, my beloved siblings!"

    "Ka, we have, Sashana'i!"  Be'i called back, snuggling herself into Toma's arm as they trudged steadily forward.  "It is a sun for us all to be blessed by!"

    With another kiss, Aratra started towards them; Sashana'i skipped along after, practically glowing under Desalia's sun, finally risen.

    "One might think they had recently won a war, or the like," Toma quipped, earning Be'i's sidelong grin as he picked up their pace.  They were both exhausted; his side was killing him and she couldn't wait to close her eyes a while once her nerves settled.  That would have to wait, however.  Just then, they were more anxious to share that amazing victory with their siblings and friends.

    But then, Sashana'i stopped, squinting at something behind them.  She almost blocked it with a hand, but then she jerked her stare back to them.  "Toma!  Be'i!" she screamed.

    They turned and saw the Unar re-aim his pistol, instantly blinding them with the glare from the rising sun.  Toma swiftly swung Be'i around and down to the dirt, only looking up to see Aratra running for Sashana'i.

    "No!"  Be'i yelled, scrambling towards Aratra even as she heard the disruptor activate.

    At the same time, Toma whipped his hand down for his pistol--aimed...

    Aratra dove, but the disruptor beam struck him cleanly between the shoulder blades.  With a cry, he fell, the shot spreading across his back, through his bones...

    ...and fired--then again.

    Sashana'i gasped aloud and collapsed in mid-stride, just as the Unar officer fell under Toma's fire.

    Be'i froze.  "No," she breathed, staring, knowing...  "No, no, no, no...  No!  Sashana'i!" 

    Crawling desperately over the rough grass to her sister's side, she looked down at Sashana'i, who lay in a state of shock--and not for Aratra's injury, but more that it had actually happened.  Be'i looked her over, watched her tawny skin quickly pale, her bright eyes dart around to Aratra, only a meter away.  Toma was already trying to assess him, but she knew...

    "Aratra and I are for the spirits now," Sashana'i muttered, unwilling to admit it--or wishing it was not the truth.  But it was.  She, blood regent of Desal, was passed with her bondmate...On this sun of Desal's liberation, beneath the dawn sun of Desal...

    She had no choice but acceptance.  As the shock died away and her body began to weaken, she realized the one thing she could not demand of the spirits.

    But Desal and its fate instantly made her reconsider that finality.  Her eyes turned to Be'i and focused.

    Without requiring a moment to think on it, she knew her siblings could bear properly...were they to accept it.  They would.  They would take it, as they had taken the rest.

    "Not yet," Be'i told her, cupping Sashana'i's face in her hands.  "Not yet.  There is too much need of you and Aratra.  Desal needs you yet--Toma and I need you.  You and Aratra may not leave us!  Please make yourself remain--you must attempt to remain and hold him!"

    "I would wish this," Sashana'i whispered,  "yet sadly even you may not sustain us, my sister.  You bear not the way...yet."

    Others off the landing pad jumped and ran towards the gates to re-secure the area.  Some ran back to the ship for medical equipment.

    But Sashana'i knew better of it.  Even as Toma tried to assess Aratra's injury...

    "It is not meant," Sashana'i whispered, feeling her throat thicken and her lips begin to tremble with tears and pain.  Even then, looking up to her sister, over to her brother...  The passing shall find Aratra with speed.  Yet they...they are unharmed...and Allanois would enjoy them in all propriety....  As much as she did not wish to submit them to what she had undergone years before, she knew they were strong, able and rightful--and she knew her ultimate priorities, too...

    "It is not meant...for Aratra and I," she resolved.  Before Be'i could ask her, Sashana'i reached up and grabbed her hand.  "Please, Be'i, Toma, do not see us pass unclaimed!  Do not allow the legacy to pass with us!"

    "What I might do," Be'i told her, "shall be done, Sashana'i.  This should never be doubted.  Toma?"

    He blinked a nod of agreement.  "Tell us what is required." 

    Sashana'i jerked her chin towards her bondmate.  "Take Aratra's hand." 

    Toma scowled at first, but seeing where Sashana'i's fingers were clutching, he turned back to Aratra, letting out a calming breath even as he committed to what he suspected was about to happen.  He took the limp hand beside him and slid his palm over his brother's fingertips.  Aratra's arm and face twitched, then his thumb curled slightly over one of Toma's fingers.  "Ti'al madvilas navna'a ya'a," Toma breathed then drew another breath.  "I'eva tsa..."

    Having glanced at Toma, hearing his words, Sashana'i rotated her fingers into Be'i's palm.  "My body is but that..." she whispered, trembling for the lancing sensation spreading in her torso, and then continued,  "...and shall pass back to the earth.  Allanois must survive in your living spirit."  She slid her center finger down the nerve in the base of her sister's hand, remembering precisely where it was.  "Forgive me, my siblings, that this must be.  It must be meant."

    "Sa--"

    Be'i's words cut off when Sashana'i's other hand came up and grasped her sister's head, her thumb pressing to her temple. 

    It must be meant.  It *shall* be meant!

    A voiceless scream racked Be'i's entire core as she threw her head back, her eyes bolting wide at the force of contact.  She did not even notice Toma collapse behind her, struggling for his own breath as soon as Aratra's hand reflexively gripped his own.  Suddenly, without warning or prelude, not the gentle initiation of her elders or Toma's thoughtful touches, the memories began to rush into her.

    Where her bonding had been a steady trickle of consciousness, Sashana'i's delivery of her family's memories was a like a violent storm, crashing into her mind moment by moment, forced within her too quickly...too quickly...

    Birth, running, pain, intimacy...

    Be'i began to cry...

    ....rain, threat, trades, illness...

    On her elbows and knees before, her shoulders buckled and gave in....

    ....splendor, food, strolls, desire...

    Her head fell onto Sashana'i's breast; she dragged every breath, unable to resist the flood...

    ....parents, bondmates, bondings, friends,

    The others cascaded in...  So many others...only two that she recognized...

    ....faces, meals, escapes, tortures...

    Too quickly...

    One after the other, they ripped into her mind, filing into the crevices of her being without plan or pattern.  They flashed before her, all their memories, all their learning, all their thoughts and feelings...

    Within herself, she heard Toma cry out somewhere near yet far away, felt his shock couple with her own.  But Sashana'i only clutched Be'i's temple more tightly when resistance was sensed, her hand nearly breaking hers, desperate to get it all across...

    It slowed, pressing in the remaining images of centuries ago...

    It stopped upon the last, the most distant birth, from which that particular line had begun.

    It was done...all of it.

    Be'i stilled, then...

    Swear it to me!  Promise upon my passing!  You must--there shall be no equity in my spirit.  Please, Be'i, Toma!  Swear to me you shall!

    Sashana'i was suddenly within her conscious mind again, pleading with all that was left of her slowing heart, pouring her last moments into her only desire aside Desal. 

    Be'i shook her head.  She didn't know, couldn't understand...

    Carry on Desal, Sashana'i wept within her.  I shall despise myself unto eternity for having given this to you, as you shall never know peace with it.  By the ancestors, I do not wish this, though Allanois must survive to guide and continue to restore our people...

    To this request, she sensed acceptance push through Be'i's shock and confusion.  She had not expected otherwise.  She knew her siblings were as dedicated as she and Aratra to Desal's reclamation.

    You shall guide them well.  In this, I bear much faith.  Yet there is more...

    When Sashana'i's hand fell away from her temple, Be'i pulled her swaying head to stare into her sibling's wide-open eyes.  With the remainder of her energy, Sashana'i held their consciousness there, away from the pasts, swirling beyond like a tempest held by a sheer net.  Sashana'i kept them all back, to tell her...finally tell her...

    It was my doing, Be'i.  You both were called forth to this wretched place by my prayers.  You were retained by my selfish needs, and now I have paid the price for my sin...my greed and despair.  Yet not all of Desal must suffer for me--it is cleansed through my passing.  I take my sin to Prihar...

    You are not taken to Prihar!  Be'i finally asserted.  It was meant that Toma and I were brought to this place.

    Peace shall be found only in balance, Sashana'i returned.  I deceived you.  I never told you of the Barrier, though I knew of it.  I kept you here, allowed you Desal in your spirits, for I knew.  I wished so that you and Toma would help me bring Desal from its state.  Ka, I did this, Be'i!  I sinned against you both, whom Aratra and I did love.

    Be'i first stilled at the confession, but then dismissed it.  Toma and I chose this place--it was meant that we be here.  We would not have left you--could not have.  Our fate was set here by our circumstance.  I believe this, Sashana'i.

    Yet it might not have been without my interference!  --Allow me my guilt, Be'i.  I deceived you as easily as I loved you....  You *should* feel anger at me.  I deserve far worse, your life spent in despise of me, for all I have done to you--even this sun.  I have given you all the unrest that had driven me unto my crimes as regent.  It all is yours now.

    Be'i's head dropped slightly, the trembling beginning again.  Even Sashana'i in health might not have held back the torrent of history at the dam of her forward mind, threatening to consume her...

    After what my life proved of me, how could I feel hatred for you?  You did lie.  This is seen, Sashana'i.  You gave all you could for Desal, yet your use of Toma and me was secondary--and not against our will, only in our ignorance....  Please take yourself with peace...

    There is but one way about that--another selfishness of mine.

    Tell me....  Please do not take yourself in guilt.  Not after Toma and I have lived so long with freedom from our own regrets, we would never wish it of another.  It shall haunt us--and you--and this we do not wish.

    Promise me you shall balance fate's gift.  My passing wish, Be'i:  Promise me you shall continue your life with your birthpeople.

    Be'i immediately retreated.  It is not wished to return.  This is our true home; we do not belong there--

    Sashana'i held on.  There is a way to return you the way you were when you first arrived at Irllae, while you may live here as long as it pleases...

    Within herself, Be'i suddenly saw the plan--to reintegrate their DNA from Voyager's databanks using their transporters.  At any age or at the point of their passings...  It was insane.  It couldn't happen.  --No, it could.  There was precedent in Desalian medicine--and in Starfleet, according to one of Toma's memories, an interesting note from the Federation database he had read after a transporter malfunction on Voyager....  The reintegration could be done with a modification of...

    Toma's memories!  Where...  And mine!  Be'i's eyes shot open to find Sashana'i's filling with water...

    I have said you should despise me.  I stole from you your beings, against every notion of propriety, for I needed you, your strength and wits. 

    Then Be'i saw the field at Uillar, stepping over Hychar's corpse to nearly fall upon their lifeless bodies.  In her despair, she connected her consciousness to theirs, sustaining them, crying to the spirits once again for a favorable fate, stretching out her energy to keep theirs from fading away...

    You held us among the living even then, Be'i realized, her stare easing to know what Sashana'i had done.  All that she had done, which had been demanded both by her desires and by the dreams of those memories she held...so many memories.  You maintained us among the living against Hychar, you stood for our protection, sacrificed yourself for our sake...  Sashana'i, your doings might have been sins in your eyes, and ka, there was selfishness in your reasons, yet you acted for love and preservation, as well.  It is an untoward balance, yet you and Aratra are not criminal.

    Sashana'i blinked, ignoring the absolution.  Promise me, Be'i.  --With Susik and Derra, promise me you shall develop this way, return to your birthpeople when your life among Desal is to cease, to your crew and someday your families--families who need you, whose destinies are not completed, whose threads in life shall be incomplete without you...

    Be'i could not promise that, not without...  Toma...please...  She felt him listening, though overcome, unable to touch her...

    ...Your forward mind would not recall this life, thus it shall not be any encumbrance for you to simply extend your body's experience.  Your spirits, meanwhile, shall always be your own and shall always know their truth, which is Desal--all you have been blessed with and all you treasure this sun.  You may pass to the spirits later than what is natural, yet you shall pass someday and be among the spirits as you desire.  Be'i, there shall be no peace for us otherwise--nor any true balance in you, as you must face your fate among those of your birth...

    Be'i saw their faces when Sashana'i recalled them for her:  A captain's struggles far from home, her gift of trust to two who did not deserve it; a solid friend, who stood beside her; a young man who turned his back on reputation and gave his friendship in spite of it all.  Farther, and there was a father, looking plainly...a mother stubbornly insisting, another mother sadly resigned, another father longed for but never looked for...all forsaken for strife and painful youth, and others gone from them yet never reclaimed, others left in wait, a people left behind for fear, immaturity and opposition....  So many open doors willingly left behind.

    Indeed, they had barely looked at that past but in bland memory, had gladly moved away from it and took on their present life, first for the impossibility of returning and then for conscious choice.

    They all must be faced again someday, Be'i, else you shall never find completion.  These people are a part of the destiny from which I took you and now must keep you from yet longer.

    Be'i shook her head.  Toma and I would yet have remained.

    This is known--and you shall remain.  Yet you must not find your passing unclaimed by your birth.  --I must know you have promised to carry Desal....  Please!  I wish not to pass, yet you shall carry on for me--you and Toma shall take Allanois as your own and return--

    We are not the blood regents! Be'i insisted.  We may only hold this place for another.

    No other exists.  You are my and Aratra's siblings, publicly declared and accepted throughout Desal and Irllae.  The others who know you shall support you and my passing wish.  --You are Desalian, Be'i.  Whatever Human and Klingon gave you life, and whatever responsibility you yet bear to those beginnings, you bear the kraja and its changes to your physiology, and you are accepted by the spirits in your bonding. This is what being Desalian is.  You bear the Allanois legacy now as well, which also can never be removed; it lies eternally within your spirit.  *This* is far stronger than blood.  --You must!

    Toma!  She felt him reaching for her.  She needed his touch, too--reached blindly out with the hand Sashana'i wasn't holding.

    ...And when fate has finished with you here, you shall give this legacy unto another of your choosing...and you shall be given back to the people of your birth--and they to you.  This shall balance what I have disrupted...

    Finally, Be'i felt Toma's hand, grabbing hers so hard her knuckles cracked.  She whipped her head up to see his ghostly expression, his shuddering and shock...equal to hers.  He jerked his hand up to her temple, apologizing already for what he bore within him, too.  Aratra...among so many...so much...

    Please!  Sashana'i begged.  Below, on the ground, her body had begun to shudder.  Her skin was white with death; her grip was loosening.  Her eyes, her trembling lips--her entire face radiated her need.  She was passing without that one completion.

    Promise me, Be'i, Toma!  Promise me you shall continue for us--and for your birthpeople...

    Be'i recaptured Toma's glazed stare.

    Sashana'i became shrill within them, crying out, I beg you!  Fate must be allowed its natural course among your birth, what my selfishness has estranged.  I beg you both!  --Oh, my ancestors, why is this brought to me, for all I have sacrificed and desired in your name?!  This is not wished!  I and Aratra wished to continue, dreamed so fervently!  --Please promise me!  Be'i, Toma!  I implore you!  There is nothing more but this!

    Be'i began to tremble.  Toma couldn't breathe.

    The flood was nearing in them, willing over in their minds.  All the voices, threatening to smother, calling to them behind Sashana'i's pealing cries, Aratra's last thoughts before Toma pulled himself away...echoing through them, smashing into their defenses, bending the dam to the point of breakage as Sashana'i weakened further...

    I shall never rest in you without your promise--your acceptance of the fate you shall know is truth. 

    Their gazes sank into each other's, lost there...yet knowing their duty.

    They once told each other they would sacrifice themselves for Desal.

    They would all live in guilt if they denied their siblings that only means of correcting what Sashana'i so truly felt was her greatest sin, which Aratra had supported and assisted.  Even without that threat, they did not wish their siblings to pass in agony.

    The rest was already done.  The legacy could not be reversed.  It pressed forward upon their minds, which they knew would not survive the breaking of that wall.  And yet, more than any of it, they knew their adopted brother and sister were to leave the living, would be no longer among them and asked only to go with peace...

    We promise.

    They looked down to her again.  She had stilled at their oath. 

    We promise, you Sashana'i, we shall do as you wish...

    Be'i pulled her sister's hand to her heart.  The limb was cold.

    Despite any of what Sashana'i and Aratra might have done to secure Desal--they certainly could have done so much more with less heavy conscience about it--their siblings had been beloved by them.  That love was entirely mutual, Be'i silently pressed.

    They would miss them for all their lives, until the spirits would reunite them.  They would fulfill all the dreams they shared, bring truth to their promises, regardless of their own hesitations.  They would make it possible, all that they could.

    They promised.

    Sashana'i's hand fell away from her sister's as a tiny smile flickered upon her lips--a continued apology in her gratitude.  Be'i leaned down, kissed her then embraced her tightly.  Sashana'i pressed her cheek to Be'i's soft curls and glanced up to Toma's straining face.

    "It...pleases," she breathed, her throat closing even as she managed the sound.  Then her head rolled the other way.  "Ar...a-tra..."

    His own experience flashing before all the others, moving forward, crawling up upon his mind, Toma knew.  As Be'i instantly turned out of the way, he crawled back to Aratra, grabbed his arm to drag him closer--to his bondmate's side, as was the tradition.  The body did not respond, even when Toma rolled it onto its side.  Touching his brother's head gently in goodbye, he put Aratra'a hand on Sashana'i's. 

    They watched as Sashana'i dipped her finger into Aratra's palm.  With one last look at Desalia's morning-lit sky, a twitch of a grin, she turned her gaze.

    Her eyes closed; Aratra drew a puff of breath, and then released it as she did her last.  Their eyes opened upon each other's.

    Then, they stilled.

    People were running all around them, crafts buzzed in the air, disruptor pistols fired somewhere in the distance, calls of people back and forth rang out, and the breeze stirred as a thin cloud blocked the sun, cooled the air; the short, weedy grass rustled.  All of it tunneled into what only was before them...and then into what was within them.

    Sashana'i and Aratra did not move again.

    Gaping at the tomb on the open grass, Be'i choked a tearless sob.  Gone...

    Then, suddenly, she couldn't cry and her head began to twinge, swollen behind her eyes.  The voices, Sashana'i and Aratra's included, began to rise within her mind...splashing over the dam...

    Her instincts told her first, They are not mine, this does not belong to me--reject it, do not...

    Yet she knew it did belong to her.  All of it had been given to them both--as had the whole of Desal.  All of it...

    Just another moment...please just another moment, not yet, not yet...

    She looked at Toma.  He was terribly still, moving only to meet her stare. 

    Dread.  Desire.  Longing.  Knowledge.  Sadness.  Wisdom.  Love.  Hope...

    Their expressions were identical.

    Shock.  Fear.  Fatality.

    "Be'i," he choked.

    "I am here, Toma," she managed, raising her hands to him.

    As Toma's arms enclosed around her, she felt the wall crack.  With their sister and brother gone, they could not hold it themselves.  They were not trained, nor were they born to it.  In their last lucid thoughts, they knew with complete certainty it would bury them. 

    Their bodies pressing together, their shuddering became simultaneous.  They blinked, trying to see what was physically there, not the memories flashing in their minds.

    But only seconds later it all burst forth:  Wave after wave, lifetimes upon lifetimes, all rushed upon their beings.  Clutching each other, they succumbed as though they had not fought at all.

    When they collapsed, Be'i's mind reverberated with her scream, echoed only by Toma's...

    Both voices died in the chaos.

    Punching the grid beneath his blackened fingers, Kurt struggled to patch through the interference and get Miztri down there.  He sure as hell didn't know what to do, having watched Sashana'i, just fallen, grab Be'i's hand as Toma did the same with Aratra.  Before he knew it, Toma pulled Aratra over then embraced Be'i.  They fell onto the grass together a moment later.

    It had happened so quickly that Kurt hadn't even opened a comm line before they collapsed.  In the distance, the resistance had quickly taken down the Unar officers who had slipped around the outside perimeter.  But there, the regents looked like they were dead, and Be'i and Toma...

    "Hell with this!"  Kurt snapped and rushed down into the field where the bodies lay.  With only a look at Aratra and Sashana'i, he knew better than to try.  So he kneeled by Be'i and Toma, who seemed locked in their position, clutching each other's clothing, trembling and stiff.  Moving Be'i's hair and scarves away from her face, he could see both their eyes were wide open and unfocused, severely dilated; they were breathing in tiny, halting gasps and their skin was ashen.  He did not dare try to move them for the looks--frozen terror--on their faces. 

    At least they were alive, Kurt figured and whipped around to see Latsari arriving from her station.

    Stopping on first sight of them all, Latsari's eyes briefly widened to examine the scene. The positions and expressions filed through her mental library of histories told by the elders and word painters.  Everything she saw on the field matched those memories.  "I would believe our blessed Sashana'i and Aratra have passed their memories," she informed Bendera then nodded to herself.  "Ka, my friend, it is likely they have given unto Be'i and Toma the Allanois legacy, an ancient practice among educated families."

    Kurt didn't bother pretending to know what she was talking about.  "Get them to the Azallis' dining room where we can keep them for now," he ordered.  "But we need to get them back to Cezia."

    Touching her temple in respect for the passed, later to be mourned, Latsari nodded and hurried back to the Azallis, commanding the crew there to prepare a space and onlookers for her beloved friends and captains, now the new regents of Desal.
 

---

    "You're dismissed," Janeway told the ensign on duty as soon as she had materialized completely.  Then she moved into the young man's place.  "Janeway to engineering, activate the upgraded transporter systems."

    "*What? --I mean, yes Captain,*"  Carey answered, surprised.  "*But those systems haven't been tested yet--*"

    "That's an order, Lieutenant--Janeway out," she said briskly and began tapping in commands, glancing back and forth from the PADD she still held.  "Janeway to Kes, I need you--"

    "I'm here, Captain," Kes said as she came through the doors the ensign had just exited.  Joining Janeway at the console, she handed her the data chip she and the Doctor had been working on.  "I'm sorry, Captain, but Anai--"

    "I've been brought up to date," Janeway cut in, inserting the PADD's data chip into the main uplink manifold.  "We'll discuss it later.  Right now, I need your help."

    Flipping open the first box she'd been given, she hunted out the easier half of the plan and started uploading the parameters...
 

---

    "Dos e'ibri mas'tsa micha'u, komis tirra al, ye'i tira'al, norr e'ik ye'i so'al dos..."

    She sat huddled in the corner, her knees to her chest, holding tightly, rocking back and forth as she muttered on and on, seemingly without end.  Her bondmate had finally worn down out of the same.

    "Ni'alla ye'i, dos e'ibri masillotsa, cha morla, ye'i tira'al..."

    "How long will this continue?"  Susik asked, staring at what had become of her friend.  One of the strongest women she had had the pleasure of knowing had been reduced in minutes to a babbling invalid with no improvement over the week since their return to Cezia.  "Is there not any kind of psychological help your scholars know of?"

    Bakali sighed, watching her adopted child, who stared at nothing but everything, her voice rising slightly at times when she held herself closer, tucked her head into her knees, weeping as she plead for mercy--or at least quickness--and that her spirit be unharmed. 

    "It shall persist as long as it is required to, Child," she said while waving away her assistants, naturally but futilely wishing to help.  "It is the way."

    Susik stared at her.  "How can you say that?  Look at what has been done to them."

    "I see my children well," Bakali replied sadly.  "Sashana'i and Aratra acted as they thought proper; Be'i and Toma accepted this.  They have said so in a lucid moment, thus it must be accepted by us as well, Susik.  There is no possible reversal of the legacy given to them, nor any assistance to be given at this time."

    She had been summoned from the celebration of Desalia-Four's liberation by the message by Derra.  Anxious and tired, haggard and saddened, as Plicta and Bolmra drove the Azallis full speed back to Cezia, the adopted Antral failed at any gentleness when he informed her of the burdens they carried, both in the dining hall and in the morgue.  Not an hour later, the elderly healer hurried through the small ship to find Be'i and Toma unconscious in each other's arms.  Latsari reported they had finally claimed sleep halfway through their return.  She and Derra confirmed that Sashana'i and Aratra had both held their siblings' hands before passing.

    Bakali realized immediately what had happened to Be'i and Toma--and more completely than the others did.  Requesting they be transported with her to the clinic, she immediately sedated them and called for herbs to be procured from her newly liberated homeworld.

    Three suns past their arrival, in an enormous ceremony under a misty sun, she and Bala blessed the passings of Sashana'i and Aratra of Cezia, Regents of Desal.  Sympathetic to their neighbors' tears, they lit the pyre and sang the songs to those blessed spirits, who had given so much joy and love to all they knew, so much balance to their people, who might have been annihilated without their dedication and sacrifice.  Their spirits could not have found a more noble welcome to the blessed ancestors.

    So Bakali and Bala moved around the fire, their feet heavy in the rain-softened earth, turning in the ritual prayer, leading their people and thanking the spirits for Sashana'i and Aratra's short but important lives among them, and knowing what was left behind:  The adopted siblings of the passed, the new Desalian regents, who had surely descended into internal chaos.

    True to their prediction, Be'i awoke hours after the ceremony screaming in pain that was not hers, and then Toma, cursing violently at the mantel stones.  She started laughing then ran into a corner, terrified.  He threw over a table then cuddled into a blanket.  Then they traded the behavior--or personalities, or ages, genders, events.  Occasionally, they would regain enough sense to desperately wonder what was happening to them.  They descended into the confusion of the memories very soon after.

    Bakali finally decided to reserve a small corner ward of the clinic for them, where she could contain them.  They certainly were not safe in the upper floors.

    A week later, as she watched her spirit child rock on the floor and chant the ancient prayer in Yusi's inflection, Bakali brought her wrinkled fingers up to her indigo markings, touched her temple and mouthed a prayer of her own for the minds of her children.  "No more can be done by me."

    "You cannot help them?"  Susik asked.  "Can anyone?"

    "They are their only saviors at present, to my sorrow.  As their minds find healing from this trauma, more can be done for them."  Her stare grew heavy upon the lady in the corner, who clutched at her ribs and rocked more quickly as the memory progressed.  "Yet I may tell you, Susik, they have been changed by this.  In time, they shall regain a central being, yet they shall never again be what they had been.  Be'i and Toma are now, as it is said, one amongst many, and those native beings now are small amidst their newly gained lifetimes.  This is also the way, in their present disorder."

    Both the elders, among others they consulted, knew the pathology:  Transferal psychosis. 

    It was curable, with time and training.  Such traumas had happened often in the generation after the initial occupation, when the scholarship was largely buried and families in the practice of bequeathing their memories tried to continue the tradition without proper training.  It had been another way of Desalian culture Unar almost destroyed, mainly for the simple fear of insanity among those inexperienced would-be heirs.

    In Be'i and Toma, they were seeing it again, they knew, one of the few vestiges of that tradition, once again done poorly and received with even less order and no preparation but their own bonding experience to guide them.  More, Bala, Bakali and the other close friends to Be'i and Toma knew that though they were Desalian at present, they did not bear those abilities as a latent skill encouraged from birth, but one which their adult physiologies had acquired and adapted to.  Relatively, it was very new.  They may as well have been six years old.

    Lledri, upon first sight of the heirs of Desal's regency, insisted she be the one to sponsor their proper training--as she had tried unsuccessfully to have Sashana'i and Aratra do.  Bakali and Bala agreed she would need to wait until Be'i and Toma were prepared and able to make that decision for themselves.  The prichava respectfully obeyed their wishes.

    In the meanwhile, the two would have to bear the waves that had consumed them.

    "Dos edisla tsa al ye'i....  Al tsa'ibra!"  Her voice became shrill again; she shuddered and flinched as she clutched her legs, crying openly.

    "What is she saying?"  Susik breathed, wanting to reach out and shake her back into the present, but just as frightened to touch her.

    "They cut away Yusi's hair, and she prays to the spirits for her patience," Bakali whispered, controlling her own tears as her child replayed the violation of their beloved regent's beauty and honor at the hands of the Unar, whom she was forced to serve not long after her capture.  Bakali remembered such an insult painfully well.  "Our dear Yusi's gentle spirit...committed to such violence..."  The elder shook her head in shame, resisting her natural will to look away from the torment, to spare herself the ache the scene inspired.  "How we accepted this is difficult to know, particularly seeing it as such again, even while I understand why acceptance was required of me...  It yet disturbs..."

    "Ma'avll!  Ye'i al tsa macho'i!"  she cried, throwing up her head, staring at the apparitions, her eyes darting to each, whom she saw with such horrifying clarity, snarling at her, beating her, sending her hair flying away in chunks around her--their fury and corruption.  Her lungs felt as though they would explode for the terror and pain and sobbing.  "Ma'all ostill ai'otsav!"  she wailed, screwed her eyes shut.  "Dos al tsa allu'evrra!  Awrr al i'ellva'i!"

    Her hand shot up.

    She stopped--exhaled.

    Her fingers dug into her long, thick locks.  She pulled a section forward to stare at it, realizing.

    She blinked.  "Her hair," she whispered.  "This is her hair...my hair..."  Her lips pressed, parted, she blinked several more times to understand...  "Yusi...  The other had been Yusi.  She shall be...  No, she is--I...she was..."  She looked up.  Her hand was trembling within her dark curls, showing her elder what she knew.  "This is Be'i's hair, Bakali."

    The elder woman managed a small smile through her tears.  "Be'i, ka," she said, wiping her eyes quickly with her scarves as she approached.  "It is your hair, and you lie within the clinic at Azlre."

    She nodded jerkily; her stare darted.  "He is--my bondmate?  Where is he?"

    "Toma rests."  Gingerly, Bakali pulled the shivering child to her feet to show her, pointing to the pallet where a restless form clutched at a blanket.

    "I shall sleep with him," she decided.

    "It is unwise to disturb him."

    With an outburst of giggles, she threw her arms around the lady, kissing her sweetly.  "Miztri, it was you who bore mention of my anxiousness for my bonding night--and, ka, my desire is heartily borne!  I shall take my Aratra upon his knees then I on mine..."  She stopped and looked around.  "Who speaks just now?  This is not my voice--"

    "Be'i!"  Bakali said with necessary firmness, snapping the girl back to the room again, making her blink, shake her head, and then nod.   Bakali sighed, relenting.  "I shall take you to Toma now."

    "My thanks, good sister," she softly replied.  "Now only should you hear my lady Sharana'i agree...  Bakali!  What a name from Nosha'eki she has chosen...  Bring me a mirror.  I need a mirror, my mother.  I must see my face.  She must look at myself."  Shaking her head again, she struggled to push back the others; they cycled within her head so rapidly, she swayed on her feet.  "I am Be'i of Azlre, Cezia," she told herself, attempting certainty but shuddering in each word.  "She is called Be'i, bondmate to Toma....  I am...no, not a--what is that?  Who am I, Bakali?  What must lie here, Aneschi, when I must be as I am not, hide in the pure sun before them?  The scholarship is such, in this midnight....  What is my calling when I do not think Commissioner Grejdrid prefers that his plate be served with Captain Janeway wants those sensor relays back online by fourteen hundred hours since my calling is Sharana'i, given as my elder-mother's...  No!  Please!  Stop!"

    Susik rushed up to help Bakali steady her friend's swagger.  But seeing the Antral woman--then something entirely different a blink later--she dropped to her knees and held Susik around the ankles.  "Di'ebli ma'ichna go'err!" she cried, sobbing into the cuffs of the officer, knowing she would be beaten, but begging her child to be spared of the same in her innocence...

    Susik could do nothing but close her eyes and take a deep breath.  "Patience," she whispered to herself and bent to help the crying lady back to her feet. 
 

    "Dalra!  Dalra!  Quickly!  Bring yourself!  Miztri!!!"  His shouts echoed hard against the moonlit buildings of the square, rustling not a few of the people within it.  He didn't notice it, but ran around in circles, swerving through the invisible rows.  "Dalra?!"

    A neighbor who lived on the street side of the building had woken and alerted the man; minutes later, tucking his robes around him, Dalra came up the steps from his flat to the open square.  He immediately spotted his friend still sprinting around like a wood beetle unleashed in the sun. 

    "Dalra!  Ab itra'ill!"

    Taking a breath, letting it out, Dalra moved forward to meet the man halfway through.  It was obvious he could not see him.  "I am here," Dalra said, not knowing which spirit among all he might be talking to that time, thus beginning it safely.

    Spotting him, he grabbed both his arms, staring wildly down to him.  "Sashana'i," he gasped.  "They have taken her and mutilated her!  I found her...  You must...Miztri, where lies Miztri?!"

    Dalra understood.  "Miztri sits with her now," he said soothingly, taking his friend's arms in return, bracing them soundly.  "Sashana'i's mouth is injured, yet she shall not perish.  It is not meant for her to pass here.  I feel thi--"

    "I feel it, my friend," he told him, in tears for the pain he knew he sensed--felt, truly felt.  "I feel her agony!  You may not tell me she is well when I feel it so!"

    "Ab, we shall lie in wait, then.  Bring yourself now."

    He turned to follow, but then suddenly jerked back.  "Where is my bondmate?" he asked, pulling his hand to his waist, straightening.  "In which interment is he?"

    "Bring yourself, Toma," Dalra repeated.  He saw his friend close his eyes a moment, so Dalra put his arm around him to keep him straight.  "You have tired yourself.  You must rest now."  Offering the younger man a grin, he gave a nod.  "I shall sit with you.  Our good elders shall worry should you be missing long."

    "This...insanity," he breathed, holding on to his old friend's hand, nailing his eyes on the facade of the clinic, praying suddenly that he could get there.  He honestly was not certain if he would. 

    "You suffer from a common psychological ailment among the untrained, Toma," Dalra clarified.

    He paused.  "They...we.  We took the Allanois memories willingly, Dalra, as it was needed.  I took Aratra's hand when Sashana'i asked.  Aratra bore barely enough life for the procedure; Everything he gave, I took.  Yet...it is not believed it shall be accepted sanely.  It may not be endured."

    "You must, my good friend," Dalra told him, still leading him, slowly but surely.  "Recall most that your mind as well as your spirit is bonded with Be'i's.  In this state, you shall succeed or fail together.  You must believe in your recovery, else neither of you shall and it shall overcome you."

    "I have tried!" he snapped.  "How can it be said Unar shall spite us so?  Let them be, and they shall perish of their own accursedness according to fate's balance.  It is the way."

    Dalra bent his head but continued on, managing to return him to the frantic assistants who had only turned their heads a moment.  Bowing as their charge chose his evening meal and searched for his libat coins, they eased him back to the corner ward and to his pallet, beside his trembling bondmate. 
 

    "I have ruled Desal ten years, yet nothing prepared me for this plague.  All I touch and attempt rots, and for my very spirit, my bondmate curses me to Prihar.  Her pure conscience to forces me to see...  What shall be done?"

    "I have borne six children, each nursed thirty du'ave.  None but two have survived.  I'utra is for the spirits now, soon, as I see him weaken by the sun, wilt more each moon.  Sashana'i remains my sole hope..."

    They sat on their clinic pallet in their bedclothes, facing each other with the twisted blanket between them.  For hours they had been staring into each other's unfocused eyes, lit by the globelight above the entryway.  Their hands were clasped together; their expressions were blank.

    "Aratra followed me for three du'ave before I coyly suggested we meet privately--and then I truly surprised him with my own offers..."

    "I told my tola too often he should not to take too much after Pajla's foods--I yet tease him that he shall grow outwards far more than inward at his years!"

    It had been two weeks.  They each had lost weight, too nervous or distracted to keep food down if they ate at all.  Bakali sustained them by then with injected supplements.  TThey could not keep themselves up, but relied entirely on what others could do for them.  They had become so afraid of themselves that they did not think to go out--when they thought for themselves.

    "I always believed that sirril wine was best served warm, yet Madari always slipped the decanter away to cool.  I never complained, as her regard for me past the dinners were far more penetrating and delicious."

    When they knew enough to, they missed Ba'ela desperately, yet were nervous in his presence.  The boy had been informed of what ailed them, and Bala brought him despite their wishes.  Ba'ela missed his parents, too--and according to Bala, they improved during visits.  It forced them to focus.

    "Dulla held me at night, kissing my head and whispering to me while I cried...  They hurt me so, and yet I cried only that I knew he must bear what I do too soon.  I know I shall not survive the effects.  I know this is meant..."

    Most defeating to them was that there was no way they could be strong enough to accept the legacy and move forward again as many of the others had done, to be with their child without slipping into a being not known to him, frightening him with gibberish or outbursts.  Ba'ela had only known love and assuredness from his parents.  The idea that they might project other lives before him frightened their every instinct, even when they were usually uncertain whose instincts they were in the first place.  They only knew the child was theirs and expected them to be something other than insane.

    "Sachets in my robe sleeves are so lovely an idea, as the scent shall move with me.  And the coral satin is preferred on moonlit evenings.  Yet R'bapri always chooses my ornaments accordingly."

    Bakali had gently reminded them that Sashana'i and Aratra had not been scholars, nor had they even committed themselves to the novitiate.  Despite their possession of learned memories, they had no experience with the proper procedures of transferal.  Transferal was a skill that took years of training to master, particularly for family archivists.  When Sashana'i and Aratra passed the Allanois legacy to them, it was not done well.

    They did not argue this.

    "The Richill sector was the first to fall to Unar.  Their weakness is apparent--yet I know not what I might do about a thing that was obviously meant.  How would I be accursed for this, Da'ili?"

    There were moments of satisfaction during that time, particularly when Cali and Aprra, or Yasis, Susik or Kurt, returned from Dviglar with news of the fronts.  Desalia-Four's liberation had freed the databanks all of Irllae had sought.  Plans to finally suppress the remaining sects of Unar were in the works.  The fleets were coming home, group by group, readying for the next front.  Desal and its neighbors were beginning to realize that the war would end someday soon.

    Meanwhile, Desal's known regents, who had been a part of bringing it all to the fore in the first place, were convalescing in Azlre's clinic, useless and half mad.

    She blinked heavily, forcing herself back to the present as soon as she realized it existed again.  They had been trying to stay awake and with each other--sleep being far less preferable than remaining in the conscious world.  Several times already, Bakali had needed to sedate them to force them to sleep.  They resisted her efforts, however, scared to succumb to the maze of visions, a spinning hell of awareness, which haunted them, vicious and incessant even with the positive recollections there. 

    Even so, their tiredness was just as apt to bring it on, too.  It was unavoidable no matter where they were, only better when they could try to control it.

    She looked at her bondmate's haggard expression, his swollen, squinting eyes, and reached out to him.  "This cannot be continued this moon," she told him softly, bringing her fingers to both his temples, forcing her eyes to remain with his.  "Bring yourself to me.  Let me sleep knowing who held me first."

    His lips parted for a breath.  "It is wished.  I...It is difficult.  My bondmate sits before me, yet I slip away.  My eyes and my mind differ...  I try to hold..."  His head jerked, but he refused to go there, to answer the people calling him out.

    "The attempts are felt," she said thinly.  Her eyes almost left his, so she moved closer to him.  The memories loomed; her skull ached for the spikes of pain and stress, and she fought it and all of them less and less.  Neither of them was strong enough to anymore.

    "Sashana'i and Aratra are passed," he whispered.

    A pause.  "They passed on the field of Desal.  When was this?"

    "It is not known.  They passed with the two before them.  They were of some importance in our line...the line." 

    "The regency.  To think it is borne now...it is unbelievable."

    "Yet it is truth.  They felt such guilt for bequeathing it...guilt compounded..."  He felt water in his eyes, blinked it onto his cheekbones.  Her firelit stare had begun to lose focus.  "Stay with me, my love!  Please do not--"

    "I bear such effort!" she told him.  Her hands tightened on his, shaking convulsively.  "It is not known...how to resist this."

    "Perhaps defeat is meant, then!" he retorted.

    "To Prihar with what is meant!" she cried.  "I care only for now--and it is only madness!"

    He yanked her into his embrace and pressed his face against her, smelling her, feeling her arms wrap around him, hold him so tightly, he could barely breathe.  Yet he did not wish her to let go in the slightest. It was the closest thing to the present he knew just then.

    "I wish only to know my being," he choked.  "I am lost with you.  They are...we are lost...in this."  His voice drifted away as he pulled her down by him on the small pallet at the back of the clinic, pressing her against the wall.  He coughed a single sob, crushing his face against her shoulder.  "I wish our beings returned...and yet now I hardly can recall them.  Yet the others...we are all of them."

    "We are all they are," she echoed numbly, staring at nothing in the middle of the room.  "They are us now.  What would that make us?"

    "Drask.  It is the Unar word for nothing, Da'ili."

    "Irllae's peoples cannot be drask--it bears no sense, I should think.  Certainly, M'hida, we might find another way to placate their revised way and assist our neighbors in their plight."

    "It is not for us to interfere in nature's destiny.  We shall wait and see whether fate would bring their poison closer.  No.  --No!  He is...  I am..."

    "Yes."  She could feel her backbone reverberating against the plaster wall for his trembling.  "I wish peace could be within us, as well," she whispered.  "Yet it shall not be.  Sashana'i swore her guilt for this..."

    "Why is but their guilt felt now?" he breathed.

    "The reasoning is traditional," she answered sadly.  "Sashana'i's sin is deeply felt; her prayers brought Be'i and Toma to her.  She and Aratra believe in her ability to alter fate."

    "Ka."

    Be'i stilled a moment, staring at her hands, seeing them pressed against Sashana'i's cheeks.  "They are passed."  Her chest contracted with the horror of that memory, the hope, the excitement and joy, the disruptor shot in Aratra's back.  In a flash, she felt the pain and flash of disbelief...Sashanai's responsive agony...They all had felt so much joy for Desal's freedom--a blessing for all of Irllae...then her scream...her screams, and the sky, golden to blue, then black.  "...as are we.  We all have passed.  Yet these forms remain among the living..."

    He buried his face in her hair to hear Sashana'i's cries, piercing echoes within his mind tearing at his consciousness even as the memories ripped at his senses.  He pressed his face deep into her locks, even while he knew there was no hiding in any darkness.  Screwing his eyes shut, he felt only water make an escape.

    "They remain..."
 

    His hand shot out to the side as his eyes popped open.

    For a second, he had to recall who was not there. 

    Then he remembered who--and that she was supposed to be there.  He looked around the room:  Not a one in the clinic seemed to notice anything amiss, but went along their way, unbothered or oblivious.

    There were still times when acceptance annoyed him, even if he knew by then that taking that route could be beneficial.  After all, Sashana'i felt keenly her righteousness in letting that monster Maghet into her, as she knew his filth would bring health to others who suffered there.  It was not too great a sacrifice for him to make, knowing his cooperation was not a choice, and in its queer way would bring her some peace...

    He shook his head again, reminding himself, cursing himself even when he was certain he could not help...

    Because she could not help it.  She was thinking about them.  He was certain of it.  Their echoes were louder, more persistent, circling.

    Slipping into his robe, he treaded barefoot through to the back of the clinic, towards the hall that led to the rear court.  Lying only partially, he told Norla, working there, that he was going to the latrine.

    After using it, he drew the robe hood over his head and took the alleyway through to the north avenue.  He knew which way to turn at the wall.  Her pain was like a beacon to him.

    Outside the north gates, there was a slight rise of rocks, a roll in the land before it opened onto the silver grasses they had always loved to watch.  Soon after bonding with Mi'ejara, they came to Cezia to conceive....  Carefully, he climbed over the rest of the hill, feeling her presence with more ease than he ever had.  Of course, once bondmates were joined for over ten years...  His brow furrowed.  Be'i and Toma had been joined only six rallkle--plus a few hundred.

    She sat on the slope at the edge of the field, her knees held to her chest, tightly, breathing hard.  Her agony screamed within him, even in that happy place.  Be'i and Toma had come with their son just before leaving for Desalia, he recalled in a small but gratifying flash.  The last time the two had been together with their child, so truly what they knew they were...had been...

    Her hair was loose and uncovered, hanging in thick clumps around her shoulders, running to her waist.  His lady.  Lighter strands and the open sleeves of her gown drifted in the breeze.  So pretty, even then.

    He missed that being.  Knowing again its absence, he missed anew being something at all.  Worse, a tiny voice inside him said they might spend a lifetime longing for their beings if they did not come to some resolution.

    Sashana'i knew this.  She and Aratra both knew, in their final moments they were inflicting their own burden upon those they loved.  They had been more plagued than their outward spirits gave them credit for.

    Promise me, Be'i, Toma!  Promise me you shall continue for us--and for your birthpeople.  I beg you!

    She shuddered, stiffening.  It would not stop, her sister's pleas, the terror and ache, the pain...

    He stepped closer and her head rose slowly as she drew a deeper breath than the last.  Lowering himself behind her, he looked out to the view she'd been watching, the early spring upon Mecrisop.  Once settled, he straddled his legs around hers, wrapped his arms to embrace her against him. 

    Then he felt it, too.  She was trying so hard to hold it back, to resist it, that he could feel her temples straining, see her face flexing. 

    Fate must be allowed its natural course among your birth, what my selfishness has estranged.  I beg you both!  --Oh, my ancestors, why is this brought to me, for all I have sacrificed and desired in your name?!  This is not wished!  I and Aratra wished to continue, dreamed so fervently!  --Please promise me!  Be'i, Toma!  I implore you!  There is nothing more but this!

    He firmed himself against the pleas as well, yet could not push back the desperation, panic and open guilt Sashana'i experienced in her final moments.  Indeed, Sashana'i had been so surprised that the spirits would take her so soon, she had suspected Prihar of calling her instead.  That despair, in addition to everything else, had been one of the last impressions she had left with them.  More, he knew that his bondmate, being the direct source of Sashana'i's transferal--as he had been directly Aratra's--heard the voice and sensed the feelings most powerfully.

    I shall never rest in you without your promise--your acceptance of the fate you shall know is truth!

    She turned in his arms, pleading silently to him in her own right, even if she knew he could not do the one thing she wished--to make them stop, to give her peace, to make it quiet again with but her own thoughts.  She begged, knowing it was useless to, but so weakened, so defeated, that she had nowhere else to turn but to him.

    He wished he could, for her and for himself.  He touched her face, stroked her temples, apologizing typically for a thing he could not do.  To see her face, in tears he had almost never seen her with, made his own ache so much more...so much...too much, even for her, whom he had always trusted to bear strength when he could not.  She, who had given so much inspiration, love, who had helped make him the man he was...had been...could never be again...

    She sank in his arms.  The burden was too great and it came too quickly, the mass of lives coupled with that...those...all of it.  She was exhausted.  She could not hold them down any longer; she had to let them overcome her.  They easily did, and she could do nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing...

    His head bent as she finally released her sobs into his chest, clutching to him as if he were the last string of her spirit, so wanting its freedom, trapped within the maze of lives, other feelings and reactions, none their own anymore, but all their own.  The cries had consumed them, smothered them.  There was nowhere to run and they must accept the stillness.  So she cried in her bondmate's arms, her last recourse.

    They were completely aware of their madness:  Frustrating, draining, excruciating, and more maddening still for those alone.

    He felt his chest constrict as his eyes screwed shut.  Her sobs echoed in his ears and within his mind, where he could only feel her agony and his own, while those others continued, that ceaseless awareness...

    Her back heaved; she choked and gasped, torrent after torrent of emotion piled up over not only her own years, but generations of acceptance and pain, selfishness and ignorance, love and birth and death and dreams...desires...hopes...hopes crushed...

    Her lungs and throat ached and burned; her skull and swollen eyes pounded.  She could not stop, not once it had started.  She had nothing else but what she held on to; she would do nothing also but beg between sobs for sanity for find them again someday.

    She felt his pleas, too, and yet answered them with as much use.
 

---

    "Doctor, I've locked onto the first set of coordinates."

    "*The stasis chambers are ready.*"

    "Activating a level three force field."

    In its own way, this procedure would be more time consuming, Janeway knew.  Having been kept in stasis at the point of death for nineteen and twelve years, respectively, Nicoletti and Bendera would require extensive regeneration and several neurological and pulmonary resequencings to return them to adequate health, much less revive them. 

    Thankfully, the Doctor had already been briefed--extensively by that point, thanks to a catacomb scholar called Brymare'i, so said an addendum Janeway had glanced at while rushing out of the city.  Anai had contacted her on three occasions to dredge up the needed files.

    As she worked, she could see the planning Ara and Anai had done with the help of Desalia's regained medical records and technologies.  She even saw some of Bakali's work in there--briefly, of course.  Janeway skimmed the medical part of the process as it came up, but programming had to be more her concern.

    Without a doubt, Desalian medicine was as good as their transporters and shields.  Unfortunately, it wouldn't be good enough...though Janeway easily decided to worry about that later.

    "I'm beginning the transport now," she said, staring at the pad.  "And Doctor?"

    "*Yes Captain?*" He seemed distracted to answer just then.

    Janeway grinned despite herself.  "Be careful the next time you say you have nothing to do on your downtime."

    She could see his look from there, but forgot it immediately to see, shimmering onto the pads, two still forms, wrapped carefully in a copper-like foil and flanked by several nodes and wires, presumably the stasis chargers. 

    Janeway took a quick breath at the sight, looked aside to Kes, who was smiling already, nodding at her readings.

    "It's them, Captain," she said, breathless with relief and excitement.  "Doctor, we have Lieutenant Nicoletti and Crewman Bendera.  Their biomatter is in tact and they are able to be transported to sickbay."

    "*Commencing the transfer to stasis,*" the EMH replied,  "*so I can start my new career in archaeology.*"

    He had not even finished his sentence when Janeway started working on the next, barely noticing Chakotay when he finally rushed in.

    He only caught a glimpse of the corpses as they began to dematerialize.
 

---

    It was well over a du'ave past the inheritance of the legacy by the time she managed to stumble to the ground basin in the nook behind the old kitchen space without someone needing to rush out after her. 

    She hardly felt the sun in the little court, warm and dry, nor did she smell the recently planted rock flowers, and she looked at neither.  She only pulled loose her laces as she approached the stall surrounding the bath, her ghostly stare aimed at the space within.  A memory somewhere within her told her that her father had recently repaired it, since the severe replicator restrictions had been eased enough to allow more than a sponge bath on occasion.  Yet she, who wished so to submerge herself, had never used it.  Something told her...  No, she knew there had been too much business at hand.  A war was being fought.  Be'i...She and her bondmate had fought a war...on the Azallis.  Be'i of Azlre had.

    The confusion that followed her so faithfully was the reason she had slipped away.  Hearing some attendants speak on it, she decided to take her own water allotment.  She dropped her thin gown as soon as she came to the edge of the pool, unmindful of the gate wide open behind her.  She had no concerns about being seen.

    She wished to feel clean.  She needed to feel clean.  Four generations of filth was stuck to her small body, waging disgust with more generations still, who had known only cleanliness.  She wished to cleanse it away, if only to silence the ones who reeled in horror.  Would it only wash away the disorder, as well.

    She had laughed at one point, to recall that once, long ago, the girl called Be'i had been so concerned with having two bloodlines warring within her.  How naive the child had been, what ignorance and peevishness had lurked.  She had known nothing.  Nothing.

    It had been long enough that the personalities did not jump out...very often.  Rather, it was a constant blur of visions and voices, emotions and senses.  As a result, they both had become catatonic in their worst moments, heavily distracted in their best.  They had begun to eat again, but barely tasted it--barely knew they were eating.  They ignored people most of the time, wandered away only to catch the doorframe they were trying to exit, blind to it for the jumble behind their eyes.

    The water might help, however; the warm flow around her might give her a distraction she desired. 

    Yet all she did when she crouched in the shallow pool was hold her knees to her chest and shudder.

    So consumed was she with herself just then, she did not move when she felt a soft sponge and the warm water caressing her back.  At first, she did not notice, either, the dulcet phrases drifting into her ears.

    "Zha, Be'i," Miztri whispered,  "you shall find wellness with time and the spirits' blessings."  Dipping the sponge again into the water, she rubbed an orb of soap before bathing the lady's back, so terribly thin and small, like Y'dri's so long ago, when she was a small, sickly child.  Like Y'dri, too, she seemed to calm a little at the slow circles and gentle pressure, though her muscles remained rigid.

    Miztri smiled tenderly.  The lady was truly attempting to bear it. 

    "Bear you recollection, sweet child, of when I bathed you on Uillar?  The many suns when you had need for my care?  Or the first sun, when we found acquaintance?  You carried great strain then, as well, and yet I bathed you, knowing you would persevere.  You have done this, always."

    The voice moved through her, through the others and out again.  After nearly stopping at two, it centralized in another memory and connected with the mentioned place.  The voice recalled a specific time, the meeting...on Uillar, Be'i--B'Elanna--and Miztri.  Sashana'i had been there, but later, after B'Elanna slept then awoke with the sear of a thousand lances in her skull. 

    Sashana'i had been assessing that fate she'd called to that terrible place, feeling her first waves of guilt, a creeping feeling that she had brought on the well-tended strangers' pain.  She would give herself to Maghet to cure the lady who had come because of her.  She had already named B'Elanna Torres for the deep brown water flower, the daknal be'i, native to Desalia-Four and once cultivated lovingly by Sharana'i, her namesake, who was a botanist of much regard, whose final dissertation had been such a challenge to her that Mi'ejara felt compelled in his sympathy to delay their bonding, which was performed on the steps of her family house by...

    "Bear you recollection, Be'i, when you were brought to Uillar?  Dalra and I took you and Toma from its searing sun, and I removed your boots against your will."

    She shivered.  The water flowed over her, though only her skin felt calmed.  The words found her better that time, however.

    "You name me Be'i, yet that hardly passes my ears; the child is no longer known to me," she whispered, staring at the ripples in the water, which Sharana'i purified before dispensing it onto her more sensitive projects...

    "Your being must be rediscovered," Miztri told her quietly.  "When Dalra and I bonded your siblings, we too were almost overcome by the weight of what we had to transfer between them--and quickly, as it had been difficult to keep in but our forward consciousness."

    "None was retained in you."

    "Merely the impression remains," Miztri admitted.  "Yet it is known what now resides within you."

    "Nothing is felt," she muttered, "can no longer be...  Nothing is seen; nor tasted.  No sense finds me, nor is anything wished but the impossible..."

    Miztri dipped the sponge again, squeezed the warm, soapy water over the lady's bony skin.  "The water is felt, is it not, my friend?" she queried.

    She paused as the water trickled down her back; then she breathed and nodded slightly.

    Pleased, Miztri continued.  "You must learn to concentrate on the present, for only the present is what can be acted upon.  This was my first lesson in the novitiate.  It is an exercise to center your spirit on what is only before you.  Frustration and arrogance is what easily comes to the one who seeks to control what they cannot. 

    "There is--as you and Toma have taught us--a purity in action as opposed to lethargy, in rising to our fate, rather than simply permitting our ends.  The eventual result is not fought, as this wastes energy.  Fate shall make of itself what it shall, merely influenced by what acts have been committed to it.  This part is not for us to choose.  Thus, when it arrives, we know what was truly meant to be, and this is accepted. 

    "In this most basic principle, I should believe, you have grown to understand your limitations and need for humility in such matters.  This must be embraced utterly now."

    After another pause, the younger woman drew an incomplete breath then said, "The prichava wishes to take us into the novitiate, to train us to the scholarship.  As ashna'o, she has said, further education in our trade may be fairly delayed.  Our parents concur.  We should take ourselves into the novitiate.  I heard them say this...some time ago.  The...Lledri wished the same of...of Sashana'i and Aratra."

    "You must commit of your own will," Miztri told her.  "Your way may not be turned by us."

    "Be'i and Toma... The thought had been discussed, for what would be done after the fight was complete.  It is not recalled when this was, however.  Miztri, is it known?"

    "It is not important when, Child."

    She watched the soap well into the clean water, its pink slowly overcome the clear pool...  "I wish for control.  I wish for my bondmate in our pallet making love to me, and I to him.  The child...Ba'ela lives without his parents; the family suffers.  The resistance continues as we lie here useless.  "What sort of regents might Desal endure when those they would look to bear but madness?"

    "Yours is not madness," Miztri said, dropping the sponge to steady the lady's shoulders.  "You have undergone a great trauma in this transferal--"

    "So arrogant!" she shot.  "So arrogant to accept the inheritance!"

    "You acted upon what was needed.  Desal--"

    "--Shall bear nothing without regents bearing some sense of wisdom!" she hissed, glaring at the muddying pool.  "Sashana'i and Aratra are the regents in truth, not these shells of beings hardly able to see before their own eyes!  We are the least fit--could barely carry a scholar's robe. The regency?!  It is unnatural to wish such a place!"

    "Your place shall be learned," Miztri pressed as she turned the lady in her grasp to look at her.  "Be'i, you must.  Should you act but for your child, this must be endured and accepted by you and Toma.  To hope without expectation--"

    "This would be a fool's hope."  Quieting suddenly, her stare became as blank as it had been angry before.  Traces of water pooled, but then faded.  Her mouth was flaccid for a moment as she found her words within the rest.  "Miztri...it is not known by us how to proceed from this point.  We are lost in...  They speak....  They call out, always."

    She stopped, shaking her head, forcing back against the pressure behind her eyes, threatening to emerge, to take over, though it hadn't actually stopped...

    "I wish only for rest.  They roar in my head, like the sound in a shell or upon the ocean, constant waves of thought and...  Shall the novitiate teach this?  To bring peace to this?"

    "It shall teach you discipline," Miztri nodded. 

    "And the lady Lledri?"  Her eyes darted at the images, trickling over and through the gate of her forward mind.  "She may do this?"

    "She bears a full scholar's training, though lacking a formal trade education," Miztri told her,  "as do all covertly trained during Desal's night, myself included.  She bears every capability of instructing you in the spiritual discipline, I would think, particularly as you are legacy bearers.  Ka, you are correct and Lledri shows wisdom:  Scholarship shall be most beneficial for you both, particularly now.  Your beings shall be discovered through it and the spirits' blessings."

    She closed her eyes; the voices rose again.  Turning completely, she leaned into the welcoming arms of her old friend, released her breath as the lady's strong, thin limbs folded her into her motherly embrace and rested her aching brow on Miztri's long, red hair.

    She felt it. 
 

    "You have said this already, Tola," Ba'ela said, furrowing his brow in a way many had attributed to his mother.

    The father grinned slightly, reaching out to touch his son's arm.  "Your forgiveness," he said.  "My words at times are not recalled.  It is like walking through the fields and knowing you have seen that hill, yet you tell yourself it is a different one.  In truth, you walk in circles.  It sometimes requires another to...to show you your way."  He looked at the little boy's large brown eyes.  "Do I confuse you?"

    Ba'ela shook his head.  "I know you and Nali walk in the field, Tola.  They have told me that Yeshalli and Teshalla passed our family onto you and Nali, and you bear them with much effort."

    He breathed a laugh.  The boy certainly had his mother's sharpness, too.  "You are a brave one," he told him.  "I cannot think enough how we are blessed by you.  Even in this confusion, it must be known our love for you is not forgotten."

    "This is known, Tola," Ba'ela said, offering a smile as he leaned up to hug his father.  "And Nali Bakali has said you shall bear wellness in some suns.  You show courage, too.  You are better than before."

    He squeezed the boy in his arm, his grin but the remnant of the previous one.  "My thanks, my son.  You are, of course, correct." 

    He yet struggled, willing away the roar between his ears with a skill he forced upon himself at present with, indeed, a great deal of effort.  Any other seeing them so affected, they could bear and often did not care or notice.  In the presence of their child, however, he and his bondmate did not wish to waver, so with the help of some scholarly memories within him and that inspiration beside him, he forced some sanity into himself. 

    It was a sad relief when Haviki came from the next door and called his child to their lessons.  A lovely girl, grown already to nearly her mother's height with good health, Haviki bowed gracefully to her chosen teshalla with a smile he hoped he returned.  Kissing Ba'ela, greeting Haviki, he let them go.

    He watched them skip across the square, their scarves and coats adrift in the circular breeze, like birds flitting off to the flock of other children, whom Lrrili used to watch.  Unar often showed no notice of them, yet the officers could never be trusted.  They had been known to take children, and so she watched the progression of flowers before him, trying to choose the one which his lover had set out for him, a game of the wellborn, who had never wished his thoughts within her and resisted them, even if she knew she would bear his regret of her for it, yet she would not allow him her clean spirit...

    The droning became louder as his son moved farther away, yet he did not return to his pallet within.  The walls some days felt like a trap; the air felt good within his tear-bruised lungs.  It felt good to breathe air that was not of Terblis, with the smog-infested mines and the dust filled lower atmosphere.  Though he had survived that world, he forced himself to remember, bringing himself back to Cezia, where she stroked his hair as the final coughs consumed him...

    Again, he shook his head.  The unintelligible was less disturbing than fazing off into another life, though both erased his present, numbed him to the world around him.

    He wanted himself again so badly--any self--he felt pains in his chest to remember that desire.

    He tried to think of Toma's birth, of the young man before he came to Irllae.  It had become a sort of game, to try to recall that person, that boy who once possessed that body but now was such a small part of those more recently gained and more insistent for his attention.  Insecure, reckless at times, but good-natured, playful--a youth, High Commander Gychak had said that the young man had passed on Uillar.  The man the boy became agreed so casually, having retained a manner of that carefree nature. 

    He now believed Gychak utterly.

    All that was left behind by the boy...his birth father, a doting mother, sisters, people, mistakes, needs, desires...

    He tried to recall the pilot, the thoughtless arrogance, the boyish hope, the talent and drive, the potential and even the uneasiness he felt in certain company for his own hard conscience.  Yes, he could recall it if he truly looked, found him there.  The images were detached, though, floated between and behind the others like a sheet of paper in the wind, drifting and slipping around the feet of trees.  He wondered how he ever had been that young man, considering what he was at present.

    He wondered more how he could ever be that child again.  It seemed impossible.

    Sashana'i and Aratra both had believed it feasible--and necessary.  With their philosophy and rationale in his mind, the reasons were clearer.  Had Sashana'i had truly pulled them there, had she interfered with fate, then returning them as what they arrived as would restore what was meant to be resolved there.  The two could return to the lives they had been born to, and their birthpeople would be blessed with that balance, too.

    Toma and Be'i, however, had concluded years before that it was simply their fate to be in Irllae and that they belonged there, that their people were meant to be Desalian and their changed lives there were of the natural course of events fate had laid out from the start.  The spirits having accepted them upon their bonding was a proof to them of that.

    Mi'ejara would find approval in such reasoning.

    They bowed to him with due respect in passing and, still seated upon the front step of the clinic, he gave a single nod in return, touching his temple solemnly.  But he did not bring his head back up, nor did he pull his fingers away.

    Once he was there, he could not think to pull away again, as if he had connected himself.  The game was done and the rush had resumed.

    Then he felt her small hand wrap around his.  It was cool, smooth, gentle...his bondmate's, he reminded himself, though he had to press himself for a name.

    He looked up to see her half-empty gaze, the gold-flecked hazel, focus upon his hollow one, a deep, blue-tinged ochre.  That was what they recognized; they could not recall the former colors.  Her mouth was parted, lost of sound for all that she already knew.  Her hair was moist and partly braided beneath her light cloak hood, but she was clean, freshly dressed. 

    She knew what he was thinking about.

    He pushed himself to his feet without words, held her hand as they moved out and away.  Strolling as if with no direction, they paced silently through the winding streets, where the people kindly smiled and bowed, through the outer avenues, alive with trades and talk.  None of it caught their attention.

    Without disturbance, they took themselves through the north gates, where the rustling, clinking and chattering city sounds drifted away into the nature, noisy with but that, brushing and buzzing in the warm grasses.  The droning within them hardly shifted with the change.

    She brought them to where they had been a couple weeks before, on the knoll just outside the city.  She showed no excitement, but rather a plainness just short of sureness as she lowered herself to the drying grass, pulling him down behind her so she could draw his arms around in an embrace, as they had been the last time.  He followed gratefully, hugging her close to him, burying his face in her thick, damp locks.  She leaned her head back, stroking his head with her cheek as she stared at the rich blue sky.

    "I am feeling you around me," she said, her voice but a breath to the sky, knowing her mind more than she had in some time...however long that had been.  "We must make ourselves well again.  This cannot be allowed to continue within us."

    "Yes," he said into her hair, taking her scent, so familiar.  It was like none other, utterly hers, though slightly tinged with soap.  "The distraction eases at times, yet I am so...parted.  It is not wished we become accustomed to it."

    "This is known."  Her eyes turned back down to stare at the rises, far away, yet so tall, they seemed nearer.  With the recent rains, they had grown bright teal, spotted with red.  Those flowers would be collected for wine, such as a sort Felisdi once sipped from her favorite venue, waiting for her lover...

    She blinked, squeezed his arms.  "I cannot understand why no anger is felt toward Sashana'i, now.  For all she has had made, most all by design...  Harder natures within me tell me to spite it, yet I do not.  Only pity meets the struggle."

    "More would have been regretted had Allanois been lost," he told her.  "The legacy would have been taken even with a complete warning."

    "This is truth.  For this, she despised herself," she whispered.  "It is difficult to know...as are many things at present."

    "She did not wish her and Aratra's deluge be given, if but to maintain the ways she required.  --And yet, her love was truth.  Aratra would have found agreement with that.  His last thoughts were of regret."

    "It need not always be such, however.  We may offer ourselves assistance and ease their spirits."

    He nodded, putting his chin on her shoulder.  "The novitiate.  No resistance meets the thought--or perhaps it is desperation for sense in this damnation.  No, it is more.  This has been discussed before; they were...  There was temptation to inquire of Lledri."

    She breathed her relief to hear him say that, to hear his confirmation of a statement she had only that day uttered without complete confidence.  "Is there recollection of when?"

    "Three years past, I would believe, was the first."  He felt her relax in his arms and smiled slightly.  "Perhaps the children would like to hear the story, too?"

    "I should think they would," she answered, kissing his fingertips.  "They had never seen Yutars and now that the incursions begin in that sector, perhaps it is--"

    "Gyi'all."  She stiffened, but he nodded before she could curse herself.  "My apologies.  That was my doing...my doing..."  He paused, willing himself to stay with her, with their present.  "What shall be done with Desal?  It is now our duty and heavy within our conscience."

    "It remains to be believed in full.  Yet this pales in comparison to what all is also borne and could never have been ours had fate not turned our origins so."  She looked down to the hands she held.  "I was born on Kessik-Four, far away."

    "I on Earth, in San Francisco."

    "Thirty-six years."

    "Thirty-eight."

    "B'Elanna Torres."  She looked back at him.  "Tom Paris."

    They were but names, blank on her tongue and meeting his ears with equal reaction. 

    Yet it was their birth.

    She considered his hands again.  They were working hands, many times scarred and golden tan with exposure to sun, like the rest of him.  Yet he was no less handsome to her, no less desired by her... 

    "Sashana'i and Aratra bequeathed their duty to them...us.  This meets more approval than their belief that those people should rule these bodies once more.  They cannot be again, even could the legacy be reversed.  It was agreed the other matters had been grown away from, that life among those people was no longer needed or desired.  To reverse what has been done bears no possibility.  Yet it is known..."

    He blinked a nod.  "Their beings shall always be a part of our spirits...part of this...entirety."

    She swallowed.  "They flitter so far within, their truth no longer bears presence.  Yet it had been...me, this body, this mind, as was.  Suddenly, the girl is drifted away; she cannot meet my being...lost in the shadow.  I am left wondering--"

    "What is left and who I am," he finished soberly.  "Indeed, the initial memories remain, yet they are...unimportant."  He paused at that truth, staring at her small hands below, rested on his.  He could barely feel her touch, though he felt it more than anything else just then.  He suddenly remembered, and he missed the joy his predecessors had in all the things around them.  He sighed, even as he resolved, "Only what remains here with you and our family, those immediate around us, is what I own now.  I wish to claim but that."

    "Yet are we those children?  Those outsiders?"  Her eyes misted as they rose to the view.  "Were we ever those who became what we loved and seem to long for now?"

    "We are more now, I should think," he mused, "not any, but all of them."

    She shook her head from side to side.  "Ka, and thus my being is lost.  It is too much...too much."

    "Then new beings shall be found," he told her.  "A center lies within us, a core of being created from the whole.  This must be believed now."

    "Ka," she whispered.  "Such duty lies before us, oceans of understanding yet to grasp."  Her wide stare took in the panorama around her, the rich, feeding fields, the thrilling rise far beyond and the deep blue sky, devoid of clouds.  Her mind turned over to all the work of her life, and then the other lives--but then she stopped the flow when it became too quick, pushed it away with an ease that allowed no comfort.  It only restored the noise to save the confusion. 

    "It is desired," she said,  "and yet, there is such...defeat.  I despise that the control so needed...that it is erased.  Humility has been brought sternly upon this poor spirit.  And now this enormous thing, which in any truth is not a matter managed with any ease."

    "We would take more than we might bear, however," he muttered humorlessly, stuffing his nerves for the moment, forcing himself to see what had been an underlying worry for them both since they realized that they were all that was left to lead Desal.  "Yet it must be reiterated:  All that was fought for, sacrificed, wished to see, it lies in our hands now.  Every string of our strength is required for this, yet my feelings of inadequacy likewise loom.  It seems ridiculous that any among Azlre alone would take as truth our status."

    "Even as regent siblings, there was no preparation for this," she agreed.  "This status, too, had been borne aside."

    He considered that.  "Yet bore Sashana'i any true preparation?  Or Dulla?  Neither had been trained properly for the bequeathals, nor had the legacy given them all they needed to learn as regents.  The single difference lies in birth.  Be'i and Toma became Desalian, and yet Desal's redemption and recovery has been wished for as much as..."

    As his voice faded away, her eyes focused on the peaks of Mecrisop once again.  There was something there, in his words...

    "...As much as they did...as much as they..." she whispered, barely audible above the breeze, the joth cry, the field birds, shuffling in the grass...all of which she suddenly heard, perfectly.  It stopped her, stilled her.  She silenced to listen, smelled the warm soil and the flowers...

    He too looked out at the range, also sensing...realizing, "As much as they do." 

    The breeze stirred, and she sensed a miracle form from her many desperate prayers.  Within her, the noisy memories found some agreement, found one thing they could voice simultaneously. 

    Suddenly, there was a moment of...clarity. 

    "They yet wish it," he continued in awe.  So simple, but equally amazing that one simple wish could quiet their minds for a moment.  It was an incredible feeling, even if it wouldn't last, even if he still felt the chaos there.  He treasured that silence regardless.  "In their spirits, within us.  For that, no completion was had.  Yet we might ease all them in the completion of our duty.  They do wish it..."

    "As we do," she breathed as her mind grew clearer still.  "And then we might find completion, too, either in passing or what Sashana'i designed for us.  The previous had been a blessing to those who preceded us."

    "The latter we shall be unaware of for the most part."

    "This is unimaginable," she said.  "To be on that ship again, yet bearing no awareness...  Our spirits shall not bear change, only our forward minds, our bodies.  We would essentially begin again...and yet with aged spirits."

    "Very aged, I should hope."

    She nodded.  They did have a good deal of time to think on the second part of the promise.  There were other things, far more important things to them, for them to accomplish, after all, and much more to consider...

    "What names shall we bear in our scholarship, my spirit?"

    Again, he did not know, but could answer,  "We are not required to choose different names of being."  A moment later, though, he nodded to what he knew they felt.

    "What I was exists no more," she told him.  "I require a calling with...belonging."

    "This is truth."  His eyes followed her path.  "It is the way to choose a name of an honored spirit."

    "Yes," she said softly, turning her head up once again to feel the sun, the warm, white star, upon which their bodies fed. 

    The light hurt her eyes, but it was a pain she no longer minded, especially then, when for the first time in over a month, she felt some purpose aside from her need to regain some measure of sanity.  She could actually feel that pain and know to whom it belonged, feel the warmth of the sun on her pale cheeks and her bondmate's arms around her.  The voices remained close, their echoes swimming just outside the borders of her present, but for the moment, she basked in that small clearing, breathing its sweet air.  It was far more than what she could do only two hours before.

    "A ra'ill rachall n'trritsal," she thought aloud.

    He responded in kind.  "Ralid tsir i'a nai shto'ise tall wi?"

    They considered that, among other things.
 

---

    Janeway drew a steadying breath as the last of the near-corpses disappeared from the pad.  She had begun the reconversion of Nicoletti and Bendera's recorded DNA, though the Doctor would be the one to progress with the trickier neurological work.  She still wondered if it was fair--even if they had wanted it--to erase everything they'd learned along the way.

    They would know of it soon enough.  Anai had seen to that by telling the stories, their intimate details.  Though, Janeway recalled not for the first time that Nicoletti and Bendera's "histories" had been somewhat slim.  Perhaps because they didn't want so many people to know all their intricacies and personal moments. 

    Ara and Anai, however, who though Desalian had far more latent desires for privacy, had told them nearly everything about their lives as Toma and Be'i.  They had committed the remainder of their lifetimes and the legacy they carried to databanks as well, which not only were distributed among the family and the scholarship, as was traditional, but given to Janeway as well.

    She could be certain there were no details left out of those memoirs.

    In the end, they had given them everything...only so they could get it back...in minds that didn't remember it personally.

    As the transporters automatically reset, Janeway's stare hardened upon the pad.

    Despite their objections about continuing as elders, they never wanted to lose the wisdom they had gained if they did end up returning to Voyager as "children."

    They didn't want to change.

    "Locking in on Ara and Anai's coordinates," she said, not for anyone but herself at that point.
 

---

    "Their stubbornness cannot be blamed," she said with an old, wise smile that faded easily away. 

    An odd mood had led her steps in the direction of the internment.  Having seen their friends off to another front, having visited their ship, which respectfully had not been flown without them except to bring them home, she had found herself wandering by.  Her bondmate, still watching the fleet disappear, hardly noticed her go.

    Only minutes later, she found their more recent prisoner sitting on a concrete bench, taking in the sun and similarly watching the sky.

    He looked well.  His wounds were gone, his burnt hair had grown in.  Though he had been permitted to retain his ornaments of rank, his clothes were of casual Unar society--a boxy grey tunic, plain trousers and tall boots.  They had taken similar care of all the prisoners, provided them with clean housing and adequate cleansing rooms.  This was pleasing.  Self-made enemy or not, the Unar prisoners should have known only Desalian hospitality there, as an example for them to carry.  Desal could be strong and wise, yet show respect and peace.  It was a fair balance.  For that matter, it would inspire no retaliation.

    Not heeding the caution which rang within her, she deactivated the force field long enough to enter.  Indifferent to his stare and the stares of the other Unar prisoners there, she carried her cloak slightly above the stone court as she moved across and took the seat adjacent to him. 

    After a moment examining the officer, reminding herself that the man would do her no harm, willing the other inner warnings to settle for the moment, she put together enough words to inform him where that fleet he had watched was going.  He bore the news with somber acceptance, yet again showing his curious thoughtfulness.  Of course, he was intelligent enough to know he could do nothing about it.

    "Unar rally as we speak around the Antral perimeters," she told him quietly, "and shall fight with as much skill as we have known of them, I should think.  They shall be overcome, however.  Unar shall not persist, Commander Gychak."

    Gychak nodded slowly, naturally torn between desires of his own.  "I understand."

    "Yet you shall be returned to your own."  He looked at her again.  "My bondmate and I have arranged this with the Antral, the Koba, among our other neighbors.  This had been planned before the taking Desalia-Four, in truth.  You bear as much right to live on your world as we to live on ours, should no further incursions occur."

    "I thank you for that," he told her sincerely.  "I cannot deny that I miss my homeworld."

    "It is but fairness."  She paused, drew a breath.  Focusing on his steady expression, an idea that had piqued her before was recalled.  It seemed far away, though it was only a couple months ago.  Toma had agreed with his bondmate's thoughts, as did Sashana'i and Aratra...  "I would believe you could be trusted in that respect," she told him.  "I would wish you continue as a leader, Gychak.  You bear a fine intellect and your people need ones who would guide them well."

    "You would say this?"  Gychak asked.  "I have been an officer working against your people."

    "This has been discussed," she replied, "and you have been told we bear no less guilt but for our reasons.  Gychak, all life may grow and change.  It is the way, a way I and my bondmate know intimately at present.  Yet you too have grown with the events fate has pressed upon your experience.  Please give our suggestion consideration."

    He eyed her closely, seeing the strange aura in her gaze as she returned his attention.  It was a rather self-possessed look, direct and distracted at once.  Or perhaps it was her clothing, finer than her usual attire, her intricate braids and long, draped scarves, which lent to her unusual presence.  Perhaps it was a holiday.  Conversely, she did not look as well as she did when they last met.  She was thinner, sadder, distant.  Her small hand, resting on the stone seat, shook slightly.  Perhaps she had taken illness.  It was not severe enough to merit any concern on his part, but it was enough that he noticed.

    "You still despise us, I thought.  Have you made your peace so quickly?"

    She smiled slightly at his ironic question, but did not dare address the swirl of thoughts that met it.  Holding that conversation was difficult enough.

    "What was done to Desal, to our people and to others in the hands of Unar, shall not be forgiven by me, not in my truest being.  There would remain a part of me which distrusts, and the rhetoric shall never be heard easily.  Yet I would hold company with you in spite of these feelings.  I am not so young and single minded as to despise my adversary without condition."

    "Only be watchful," he noted.

    "Your people would do no less with us, I should think," she returned.

    Accepting her point, Gychak leaned back against the hard wall behind the bench; for a moment, his eyes considered the horizon, not the sky nor the land.  "When I was in the nursery, my mother whispered to my ear that once, long ago, Desalia and Unar had great friendship, were scholars amongst each other."

    "Our histories agree," she confirmed, seeing it, too, in her mind...a dinner among them.  They had not been aware at the time of the gradual shift in Unar society, though Mi'ejara had been curious at the more strident attitudes of their guests during their meal.  Feeling it, too, Sharana'i had served their wine generously, hoping they would relax to enjoy it properly before initiating another round of debate.  Perhaps that was it--overwork.  Unar tended toward perfectionism. 

    "Then it is conceivable," Gychak continued, catching her stare again,  "someday, when the stain of our transgressions may be forgiven by another generation, that our peoples might be allies again."

    Her lips flickered upwards.  "It is quite possible...someday," she said.  "Yet now, good leadership is required on your world, true beings and much labor to produce such a blessing."

    He nodded slowly, feeling his own grin grow as he considered the possibility.  "And what have your regents to say on this matter?"  Gychak queried.

    The lady's face froze.  Her small fingers clenched the stone she sat upon as her eyes turned.  She breathed, and yet it did nothing but drain the blood from her face.

    "Be'i Azlreat'i?"  Gychak leaned forward, almost touched her arm, but she pulled it away, shook her head.

    She drew a deep, cleansing breath, concentrating.  Forcing the words of Lledri and her elders into her forward mind, she found the clearing again then thought to speak.  "Sashana'i and Aratra are passed to our blessed ancestors.  I and my bondmate are Desal's regents now."

    Though this news did indeed surprise him, the Unar bent his head respectfully.  "I hope they found death with dignity."

    "Ka," she said hoarsely, understanding what it was for him to say such a thing, having known her siblings as but drasks of former standing in the Uillar camp.  But then, all that he had done showed both fortitude and a peculiar compassion.  In her eyes, deep as they were becoming, she knew he had been very brave.  In truth, he was a good man.  Terrsba bore memories of many Unar like him. 

    "We are to enter the novitiate," she informed him, breaking herself from the distraction.  "We have been...unwell since assuming the line, the legacy of the Allanois.  To enter the novitiate had long been a consideration, yet now this must be our fate, for our promises and our people, whom we would have served unflinchingly in either manner of continuance."

    Gychak looked at her again, almost smiled to know he had been correct.  "I noticed your unease," he said.

    "My purpose in telling you this is that you must give of yourself utterly to save what you love, too.  Despite the hardship you shall incur in your recovery, your people's welfare and lasting prosperity requires all you may bear to them."

    "I should, however, think there is little hardship in assuming the regent's role," Gychak commented.  "It is a substantial rise in position."

    "My bondmate and I never bore ambitions of nobility," she replied, coolly for his suggestion, though such a statement from an Unar was not unusual.  "Quite the opposite, in truth.  A mere knowledge of the ability was preferred, certainly not the rank.  The influence that accompanied the positions as regents' siblings was rather avoided.  Only as captains and teachers was the place necessarily assumed--yet nothing more."

    Gychak was not surprised.  "Yet you are regent now.  You may do with it as you please."

    "We may only do with it as what would restore the true way," she said, but then thought about that, recalling...  "However, such a way among regents is not unknown, and in fact is our truth and desire--to be one among all and but a binding influence.  We once were truly equal to those we lead." 

    "I heard such tales in my village, of Desal's egalitarian beginnings."

    Her eyes found his again, surprised that she had not given that as much thought as the uneasiness which met the mere idea of her changed status.  "My thanks, Gychak," she said quietly.  "I shall take this to my bondmate well.  It shall please him to recall this."

    He bowed his head to her again.  "Perhaps we shall enjoy other occasions to offer each other our thoughts, for our mutual benefit."

    She blinked slowly, considering the ground before him.  "It pleases, this thought."  Her eyes rose.  "In time, I would hope we shall."

    "Even should you never forgive my people?"

    "Even then," she assured him.  "As a child, I was employed among those who once had been my claimed enemy, with some success..."  Seeing the the flicker from her birth's past, forward among the others for a moment, she grinned.  Such a different life it had been, to see its images from time to time was oddly amusing now.  "As I recall this, it may well have had...some benefit."

    "I should think it had--'Chief.'"  It was not Gychak who had spoken.

    Turning, she found her bondmate standing just inside the forcefield.  His comment was quietly amused, which was more than he had been capable of for some time, she knew.  His expression remained, though, as he gazed tenderly at her from beneath his fine headdress.  The tail of the soft cloth floated forward to brush his jaw when the air turned, but he did not seem to notice anything but her.

    Her smile flickered up a bit more as she stood, touched her temple to address Gychak once more.  "Until we meet again...good man," she said softly then stood to leave.

    The Unar commander watched the man take his lady's hand after deactivating the forcefield for her then help her over the grid threshold.  Before turning away, he looked back long enough to offer Gychak a customary bow.  Gychak gave him a nod in return, a small grin. 

    The regents.  How irony rules us.

    They turned after that and moved across the entry court, their steady gates shifting the hems of their robes and the untied portion of her scarves.  The man's hand was placed around her waist; her own hand rested on top of his.  They seemed aimless in their direction, heading to no precise point that he could see; yet they walked, their postures straight and their bearings befitting their rank at least from that vantage...

    In that small detail at least, Gychak thought, they had not changed so very greatly from the time they were but drasks on the opposite side of the forcefield, when he was the one to walk away.

    Strangely enough, he too would leave and begin again from near nothingness.  Like them, the future would only be what he chose to do with it.

    An intriguing thought, he mused, leaning back to study his fellow prisoners...and perhaps hope it could be.
 

---

    "We still haven't gotten past the neural resequencing problem with Ara and Anai," Kes said as Janeway continued to prepare for the transport, download their coordinates, recheck their systems--seemingly all at the same time.

    "The Doctor can try it anyway," the captain replied bluntly,  "but they're coming back."

    Kes' eyes widened at that.  "Captain, they told us they would rather die peacefully than continue with their memories--"

    "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Janeway told her, furiously programming as the upgraded transporter resequencers merged into the present configurations.  "First, we bring them up here--then we deal with the consequences.  They told me to do what I felt was best--and this is it."

    "Captain--"

    "I am not going to lose them again!"  Janeway snapped and popped the second program chip into the console drive.  "Not when we don't have to and not when there's a chance.  --Chakotay, tell Mr. Carey to boost power to the transporters.  --Captain to Sickbay."

    "*Lieutenant Nicoletti and Crewman Bendera's bodies bore the transport well, Captain,*" the Doctor said.  "*I can begin work on them as soon as I reconfigure the equipment I need.*"

    She nodded to herself, unstopped in her simultaneous tapping and reading.  "I'm bringing Ara and Anai up now," she told him.

    "*Now?  What about--*"

    "Prepare for their arrivals and do everything you need to do to save them.  Disregard the neural resequencing if you have to and concentrate on reintegrating their recorded DNA."

    "*Captain...*"  Janeway's head fell for a moment to hear what she knew the Doctor would say.  "*...my programming will not permit me to make them undergo this procedure against their explicit disapproval.*"

    "Doctor, I have their permission to proceed," she responded.  "Contact Havetsi and Cera if you feel that's best, but prepare for them--now."
 

---

    "As it shall be, in my spirit and among all..." 

    It was often but a family event, yet Azlre had never seen such a ceremony, they realized one morning as they walked with Ba'ela to his lessons, looking around the busy square.  Three generations of their people had grown up without the scholarship, only whispers about one. Only a few among them had experienced a committal celebration; those trained in Desal's midnight of course did not have one.

    Desalians, they knew all too well, learned by watching, so they decided that their first public act as regents should be to commit to the novitiate on the same steps that had borne their bonding, the steps of the Azlre silag.  Their people would see the ancient act themselves and perhaps be inspired once Cezia had an institute of learning again.  To balance the publicity they had never been comfortable with, they decided it to be an unannounced occasion, an Akosa'o of sorts.

    Despite--or perhaps because of--their tactic, the citizens steadily gathered at the unusual activity around the silag and watched with rapt attention as the few elders there breathlessly identified the invocations sung by Bakali and Bala and the responses of their charges and the prichava.  The news spread like floodwater across the square.

    Hearing the buzzing behind them, the new regents couldn't help the look they shared.  It was still strange to think that they should be ones to look to in society as well as for knowledge, would always be an influence and all matters Desalian.  The oddness and fear of such responsibility was fading into a resolved acceptance, however.  They soon would be too busy to think on any residual strangeness. 

    "One among all, in my spirit as with all things living..."

    The opening meditations completed, and with an assuredness which belied their recent conditions, they presented themselves upon the ginhra cloth before their elder-parents, touched their temples with their fingers, bent their heads to accept the white scarves and headdress traditionally bestowed upon ones of their increased stature.

    "I, this sun, consecrate my body and spirit to the novitiate in preparation for my life of service in the scholarship."

    "And what shall be your being, Child?"  Bakali asked in her turn, smiling proudly down to the lady, her chosen daughter.  So troubled still, so often distracted and full of sorrow, she yet looked lovely that day, had honestly wished to bear herself into her new life with what dignity and beauty she could manage.  "How shall you be called from this sun unto the ancestors?"

    Staring up into her elder-mother's bright eyes, she knew her answer.

    "For my sister, whose prayers were made with guilt, yet were blessings upon me in life and spirit, and as she is a part of me always, I take this sun the calling of Anai, my spirit's being."

    Sashana'i would not have been particularly pleased with the idea, she knew, would have insisted she were not held along the living through such a cause.  But if her namesake need wear her hair in regent's scarving and beads for the remainder of her life, Sashana'i's spirit might at least accept the honor.

    "And your being, Child?"  Bala asked the man before him, who looked up with an unreadable expression.  But finding his spirit-father's eyes, his lips turned up.  Bala smiled back.  "How shall you be called from this sun unto the ancestors?"

    "For my brother, Aratra," he answered,  "who with Sashana'i allowed our spirits their present temperance and blessed us first with acceptance, and then with love and family, which we shall carry into eternity, I take this sun the calling of Ara, my spirit's being."

    Aratra's laughter at such a compliment echoed within him.  Yet despite their wryness in remembering their siblings, he and his bondmate had chosen their names in all seriousness and with much consideration.  It was truth that he did indeed "look to the stars," as she could "see with hope."  Their siblings' memories were very close upon them, as well, and in some ways they felt they were continuing their dreams, dreams both shared and not.  The names were of honor and meaning, and very proper, ancient conjunctions in Desalian. 

    Most of all, they felt right with those titles.  They created them, chose them.  From that, they could rebuild the rest.

    Not a quarter after the ceremony, the traditional offering of bread and wine to the onlookers and accepting their friends' and crew's congratulations, they passed under the great arch and entered the silag for the final consecration.  The excitement of the morning and the strain eating at their still unsteady minds had begun to show, and in a moment's severe distraction while they discussed their plans with Susik and Latsari, they had snapped themselves back into the present only to return again to the haze of numbness all too familiar to them and their family by then.

    Seeing this, too, Lledri was the first to suggest their entry.  Allowing them to kiss their son farewell for the day, she led the two into the doors of the temple they had helped to rebuild only a few years before.  She recalled quite clearly their sweating limbs, determined stares and their pride upon its completion.

    Much had been rebuilt with them.  Even they had grown anew, those children, now consecrated to their adult lives under her guidance.

    No other duty could the prichava have wished more than that.

    In the incensed foyer, they stood, their fingers gently woven, their eyes solemn but sane enough to recall the way:  They bowed to the woman who would be the first to guide them.  Lledri returned the gesture with due respect.  Though not of Desal's blood at birth, she had no doubt whatsoever exactly who and what they were now.  Once the clever children sitting on her pillows and resistant to citizenship, they had faced every trial in accepting it and had soon become most exceptional Desalians; learning their names as they took Desal in that most sacred way sealed her faith their spirits absolutely.

    From the entry, the two parted to be led into the chambers that had been prepared for them.  First among all, they required cleansing and rest.  The latter was not always traditionally practiced.  Yet in their conditions, Lledri felt it would be a benefit.  With a nod, her assistants began.

    She stood, properly compliant, as the women undressed her, removing her blue cloak and gold gown, easing her legs up, one after the other, they pulled away her leggings, unbraided her hair and eased away her scarves and beads.  It was hypnotizing, she thought, feeling their hands bare her, so softly, kindly, as if revealing her to nature itself, freeing her of the weight she bore upon her life.

    She felt the memories of the others who had undergone the same swimming in her, and her head lolled a bit at the rush of it.  But the scents, the gentle bells, the warm light glowing through the golden dome above them, all relaxed her enough that she simply swam with them and into the marlai-flowered waters when she was led there.  The fragrant wetness was the temperature of her body, and they poured it over her, caressed her with it then leaned her back into it to wash her hair.

    To this all, she gave herself completely.

    Her eyes closed slowly, opened lazily, unfocused as their hands moved over her and into her hair, and the bell song filled her ears.  The daze within her own mind sang to the song, the rush becoming melodic and the thick citrus aroma filling her.  She could not have moved if she tried and yet felt light, warm in the glow.  There was nothing but the fragrance and the song, the golden hazy light and the watery blanket around her.

    "You have carried the worlds of many upon you too long without ease, my child," came Lledri's soothing whisper as she felt the attendants ease her onto the edge of the pool.  "Sleep, Anai, release this aching weight, for you shall cleanse your spirit, as well."

    She obeyed.

    He had allowed the same, oddly taken as well by his senses, so completed in the soft chimes, the scent of the water, into which he was submerged and bathed.  It was a strange sort of peace, the harmony of those within him, chanting, a peace that had been desired for so long that the granting of that wish relieved him to the point of utter exhaustion. 

    He did not sleep at first, but lay numb in the attendants' arms as they washed away what earth might have been upon him.  Breathing the scented water as it caressed his face, rolled down his jaws and neck and into the water again, he indeed could feel it slipping away, the world at least.

    Who might have thought it of his birth?  he mused in a moment of remaining consciousness.  But this fell away to the water with the rest, and he floated, dreaming within reality, utterly unwilling to disturb the comfortable daze. 

    His placement turned as they completed his bath; the song progressed easily into another melody.  He noticed, but was not distracted by the change for the smoothness of the transition.  Some time after he knew he was lying on the edge of the water, he felt the old, bony hand of the prichava stroking his short hair, lulling him yet more. 

    "Your lady sleeps, as should you, Ara," she breathed.  "Sleep, and then wake cleansed for prayers to the spirits."

    His eyes closed upon her words.

    The sun fell hazily through the long rear panes when they entered the high temple at opposite ends.  They had woken well, far clearer minded than they had been in some time, perhaps for the rest, perhaps for the medicinal value of the marlai, or for the song, seemingly far away, a steady echo in the altar.  Well prepared for the consecration, what they saw in each other, however, warranted at least a pause in the entry arches.

    They decidedly had wrapped him in clothes befitting the occasion, she thought, in earthy trousers soft against his lean body, a fine tunic buttoned at the neck beneath a dark green kneecoat, finely embroidered and tied at the waist with a wide sash.  A tailored white robe framed the array.  His head was wrapped with scarves as soft and white as his robe, intricately plaited at the side with chain and tied with de'ihr beads as was proper for his place.

    They had taken special care with her hair, he noted with a small grin, braided several dark strands with silk and beads before draping them around her crown and over her forehead.  Sheer white scarves had been threaded through the braids and drifted down to the floor behind her.  Her shin-length gown and coat were silks in shades of blue with deep-toned stitching; dark indigo leggings fell over her cloth-wrapped ankles; upon her arms hung her robe, white embroidered with silver thread.

    So strange, they thought at first.  For the first time, they looked as regents should.  For it is what we are, they understood. And the longer they stared at each other as such, the less it was different, and the more it became proper. Indeed, it was agreed upon within them, that this array was right; it belonged entirely to many of those who had been given unto them, and now what they had chosen, accepted--claimed.

    Finally, he stepped forward, extended his hand.  His stare was bound to hers.  She held it without wavering.  When her hand slipped into his and her energy joined to his once more, he breathed again.

    "Anai," he whispered, stroking her fingers with a thumb.

    "Ara," she answered, pulling her chin up a touch.

    Their mouths turned up slightly.  This was their truth.  The names were welcomed within them.

    Bending, he brought her palm to his lips, pressed a kiss to it, and then to the soft of her wrist.  When she touched his temple markings, he rose, capturing her gaze once more and turning them towards the warm light.  Together, they stepped to the altar, a plain nook of the room, decorated with but a tray of heavy incense and subdued ginhra panels.

    There, they sank slowly to their knees, folding the fine fabrics upon the soft pillows, deriving their sureness from their touch, needing it as they began to offer their first prayers, their prayers to the living.

    Their hands waved the gentle white smoke over their faces and necks.  "Tsa'al ri'emonre ye'o, tsa'al gibre'ull nacsharr..."

    They prayed for their son and for their parents, for Miztri and Dalra, Susik and Gatra, Derra and Yasis...their chosen family.  They prayed for all Desal, blessed by the spirits in its new hope, yet to be vindicated and yet saved, should fate continue that path.  They prayed for the strength they needed to make that path possible.  They prayed for their crew and for their friends, for Novren and Medrove, their closest comrades and for all their neighbors within Irllae who would likewise begin again in their people's resurrection.

    They waved the incense over themselves, turned their hands within the wafting curls, feeling the slight drift in the draftless room.  "Ye'o tsa'ill monra'ull vjarr..."

    These things they would keep in their present world, the realm in which they would retain influence and responsibility, on which they could act, and would according to what fate would have of them.  The ones among them, peoples around them, moving and living, growing and learning and yet entwined in whatever was intended.  In these things, they would place their hope.

    They prayed for their own spirits, as well.  They asked for what allowance of wisdom and strength they could derive of their present selves, of all those many who had come into their beings and the children who had preceded them, whose knowledge and experience yet wandered within the flood of voices.  The remainder of that childhood was now set aside utterly.

    "Deliver them safely," Anai whispered, "our childhood spirits...and keep them at peace in their sacrifice..."

    "Safe until the time," Ara finished, "when they might be brought into the sun again.  We give them unto your care, blessed ancestors..."

    "For Desal, for the future, for the children among us and those who shall follow us..."

    "We ask this."

    Their eyes had closed, their heads bent, for their humble pleas to the spirits, never before so sacredly spoken from their lips.  There had never been such a need in the past.

    They prayed to let go, completely that time.

    Upon the altar, shed of their origins, their former beings, they felt that release, the weight of that youthful conscience fall away.  For all their former doubt, fears and insecurities, they knew that they could take back only what was theirs--their family, their people and their desires and dreams: their truest beings, their very present.

    The rest was fate's hand.  Someday, they would see its purpose.  For the present, they would only know their own.

    Their fingers still entwined, Ara and Anai prayed most sincerely to bear the strength to wield that freedom and that sublime acceptance, that balance within themselves.

    In that way, they continued.
 

---

    In the airy, silent room the two regents felt their elders' lives slip completely, finally away.  Watching their last breath expel, their last blink, twitch...

    Havetsi let her tears drop over her cheeks and past her wistful smile.  She loved them so, would honor them devoutly and always.

    They were the sorts who had shied from the attention their deeds in life inspired.  Rather, they let go and moved on, back to their source--their family--onto a new challenge, a new question or curiosity.  They accepted praise with true humility, though their spiritedness was as much a part of their beings.  They sought to live simply, bore their pride in others, though they did know their own accomplishments and took on as much responsibility and purpose as any might have expected--and far more when they believed it was required.  They had much complexity and bore their secrets as they felt necessary, and yet they had given everything of themselves.

    For all that, aside from her own strength, Havetsi knew she would do all she could to have their histories known completely from that sun forward, to never let any among Desal or Irllae ever forget them.  They had earned that honor--and would again, she knew contentedly.  They were only beginning...yet again.

    As she decided this, sharing her peace with Cera, touching his temple lovingly, she blinked to hear a familiar trickle of energy breaking Desal's tradition, just as she had hoped.

    Turning again, they watched their elders fade within the shimmer.  Not the spirits, but spirits still among the living were calling them.  Havetsi's smile grew. 

    Within herself, she already felt their initial pain and desperation, disbelief, and then curiosity.  Yet then, the hope, the work--always such work and uncompromising dedication--the continued wondering, the warm regard, deep love, resistance, tiredness and yet, particularly in the end, resolution. 

    It was an unsure end, and yet their final act was truly felt, giving to the woman and others who did so desire them, and wishing only they would fulfill the destiny their siblings had staked their spiritual peace upon.  For themselves, however, they had also finally chosen to resolve their foreign birth, one hundred and ten years after renouncing it.

    So, it was done.  Fate would be balanced.  There would be peace for the birthpeople, for their sister and brother, for the family and perhaps eventually for Anai and Ara's spirits as well.

    Havetsi and Cera watched the transporter take the bodies from the bed and continued to stare as they held each other's hands, well after the elders had disappeared.  They were not gone, however.  The elders yet lived, within them, truly within them and now beyond, in a continued life.  It could be said to merely be a small delay in the spirits' realm.

    "*Voyager to Captain Havetsi.*"

    It was Voyager's doctor, she knew with a blink.  Still a bit disoriented, she did not think to speak immediately.  With her well-learned expertise and a calming breath, she managed to stave off the rush of memories that attempted to follow that recognition, tucking them safely back.  Her own memory of the EMH would do. 

    "I am present," she said.  Her voice was a little thin, but she was assuredly herself.
 

---

    Anai's eyes opened upon sensing the light, and yet she did not see the familiar plaster ceiling at first.

    "You may find the point of balance within your mind," she could hear Lledri say in the first lesson they had taken.  A few other scholars, true and quite elderly scholars, had come to assist teaching the new regents, yet it was the prichava's voice she remembered most clearly then.  "This you have touched before.  When you bonded, you learned a way similar, the balance between each other.  Now you shall learn to center your singular, entire presence.  Kneel now and we shall use the clearing of which you speak...."

    The eaves creaked and far below, Rahna's call of bread was answered by several men who greeted him with the dawn.  The chatter faded naturally as they continued moving.  Through the shutters, the new sun began to creep in.

    Her fingers fell upon her belly, warm and flat, drifted over a spontaneous quiver within her.  She breathed.  The air was cool and dewy as were most mornings in Azlre.  She turned her head to take in the scent of her bondmate, as warm as she was in their old, beloved bed, musky with incense and the deeper traces particular to him.  It was almost strange to feel her senses so tuned, so sharp after nearly three du'ave all but lost of them.

    It had been so long, she knew, since they had made love.

    "As none can doubt your race beneath this sun, never doubt your spirits' truth, which is this place of calm you achieve.  Embrace it as your very nature, and your steps shall gain assuredness."

    Ara's eyes opened to hers: oddly calm, clear...knowing, utterly aware and yet learning.  It stirred her deeply to see him with that much peace, even if they had so much more to gain still.

    "From this point within, you shall learn to access the remainder of what lies within you.  The lives you carry shall assist your training when you learn to access them correctly.  To call upon them--and not they upon you--shall be learned as they embed themselves properly within you...."

    It had been a challenge.  For the third time in their lives, they had to learn how to process information, recall and interpret--and that time, like the last, in a completely different manner to what they were accustomed.  The advanced meditations were performed both together and individually, sometimes with their elder-parents or sometimes with Lledri; that had greatly assisted their recovery, as did their relative seclusion.

    While the battles and skirmishes waged on in the ever-stubborn Unar territory, their lives were spent between the silag and their home, in study and in meditation, in their dogged need to reclaim their senses, to rebuild their beings from the scattered fragments within them.  In time, it all would merge.

    "The spirit alone brings bodily life.  The legacy is life and spirit already touched by fate.  They are now a part of your experience--your life; they gather in your peaceful state now to help form your present being.  Welcome them now, and always.  You shall find constant teaching from them, even while utterly among the present...."

    From what Anai could tell in those first few minutes of her morning, it was beginning to work.

    She stretched her arm over him, filled with his scent and his stare.  Never losing either, she moved, sliding herself over him almost as if she was the trail of incense, covering and encapsulating him within her streams, moving against him, upon him, tempting all his senses, inciting him to breathe her effects.

    He showed little surprise, but undoubtedly was pleased.  He added to her aroma when his hands lifted from his sides to wash her against him, pressing his hands against her skin, over her soft curves as she undulated against him, arched to his motion.

    "I am fertile this dawn, my mate," Anai whispered playfully into his ear before she tasted its lobe, nuzzled her nose against his markings, reveling in their similar alertness, as if the sun had finally broken through their morning mist and fog.  "It is felt."

    "You bear more warmth, ka," he breathed in agreement, inclined to grin as he grazed her warm neck with his teeth.  "You wish for another child?"

    She smiled as her nuzzle became a kiss to the sensitive nerves of his temple.  "I awoke inspired," she told him without complication, lightly flicked her tongue along his indigo marks.  He groaned, low in his throat, causing her to sigh with a doubled satisfaction.

    "Then I shall have to indulge my spirit," he said, letting his fingers fall between her parted legs.  Softly, he brushed her swollen flesh, rocked his hips against her own sinuous motion, and matched her kisses, tastes and soft, encouraging sighs.  When his touches deepened, she arched hard against him, drawing her head back as she allowed the rush to wash through her.  His other hand slid up to cup her full breast, gently squeeze her nipple between his marked fingers.

    "Ahh...more..." 

    She caressed him with her moistness as he complied, watching dreamily as her pleasure radiated from her open-eyed expression.  It had been far too long since they had been well enough to have each other like that, he decided, drinking in her responses, her motions, her soft, throaty song. 

    Shuddering deliciously, she rotated her hips to stir his increasingly wet erection, and felt her nerves and muscles clamor for more attention.  "I am ready for you," she breathed, a seductive smile curling her mouth.  She slid her center over him again, trembling slightly with another wash of sensation.  "Take me."

    His lungs filled as his body surged.  Her words had been coupled with her knowing, her feeling...  "Ah, Anai..."  Pulling her down to his open mouth, he tasted her upon contact, burying his hand in her long curls, turning them over like the tide and shifting himself down so to bury himself in her.

    She welcomed him with a long moan of approval and drew her legs around and up his firm thighs and hips.  He moved, and her heavy lids closed with the pleasure and relief, to have her mate feeding into her body and her joined spirit, drawing out every ecstasy in them both.  Her calves pressed his weight more fully onto her as she drank his open kisses, his quickening breath, muffled his moans and hers between them.

    "We shall make a child this sun," he whispered, parting from her a moment to find his breath.  His sleepy stare smiled down to her, warm and sure, even as he pressed again into her small body, watched her relish in her fullness.

    Her gaze drifted down to his.  "We shall, yes," she whispered, ending on a deep claim of the cool morning air as he completed them again...and again; then he rocked his hips against hers in a timeless rhythm she countered as if by nature.  She almost laughed.  It was wonderful, the motion, the sensation, building upon and over the last. 

    He thrust harder, plunging his hand behind her nape to draw back her head.  His lips and teeth went to work on the flesh of her shoulder.  Upon contact, her nails tightened upon his hot skin.  It dawned on her a moment later that he would not be patient in it that morning.  It had been too long for that.  Considering how he compensated, she did not mind. 

    She instead met his strengthening rhythm, holding his stare as his face tensed, as her upturned lips twitched, completely in each other.  He was straining within her, surging against her riveting muscles; she felt the small muscles in his temple twitch as his mouth locked onto the curve of her neck.  A strangled growl rumbled in his throat; her hand flew between her own teeth to stifle the cry she might have voiced freely had their son not been sleeping nearby. 

    It barred nothing in pleasure, though.  Moments later, she felt his warm seed spreading into her as his mouth parted to gasp for his breath.  A moment after that, she bit her hand to feel her climax rain through her, arching her body and clamping her legs, pressing her foot on the inside of his thigh to hold him where he was.  He did not resist, but fed it more, bearing hard into her in another small surge, tasting the soft underside of her exposed neck lovingly, gratefully, shuddering again soon after she did.  He nuzzled there a minute longer as they began to relax.

    In that moment, all was quiet within them.  Looking to her again, adoring how she looked just then--sated, completed, at peace, her small, kraja-marked hand at rest beside her face, touching her temple with the backs of her fingers--his lips pulled up into a similar smile.

    "M'ves ye'a," he whispered, his emotion crackling in his throat.  She was so beautiful to him, so able and inspiring to him...

    "M'ves ye'i," she responded softly, with a slow blink in her misted eyes.  Sometimes, not necessarily at times like that, her breath caught to sense what he felt for her.  It never failed to raise the same regard.  Reaching up, slowly caressing the long muscles of his legs with the arches of her feet, she led his lips back to hers. 

    He went easily to her, tasting her full mouth once more before pulling her over with him, onto their sides.  He drew their blanket over them again, still kissing her intermittently, whispering his love of her as they nestled into each other's embrace.  Their eyes closed slowly, without attempt or argument.

    The rustles in the eaves, the clinking of the kettle downstairs, the sun shining fully into the little window at the center of their attic room, all of it they enjoyed as they lay entwined in each other below their soft knotted blanket.  They smiled gently with the knowledge of those first facets of peace within them...and perhaps soon a happier distraction, would the spirits bless their hope and fate saw it to be truth.

    "Nali?  Tola?"

    Their eyes drifted open.

    Their son stood at the curtain of his pallet, sure on his small, sandaled feet and yet prepared to go any direction with but a word.  His dark brown gaze was rather plain below a raised brow; his bottom lip was lightly snagged between his small teeth.  His fingers, entwined upon his ribs, fumbled with each other.

    Since their inheritance, Ba'ela had been remarkably strong for such a high-spirited child, though a little hesitant to approach his parents at first--careful, in truth, not to surprise or disturb them.  There were several mornings where they, so wrapped within their own minds, did not hear him calling them, or thought he was someone else.

    That morning, they heard him perfectly, and they found their mutual grins grow to know it.  Turning onto his back, looking to his son's questioning face, Ara outstretched his arm.  "Bring yourself, Ba'ela, the sun has not grown to great height as yet, I should think."

    Seeing his mother's grin, his father's welcome repeated with a turn of his fingers, the boy smiled widely and hurried over.  He slipped off his house sandals once there and crawled onto the bed, giggling as his father pulled him over and between his parents.  Placing his dark, curly head on his mother's breast, Ba'ela snuggled in with them and gladly closed his eyes, felt both their warm arms rest upon him, hold him gently.  The child relaxed in mere moments.

    Anai caressed her child's hair, placing a kiss on his fluffy crown before looking up to Ara again.  That time, she thanked her bondmate with her smile and her gleaming eyes for the one they had already and the other that might have been made that sunrise.

    For all the guilt and regret her sibling might have felt in her prayers and actions, Anai knew she regretted not a moment, especially then.
 

---

    There was a palpable pause in the transporter room when the systems whirled down.

    The elders of Allanois lay, still entwined, their marked hands bound with their center finger rested in the other's palm, their beautiful clothes and ornaments spread around them, staring serenely at each other. 

    Dead.

    Chakotay took a step forward, seeing their array.  In a blink, he was in his quest, watching the youthful forms in those same clothes walking away from him, having said their goodbyes.  He almost held a hand out to prevent Kes from disturbing their grave, but then he suddenly understood that she was supposed to.

    For that matter, on Desalia, once their spirits had been freed by their loved ones, the body did not matter.

    "They've only lost pulmonary function about a minute ago," Kes said, her voice rising with contained hope as she double-checked her readings.  She looked back at the captain.  "Their neural pathways are still functioning.  Weak, but present."

    "Then we don't have much time," Janeway said, her stare locked on those forms, whom she'd left only a half hour before. 
 

---

    She was notably rounded with child--two children, in fact--when her bondmate opened the door of the silag for her and they walked out onto the front steps.  Ba'ela, who had come with them while they received their ornaments and dedicatory prayers, held his father's hand, his eyes wide to the scene before them.

    Upon being seen, a roar of celebratory greeting enveloped them.

    Anai laughed, leaning into Ara's arm.  It was as beautiful a sight as they had hoped.  A dream and prayer breathed by billions finally brought to the present by an inspired fate--not to mention a great deal of education, hard work and sacrifice--had resulted in Irllae's boundless rejoicing.

    The ancestors were certainly pleased.

    All of Azlre and Cezia looked to be in the square, celebrating the end of the war with Unar; it seemed that half gathered close to the silag when the regents made their presence known.  They gratefully greeted and thanked the two, whom they knew when they were children--children who had struggled to improve Azlre and Sacezia, who had plead for resistance in that very square, who taught their people and fought for their people, suffered and overcame, as well.  Seven and a half years after beginning their fight, they all were free, their regency and lands restored, their spirits unpoisoned and ways unspoiled, their blessed futures before them.

    "Zhra'o ka!" and "Zha hevrre!" echoed through the crowds, some waving from as far as the east avenue.

    In response, she drew a circle with her fingers upon her temple and bowed to them.  Her bondmate mirrored her, sinking to a knee with all respect yet cheerful, too, to hear another wave of welcome rise from their fellow citizens. 

    Turning to see Lledri and her attendants gladly following them out, they lifted their robes and stepped down with their child to join their people in their joy...
 

    Their fingers slipped under the crust of the soft, puffy dough then rolled it around the joth cheese and harisde they placed in the middle.  Anai ate her portion quickly, hungry not only for her burgeoning belly, but for the busy, happy day, spent amongst her neighbors, friends and allies.  It was nearing sunset by the time they were able to sit and take their meal.

    She did not complain, however, even as her legs cried relief when Toma helped her onto a sidewalk step.  They basked throughout the day in Irllae's accomplishment, even while the reality was still sinking in.  Anai and Ara, among the others, had known for nearly two seasons that the Unar would surrender.  After a decisive series of attacks on their homeworld and a final pinch of their resources, their prediction came true. 

    Sashana'i and Aratra would have felt incredible contentment in that, Anai knew.  Much of what had consumed them--the very reason for their initial prayers, in fact--had at last been vindicated.  And yet, that was only a part of what would be Desal's peace.  Next must come the long, difficult and far-reaching work. The restoration of Desal would consume at least a generation.

    However, she managed to set those thoughts aside to celebrate that blessed sun.  The next sun would rise soon enough.

    Looking at Ara's wise grin, she could tell he understood the same.

    "My children," said Bakali as she and Bala brought forth another elderly man.  Gaunt and trembling, the stranger smiled kindly then bent in respect before taking a space on the ground precisely six paces away from them.  "Beneath this sun, I bear the honor of presenting Shantsa of Desal, leader of the new council of elders which has formed in the city."

    Anai sighed to see the man's terrible state; Ara, feeling equal compassion, leaned forward to offer their tray to him.  "We welcome you among your own, good man," he said, bowing his head.  "Please, bring yourself forward and take your meal with us and our family."

    The elder was visibly surprised to hear such words and to see such simple people.  Somehow--perhaps for his own memory of so long ago--he had expected the two, though captains and laborers in the resistance, to be more formal with him.  "My thanks, good regent," he said and crept forward to choose a spool of bread and some fruit.  When Anai poured him tea and set it by their tray, he breathed a laugh, bowed again to accept it and the close seat.  "It pleases, the spirits bless you, good regent."

    "Shantsa wished to speak with you," Bala said, nodding with approval as the man took his bites.  "He brought himself with Gihetra this mid-sun for this purpose, sent by his council."

    "My infirmity accepts travel poorly," Shantsa admitted, "and yet, given my past placement among Desal and familiarity with your family, I felt it proper that I be the one to address you both and beg of your duty, as you are now prepared for it."  His eyes roamed around the square, sunken and sad.  "I should feel an eternity's weight of guilt for asking this of you, however, seeing your beloved home."

    Anai leaned back on an arm, caressing her swollen abdomen as she regarded him again.  "Shantsa," she said, "a great many spirits committed to the ancestors bear a measure of guilt they have placed upon themselves.  You need not add pain to the stars in requesting what we are, by right and duty, committed to give you."

    Ara reached over and stroked her arm.  Best they began their regency with some measure of poise, he thought.  Anai had begun well.

    "Thus," Anai continued, "you shall take your meal amongst our well-earned peace and then we shall speak on Desalia-Four."

    They could be patient, Ara knew.  They already knew what the elder would ask, having not been isolated during their training.  They had rather insisted on being fully informed of Irllae's developments.  Unfortunately, the news on Desalia-Four was surprisingly bad on a continuing basis.

    It was not for a lack of relief going to the homeworld.  Food and medicines had been brought and distributed.  Some quarters there had unbelievably resisted the help, claiming that Desal had not served in its contrition well enough.  Also, the conditions of the planet were such that much of the effort outside of unraveling the massive catacombs of historical and technological archives involved keeping those volunteers healthy and safe.

    Disease, bacteria and blights, infected insects and animals, had sunken into the very stones of Desal, much more so across the continent; the generally temperate climate did little to kill it.  More, the power systems they had needed to obliterate during their invasion had no replacements.  The Unar had removed all the original systems, including the sanitation control and food services, so they could maintain complete control over the retained population.  The land around the capital city had been abused with force, preventing any productive growth for at least another season, when the rain season might help wash the deluge away.  Even then, the poisoned waterways and wells would need to be purified in order for any irrigation to be successful.

    People like Shantsa were in desperate need.  Certainly, he would not have come had his home city did not needed an assured sign that it the resurrection had come, a presence that their citizens could look to and the work those new regents had always been prized for in their trade. 

    Those not like Shantsa and in utter disbelief that Desal was vindicated and ready to grow again were likely in worse condition.  They remembered too well the empty looks on the natives' faces when Be'i and Toma had broken into the city, their lethargy even when they killed the guards there. 

    They were spirits living in corpses.

    Those citizens would have to learn by their regents' examples, Ara and Anai had decided, watching Shantsa obey them and continue his meal, his long, ancient fingers trembling with but the weight of the bread.

    They ached to merely think about leaving their beloved homeworld, waking in the cool air in that tiny loft, taking their morning through the square and enjoying the company of their fellow natives, all of whom they could name as friends.  They would indeed miss Azlre openly. 

    Yet their responsibility was to their people, their calling to bring Desal back to health and contentment.  There was no formal scholarship to speak of--more simply, no government--no proper schools, medical institutions, food supply, housing, training centers.  These were but their local concerns.  There were six Desalian planets, fifteen smaller settlement worlds and about five billion largely uneducated people.  Thankfully, they were also a people whose love of learning had never ceased, even in submission.

    On that, Ara and Anai were basing much of their optimism.

    It would be like their work on Cezia, they imagined, only more widespread, far more encompassing.  They felt ready for that new challenge.  Having completed their spiritual training as well as being learned in their fields, they felt confident and relatively secure with themselves and the legacy that had been left with them, with eight lives worth of working during the occupation, nineteen more of working in peace, plus two foreign born ashna'o, whose experience spanned both conditions.  This all at work within them, they had little doubt that they and the other captains, their dear friends, the surviving scholars and their beloved elders, among others, joining their efforts, could repeat the process they had fought for years ago in Azlre, spread their knowledge and purpose.  The next generation would show some of the fruit of their labor.

    At least it would not be completely new to them.  Then again, nothing really was anymore.

    Ara nodded to himself as Shantsa completed his meal, careful not to waste a bite.  The elder looked as though he would burst with the relative feast he had consumed and he stared at the bared tray with what almost seemed like regret.  For that, the younger man offered him a small, warm grin.

    "Your care shall be seen to during your suns upon Cezia," he told him then caught Bakali's visible approval.  Ara returned a little grin and continued, "You shall take food and gain health, enjoy this blessed world and its citizens and remember it dearly."

    Shantsa sighed.  "Should this be what you require of me, good regent.  And yet, I must beg your--"

    "Not beg," Ara said gently, reaching out to the man's heavily wrinkled temple.  "I would rather wish you remember Azlre, Cezia, as that shall be our template for Desal--for now.  Even Azlre should require great improvement.  Someday, it shall be but a memory given to our grandchildren and great grandchildren, and all after that who shall see us, all of us, as ancestors willing to sacrifice what little they had to allow a future peace to flourish.  Or I should hope we would be blessed by fate so dearly, for the amount of work which must be committed to."  His eyes crinkled with his grin to see Shantsa's smile slowly grow.  "Remember it all, good man.  It shall be again, should our acts lend to the future.  We should intend they might."

    The elder Shantsa breathed a thick but resolved sigh then nodded.  "It pleases, good regent."

    "Only allow my bondmate and I the proper amount of time..." he paused, glancing to Anai, "...for proper preparation and to settle our affairs."

    Anai straightened, pulling on a brave little smile for Shantsa.  "It would be all we ask of you," she said,  "for ourselves and our child, our friends, to allow us a gentler parting.  Suddenness in these matters is not preferred, should it be unnecessary.  This is...our nature."
 

---

    "Janeway to the Doctor.  Prepare for your next patients."

    "*You'll have to begin the regenerations sequences there,*"  he informed her.  "*I'm transferring those parameters to your location.  When you've completed the first re-encoding sequence, we'll bring them to sickbay to prepare for the next.*"

    "With or without the neural resequencing?"  Janeway asked, watching Kes examine the pair then move away with a nod.

    "*To honor their wishes, I'll attempt it,*"  the EMH replied.  "*As the Desalians say, we'll find out what is meant to be.  --Yes, I have spoken with Captain Havetsi.  She says they would find the spirits regardless of what we are able to do here.  I took that as a yes.*"

    Janeway let out her breath, nodded.  "Then I suppose we'll see soon enough," she said, breaking her eyes away from the pad to examine the genetic data uploaded from Sickbay.  They merged into the present program with but a tap of her index finger, and she looked out to the couple on the transporter pad once again.

    "Just one more blessing, you two," she whispered.  "That's all I ask."

    A moment later, the pad filled with light and energy, which poured into the lifeless elders.
 

---

    "She does not wish to see you," the nursemaid told him from the crack in the door, plain and cold, as any good nursemaid would.  "She states that you should wait until she is fertile."

    "I did not return from three-quarters a year in interment to wait, woman," Gychak responded.  He pressed the door open easily.  For their lack of activity, Unar women were naturally not very strong limbed--only strong tongued.  Striding through the foyer of his wife's quarters, he collected his breath, however.  Despite her usual and frustrating dismissal, he could not curse a woman who had lived her life looking at the world from a chamber, whose cleverness had been restricted to her small cells.

    He saw her near the wall, just how he last saw her, years ago, sitting in her reed chair, staring up to him with a mixture of surprise and hostility.  Somehow, it was a relief to see her, even like that.  He raised his chin to her, respectfully...perhaps even kindly.  Her floor-length hair was bound tightly, hanging over a shoulder and contrasting with her grey dress and perfect, milk-white skin.  Between it all was her thin, wide mouth, long nose and high, arched brows.  She was very handsome.  He had almost forgotten how much. 

    "I would like to see our son," he told her quietly.

    She almost refused him outright, but peered up to him in afterthought.  "You have been among Desalians for some time.  They obviously have shown you some sentimentality."

    "They treated me with kindness that, even considering their manner, was generous," he acknowledged.  "Though, I was among my crew in their internment and had little contact with them.  --Our son, Rejkisb.  I would see him now.  It is my right."

    Thinking a moment more, looking over his commander's uniform, his silky black hair, his long firm nose, tensed with need, she gave the nurse a slow nod.  "Prepare Tchutur for his father's audience," she told her, and then met her husband's gaze again.  "You might have asked he be brought out to you in a more proper forum."

    "What is improper about having a forum with my own woman?" he queried.

    "Do not play games with me," she warned.  "Unlike you, I have no such heartfelt yearnings.  So tell me why you break my isolation?  Only to see Tchutur?  I think not."

    "I might have obeyed your conditions, Rejkisb."  Gychak did not release her stare.  "But, simply, I wanted to see you as well."

    "For what purpose?" she asked.  "I am not fertile."

    He sighed audibly, turning to stare at the gauze-covered windows.  "I believe it is unnecessary you live in isolation when there is no need.  Those restrictions were imposed again when the Plodischik Sect overthrew the central commissionry a century ago--an unnecessary action by the revisionists, as we had overcome the affects of Gozhor with proper treatment.  There is no comprehensible reason for you and others of your sex to live bound by walls."

    "There are many who would burn a hole in your sternum for that," Rejkisb commented.

    "Those many are largely dead for their beliefs," he countered.  "Who is wiser, I wonder?  The sentimentalist or the fragments of a corpse?"

    She allowed a nod to his point.  "It seems I knew you less than I believed."

    Tilting his head, he accepted that and continued soberly, "Consider this, then:  I believe that Unar should regain its prosperity in its older ways.  For that matter, we require all our people now--and as much knowledge as we may manage to gather.  We are very poor for what we sought to do in Irllae.  We have been disgraced and degraded beyond measure for that abundance of arrogance and violence with which we stripped the liberties and livelihoods of all within our region, and then attempted a controlled genocide upon a race who once were our allies, among others."

    "This much is true."

    His eyes lost a bit of focus as he thought on that.  "I shudder to think what our finest philosophers would have assessed of our last century."

    "Doubtless, they would have cringed at the lack of adherence to the precepts of Crishog," Rejkisb said plainly,  "to the tenants he laid out concerning the respect of all minds equal to one's own.  It is obvious now that those who turned Unar towards desire for regional purity similarly ignored the possibility that the remainder of Irllae were indeed equals, only saw their differences and named them weakness so to vindicate their political objectives."

    His eyes widened with her admission, and he felt a thump in his throat for the hope she had just planted in him.  "These are your thoughts in this, wife?  Do you wish to end this isolation?  These plans for dominance?  --Yes, I realize the latter is already chosen, but I would like to hear you.  You are educated fully and the literature you have produced is exceptional."

    "This has been my only known life," she told him then turned her stare again, "and you have been at war a long time." 

    Watching him hold his face strong to her even then, however, she sighed thoughtfully.  He truly wished to know her mind and was not toying with it, as he once had.  Once--and he had disgusted her to the point of never allowing him into her chambers again.  But, Rejkisb thought again, perhaps it was but his active mind which had produced such a needling curiosity.  Or at least maturity had made him bearable...even intriguing.

    "With such progressive thoughts," she stated,  "and as you are still rather young, you might want to attempt your own campaign at the commissionry."

    "But would you stand with me?"  he challenged, turning fully to her again.

    Her light grey eyes flickered a bit as her brow drew down.

    Gychak willed down any sign of amusement.  It was good to know he was able to surprise her, to take her off guard, hold her interest.  Still, he yet did not wish to turn her quick temper when he had only begun with her again.

    In the next room, he could hear his child being prepared for presentation to his father.  But Gychak did not look back.  He needed her answer, and he thought that perhaps the Desalians had influenced him after all.  Or maybe he had finally learned to listen to his thoughts and desires.  His father and brothers seemed to agree with his views, particularly in the light of Unar's need and gladly in spite of those who yet held onto the ways that had all but destroyed them.  Now, he would take his woman's words, as well.

    "Would you be a true wife and bear my side in this," he asked again,  "as did the women of our people in our greatest age?  Rejkisb, your words will influence my policy.  I have chosen to trust and respect your opinion."

    Rejkisb broke the stare to glance towards the shaded windows, knowing that she had never looked outside them, yet had considered it.  Why she never tried, however, was suddenly a mystery to her.  The same could be said of all their people--why they as well had never questioned...

    "I might like to see the sun," she replied softly.

    Gychak's lips pulled into a grateful smile.
 

---

    It seemed disrespectful, Kes' parting the couple then, though it was necessary--and even she had paused before separating their fragile, skeletal hands, which did not come apart easily.  Janeway might even have stopped the whole thing right there if the young lady had been any less quick about it.

    From there on, she shut back her emotions and focused again on the technical.  Kathryn locked her stare on the readings as the transporter began to reintroduce the most recent samples of Lieutenants Paris and Torres' DNA into Ara and Anai of Cezia.  The genetic samples were not dissimilar to their recipients, in truth, only that they had been taken before they had been affected by environment, illnesses, injuries and time.  Ara was given the first reintegration, since his medical condition had been dire.

    Looking up, she watched intently, as though she expected someone else to be left on the pad when the cycle was complete.  But she knew that was still to come, the more precise treatments that had been planned.  When the transporters stopped cycling according to the program written almost a century before and amended as late as a month ago, Janeway numbly repeated the process with Anai.

    She was beyond feeling by then, but watched with the detached calm of any scientist, even almost wishing at that point she could see where each cell was being met and merged.  But as the program ended again, she grit her teeth at the thought.  Those were no science projects, there.

    Still ancient, still dressed in their wedding clothes and bearing the same peaceful expressions she'd witnessed in their chambers, they did not move, nor show any signs of life but the neural energy detected by the sensors.  Her heart still thrumming in her chest, her eyes still aching and face still pale, Kathryn blinked and tapped the next commands into the computer. 

    "Doctor, the first reintegration sequence is completed."  Her voice was hollow even to her own ears.  "We'll continue the upgrades here and have the transporters ready for the next sequence within the day."

    "*I have their stasis units ready, Captain.*"

    "Transporting now," she replied.  With a whirr deep within the buffers, a shimmer radiated around the two once again, filling and consuming them within seconds before they were gone.

    It almost seemed too easy.  She knew it wasn't, though.  But at least her part in it was done for the time.

    Suddenly, seeing the pad empty at last, she needed somehow to get away from it.  She had what she wanted, even if she hadn't even asked for it...but would have.  Either way, she could do nothing more.  She'd done enough.  The Doctor would handle it, or call her if he had problems... 

    Or he'd better this time, she thought and looked to her side.  "Commander, arrange a briefing for the senior staff at fourteen hundred.  I'll be in my ready room until then."

    Moving off from the console, taking the boxes Anai had given her, Janeway passed Kes with only a glance, and would have left Chakotay too if he hadn't stopped her.

    "Captain," he said, realizing that any question he would come up with would likely be useless.  He'd put enough together already to understand what he'd just witnessed.  He asked her anyway.  "What's going on?"

    She stared up at him.  "Kes will bring you up to date," she told him.  She turned a look back at the young woman.  "It's about time you explained it."

    She didn't stay to listen, but let the cool whoosh of the transporter room doors give her at least some relief.

    As she began her stride down the corridor, however, and her hand fell to her side to touch the soft, embroidered sash Havetsi had tied around her waist, her escape only served to make her wonder what in the world she'd just done.
 

---

    "One might say that Sashana'i and Aratra wished to thwart the fate we had been given," Anai said, held up her palms.  "She blamed herself for our pain, even as she encouraged us.  I cannot be certain of your agreement, yet Ara and I have long felt her sin to be our blessing, our being brought to Irllae.  We bear no regrets."  Shaking her head, dropping her hands with a slight shrug, she looked at her friends in turns.  "We have promised to make their work our own, however.  Or we would work for a method for you to leave earlier.  Your choice is simply that--yours."

    "It does not seem like it would be too much of an inconvenience to us," Susik said, liking the idea of going back someday without feeling the guilt of leaving the others, or taking Marise away from the only home she knew, which honestly was the only thing that held her there some days.  "So, at the point of our deaths, we would be cryogenically preserved until they come looking for us."

    "Ka," Anai said as she leaned back on both her hands, allowing the sun to peek at her forehead.  "The technology requires revision, yet this is the gist of the preparation Sashana'i and Aratra have made."

    "It is equally insane and workable."

    "It shows promise," Anai agreed.

    They had heard the idea rather well, she thought, smelling deeply the rich air and the trails of the market, floating outside the south gates of Azlre.  Anai grinned a bit to herself, remembering exactly where Toma, then Be'i's lover, had given her their first hovercraft--her birthday present, he had insisted.  In the distance, Dviglar's highest communication relay could be seen over the rises, yet she recalled the children's first walk out there with Sashana'i and Aratra...not to mention Sashana'i's clever withholding of Desalian computation, among many other things.

    She knew she should be more compelled towards acceptance, but Anai still missed them.  Aratra's playful chuckle and love of mischief, Sashana'i's dancing stride and her bright-eyed glances; his subtle favors, always dropped quietly by with a wink, her soft touch, adoring embraces and simple kindness.  Even when she pulled at her sister's hair and fussed with her dress, she always gave a peck on the cheek and a girlish giggle that somehow made it all worthwhile.  Their siblings lived within them in every detail, thought and sense, vivid upon their beings, for good and for bad; however, it was their presence among the living that Anai simply missed, and she knew Ara did too.

    Their spirits would have peace, if they had anything to do with it.  For those last pleas, which she knew would echo in them both for an eternity, Anai could not deny her sister's final wish, as much as she would never have asked to return to her birthpeople with her own tongue. 

    The thought of being again those selfish, pained children with so much yet to bear in life was not a pleasant thought to them.  They were certain their spirits would lay in agony behind those narrow, youthful eyes, silent and forbidden their own voice.  More, they would not be able to resist each other's bonded spirits for long; fighting that would be a greater agony still--and possibly hazardous.  Yet even that would be better than their returning to that place with their minds in tact, only to long for Desal, their friends and family, and to carry forever the burden of their legacy in their forward minds among a people who they were now alien to.  For all the lack of unity they felt before, even as officers, it would be nothing to what would greet them as Desalians.

    The only solution she and Ara felt secure with, when they discussed it, would be to make certain their own lessons in Desal would be pressed upon those necessarily restored children--and if fate had any kindness, the two would look into it, learn from it.  They would be stubborn, yet they would be changed and would adapt to that change with time.  With good fortune, they would embrace it and someday find the spirits waiting within them.  It certainly would be better than releasing them back into the emotional and spiritual wilderness from which they had come, ignorant and unprepared for the inevitable.

    Thus, Anai and Ara had come to peace with Sashana'i's desire and their promise to her.

    Perhaps, in the end, she could treat it as her only way to truly thank Sashana'i for the life she did so cherish.  The beginnings had been difficult, indeed, but Anai knew she was satisfied, she was happy, and she had made more of herself than she ever might have dreamed--and she yet considered herself a young woman.  There was still so much for them to learn and do.

    Sashana'i's self-named sin had given them that.  The least they could do was to fulfill her wish--only that they would do it their way.

    "Voyager's transporter records are the other half of the equation," Anai continued.  "What must be done is to assure the mechanics we are working with, and then be certain they are in possession of the technology.  As they are recalled, the transporters would require modifications and a rather adaptable program."

    "It sounds like a coin toss," Derra said, resting back on his elbows, his legs crossed at the ankles.

    "Should it be unsuccessful," Ara said,  "it would not have mattered.  There is no harm in the attempt, I should think."

    Susik eyed him.  His face was perfectly casual as he spoke, though his eyes looked dreamily outward:  In one way thinking on the possibilities and in another way shrugging them away as if it didn't matter.  Not that either would surprise her.  Ara and Anai--names she still forgot sometimes--had been different in ways both subtle and obvious since Sashana'i and Aratra passed all those memories to them, just as Bakali had predicted.  It was possible that they were acting only on those influences.  They had admitted, after all, that they'd promised their siblings.  That said nothing of their desires.

    "It seems cruel to raise Voyager's hopes for something this uncertain, though," she noted quietly.

    Anai's lips turned up.  "Ara and I already consider those arrangements," she told her.  "Certainly, there lies much time before us to make the whole more feasible--and none of it shall be committed to them should we find the plan to be impossible.  Such an empty hope would never come from us.  Yet this is all to be seen.  In the interim, our lives may be led as it pleases."

    Derra shrugged, but Yasis poked him in the ribs.  "You might have another turn at life," she scolded him.  "You would be a fool to refuse such a chance.  If I thought I belonged out in that expanse for a moment, I would ask the same for myself."

    "Well, I might want the company of a nice girl who doesn't know the territory."

    "You will go, Kurt!  Do not be flippant with a dead woman's last wishes!  How could I ever have thought a man might have any more sense than a pile of--"

    "I was not disagreeing with you, oh wise one!" he insisted, chuckling at her tirade as he pulled her closer then hugged her into silence.  "I will miss you--memory or not."

    "We would be dead despite anything," she told him, softly then.  "It is making one's present life important that matters."

    He grinned again, pressing a kiss to her curly crown.  "Yes.  It is."  Looking at his friends, he nodded.  "Like the lady says, I have nothing to lose.  Count me in."

    Leaning back against the soft stone wall of Azlre, Susik couldn't help but sigh.  "I am unsure about losing everything I have known here.  Much as it might be comforting, the more I think about it...it does not seem right."

    "The same may well be said of preserving corpses," Ara pointed out.

    "That does not bother me as much as waking up someday to hear I lived another life somewhere lost behind me."

    Ara gave her that, as if he had not thought of it, too.  He could imagine within his memories that boy trying to grasp the concepts of lifetimes being buried within him, and that his present being was not his truth; he could hear that youthful voice deflecting the issue or lightly consigning the issue to another day, even while knowing it would never leave him again.  In truth, such a jolt would do the young man good.  It would force the boy to think on his truer worth, his possibilities and desires.

    Perhaps it would be good for them all, those former incarnations.

    "Desal shall keep your histories without fail," Gatra said.

    Susik did not argue it, considering the unbelievable mass of historical databases she had barely grazed in the months after Desalia-Four was liberated.  She knew from minute one that she among others would be working on unscrambling those and other records for years at best--and she had only to handle the Antral portion.  "Regardless, I am not going to like hearing about it."

    "And yet, it shall be learned from," Ara replied, reaching over to rub her calf when she shrugged.  "Your compliance shall not be forced, Susik.  You must truly wish this."

    With but a pause, she met his stare again.  "Well, I think Captain Janeway does need the help.  Who would we be to deny her that when we would not suffer for it?"

    Anai laughed.  "Always so practical, Susik.  Antral hands shall be full with you."

    "It will be good to go back," she admitted.  "I love it here, but Novren really needs help with the records and systems--not to mention someone to handle his affairs.  He is absolutely hopeless.  Mother Kichyrn needs me, the family, and Marise needs to live there now.  So strange how we finally see you again and think of home, but then we realize how much we have all made our lives here."

    As Susik finished the sentence with a quiet laugh, Anai nodded understandingly.  "We shall speak often, Susik.  I would believe we forget that Irllae is not terribly large.  --And you, Derra, see to the preservation of the clinic?  The new council has asked it stand as we leave it, and Ara and I would prefer this, as well.  Ka?"

    "Less for me to do," Derra grinned.  With a glance towards the south gate, he got to his feet, gave the people on the path a nod, a small wave.  "Your entourage is here."

    Anai looked and breathed a deep sigh.  They had spent another du'ave shoring up all their details at Cezia, installing Hanla'i and Sollve'a as the new city leaders, arranging the first schools and building projects, particularly at Sacezia with the new leaders there, and the trade base, which now exclusively operated out of Dviglar under Cali's administration.  A handful of surviving scholars would remain to assist those processes.

    They arranged and planned until every detail of Cezia's well-being was attended to.  It took Cali to gently remind them of the date.

    Three suns later, Ara helped a heavy Anai to her small feet as Ba'ela hurried up to walk with them.  On the path stood their elder-parents, smiling and, despite their adoration of Cezia, well ready to end their seventy year exile and return to their homeworld.  Nearby walked a good number of their crew, who loyally asked to continue with their former captains and assist in Desal's rebuilding.  Trailing just behind them was Dalra, Miztri and their family, who all had also asked to come, to remain near to the regents and someday complete their educations on Desalia.  Dalra also wryly noted that he still needed to be watchful of those passionate spirits, lest they cause any trouble.

    Satisfied with her view, Anai set herself to the last of her necessary matters there.  Turning, she opened her arms to Susik, who filled them immediately and as best as she could.  "Regardless of subspace, you shall be missed, too," Anai breathed.

    "Have someone contact me when you go into labor," Susik told her.  "I will come and help you...visit a while."

    Anai squeezed her more warmly.  "I shall, my friend."  With a kiss on Susik's cheek, Anai released her so Ara and Ba'ela could have their turns.  She reached out to Derra, who gave her a kiss and a warm hug, a pat on her big belly.

    "Keep it together, Torres...for the most part."

    She grinned at the memory.  "I'll give it my best shot," she said, humoring him, and then finished in her tongue, "my good friend."

    Ara, having passed around his regards and invitations to all four of their friends, took his bondmate around the waist and reached for Ba'ela's hand, still tiny but strong like his mother's.  His gaze remained on Susik and Derra, who remained beside their mates, seeing them off with no more farewells.

    He liked that, as he was not particularly fond of goodbyes, himself.

    "Until another sun," he said to them all, his smile real, but his eyes saying the rest.  With a deep breath, another look up at the city wall, he started them off through the short grass and to the path to Dviglar.

    From there, they would take off with the Merraj and the Ibatlen, who would assist them in their journey.  The war was certainly ended, but there were yet some Unar fighters in the myriad rocks floating through that space.  There had been incidents, thus, their people were triply careful for them.  They could not afford to lose their regents again--truly feared it.

    Ara and Anai had no such concerns.  Aside from a growing confidence in their fate, they knew well that a minor Unar scout was no match for the Azallis even in bad times, which might have been arrogance were it not a proven truth.  Rather, their discomfort had centered merely on leaving.

    They would be able to return at times, they knew, would always have communication with their friends.  It was not far away.  Even so, they felt a need to hold their heads high, keep their stares forward, as they followed the others over the rises and turns in the trodden path they knew for every stone.  Their pace, not so much for Anai's pregnancy, was unusually slower than the others.

    Bala and Bakali, arm in arm, tread the path steadily, commenting on it all, perhaps for the last time, they said.  It was a typical day, warm, dry, sunny, and the usual breeze swayed the sweet silver grasses and occasional scrub tree, heavy with fruit pods.  On the horizon, far past the hills, the dark blue sky went untouched with clouds.  To hear them call attention to it, Ara gave Anai a warm squeeze.  Her head eased down to rest on his chest.  He rubbed his son's soft hand, glanced down to see Ba'ela's little smile, pointed ahead.

    They did not look back to the city.

    With work, persistence and love, it all was possible, they told themselves as he eased her around a slightly larger rock on the way.  Their people would have joy again, relish in nature and technology again, and make their lives all that the spirits would have it.  Cezia had risen during the war, had become strong and lively during a time when supplies were still very limited and all its citizens needed to work thrice as hard to maintain them.  There was no reason why the product of their efforts could not be repeated on Desalia-Four and its colonies in better times. 

    However, that place would never be their spirits' home, only their bodies'.  They would always be Ara and Anai of Cezia, scholars of Azlre.  Leaving was merely moving on to their next duty, they understood and had finally accepted, as they carefully made their way down through the knoll on the road.  Dviglar was only around another bend.  The Azallis was waiting for them. 

    They stopped.

    A herd of joth needed to cross, and they kindly greeted the herder as she passed with them.  In a way, they wished they might hurry, lest they turn right around and go back, crawl up into their old, knotted blankets and take but one more day.  Of course, they would not do that, but it was a thought as they watched the unbothered animals cross, their creamy white fur floating up a bit with each canter, some hopping ahead and others balking before turning again to follow the others.

    The throng was not large, unlike the ones that would be led through later in the afternoon, and so they were able to move again less than a minute later and even walk alongside the herd a while as the path straightened on the final stretch to Dviglar.

    Without thinking about it, as a relatively old joth strayed near enough, Anai's hand drifted down from her belly to give the goat a little scratch on the ears.

    Ara lips curled up.  "Have I told you, Anai, not to play with your food?"

    The look she turned up to him made his day worth the trouble.

---

    Kathryn dropped down onto her ready room couch, her back straight but the remainder of her glad for the relief.  She let out half a breath, feeling an odd sort of numb that typically followed a period of stress: the body trying to get back to its equilibrium, the mind taking a necessary break from the strain it had been under.

    Resurrecting dead crewpeople.  Shock is more like it.

    It was done.  Time would tell the rest.

    The Doctor could keep them alive.  The studies Ara and Anai had done during their lifetimes, their precisely kept medical records and those of Susik Kichyrn and Derra of Azlre, their supplied Desalian medical technology and theories, were all extensive.  Whether the elders had wanted to honor it or not, they had certainly made good on their promise to their siblings and gave it every opportunity to work. 

    Reintegrating their DNA into their present forms would be a gradual process--the less shock to their already fragile systems, the better, the Doctor had said--and would take several days.  The neurological resequencing, the troublesome procedure that had almost kept Ara and Anai from agreeing to return, would come last.  Despite the outcome, all four patients would require regular neural regeneration for some time to strengthen their recomposed cellular structure.

    Though Janeway was anxious for the outcome, she couldn't help but think it would give everyone time to recover from the news that Chakotay was just beginning to explain to the others.

    Kathryn sighed.  She knew she would have to do the same herself.  But she really did need that minute to settle her nerves, to will away her anger, her hurt, her pity and the other mess of unsorted feelings.

    She could see why Ara and Anai didn't want to do it all over again.  She even understood why they didn't tell her, had wrapped their entire family in that one last Allanois intrigue.  For the elders' mixed feelings about the entire matter, throughout their lives, they had kept the details of their own histories vague, deciding to wait to decide exactly what to do.  The only thing they planned was the telling and their memoirs.

    Meanwhile, they lived their long lives, remarkable, successful and important lives in their own right.  They faithfully performed their many duties to the best of their abilities, went where they were required to be, did as was needed and gave all they could, always.

    They were entirely happy in those lives.

    It was strange to think how right Dalra had been so long ago, when he cautioned them about the kraja.  It certainly had ended up being irreversible and in far more ways than the man had meant. 

    Funny thing was, Janeway didn't know whether it really was as bad a thing as Ara and Anai had imagined, remembering everything, starting over again in life with all the wisdom of their former years.  But that common phrase,  "if I had it to do all over again," was more a curse to the two, who seemed to wish that if fate were served and they return themselves to their birthpeople, then they should return as they were when among their birthpeople. 

    Perhaps it had something to do with their spirituality, their belief in restoring fate's balance correctly, not just in any way possible.  They had almost chosen a peaceful death for it, had deceived Voyager's crew so that they could come to that decision.  Only Kes had kept them from giving up when they knew it would be impossible.  Frankly, when she considered the same question, Kathryn's first response was to choose continuance.  Of course, she hadn't lived their lives.  She'd only heard about them--and only about their youths at that.

    "This shall be known," Anai had said in the gardens the first time they had spoken closely, after the first story.  "With fate's blessing, all shall be known to you in time."

    As she began to feel compelled to move again, when her mind stopped turning loops around itself and began to focus, when she became a little drowsy from the stress just passed, Kathryn's gaze drifted across her ready room to the box she'd placed on her desk when she paced in, not thinking about anything but having a seat.

    "...another thing I learned from those who made me what I am is that the flower of purpose can be better brought to fruit with more suns--with patience.  When you look upon the bloom, it is difficult to see what the food becomes--unless you have seen already the harvest."

    She wondered if Anai and Ara had thought about that when they came to meet them at the Institute, if they wondered whether they would be recognizable.  Likely, they had.  They probably smiled at the curiosity and had plans for that contingency.

    "I too bear the burden of my past," the ancient lady had said, a teasing lilt in her voice,  "and thus the only redemption I may earn is though these acts I perform at present.  It is my privilege as elder and regent.  Such power in placement offers an odd comfort, ka?  And yet, how arrogant are we to be, good child, in claiming charge of fate, which is ever untamed?"

    As thoughtlessly as she put it there, Kathryn pushed herself to her feet and stepped to her desk, where the memoir box sat.

    With a finger, she drew open the top of the beautifully carved and inlaid box, sighed to see again what was inside: hundreds of data files, every sixteen or so carefully stored in thin cases.  Their lives, recorded meticulously for over a century.  The years before their scholarship--before they arrived at Uillar, even--had been covered in retrospect and with as much detail, it seemed.  The labels had both Desalian and Federation standard characters. 

    She turned it as she moved around her desk, sank slowly into her chair.

    They had meant to give them their histories, wanted them all to know what had happened to them...wanted them to celebrate their proud, fruitful lives, as was the way--their way.

    A transcriber had been built into the ornate lid, along with an audio console and holo-imager.  Staring at the selections for a moment, she opened a case and inserted a chip.  Looking through the directory, she chose the file detailing the day Desalia-Four was liberated.  The diary was recorded five months after the fact, she noticed, looking at the transcript header.  Furrowing her brow slightly at that, she activated the file.

    She chose audio only that time, and was glad she did when she heard a voice, slightly tinged with age and rather heavy with experience, begin to tell the day.

    Kathryn leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes to save her tears.

    Though thickly accented in the Cezian dialect, translated from simple Desalian, she knew the voice without a doubt.  It struck her heart immediately.

    And she had only begun.

---

    "...'Take one step, then take another, and then you shall be another step further,' my elder-father told me.  'It is but this simple, Child.'

    "Bala had almost made himself done with the rolls as I and Ba'ela, Plicta and Bolmra had completed the condiments, which we would feed to our equally thoughtful crew.  We all bore awareness, after all, of the challenges to be faced on the homeworld, the terrible many things required for its mere health.  For myself, apart from Bakali's hourly assurances that the injections she had given Anai and Ba'ela would maintain her and our children's wellness, the list Anai and I had compiled of our own duties was blinding but to think on.

    "Thus I sliced vegetables and worried in circles to my father.  Bala, of course, remains Bala.

    "Your paces may only be taken one at a time, Ara, and in the direction you feel most proper.  Trust your spirit that you shall not fall should you not look at each one--or all the ones that keep themselves distant.  Concentrate but on the present and simply know what path lies ahead.  You shall know you should turn, when you bring yourself to it.'

    "'This is truth, my father.'  I said this as I turned to see my lovely Anai.  She sat on a hip with the other women, folding napkins.  To see her place each square on her abdomen as if upon a table.... She was so heavy, but ah, so lovely, always.  Seeing her perform such simple matters lightens every mood in me--particularly when it is well known what complicated acts she masters, often with equal simplicity.

    "'See there your nali, Ba'ela?'  My smile was indeed broad to watch her continue, unbothered at most at my attention.  'The same way was hers when you lay within her belly.'

    "My boy giggled and pulled the hem of his tunic up over his eyes.  'Was this why it was dark in Nali's womb, Tola?'  he asked and we all laughed.  This was needed; to prove it, I snatched my boy up and teased that exposed stomach.  His squeals then filled the room and echoes of amusement followed.  Yes, this reminder of joy was a blessed thing.

    "It surprises me at times, that a young man of my past might have run as quickly as a field di'agret from a hungry gask from the life that blesses me this sun, for all its complexity and little allowance for diversion.  As I am, however, I cannot not imagine any other way about contentment, and nothing but this life is desired.  Many times, I have recalled this; each time, I am left more thankful than before."

---

    The moon was setting in the wood and all he could hear was the crinkle of leaves beneath his feet.

    No animals strayed or burrowed; the waterfall trickled into a calm pool.  The rocks there held no visitors.

    It didn't feel right somehow, or perhaps it only frightened him that no one was there.  Perhaps there was indeed no one left to see.  They had met him during his last visit, had been waiting for him to come and had said goodbye in typical Desalian fashion--told him that they would meet again, when time held no power and their spirits would be truth.

    Why Chakotay had come again was still a mystery to him.  Maybe for their presence in sickbay, he had thought that they would see him a bit sooner than he imagined.

    But there was nobody and nothing there, no fish in the pond, creatures in the trees, birds nestling above or flying elsewhere...nothing.  Behind him, trickling through the tall, thin trees, the sun began to rise.  The moon was still to set.

    Accepting the light of day after illuminating the night, the moon floated lazily towards the horizon.

    Tom and B'Elanna...B'Elanna, or at least what had become of her, staring up to him that first night with brightly flecked eyes over a century older, a result of her bonding.  He had felt something in her there, but the elder was so intense, so subtly evasive, holding all the cards and choosing which few to reveal.  When he met her again in her house, too, telling him the meaning of his name, even teasing him about it, she was actually testing him, just as she had tested Janeway.

    In one way, she was hiding; in another, she was asking them to know her.  Ironically, that reminded him of the B'Elanna he knew, if nothing else did.

    She never did get back with him to teach him how to write his name in Desalian.  He could understand why.  It would have made things even more complicated, and B'Elanna had always hated that, though she attracted difficulty sometimes, made it for herself.

    Meanwhile, Tom's elder ego had taken his seat at a distance, his dark hazel eyes peering askance or simply listening, but still expertly deflecting--putting Chakotay off guard, even, with a romance novel or a cup of tracha, or sitting by his wife during the tellings with a relatively unconcerned air, or just sleeping.  But Chakotay hadn't missed from time to time those watchful little glances Ara turned, his minute responses and raised brow, his occasional mumblings nor the little whispers into his bondmate's ear.

    In truth, Ara cared a great deal, was directly involved with the process and the outcome.  He just wasn't going to say much about it, but talk about something else to bide the time until the moment came.  It was not too unlike Tom.

    It frustrated Chakotay just as much.

    They had pushed him away.  In those same woods, they had first ignored him, leaving Kurt and Susan to desert him, too, and then they'd admonished him from pressing them, following them.  Lastly, they had said goodbye.  --But then, Chakotay had to remind himself that all of it was his perception, his interpretation of the situation carried to a higher level through his quests.

    Or was it?

    Either way, they did not come again to the woods well after Chakotay arrived.  He did not call them, either, only paced around the clear lake, feeling his heavy feet in the thick leaves, careful for mice though he didn't hear them anymore. 

    Thanks to whatever determination that had made those old people change their minds in the end, their spirits would still have some time to wait for the peace they sought.  They hadn't wished their duty upon themselves for good reason.  Even so, Anai didn't seem to mind at first, painting her stories to them.  In fact, she was honored, relieved, welcoming, even excited.

    "Then, you wish to hear the words I shall paint?" she had asked, and he had nodded, telling her about his own people's traditions of taking lessons from the stories the elders told.  She'd been pleased with that.

    Chakotay still didn't know what she meant to teach them but in history.  Of course, that was the trick, one he'd already discussed with the captain.  The elder's job was but to lay out the colors and patterns.  The children around the fire, listening, would have to find their own meaning in it all, just like Be'i and Toma had to years before, when their ultimate duty to Desal had been thrust upon them.  Ara and Anai had definitely earned the right to be host to their own challenge.

    He still hated it when elders did that sort of thing to him, though he found himself grinning when he realized his old, common annoyance had come back to haunt him with a vengeance.

    That amusement faded soon enough, when he finally, simply, took a seat on a fallen tree near the shore of the pond.  He felt tired, and he wondered why he bothered remaining if there was no one there, nothing left to look for.

    The truth of the matter was that he didn't know what they were all getting back in the end, for all their trouble.  Had it not been for her extraordinary and dedicated belief in balance of fate and the empty spaces her siblings had left in their former incarnations, he might have said that Sashana'i shouldn't have bothered.  Ara and Anai might have been able to live out their natural lives without that specter of responsibility hanging over them.

    The comfort in it all was that whatever happened, the elders could be content in that they'd finally followed through.

    Perhaps that was why the wood remained silent as the sun began to warm his back, reflect upon the clear, stony pool.  Perhaps their souls were preparing for their new journey, since everything that was meant to be had finally come, and that those involved in that destiny had done their part and were ready to accept whatever came of it.

    It was time to start over--for them all.  Perhaps that was some lesson to be had of it.

    Chakotay sighed, staring at the little ripples.

    The wind stirred, but he didn't move to observe it, only let his eyes drift up to see the full, white moon finally begin to sink through the trees, over the horizon.

    An animal mew softly sounded to his side; as his stare turned down, he saw a goat-like creature with a flat muzzle and large mud-brown eyes creeping up, almost as if ready to spring back away.  Her long, white fur shone in the dawn light as she inched up to him.  Her hooves made hardly any noise, not stirring anything around her.  Her gaze was wide but steady.

    As if too curious to stay away.

    Chakotay remained unmoved, at first surprised to see the joth, and then relieved that there was indeed something there.  The wood had been discomforting in its silence.  He also did not want to scare it.

    She crept up a few steps more, leaned her head just near enough to stroke his leg with her jowl, purring a bit before she looked up at him again.

    Carefully, Chakotay reached forward and stroked her soft head.  Her fur was as silky as it looked.  With a jerk, the joth maneuvered his hand around to her jowl and rubbed him a second time.  Grinning, he scratched her gently there.  For a second, it almost seemed as if she'd smiled.

    When his hand paused, she took a step back.  With another look to him, she turned and skipped off towards where the moon was finally about to set.  Just before she disappeared, she looked to rejoin her mate, and then a herd, darting into the fields beyond the wood.

    Watching after her, Chakotay stood again, deciding it was time to leave.  The sun had risen, and he had gotten more from that barren wood than he'd expected.  Best take what one can and be thankful for it.

    And maybe that was the meaning to be had there.

    Figuring the rest of it out would be another thing, though he felt confident that he would someday.  He had the time.  So, he left it at that.

    As he finally began to make his way back to the clearing where he'd entered, when he was just about to leave, the last thing he heard was a thrush of rusting leaves and the busy giggles and chirps of mice.

---

    "Odd it was to me at times, when I allowed myself to think on it, how well Ara and I had accustomed ourselves to paper and pens, physically doing what was required, or simply recalling our knowledge without any aids.  --Our improvement in the latter has been greatly influenced by our neurological changes and training, certainly, and yet drawing out characters, pictures, what our minds saw, is oddly satisfying to us both. 

    "Needless to say, a good deal of rubric was spent on the flight to Desalia-Four.  Using all the memories within us, the plans we had made were brought out and final revisions were begun.  It was a book of square sheets littered with thoughts and lists and diagrams and maps. 

    "A large portion of our bunk is now filled with me, still we nestle there quite comfortably and work likely more efficiently than with the distractions of the bridge.  On that mattress, we have divined those memories all to organize a true plan, which shall be prioritized according to what Shantsa regretfully has relayed to us.  It should able to be followed.  The list shall be shared with Dalra, Miztri and Gihetra, our parents and others among our new staff past our tour of the city and upon their comments shall be revised yet another time before settling into a policy for all to look to.  Yet even then, there seemed to be so much that was needed, our lists began to look as would a book of days.

    "When Ara saw I grew too frustrated, and regardless of our wish to finish at least one matter of official business this moon, he was quick to yank my gown to my belly, toss all our paper aside and kiss my bare skin there.  Then he stroked my sore sides with those lovely hands, which certainly had been divinely blessed at his making, and blessed me, in turn, with the easy promise of a most pleasurable diversion.

    "Nevertheless, I first demurred:  With all which was needed to be done and he wished to play with the mass I carried!  --Not an unusual act, I readily admit...and it is known well I enjoy this, too.  Yet there was much to complete before arriving at Desalia.

    "All my protests, of course, went ignored.  Without words, my stylus was plucked from my fingers and he lowered his head like a sunset beyond my bloated belly, his soft, warm lips turned knowingly up...

    "Indeed, my sweet Ara had also been blessed with exceptional wisdom...."

---

    It was strange to see so many stars again, after almost six weeks in Irllae. 

    The morning shifts were starting to file out of the messhall, but Kes didn't find it in herself just yet to break away from the view of the stars.  They had stopped for a moment, possibly to investigate a cluster she could see a bit of at that angle.  It lit into her heart almost as much as first time she had seen one, like a precious miracle.

    Traveling in Irllae was a colorful event, strikingly beautiful at every turn.  But it did not feel as expansive as open space was.  Desalians of course knew of the space beyond their region, but only through probes they had to wait a long time for.  And though they had breathlessly accepted and devoured Voyager's astrometric database, a bare few ever chose to leave Irllae, but rather committed their careers to building very good sensors and waiting for them to return.

    If anything spoke of their patience, it would be that, Kes thought with a smile. Then again, none of the other races of Irllae had an exploration program that they knew of. The few who left belonged to independent ventures.

    They had left Irllae not long after the Doctor had completed the first of the major procedures on the four, when the captain was certain they wouldn't need their Desalian friends' help again.  When they came to the Zi'ihar Ralle, near to where they had entered the region, she and Neelix were invited to the bridge for a formal farewell from Osna and Babaki.  They were quiet but smiling, assuring them that their regents Havetsi and Cera were well and happy with matters as they had developed. 

    With a touch to their temples, a slow bow in Voyager's honor, they cut the comm line.  Captain Janeway gave the crewman at the conn a nod, took a short breath to give the command.

    She had tried to look calm and in control, but a closer eye knew better.  Part of her wouldn't have minded remaining, another part needed to leave.  One part of her was reminded of so many times she'd said a fond farewell and left with good memories to carry with them all.  Another part felt a lack of completion somehow, an uneasy longing.  They did have to get on with their own journey, however.  That part won in the end.

    "Take us to the edge of the Barrier and then jump to warp three," the captain said, "just long enough to get us through the field."  She had been reminded yet again by Babaki that it was far easier to pop through the plasma field rather than let it pull and burn them.  More, she hadn't forgotten why they had ended up in there in the first place.  "I want a full, long-range scan of the surrounding space before we leave the outer nebula.  Shields up.  Activate harmonics pattern Sigma-four-two, Mr. Kim."

    Voyager turned itself around but a moment after that, and with the benefit of its newly repaired and fully operational drive and upgraded shields, burst into warp a few million kilometers before the Barrier, and then stopped as suddenly the same distance outside of it.  They experienced similar tremors as the plasma field seemed to be pulling the ship around within its shell and several seconds of the temporal "bending" effect as they pushed through.  However, the speed and their upgraded shields, set to a precise frequency pattern suggested by the Desalians, indeed had made it easier.  The shields but marginally weakened, all systems were online.  Janeway seemed to be at a loss for a minute, partially for regaining her equilibrium, another part surprised that they didn't need to send out damage teams that time.

    Somehow, it might have been easier for them if it hadn't been so simple--though Kes had to admit she was glad it had been.

    Janeway called for a full stop after they were through, staring at the nebula they'd come from, the peeks of stars beyond.  She asked for a full round of diagnostics to be certain there were no deleterious effects from the plasma field in the gel packs or among the crew.  She then repeated her order for a full sensor sweep to scan for Kazon ships and quietly asked Tuvok to reinitialize their weapons systems.

    Waiting for two small cruisers to move away, Janeway watched the diagnostics play out on her screen and the status reports come back as manageable.  Tuvok reported that their phaser and torpedo bays were online and at full capacity.  Some time later, long range scans showed no more Kazon activity in the area.  All was well.  She sighed, gave a nod.

    Before she could open her mouth to direct the ship, however, Tuvok announced an object coming through the Barrier.  "It appears to be a capsule, Captain.  It is of Desalian origin and homing to our warp signature."

    Janeway's eyes warmed before her lips turned up.  "Beam it into the cargo bay--and send one of our smaller probes back to confirm we've received it and...to say thank you, for whatever it is."

    They later discovered that the bulk of the capsule had been packed with news, letters and personal items for their patients.  Havetsi had also included a beautiful letter to the crew, with updates from Desal and wishing them all the best in their travels and in their lives, not to mention several more recorded discussions from the Institute concerning warp propulsion, their transwarp project and Starfleet technology.

    A few days after leaving Irllae, Kes gazed at the stars from the viewport, smiling on the memory of those gentle people.  They reminded her of her own, the Ocampa, but independent and forward thinking, while yet entwined in their history and traditions.  They'd had the time to make the best of it, she thought, with the right guidance and a good deal of faith.  Perhaps her people would achieve the same someday, too, in time.

    Ara and Anai returned to her thoughts.  The despair and fear they had in the end of carrying their burden with them into the afterlife was understandable, but Kes was thrilled when the Doctor confirmed that they had finally given their consent to the captain.  Kes still had the feeling, somehow implanted in her when she sensed the plotting of the elders in their garden, that they wouldn't curse the outcome.  She could see how they would be curious--and yet still hesitant, stubborn, frightened...and tired.

    "It belongs but to fate now, Children," Anai had said several days after her last painting, when Kes and Tuvok visited at the latter's request.  Sitting on the pillows of their study, she had been reading Institute reports while Ara, terribly weak that day, rested and listened.  Graciously, Anai invited them in and heard their further requests patiently.  Her answer was kind, but plain.

    "All we intended, all we promised, has been done.  The remainder, which you shall yet hold among yourselves for the present, is otherwise yours to do with as you please."

    Kes lowered herself next to them, glancing back to Tuvok before addressing them.  "Anai, you can't tell me you don't care, that you don't want this to work."

    "I have cared, Kes," Anai replied.  "Twelve times your people's life span, Ara and I have lived and worked amongst our people--always worked as diligently as we were able in order to serve our people, our allies and our families, and to see to the restoration of our civilization.  Our remaining youth was entirely spent on this, as was our scholarship.  All we have dreamed and desired has been accomplished.

    "The remainder should not be our concern.  Rather, your desire should bring it, and only should it be meant.  It was not our wish initially, rather an adopted one which we have honored to the best of our ability.  Ka, we bore some curiosity.  No longer, however, not in the manner I know you shall propose."

    Kes sighed.

    Anai reached out to her, touched her cheek softly.  "Good child," she whispered,  "I do feel sorrow for your part in this.  I confess, we did not, in the beginning, anticipate the extent of resiliency in Desalian neurology, though we were aware of it in itself when we offered the program to you.  We could not have tested it efficiently; one on Voyager was required to confirm our findings and you were chosen by me.  We were prepared for this difficulty--and prepared you, you should recall.  You were told it was but a curiosity, not a certainty.  I yet intend Havetsi to procure your transporter upgrades, with which you may perform more tests.  With or without it, however, you shall enjoy a partial success.  You shall yet regain those you call Nicoletti and Bendera."

    "But that's not enough," Kes insisted, wondering where all her stubbornness was coming from while knowing just as well that she meant what she said.  "It wouldn't be right to take them and leave you behind."

    "It shall need to be.  You must not expect too much, else live with disappointment.  You were not included in this only so your spirit would not be given pain, only..."  She smiled slightly.  "Perhaps a small part of us did want for the hope and knew you would make that be.  Perhaps we did wish some connection to our pasts.  Seeing you again, knowing you again...it has been a good thing.  --Yet our original plans cannot be compromised so much as you would wish it."

    "What would be so bad about keeping the memories in tact, Anai?"

    "It was not wished--it is not wished," Anai told her. 

    "But why?"  Kes pressed.  "Why would you have your younger selves--and all of us--know everything that happened to you if you really wanted to forget?  Why tell us the stories and send the rest of your memoirs with us if you don't want to continue?"

    "I am an elder and a scholar, as is my bondmate," Anai stated.  "Ara and I are agreed--now more than before--that there is no belonging on your ship for us.  We are Desalian, not the ones you knew.  We bear no desire to be again what we were when you knew us.  In this, you are quite correct.  And yet as we are, we bear no place among you and are tired in this life."

    "Do you really think it makes a difference to us, what you are now?"  Kes held the ancient woman's stare.  "If it was only because you were old, Anai, and you really thought you had nothing left to give, then I wouldn't argue with you.  But I can feel that you want this."

    Anai likewise maintained the child's attention.  "Should the obstacle not be overcome," she said, quiet and firm,  "then you shall not proceed, Child.  Respect the spirits who bear that desire.  All our spirits shall allow has been given to you."

    At that point, Tuvok finally spoke.  "You have stated that the primary and most practical reason for the procedure was to replenish Voyager's complement, as they were much valued members of the crew."

    "This is the practical reason," Anai agreed.

    "Then it is not logical that you would deny our attempts solely for the inability to return our crew members in the way you insist upon."

    "As has been said, your crew members would not be procured in any way but ours," Anai replied.  "Rather, two Desalians who had a preference for being precisely that--of Desal, old regent scholars, and exiled among you.  What balance could be achieved in giving a life's work to those who have already completed theirs?"

    "It still does not follow that you would have all or none," Tuvok told her,  "when you claim that fate is not in your control."

    "Yet one part is.  the coordinates remain with my bondmate and me, as does the power to mold what shall come of them.  Additionally, it has already been stated that Susik and Derra may be given back to you through your efforts.  Beneath the sun that witnesses our passing, when our memoirs are released, you shall be given the coordinates we feel you shall bear, and theirs shall certainly be a part of that inheritance.  This is not nothing."

    "True," Tuvok replied.

    "More, good Tuvok, I would never claim myself as belonging to the realm of logic, nor even good sense at times.  I myself shall rather act as my spirit dictates and change as does the wind, when it suits me--or yet I may hold fast when I wish it.  Had I been apt to follow my mind with exceeding loyalty, I would have passed when still a girl."

    "Is it this same 'spirit' that brings you to deceive Voyager and the captain in this endeavor?"

    "Ka, it springs from my spirit," she answered.  "And Kathri's shall not be broken.  It bears enough strain and feeling of responsibility.  Should it not be meant, she shall have lost nothing more, nor shall the crew have.  To commit them to pain when it is unnecessary would truly be senseless."

    Ara's fingers tightened in her palm, into her markings.  Moments later, Anai's lips twitched upwards and her eyes closed.

    Kes had opened her mouth to speak again, but they were asleep almost immediately after their contact.  She decided they'd had enough.  Ara did seem very weak.  He had barely said a word but to greet them.  Anai had grown irritable with the topic instead of only saddened.

    "They do deserve their way," Kes thought aloud as they turned to leave.

    "Indeed," Tuvok replied.  After his gaze had examined once more those relics of another time, he blinked a nod in his final assessment.  "We will continue our research, but also respect their wishes."

    Kes looked up at him, her brow raised to hear him.  "You agree?  I didn't think you would."

    "On the contrary," the Vulcan replied,  "I, too, understand their positions among their people and the status of learned elder.  While illogical, they have proven themselves educated and wise enough to make their own decision in this matter.  They have the right to choose.  However, they have also given us the right to continue our attempts to resolve the problem they proposed to you."

    And so they had tried--and Ara and Anai had chosen again, chosen to give them that attempt, much to the Ocampan's relief.  As much as she respected Anai and Ara's positions, she couldn't help wanting them back in any form.  She understood Sashana'i's enthusiasm about the idea and was thankful the young regent had died pressing it into her siblings as she had.

    Before coming to breakfast, Kes had visited the patients.  They were still protected in stasis fields and being prepared for the last of the regeneration sequences.  They all looked very much as they used to already.  Not completely, however, as the kraja markings had grown too intrinsic to their neurological framework to be safely removed, just as Ara and Anai had predicted.  The Doctor had chosen to work around that until B'Elanna and Tom were able to choose for themselves how to address that change.

    She was beginning to feel more anxious than ever for when they would be revived.  She wanted to see their faces when they felt their life within them again, when they learned of Irllae, and when they saw the stars, as she did just then.  She wondered if the view would matter to them as much as it did her.

    "Thinking about our patients again?"  Neelix asked.

    Kes looked up and smiled.  Neelix had brought her some juice with a small smile he'd been giving her since the crew learned about "the plan."  With a gesture, he sat beside her on the window couch to share the view.  She took a sip of the juice and blinked with a bit of surprise.  "It's delicious, Neelix."

    "Just a little sirril nectar with kosi water," he shrugged, wrinkling his nose slightly.  He hadn't particularly liked the combination.  "I thought they might like having a taste of home after they wake up."

    "They probably won't remember it," Kes reminded him.

    "Then, when we tell them what happened, they'll probably want to know more--well, maybe not Lieutenant Nicoletti, but I know Kurt would.  And Tom and B'Elanna might like to have a connection to what they were.  Who knows?  Taste can be a powerful memory."  He drew a breath and turned his eyes out to the viewport.  "They had a lot of time to get used to living in Irllae."

    "A lifetime," Kes whispered.  "When I was folding their wedding clothes, I kept thinking about how old they were.  They'd somehow kept it all so beautiful, every stitch of embroidery, the colors, all their ornaments and scarves.  Everything about them was preserved."  She paused, drew another slow sip of the juice.  "Even for humans," she continued,  "they lived long lives, so differently than they would have here or at home."

    He nodded.  "Ensign Kim and I were talking about that."

    She looked at him.  "I haven't spoken with Harry recently.  Is he doing better?"

    "Oh, yes.  Nothing for you to concern yourself with.  Just shock, really.  Well, he didn't like their being so sneaky, but I think he understands they believed they were sparing our feelings."

    "Good," Kes said.  "Because Ara and Anai really had been happy to see us again, and really wanted the best for us.  All the upgrades on Voyager were their suggestions, and the supplies were arranged mostly by them."

    "Really?"  Neelix furrowed his brow.  "I thought that was Havetsi."

    "She carried the supplies through to us, but Anai made most of the suggestions and sped the procurements.  I came on them them once when I visited.  I was reminded a little of Tom, hearing Anai arguing with the Koba representative about trade shares.  She wheedled him like a professional pool shark."

    He chuckled, gave Kes a hug in his arm, sighed out at the view again.  "If they remember anything, I hope they'll adjust.  They haven't lived on a starship in a long time."

    "I think they'd do all right," Kes said, smiling at the starfield as it turned with the ship.  Voyager paused a moment before it engaged warp speed, streaming the stars across the viewport.  "They did before."

---

    "'It is known that presentation is half the battle in influence.'  This I told her while eking out that tight muscle in her arch, up to the ball of her foot.  --By the spirits, they were afflicted and bereft of warmth despite our lovemaking. 

    "'Of our elder father, I should think,' said Anai, with that soft growl--that lovely sound--as another knot was eased from her arch. 

    "Anai's toes curled as each was serviced, and she stretched the remainder of her presently sated body.  With business or otherwise, it pleases to see our respites are enjoyed.  I know well enough we have both required them, as we are prone by nature to work, to maintain our concentration rather too well, in that we exhaust and frustrate ourselves.  With time and maturity, I would believe some reparation of that fault has been made, however....

    "Vya!  What nonsense do I speak?  Our passion has always been treasured--and resisting her shall never find me at ease.  Yet we bear as much intensity in our labor, which consumes much time and wears at us more lastingly.  Yes, that is a better telling.

    "Anai added,  'Certainly, Dulla bore great presence among his own.  It offered him great success, for what he could attain at the time.  We have presented ourselves in good fashion as well, and shall, I should believe.'

    "To this, I replied, 'Yes, and I am glad to bear such truth in our ways.  Still, we must be more than what we desire to be in our people's eyes.  It should be an interesting balance to attain among them, who have borne so little influence outside Unar these past generations.  Yet I would believe they require regents as the histories would impress just now--as Shantsa had need to see and know.'

    "There is a smile about Anai which faithfully amuses me, a clever one touched with a certain playful sarcasm.  She once wore it in childhood, and I now know our good regent Mi'ejara bore the same manner.  This Anai reflected as she told me, 'In our presence, he would not act without our decree.  Would Desal hear our edicts with as much humility and willingness to act! Our work would make itself done with far greater ease.  The span of our power we must adjust in time, yet not at present.  Desal has known much change and must feel security in ways known to them.  Desalia-Four should need yet more of the same, though with quicker change of its physical nature.  Yes, our facades alone should be an interesting matter--as well for all who arrive with us.'

    "I nodded to this known truth upon that older topic.  We among others had discussed the differences between the Cezian population and the homeworld--between all the colonies, in truth.  We were yet learning of the horrors all Desalia had endured; we would see far more, most certainly.  'I should think those ways bear use in moderation.'  This I told Anai quietly, easing away from facts to hopes.  She had only just relaxed enough to sleep, after all.  'We shall see about the excesses soon enough.'

    "I moved to the next foot and began again.  My poor bondmate bore such weight upon her body at present that her arches may as well have been flagstones.  As much a part of it were our many concerns and untested plans.

    "This was set aside from the present, however, as it was a step still to be taken, among the many others.  Anai required her rest, as did I."

---

    The Doctor roamed around the tables, possibly for the hundredth time to be certain the last level of cellular reconstruction was going as planned.  There had been a scare with Crewman Bendera's white cell regeneration, which had piqued his more cautious programming and kept it active throughout the remainder of the procedures.

    In all, the EMH had thought from the first that those procedures would be fascinating to do himself, being aware of the precedents in Starfleet and even there on Voyager.  Working on Lieutenant Torres not too long ago, he had merged and restored her DNA in a similar fashion with great success.  Now he had four patients to do much the same to, that with a far more delicate process.  Still when he first read about the planned procedures, he was fascinated with the idea of expanding his own knowledge with something so revolutionary--in a word, giving four crewmembers another full life.

    It was not necessarily an easy issue for his ethical subroutines to measure and re-measure, however, except that he had the permission of those involved and the encouragement of the families--and the captain's orders, which though not necessary, certainly gave him the official justification he wanted.  He could see how such a procedure could be abused by those without the same controls he had.  These incidents had precedent, too.  So did restraint and propriety.

    According the Desalian belief, the very idea of returning the crew as they had might be considered selfishly averting fate, even betraying nature.  Anai had spoken of it and agreed with the latter.  They were not acting for themselves--this was clear--but instead denying their bodies' natural course among the living, a sin dating back to their Desalian creation tales. 

    Of course, that sin was to be committed to correct greater ones--willfully tampering with fate, lying, "stealing" memories and committing murder to protect the products of that first sin.  Though excusable by many standards, the traditional Desalian faith, which Sashana'i of Cezia had been taught in her youth, would find such acts worthy of spiritual banishment to their version of the devil.

    On the other hand, more liberal Desalians like Ara and Anai would argue that their sister could not have averted fate in the first place--as it all was meant to happen, that everything preceding them had made that fate both possible and unavoidable.  Their belief allowed variance in precedent, making conditions ripe for an effect--but the ultimate reality was not in their control.  While similar, it was significantly different in one's ability to influence an end. 

    Apparently, Sashana'i had inherited her predecessors' assumption of power and ability to rationalize decisions more than perhaps even she realized.  In a way, she was notably more arrogant than her siblings, an irony that brought a significant pause to the Doctor, considering who those siblings were.

    In either case, that second aversion of nature was Sashana'i's only way to balance her first sin, if it could ever redeem her taking the full spiritual responsibility for sending her people to war with intent to harm others for their benefit--another thing any good traditionalist would have balked at.  Only the fact that they also gave themselves for their fellow citizens and neighbors excused that--their sacrifice for their lack of action a century before.

    The EMH released a sigh through his nostrils, getting back to his work.  The Desalians were a good people, but their constant balancing acts could be confusing.  In one case, it had almost destroyed them.  Much of their ethics, based on their histories' lessons, were in weighing a bad for a good and also the mediums, while seeking to live an equitable middle ground and accepting fate and the spirits blessings....

    Of course, not many humanoids had simple standards of morality, he reminded himself.

    Looking at his patients, knowing what two had permitted from the start and what the other two had finally agreed to--another set of extremes in itself--the Doctor had a feeling that the ethics would probably be the easier part for them.

---

    ..."The sun of Desalia-Four had finally grown to rest when we took ourselves back to the Azallis for no other healthful place to sleep.  Ara bore well the words while staring at the ceiling, his warm embrace such comfort, 'How strong and proud we must seem to them, for how they looked at us, groomed and dressed as we are.  They seemed to stare at apparitions, impossible of themselves.  Our previous thoughts have been correct yet now bearing greater depth:  We should not be impossible to follow, Anai.  They should be equal to us, not regarding us as deities.'

    "This, of course, was agreed upon, even in my exhaustion for that terrible yet telling sun.

    "As has been said, we wished not necessarily to bring ourselves to the homeworld, though we were required to as regents of Desal.  Missing Cezia as a mother might miss her lost child, when we landed at the same field where our beloved siblings were sent to the blessed ancestors, our duty was immediately seen:  Desal's need.  Cezia had been a comfort to us, though the homeworld and all the colonies' needs were known.  Developments had been followed closely.  We were painfully aware that we would be required to leave, that our fate would call us away. 

    "Finally, it did, in Shantsa's wretched form.  We felt guilt but to look at him.  Yet perhaps our spirits had required remaining at Azlre more than even we had awareness of, that all our strength should be regained before assuming the great task before us all. 

    "We knew immediately its truth upon first sight of Shantsa's bondmate, who had brought herself to greet him and us.  To look upon her, tears stung my eyes.  Her appearance was no better than the tatters brought from the Rulafla camps, in rags long past stained with grime, as gaunt an elder as she might have been with as acrid an odor as the remainder of the city.  She had borne great beauty once, however, with nut-shaped eyes and a small, round mouth.  And, equally to both pity and admire her, she held herself with some remnant of grace, a fine posture and gentle expression. 

    "At my side, Ara sighed to see her.  More than half a rallkle past their liberation, they had continued with such deprivation and unnecessarily extreme humility.  Bowing as would slaves, to their knees, as though we were Unar, their greeting was followed with a prayer for their beleaguered spirits.  In any other circumstance, this would have been seen as an utter insult to us both.

    "Yet more frustration simmered in me to know that they would, though free, continue in such a state--and more horribly, that some would choose such a way.  Once again, we faced Desalian complacency at its apex.  It was no easier as a regent than as a child to see--more difficult now, I should think.

    "'This shall change,' I thought first, examining her and the others who had arrived with a horror I felt lurching in my chest, well-weighted alone with milk.  To see and sense my Ara then, it was known that he and I understood our work with a newness and devotion, which in itself gave us courage.  Our planning was well enough, yet the true importance stood before us; within, our reactions were now to be put to action, beginning beneath that sun.

    "At last since we took our inheritance, bearing the regency pleased me well, that we had been given Allanois by our blessed siblings was a blessing.  We could act with all the privilege and ability our positions afforded us--and would.  Sashana'i, certainly and thankfully, had known this.

    "And our first acts there, I knew as we neared to greet those who had brought themselves, would be to incinerate those horrid rags and feed those hungry faces...."

    Janeway cut the log and leaned back in her seat to close her eyes, rest them for a moment.  Truthfully, she could use a month's worth of rest for all the reading and listening she had done.  Her eyes felt swollen from the insides out for being so glued to the imager.

    It had been a week since they had left Irllae.  A quiet ride at warp eight-point-five, with one short stop at an interesting cluster, it had given her a good deal of time to think and to look over the memoirs of Ara and Anai of Cezia, regents of Desal. 

    How they had gotten to that point... How Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres--Be'i and Toma of Azlre--had wound up on the footstep of a post-apocalypse with an entire civilization's faith and survival resting on their newly learned shoulders, had been more than enough for Janeway to understand why they had done what they had, and why they had separated themselves utterly from the "children" they had been.

    Simply, they hadn't had any room.  They had taken what they needed of their origins and from all the others they had inherited from Sashana'i and Aratra and recreated themselves, those two being Ara and Anai.  They renounced their previous lives in order to regain a sense of self, paradoxical as that was.

    In another way, they had been becoming those people all along.

    Reading their thoughts and feelings since that terrible day, after Sashana'i desperately flung all her and the Allanois' memories and desires into Be'i, and Aratra likewise into Toma, Kathryn finally understood what Beshelli had said, that Anai had not lied when she said that the two had passed on the day of Desal's liberation.

    The last log she had heard had been recorded a century ago, the beginning of the challenge that would consume the rest of their lives.

    She had only scratched the surface of what had become of her officers, she realized.

    "*Sickbay to the Captain.*"

    Janeway opened her eyes.  "Yes Doctor?"

    "*I have completed the final procedures on Lieutenants Paris and Torres.  They are ready to be revived...if you would like to be present.*"

    "What about Lieutenant Nicoletti and Crewman Bendera?"

    "*Their systems are more fragile, having been in cryogenic stasis for as long as they were.  I'd like to let their systems stabilize another forty-eight hours before awakening them.  But Mr. Paris and Ms. Torres are remarkably well, considering.*"

    She drew a deep breath and slowly let it out.  "I'm on my way," she replied.  She pressed her hands on her desk to stand, made her way around her desk and through the automatic door then stepped out onto the bridge.  "Chakotay," she said to the man already glancing at her then gave a nod to Tuvok.  "We'll be in sickbay.  You have the bridge."

    "Are they awake, Captain?"  Harry asked suddenly, snapped up from the diagnostic he'd been running.

    She turned a commander's grin his way, cautious but sincere and seemingly in control.  "Not yet, Ensign.  Soon."

    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him nod, grin slightly in return--the anxious little smile he often gave when he had more to say but didn't want to get in the way with something that could wait.  Someday, he would learn that her expression meant about the same.  Regardless, it remained with her as she continued to the turbolift, where she waited for the commander then called for deck five.

    The trip was silent.  The whirr of the lift produced no breeze; the artificial light above held no warmth.

---

    "I should think I heard it for the kreli'a'ave time--and I have sworn never to hear it again.

    "Hibca insisted upon burning those words into my memory one last time, the poor spirit:  'Yet, with all humility and thoughtfulness, good regent,' he had said, 'it must be asked whether we are deserving of such benefit.  Since my birth, it was known that our way was of what fate chose to bring us--which was Unar.'

    "'And fate brought you us past Unar defeat,' I told him among the others whom Shantsa had managed to enlist from the healthier of the east district's survivors. 

    "This full week has seen our work, leaving us filthier than we have been since Uillar, I would believe.  Miztri suffered injuries when an unstable housing section nearly crushed her; our parents have become too fragile in health to assist outside Bakali's house of birth, where their efforts now are concentrated and Ba'ela is kept safe.  Latsari and Bolmra are both required to rest at their chosen family house another du'ave past his contracting Murrajir's Syndrome, leaving Dalra to the organization of all the base repairs and as temporary technical liaison.  Anai continues to work largely from the beleaguered house we and our parents have claimed, adding to her frustration in her late term.  P'llaja'i has been a humbling nursemaid during these horrible suns.

    "Stable power is yet to be established. Unar's preference for laridium has corrupted more than we had known--until, of course, we began to clear the piles of dung and rubble away, and also the corpses, whose spirits had long left them, disrespectfully left unburned or unburied in the alleyways so many months after Unar was no longer there to order that desecration.

    "To work in those deathly conditions with such difficulty and more, I certainly bore no desire to hear of Desalian guilt or see our citizens' continued inaction, had I ever been.  Behind me, I heard Anai exhale at similar comments made in agreement to Hibca's nonsense.  Indeed, my bondmate's sole venture through the city this week could not have disappointed her more grievously.

    "'It yet must be asked, good regent, whether it is deserved, should we have paid--'

    "My palm stopped him: 'Prihar eat your contrition!' said I.  "Bear you no pride in Desal whatsoever that you would allow their dung to cover you when they themselves have sworn defeat?'

    "Hibca bowed in deference as he did absolutely nothing.

    "It ended at that.  The patience upheld beneath that sun turned swiftly to a model of the indignant regent of dawdling children.  We had thought to be kind and to tend to them gently, yet firmly, as such brutal Unar had ruled them previously, wish wished to show mercy.  Then, however, the arrogance and uselessness of that way was understood.  My hands had been bloodied, my eyes felt charred and bitter phlegm rose from my chest when my temper at last had reached an end and I knew that gentleness would need be borne beneath another sun.  Should those wretches, such pitiful skeletons, not care for themselves and their own with any fairness, then I would, with or against their wishes.

    "As had some at Cezia and many more freed from service or internment, simply no other way was known to them; affliction alone had been their guide.  Very well, I thought.  They shall need to learn what an end had been brought by finer example.

    "Thus, I instructed them to bring themselves away from the area in question; then I dug into the equipment chest, extracted a zutya pistol and a tossed a trionic charge into the heaps within the nearest residential alley.  My expediency flowed freely when I set the weapon's levels, aimed and incinerated the entirety of the row, dusting away the passed, the filth and all the other the symbols of Unar oppression in the duration of a full breath.

    "Such satisfaction outside of my bed had not been felt since we brought ourselves to Desalia-Four.

    "The Desal natives scattered at the fire, though they were quite safe.  Our closer comrades of Cezia, however, watched with relief, no more words and certainly no guilt.

    "'Your contrition shall be taken by me now,' I told those who slowly returned to watch the off street smolder, the dust of the past blow away in the wind.  'As regent, it is my right.'

    "'As it is mine.'  It was Anai, who managed herself, exhausted and bruised, around yet another pile of debris and to my side.  That sun had first been cursed by her, yet her face had brightened with the opportunity to share her mind--and perhaps at last with some result when she said,  'Take closely my bondmate's words beneath this sun, blessed citizens.  Desal's payment has been given by the spirits of our honored passed, who were sacrificed in our resurgence of healthy pride and will to survive the destruction Unar nearly had of us.'

    "There, I continued:  'What honor offer you to their spirits in this laziness and disregard of Desal's future?  Of Irllae's future?  What honor is given to those who passed so honorably in Desal's long night, bloodied and raped by Unar at our own allowance?  What good is done for your children by showing them but your selfishness and pitiful hopelessness?  What acceptance of fate and the spirits' blessings, trying to make their work here truth, do you pay mind to--or would there be remaining will to feed your empty spirits?'

    "'Those of you who cry for contrition may bring it directly to us,' Anai repeated.  'Desal is in full possession of its absolution, thus now the time has arrived for our capital to be cleansed of its facade of sin.  We would not have brought ourselves to the capital were this not meant.  Indeed, your regents are present and one among you, good citizens, and we shall likewise give possibility to a new and blessed age, free of that which brought us to this need to heal.  Accept this truth:  My children and yours shall not grow to their beings in a drask heap!'

    "Standing by me, straight-backed and round as a moon, her cloak snapping in the hard stench and her hand rubbing my sore side, I watched her final words burrow into each one of those who heard.

    "At last, they looked to understand what change had brought itself."

---

    ...She was getting what she originally wanted--and a hell of a lot more she hadn't expected, hadn't even asked for, but was granted by two benevolent leaders...her people...once her people, who regardless would be again. 

    Or would they be?  Janeway knew the Doctor had attempted the neural resequencing, at least to give it a chance on real subjects.  Ara and Anai wanted that despite the odds.  Like any good Allanois, they had dropped those bricks in fate's path and let them sink in as nature would have it.

    Then again, they did have to give her that last brick to place, as they knew she would.  To fulfill their oath once and for all, they gave her the choice, knowing what was likely to come of it...

---

    "Her heels could be heard crackling on the old stone steps Tola had only begun to repair in our chosen home, which alone shall be for some time a work of great love.  The whole of Desalia, as much of Irllae, would be.  (How commonly this is recalled, particularly when fatigue claims me!)  Despite the commonness of such reconstruction here and indeed upon Antral, my humility had great health for the condition of our home, in which our dear, dutiful friend would remain within this du'ave.  This was not an unnatural thing, I should think.

    "I felt gratitude for her arrival nonetheless.  No matter or business would keep her away from fulfilling her promise to me and Ara, even while she required several inoculations to bring herself to this blighted world safely.

    "Despite the inconvenience and her long journey, Susik Kichyrn was a sight of radiant joy when our good Miztri opened the door of our chambers.  As the light bathed over her, it could be easily seen how well she looked, though her eyes reflected a fatigue not unlike all of responsibility in Irllae.  (Moreover, her work at the side of Novren Pridalar certainly has tried her patience!)  She stepped in, careful for the loose stones at the threshold, staring to us with such a motherly wonder that shall not be forgotten.

    "My smile grew, too, to display of the present state of Allanois, at rest upon a pile of pillows under the long bay window.  Two sleepless scholars were my and Ara's forms, our tiny Mirai and Kyerani, were pink and cradled in our arms, and nestled between us was sweet Ba'ela, whose engagement with Kyerani's nursing from my breast was broken only when Susik came within.

    Ara's face likewise grew with pleasure when he said, 'Susik abillosk.' That beautiful smile was warm in his voice--warmed me, in truth, to hear it, to feel it.  'Sit with us.'

    Susik brought herself to the pillows by me.  How Antral she did look in her clothing and posture!  Yet such lovely burgundies and rich browns had always pleased her form--and being of good family and high standing, she would, with or without her wishing it, be treated to the finer articles Antral had to offer.  Her inflection was strong, as well, though of its usual plainness when at last she spoke.

    "'I brought things--gifts from Mother Kichyrn,' came her whisper as she reached to touch little Mirai, in Ara's arms.

    The glint of mist in her eyes, her smile and light, were as precious to me than any other offering of Antral.  Once, it had been considered whether past the war Susik might find peace in this place, aside from her duty to her daughter, her husband's family and what work she would bear--and Gatra, for whom she has found increasing regard, perhaps even love.

    "Yet in her duty as friend alone, no question remains that Irllae is home to her.  While she has borne her share of tragedy, life in Irllae has given her graces, too, which could not have been claimed elsewhere.

    When I touched her temple, felt her life, my first thoughts reflected 'sister,' and my smile was refreshed.  Yes, the name was settled well within me.  'Our thanks, for that and your arrival, Yeshalli Susik'..."

---

    ...Still, Janeway knew--in retrospect, now--what bits of Tom and B'Elanna had survived in the elders.  Ara's casual air of indifference and worldly amusement with matters around him, Anai's unabashed pride and will, right down to that "I told you so" look that Janeway had earned a couple times herself.  It had grown from the look B'Elanna used to give when she knew she had gotten it right and was waiting for everyone to agree with her.

    And she called *Sashana'i* a snotty brat.

---

    "Here, Pe'atla, this is where you speak."

    "And it shall always be preserved, Tola?"

    "Yes.  Always.  They are our lives' thoughts and ways, preserved for the future."

    "For the Institute?"

    "For many people--our people and others; you and your sisters and brothers, as well.  For us all, we are passed to those who follow, so that we shall not be forgotten.  All scholars record their lives, and our friends in the catacombs perform this service for our general citizenry.  Your nali and I likewise record those beyond Desal--a matter about which you shall learn when it is meant we teach it."

    "Our friends at Antral?"

    "Hmm, ka, they too, among others.  Ab, Child, you may tell the future a thing, should it please."

    "It does please, Tola.  --Vaa...  I am Pe'atla and I have lived four years, and my sisters make dibso plates on the garden for their course, and Tola-Bala watches them, and just past, he was laughing at their talk.  Yeshalli visits from Antral, as well.  She brought us fruits.  --Tola?  Shall it always be the way to recall this?"

    "As fate sees it so."

    "--Nali and Yeshalli and Nali-Bakali are making nido'ev pie this moon and it is my favorite!"

    "Ah, for future generations to know this is most pleasing.  Nido'ev is an important nutrient.  Now, perhaps we may slip some away before your nali takes each half.  You bear remembrance of her love for it, yes?"

    "Yes, Tola!  It is most beloved by her!"

    "Ara?  Mirai beckons you."

    "A moment, Gatra, my thanks.  --I suppose we shall learn who takes the pie another time, the next time...."

    "....Of all nonsense!  Eat the entirety of the pie?  Ara, I should think your mind has turned to joth curd--or the product of it.  You would ask the future to believe I bear such greed for pie that I would take it from my children?"

    "Anai, should any fool treat my jests with more than passing amusement, they soon would find your image and envy your blessed form for truth."

    "You have taken instruction from Novren again, with that smooth tongue of yours.  --Gye.  I am mistaken.  It is simply made more slippery with age."

    "You have taken to its smoothness well enough."

    "Vya!  Not this moon.  There is little luxury due to you--and then, our guests await--aah...  Our approaching meal is yet in preparation--a matter that must be attended by you.  Our plans we have yet to procure for the...  Ara! By the spirits!"

    "My deepest apologies, my lady of Allanois, for consuming your time so selfishly.  Allow my contrition to be shown through sincere worship?"

    "Ara, it is so soon past...  Or perhaps..."

    "Yes, good lady?"

    "Vaa, indeed some show of...service, would procure...me'aa..."

    "I should hope it might, my sweet Anai."
 

---

    Janeway's mouth flicked upwards, even as her eyes nailed to the door then pointed down the corridor when the doors opened.  Only her peripheral vision assured her Chakotay had indeed come with her.  He was as silent, likely as consumed in his own thoughts, or perhaps only respectful of hers. 

    Likely both.

    Into the next section, Janeway began to feel his presence, heard him release a breath, preparing for getting his curiosity satiated.  She felt herself taking the same steps.  She had not been to sickbay since the four had been transported there.  Something had told her she shouldn't.  It was an easy instinct to obey.

    Another bend in the corridor, and as though it were any other visit, Janeway made the last turn into the sickbay doors and to the Doctor's station.  There, she stopped and looked at what Chakotay had already paused to see, what Kes, looking very pleased, was still moving around scanning, checking, assuring.

    Gazing at both patients in turns, Janeway moved forward, between the two beds where they lay, utterly still, blanketed warmly above their sickbay gowns...and young, maybe too much so.  Somehow, the captain did not remember them looking so youthful.

    Their hair had been stimulated to their usual styles, their scars healed and bones rebuilt or straightened during the regeneration sequences.  Their hands, resting on their ribs, were fleshy and strong, fit for starship work as they had ever been.  Their pigmentation was normal, aside from the kraja markings on their temples and left hands, slightly fairer on their youthful skin but obviously one regeneration the Doctor had decided not to pursue due to the neurological impasses he had failed to overcome.

    Even so, it was hard to believe they were the same people she transported on board not a week before--nor even the two she'd seen in the image files.  Rather, they looked like the people she'd sent on an away mission almost two months ago, one half-Klingon engineer too smart and sensitive for her own good, one boyish pilot with more skeletons in his closet than she wanted to know about.

    Of course, that was what they were supposed to look like, those youths she had once smiled at so knowingly, had such hopes for as they rediscovered their potential with a second chance in Starfleet, had enjoyed watching as they met the challenges Voyager faced--and even a few of their own in the short time they had been aboard her ship.

    Looking and being, Janeway knew painfully well, were two very different things.

    Suddenly, it indeed felt like a hundred and ten years ago since they had been there.

    It almost seemed...unnatural, welcome as it was.  Little wonder Anai and Ara thought it would be.

    Steeling a breath as Chakotay took the other side of the first table, Janeway finally gave the Doctor a nod.  "Guess we have to find out sooner or later."

    The EMH's mouth turned down.  "So much for complimenting the artist," he commented and turned to load a hypospray.  "It may take a moment for the stimulant to take effect."

    Janeway and Chakotay both leaned over the young woman's body when the Doctor administered the dose.  Immediately, the lady breathed, a long intake through her nostrils, which she let out again.  Even that breath was youthful, clear and free, filling undamaged lungs.

    Chakotay smiled with relief and placed his hand on her forearm.  Hesitating for a moment, he decided to take the lead that time.  "B'Elanna?" he said, rustling her arm slightly.  "B'Elanna, can you open your eyes?"

    She did not move--more, she stopped moving.  For a moment, it seemed as though her breath had ceased.

    Chakotay looked up, concerned at first, but Kes shook her head.  "The Doctor said it might take a moment.  Try again, Commander.  Give her time to respond." 

    He blinked and resolved to try again with a nod.

    But Janeway held her fingers up to his next attempt, silently asking her turn.  She watched the young woman take another tiny breath, as if she was content to do only that--wanted to remain asleep.  In the moment after the injection, her mouth had relaxed, as had her brow and eyelids.  The plain, unconscious expression had softened, somehow seemed more...It seemed more...

    More like the last time she had spoken to her.

    Reaching down, Janeway placed her hand against the full, warm cheek there, stroked the woman's chin with her thumb.  Swallowing, she drew a new breath, smiling slightly, sadly, knowing...

    "Anai?"

    She breathed again; her lips parted...

    Janeway caressed her face again, sadder still in the absence of a miracle, but relieved all the same that the lady had chosen to stir.  A strange fear told her they might not, that they would realize what happened, and then quietly die.  Perhaps it was meant to be after all, that there was indeed something more for them to do there, a reason to remain alive.  Janeway certainly would not argue with that.  In any case, the woman's color began to increase; her breathing was thin but steady.  She and her bondmate would awaken soon to that uncertain and lengthy future the captain had provided, just as they knew would happen.

    Janeway breathed against her welling emotions and stabs of relief and regret, seeing the lady's fingers tighten lightly upon the blankets then relax again.  "Anai, can you open your eyes?"

    There was movement behind the patient's lids, and then stillness again.  She drew another breath.  Finally, her eyes gradually opened.  Rather than the deep brown they expected to complement the young woman's appearance, the color was decidedly hazel, brightly flecked in the lights above her.

    The stare was blank.

    To see the ceiling, the sleek grey, curling lines in the beams, the lights tucked within, to recognize its form in a faraway memory of temporary residence there, and to gradually recall all that had followed that place, those same eyes misted, blinked slowly...then focused.

    For some time, she remained silent, interpreting all her senses, one by one.  The quality of the light, the lack of scent but upon those breathless people around her, the static feel of the cloth which covered her, the touch upon her face...  All of it filed into her, having been in a short hibernation...and another by her awakening, as well, recognizing, realizing with her...

    One in life, there and beyond.

    His inner voice, far deeper and utterly complete within her, called to her in what ways it could.  Her spirit lightened immediately to know it remained there; his presence grew stronger, making her know that she remained within him, too.  Still bonded, and so she answered him and felt his relief, his thankfulness.  They had both feared...yet now there was no need.

    The trace of a smile touched her lips.  Then, they saw...

    Two others, within them, reaching out to them...at peace.

    They both stilled at the sensation. 

    Peace.

    The cries were gone, the guilt, the need for contrition that had not faded in their many years--not until that moment.  Her paled and desperate face, glaring up from the grass outside the gates of Desal, had changed.  The image itself fell into the past for a sturdy young woman with golden brown hair braided with long, light purple scarves and hazel brown eyes above a rosy mouth.  She held the arm of her bondmate, whose red-blond hair stuck out of his yellow headdress as always.  His smart grin below his crinkled eyes seemed poised on the edge of a laugh, but his expression was also full of his love for them.  Both stood proudly in their faded but finest gown and coat, tunic and robe, bathed in the peaceful whites, the threshold of Tsa'aista.  So handsome and happy there, those refugee regents, their siblings...

    Thanking them.  Blessing them.

    With gratitude and relief, it was accepted.

    Despite what and where they were, there was contentment where it mattered.  This was felt by all the voices who once had cried and urged or later had distracted and interfered, as they slipped easily back.  Always there, yet they granted the two a relative quiet they had not known in over a century.

    Their gift, in thanks.

    For several long moments, the two allowed themselves that peace....

    "Can you talk?"

    She heard the thick but gentle whisper, almost hesitant as she felt a thumb stroke her cheek again.  In the corner of her eye, she saw the captain staring expectantly, her eyes lit with water, her wistful smile twitching a bit, as though requiring an effort, even while keenly felt. 

    She knew the expression.  It was far sadder when she saw it last.

    To another side, the dark man had given her arm a squeeze.  Concerned and curious, he managed to hold a similar aura of calm as his eyes darted over her then glanced back.  When she was a child, she had thought that they had been through a good deal together.  It was likely still a good deal to him. 

    Birthpeople.  Old friends.  They were the ones waiting that time.

    She took another breath, swallowed to wet her throat.

    Fate had chosen.  The purpose would be seen...someday.

    They could only imagine what it might be that time.

    For the present, she slid her hand weakly up to the one that still cupped her face, and then wrapped her fingers around it.  She finally turned her eyes to the ruddy haired lady above her.

    The captain's deep blue eyes blinked away the water upon the contact, her smile pulled up a little.

    She blinked heavily, patted the lady's hand.  "Ka...thri," she breathed.

    Janeway coughed at that, neither a laugh nor a sob, then nodded.

    "Vaa, do not cry," she whispered.  "It was meant.  It was all meant.  For that...it shall be well."

    The captain stroked her young, warm cheek again, leaning down close.  "Thank you for coming back to us," she said, a little hoarse but as heartfelt as before.

    "Yet we are not what we once had been."

    Kathryn shook her head.  "It doesn't matter.  That you and Ara would let me bring you, after everything else, means more to me than you probably know."

    There, her lips turned up; she patted Janeway's hand again.  "Gye.  It is known."  Moving her other hand up, she gave Kathryn's arm a gentle tug, pulling her down.  Then, surely, though weakly, she embraced the lady.  Without hesitation, Janeway returned it, pressing her cheek to hers. 

    She turned her head in that embrace and found beyond the commander and Kes her bondmate, who had opened his eyes without assistance soon after she had; he gazed steadily at the scene, smiling gently at her.  She drew a quick breath at that, though his youthful facade was not that which stole into her spirit.  Rather, it was everything past his eyes, unseen by all but her and so felt.

    He blinked slowly, his own acknowledgement and approval.  Her own smile grew to see it.

    They would bear the rest later.  Just there, just then, it was an acceptable fate, if only for the grateful captain embracing her, and the others there, who had desired them so that Sashana'i and Aratra indeed were granted their last wishes.

    Still near her ear, she whispered again,  "It is known, Kathri."

---

    "...A museum!  Vya!  The archive thought to place our ship in a museum!  While, truth, our beloved Azallis bears great age, we own not nearly so many suns--nor do its systems, which Anai and I have upgraded to the finest degree Desalian technology could ensure.  I should think what gave me most amusement this sun was the expression my dear bondmate turned down to poor P'drili's quickly crumbled note.  For not being a captain, P'drili bore little understanding of the insult she had delivered and could not understand why it soon flew upon the morning breeze without apology.

    "This should make interesting talk in Desal regardless.  More talk, I should think, might likewise be geared towards Be'otala's bonding, but a tb'rass before us.  Tejani of Azlre passed by me after parting with Anai, and it seems that lovely child bears equal bouts of anxiousness, though she has loved our Be'otala these past two years. 

    "Oddly, I am reminded of Toma at her age, so unsure beneath that grace and stance, seen only in the eyes and by those who bear an observant nature.  It is also much as was her mother, as I recall her upon Uillar, on the moon of our liberation.  Yet this is another story, well-told by good Suoti herself.  I shall suggest to Anai that she tutor the girl in this experience.  Tejani has much been accepted as a daughter by Anai, after all, as well as by myself.  Her house is one we could not be more pleased to see our Be'otala enter.  Ka, a most charming girl.

    "Before the moon's rise, instructional lectures for the following tb'rass and three forthcoming seminars must be arranged, the new orbital stations at Ivlisa and Saha'aten assessed and the design schematics for the new agricultural bank inspected.  Upon the next f'hajen, three new institutes are to be blessed by myself and Anai.  Grateful events, all, though it must admitted how it shall please to see her brown silk gown again, and more to spend time upon Cezia past the final dedication.  Afterwards, we should have found enough rest to begin preparations for the coming Arrellaros and outline the new topics for the Worlds' Council with Latsari, Bolmra and Tase'illa.

    "When shall the council function independently?  Within another generation, I should sincerely hope.  I shall yet speak with Gihetra of our appearance and commit our topics to careful planning.

    "Miztri's typically effective appearance should be made there as well, might I beg her away from Dalra's most recent restoration.  Sadly, Anai and I are required to postpone our visit to that good work, as I do not doubt we would be expected to attend that council which Gihetra should be trusted in alone, particularly by our neighbors.  A fine captain in the war whom they all admire, his ability and efficiency have never met question.  Still, some wisdom would be shown to appear and present our 'courtiers' as representative once again, lest there might spring some unconscionable notion that the Regency again ignores them.

    "Little wonder Anai notes her greying hair and mine have all but passed entirely.  Always, we have borne desire and enjoyment for such challenges, for labor and purpose, and yet...

    "Kash, I grow tired, I would believe.  Much of our energy is to be expended on this moon's third and we wish to be distracted only by our eldest son's bonding.  Be'otala is a fine-minded man, with a fine presence and nature he bears openly to all.  He is our first to take to the novitiate and soon to bonding.  I bear such pride and love for him--and to Prihar's tail with humility.  Yet this has always been so with the children.

    "So strange, to think that next it shall be Mirai or Kyerani, Kela or Pe'atla...then little Baki--and it shall be an untoward day when a young man seeks after her, I should believe, unless...  No, I should think my blessed bondmate would fling my spirit to the ancestors, only to follow with a vengeance prized in her birthmother's bloodlines, should merely the suggestion of another child pass her at her age.  While certainly she gave no complaint, another blessing may well procure a measure of them.

    "Distracted, indeed, as six topics have found me in fewer minutes and none completely--and it is yet the morning sun shining on the court, and my first lecture is yet to begin.  Without argument, the Azallis shall take us to Oyal-Two for the Council; it shall be flown proudly there by us.

    "Yet still a curiosity exists whether Anai would allow me to prove its continued agility when we meet Novren's ship.  Perhaps past our morning's correspondence, she shall not refuse a healthy test of its systems.  Considering old Tridl may well be with him, I should think she might find enjoyment in this...."

    "Captain?"

    Jerked into the present by his voice, Janeway looked up from her coffee and PADD to Kim, who had approached her usual dinner seat.  She offered him the same grin she'd found while reading the last sentences of Ara's entry.  "Good evening, Ensign."

    Kim managed a small smile in return.  "Hello, Captain."

    The moment of silence following his formality was all Janeway needed to figure out why he had approached and greeted her only to say nothing.  Kim had been more than uneasy since they had brought the four--such as they were--back to Voyager.  In her own mind, and with the elders' acceptance of how they had returned, she was settled with it.  But she knew the others hadn't seen the things she had, or been where she had been. 

    Harry Kim, of course, had suffered the least preparation and the most shock, having been their friend.

    "Join me?" she asked, motioning to an adjacent seat, which he took and followed after another awkward moment.  She reluctantly put down the PADD, leaned back in her chair.  Seeing his eyes briefly examine it, she drew up her coffee for a sip.  "While I was in sickbay, they invited me to keep reading through their memoirs," she told him.  "I've been skimming through--it would take years to read them all, more so to listen to the translation.  Thousands of portraits and images of them and the family are also in there; their friends and possibly every place they'd been in Irllae, official visits and vacations.  They certainly left no stone unturned when they recorded their lives."  She glanced towards him.  "I seem to remember you were interested in finding any of their logs.  Maybe you would like to look through them, too?"

    "Thank you, Captain," Harry said politely, "but I don't think it'd be right, since they're here and that's so personal, you know?"

    She eyed his obvious evasion.  "They're a public record now, according to Ara.  They won't mind."

    "No, I guess not," Harry conceded.  "Not after the stories."

    Janeway drew a breath, warming her hands on the mug as she glanced out of the window.  "Commander Chakotay and I are planning to invite Ara and Anai to an informal briefing after they're released from sickbay.  --A sort of...re-acquaintance.  We thought it would help."  She had said it casually; then she saw his gaze draw up from the table.  "Have you seen them yet?"

    "No, Captain," Harry confessed, withholding the predictable reasons why, while still showing them plainly.  "How...I mean, are they all right?"

    "They were quiet," she admitted.  "Understandable in their circumstances.  But they seemed to be curious, alert.  I think they'll be all right."

    Sighing, he leaned up a bit, resting his crossed arms on the table.  "What's going to happen to them here?"

    "They'll move on," Janeway told him.  "I admit I had some trouble with it, too; I wondered if they were doing it solely for us, or even if I was being selfish in bringing them."  She nodded to his reaction to her confession.  He deserved to know she understood his quandaries.  She was certain there wasn't a doubt he had that she hadn't already considered, didn't still feel in some way.  "The only reason they even thought about coming back in the first place was because they had promised Sashana'i they would continue their lives here.  It seems they want to give it a chance.  They said fate gave them this end, and so they have to make what they can of it.  I want them to have that and some."

    Kim nodded, though his mouth was still turned down.  "I don't know, Captain," he said quietly.  "B'Elanna...  Anai said when we met her that she was telling the stories to help us mourn.  But now it only seems like they were...  I don't know."

    "Did it ever occur to you that it was to help them mourn, too?"  Janeway asked.  "They'll never forget their lives, so there's nothing for them to have to get back in that respect.  But when they first planned this out, they knew that if they weren't going to die, they would at least be giving up their home and family, everything they'd come to know and love.  Desalians thrive in their memories, their histories and traditions; it's almost as sacred as the adoration of their ancestors.  So I understand completely why they were so against Sashana'i's plan at first.  Regardless, they were dying--if not in body, then in their own history on Desalia.  And all their lives, they had not shared in full how they came to be what they are.  It was quite an event for them."

    "They wanted to finish it with us there," Kim acknowledged, seeing in a flash the ancient lady, touching his face, staring gently into his eyes.  It was still hard for Harry to believe that that elder was B'Elanna, patting his face like he was any grandchild...and the other was Tom, a closer friend still, nearby and falling asleep on the wall he sat upon, too ill to stay awake.  At the time, Harry thought the old man was being purposefully disinterested.  The more he thought about it, the more it troubled him, the more he didn't know what he'd say to them, how to reconcile those elders to his friends.

    Janeway reached over, put her hand on his arm.  "That word painting wasn't just a story of Be'i and Toma and the people around them.  It was a way to bring that past alive--a consecration of what was sacred to them and their own closure--for them, their family and people and for us.  It was their final testament."

    "But they're not dead here."

    "Only because they allowed me to bring them back--and I honestly don't think they could have made that decision without Anai's having told her stories, having made that closure there.  Either way, their history in Irllae is over.  When they agreed to return, they accepted the fact that they would be starting again, with or without their memories in tact.  We have to give them the opportunity to fulfill what they were meant to do here--whatever that might be--with us, on Voyager...and back home."

    Again, the ensign nodded, then shrugged.  "Maybe.  Maybe I just miss them still.  I mean, Ara and Anai are so different."  His gaze darted aside then back to the captain.  "I didn't really see how much until I saw that portrait of them from Cezia, the one Captain Havetsi gave to Commander Chakotay on the bridge.  They'll look like Tom and B'Elanna, but they aren't the same people.  Even in their stories, Anai said they didn't belong with us anymore--and that was when the war was still going on."

    Janeway's lips turned up at the sides and she glanced down to the memoir she'd been reading.  Placing her hand upon it, she slid it over to Kim as she rose to her feet.  "Yes, they're not the same people.  But as for the rest, they might still surprise us."  She motioned to the PADD.  "Have a look, Ensign.  I'll see you in the morning."

    With that, she left Kim with the log, which was still open on Ara's highly amused and flabbergasted reaction to the suggestion that their ship was to be grounded for the history books before its time.  This had happened in the middle of a typically busy du'ave as regents handling planets and politics and their careers as designers, engineers and teachers, plus arranging for their firstborn son's marriage.  Still, the Azallis' near fate was what had set the typically urbane and attentive Ara of Cezia off on his tirade, though he had recovered nicely in that same entry.

    Once a captain, always a captain, Janeway grinned to herself as the turbolift doors opened before her.  She almost wished she'd been there to see what they'd done to poor, foolish Tridl and their old friend Novren.

    Well, soon enough, I will, she thought, remembering that the original of that entry was still in her ready room.

    She could already see their faces as they whipped circles around the Antral ship, the gleam in their eyes, his winning grin, her satisfied smile.  She hoped Harry might see it too. 

    No, he probably would, in time.

    "Deck one."
 

---

(continued in epilogue)
Chapter 10 | WP Main

November, 1999
© D'Alaire M.