by Andy Mangels
A blanket spread out on the grass, Jacob had arranged himself so that Rena could sit between his legs and lean against him. The intimacy of the seating arrangement simultaneously tantalized and terrified her, but the intuitive trust that had existed between them since the start won her over. Once she was situated, he gathered her long, curly hair into his hand and draped it so it hung over one shoulder; he rested his head on the other. Rena propped her arms on his thighs, dangling her hands off his knees. As always, silence felt comfortable between them. Neither felt obliged to speak for the sake of making noise. Instead, matching the rhythm of her breath with Jacob’s became a soothing meditation. Fully relaxed, she snuggled back into the warmth of his body. He pulled her tight against him. Glancing over at Parsh and Halar, she was pleased to see that Parsh had overcome his usual shyness and had put and arm around Halar’s shoulders. They looked happy.
Soon, the first moon climbed over Yyn’s towering cliffs, blanching them cold, white-gray, signaling that the longest day of the year had passed into memory. As if to hold on to the lost light a little longer, a series of massive bonfires erupted on each side of the dais, coaxing a collective “ah!” from the crowd.
Accompanied by sad, soaring flutes, and stringed belaklavions, dancers, clothed in gauzy lavender, sea green, blush pink, and daylight blue twirled onto the stage, their robes flowing out like sea anemones’ tentacles floating in a tidal pool. Offstage, the narrator’s clear voice introduced the story of Astur, the water spirit who, on solstice morning, had left the ocean in the form of a woman, to search for a young fisherman whose face she had seen when he’d glanced over the side of his boat to retrieve a lost coin. Since the story was conveyed almost entirely through dance, Rena explained the unfolding action to Jacob using the words Topa had told her at a long-ago bedtime.
Astur found her love but couldn’t persuade him to leave his life on land to join her in the sea. Because her father, the King of the Reef, had granted her human form only as long as there was daylight, Astur and her lover attempted to hold back the night by a great fire, hoping to deceive the King. But neither a creature of the sea nor a man of the land could withstand the inferno’s heat: the lovers were consumed by the flames, conveyed by long lengths of shimmering gold fabric on the stage.
At last, the dancer portraying the King of the Reef came onto the stage and lifted a large milky white glass oval off the ground where the fire had turned the sand to glass. In memory of his lost child, he threw the glass high into the air. The crowd—including Rena—held their breath waiting for the inevitable crash.
Instead, on all sides, small flames appeared as thousands of candles ignited instantaneously, as if by magic, creating the illusion of floating in a candlelight sea. Delighted, Rena clapped. This was far more enchanting than the bedtime version she was familiar with.
“And so it is,” the narrator concluded, “that on summer solstice night, sea glass turns to flame as the King of the Reef hopes that his daughter and her lover can live again.”
The stage lights dimmed, ending the pageant, but the candles remained, waves of flickering candlelight flowing as far as Rena could see.
As people started getting up around them and leaving, Jacob leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “What happens now?”
“Parsh sort of explained this to you a while ago, but now that you’ve seen the pageant, it probably makes more sense. The story goes that those couples who capture one of the water spirit’s candles have the King of the Reef’s blessing for one night of marriage. When the sun returns, the spell is broken.”
“Sounds like an excuse for people to make love.”
“It is,” Rena conceded with a smile, “but it’s a romantic one, don’t you think?”
Taking their cues from those around them, Jacob and Rena stood; she folded up their blanket, packed up a pair of wine-glasses they never used, and slipped on her shoes. Halar grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her out of earshot of both Jacob and Parsh.
“I want Parsh to bring me a candle,” she confided.
Rena blinked her surprise, but quickly gave her approval by enveloping her friend in a big hug. As she broke away from their embrace, she saw Parsh coming toward them, a candle cupped in his palm. She spun Halar around and wished her luck.
When Halar and Parsh had vanished into the crowd, Rena started toward the line of departing audience members, quickly realizing that Jacob wasn’t with her. She scanned the throngs of people. She knew that the odds of finding him in the dark were slim, but she hoped his height would give him away. When he didn’t immediately appear, she began calling for him, feeling a low level of panic start to rise within her. Logic took over. If we accidentally separate, we should meet back at the hostel, she recalled the four of them agreeing yesterday. Since most of the audience appeared content to linger around the candlelit ruins, Rena met little resistance as she raced down the hill and gravel road to the hostel.
The yard surrounding the hostel was nearly empty. The banquet tables held the skeletal remains of their earlier feasting. Sprays of starlight appeared between the tree branches. Low, throaty laughter came from the dimly lit porch, where groups of festival visitors had gathered around tables to play games or drink wine or talk late into the night. Still no Jacob. Circling around back and through a tree grove, Rena nearly tripped over the legs of a couple who hadn’t bothered to find a more private place to begin their celebrating. She was about to start down the path to the beach when a hand touched her sleeve.
“Rena.”
Jumping nearly out of her skin, she spun on her heel. “Don’t you ever leave like . . .” Her voice trailed off when she saw that Jacob carried a candle between his hands.
She didn’t know what to say. In her heart, she had known this would happen—hoped it would—and now he stood before her, his face cast in warm yellow candlelight, and she had to decide.
“I know you’ve made promises to Topa. I know you feel like you have obligations to Mylea,” he said, his voice quaking from nerves. “You have to believe that I’m not asking you to walk away from those commitments—”
“I know,” she whispered. She knew from the story he wrote for her, from the inspiration she felt to create when she spent time with him. Through his eyes, she saw Bajor and life more clearly than she ever had. The tightness in her throat released and in its place heat tunneled through her. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
“Whoa—” he sputtered, holding the candle away from his body. “Let’s not follow the legend too literally or we’ll be glass by morning.”
Smiling, she kissed him again; then, wordlessly, she led him inside.
Jacob had time only to place the candle on the dresser and lock the door before Rena had pulled him down to sit on the bedside.
“If this is going too fast for you, we don’t have to—”
Placing her finger against his lips, she shushed him. She slipped off her sandals and sweater and she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, resting her head on his shoulder. Because they were comfortable that way, they sat in silence. Jacob traced circles on her bare arm and shoulder with his finger; his feather-light touch became more exploratory, and she shivered.
To halt him, she flattened her palm against his chest. With trembling fingers, she unfastened his shirt, parting it to expose his skin, and pressed her cheek against him. He smelled like musk and candle smoke and the field grasses above Yyn. She began a delicate trail of kisses up his breastbone, murmuring his name, until he captured her face in his hands. The inscrutable expression on his face worried her for a fraction of a second until he claimed her mouth with dizzying intensity. We’re going through with this, she thought over and over again. He wants this as much as I do.
Breaking away from their kiss, Jacob reached over her to deactivate the lights, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her down onto the bed. Lying side by side, they faced each other, at first not touching, having only the candle’s sepia glow to see by.
My turn. Sitting up, Rena reached for the tie of her blouse, loosened the neckline and pulled the blouse over her head. She felt his gaze. Before, when they had been together, it had been under the cover of darkness. Now, having him look at her, she imagined the way she studied the subjects she painted, and was filled with nervous excitement.
From behind, his hands went gently around both sides of her waist, fanned against her hips, and he buried his lips in the slope between her shoulder and neck. Arching into his touch, she cradled her neck against his shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling at last that things were as they should be. Complete.
* * *
When the midmorning sunlight woke Rena, she rolled onto her side to find Jacob watching her. She must be a sight: her hair in its customary wild and bushy morning style, her lips swollen, and virtually every centimeter of her aching from exertion. She stretched, raising her arms above her head, and then, feeling oddly shy, pulled the sheet back up to cover her fully. “Hey,” she said, offering him a drowsy, crooked grin.
“Hey yourself,” he said, looking at her expectantly. Resting his head on his elbow, he seemed a little too self-satisfied for Rena to be at ease.
Wrinkling her forehead, she said warily, “You look like you’re going to explode if you don’t say whatever it is you’re thinking—”
“I . . . I think I might be in love with you,” he blurted out.
She arched an eyebrow in surprise.
“I know it’s sudden and all—”
And then instinctively Rena knew, without being told, that his declaration came from genuine feeling and not from the emotional miasma of sex. Smiling, she leaned over and planted a firm kiss on his lips and pulled him on top of her, relishing his weight. “Besides that other thing, what were you thinking just now?”
“Words . . . ideas . . . the nucleus of something I want to write later. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but I feel like I’ve been seeing life through a broken lens that’s suddenly sharply focused.”
Rena smiled knowingly against his chest. “That’s an artist’s job: to see the truth of the world and people and communicate it. Often, we fall back on what we know, not what we see. There’s a difference.”
“You sound like someone I used to know,” Jacob said. “She died. One of Dukat’s men killed her. It was . . .” He inhaled deeply, then sighed. “I miss her.” Looking down at her and leaning in toward her, he touched his forehead to hers. “You would have liked her. Ziyal was an artist, too. There’s a display of her work on the station. Have you heard about it?”
Rena shook her head. “No,” she said. “I haven’t paid much attention to what was goes on up on the space station. But I’m certainly going to look her up now.” As he drifted into memory, she felt a brief flash of jealousy. She asked, “Did you love her?”
He considered her question then said, “In another time and place, I might have, eventually. But no, we were just friends, for the short time we had togteher.”
“And you cherish that,” Rena said, “just as you cherish every other moment of your life, and everyone in it.”
“You understand,” he whispered, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. “I feel like you see me.”
“I see you because I love you,” Rena said without thinking about the words, and knew it was true.
Then he whispered something against her skin that she thought she heard, but couldn’t quite bring herself to believe.
She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Ask me that again.”
Epilogue
Sisko
All in all, it had been a merry evening. His guests started arriving just after sunset: Opaka first, followed by his friends from the station, with the first minister arriving last. Thankfully, they had mostly heeded his edict and dressed in casual civvies: Kira in a dark red dress and boots, Asarem in a long rust tunic and trousers, Vaughn in an evergreen crewneck sweater and jeans. Only Sulan had not shed the trappings of her vocation, but she seemed quite at ease in the humble purple vestments of her order, so Sisko was not disappointed by her choice.
Everyone fussed over Rebecca, of course. Predictably, the baby had quickly become overwhelmed with all the attention and the number of strange faces invading her tranquil world, needing the comfort of Kasidy’s embrace to reassure her that all was well. Eventually she grew accustomed to the extra people, and everyone got a turn holding her over the course of the evening before Kasidy finally put her down for the night.
Sisko made crawfish étoufée for dinner. He’d ordered the plump crustaceans direct from Earth two weeks ago, from a company that specialized in exporting seafood offworld; the catch had been packed in stasis straight from the traps and remained thus until ready for use. “Fresh as fresh can get,” his father assured him when he first told Sisko of the service. Dad had been right; the meal had turned out exquisitely, if Ben did say so himself. Kas and their guests certainly seemed to enjoy it.
As the night progressed into the small hours of the following day, the group adjourned to the front porch for an after-dinner aperitif. Nerys opened the package she’d brought with her, revealing a strange-looking dark green bottle. Vaughn recognized it at once; his first reaction had been to cover his eyes and shake his head with laughter. Kira explained that it was a Capellan drink called grosz, something Admiral Akaar had introduced her to a while ago. “I should warn you, it has something of a kick,” she said.
Sisko accepted the half-filled glass of clear, slightly purple liqueur she’d poured him and sniffed it, then sipped appreciatively. He paused to consider how it felt as it went down his throat, deciding as it snuck up on him that “molten latinum” was an apt description. “You weren’t kidding,” he said, trying to blink the moisture back into his eyes. Kira grinned and refilled his glass, then poured three more; Opaka and Kasidy abstained, taking tea instead.
Sisko had not expected Vaughn to be such a raconteur, though he supposed you didn’t arrive at that age in Starfleet without accumulating at least a few tales worth telling. When the commander finally wound his way to the conclusion of the story of the tribbles that had found their way onto a freighter full of the xiqai, the Orion aphrodisiac spice, Sisko thought that Opaka was going to do an injury to herself from laughing. As it was, she slid out of her low chair and lay helpless on the ground for a few minutes, gasping for breath.
The discussion eventually turned to more serious topics . . . which was, of course, the unstated reason he had gathered this particular group together in the first place, and why they had each accepted his invitation to join him this evening, even after the trials of the day. Had Odo not felt compelled to leave so soon after Unity Day, he too would be here. But Odo was needed elsewhere . . . even more than he himself realized.
Asarem, with whom Sisko had shared several private conversations during the last seven weeks, looped them in on the sudden death of Bajor’s Federation councillor, and her surprising choice of a replacement—something the rest of the planet would not learn about until later that day. Sisko remembered Krim Aldos with mixed emotions, of course, but mostly they were favorable. Though the two men had come down on opposite sides of many issues during that uneasy first year, culminating in a battle for control of the station, Krim’s convictions about what was good for Bajor had always seemed genuine. The general had both the strength of his beliefs and integrity . . . but it had always seemed to Sisko that Krim also possessed a keen intellect and an open mind. Sisko had no doubt these qualities would make a potent combination on the Federation Council.
Sisko knew less about Vedek Solis Tendren, who, according to Opaka, seemed likely to throw his name into the running for kai. The Vedek Assembly was finally due to convene for statements and deliberations on the matter in the coming weeks, after several false starts over the past year. Though the faithful were beginning to accept that Opaka’s return didn’t mean she would be resuming her previous role as Bajor’s spiritual leader, her living presence was a powerful reminder of what a k
ai could be, should strive to be.
Her eyes met his several times over the course of the evening. More than anyone else in the room, she seemed to perceive the less obvious reasons why this gathering was necessary.
Soon, as it had to, the discussion took on a more grave quality. Kira brought up Sidau, explaining to those not among her crew what had transpired out near the Badlands, and which had unfortunately shed little light on the reasons for the crime that had been committed in Hedrikspool only a day earlier.
The conversation then shifted to the Eav-oq, Bajor’s newly discovered sister species (at least in spirit) on the other side of the wormhole. Their existence carried with it strange implications for Bajor, Asarem felt, perhaps even more world-shaking than the rediscovery of the Ohalu prophecies. It was, potentially, a cause for great celebration, to learn that the Prophets had Touched others besides Bajor. But there was still the other half of that revelation, the knowledge Opaka had brought home with that of the Eav-oq, that a third such species was also out there, somewhere in the Gamma Quadrant: the mysterious and violently aggressive religious zealots known as the Ascendants. From her encounter with one of their kind during her years among the Sen Ennis, Opaka believed the Ascendants would eventually return to the region of space near the Temple, and what would follow then was anyone’s guess.
Noting the troubled tone with which Opaka expressed her concerns, Asarem volunteered the opinion that they needed to prepare for the worst, with which Kira agreed.
Vaughn suggested moving quickly to reach out to the Eav-oq, begin building a relationship and learning whatever they could about them, their history, and perhaps more about the Ascendants in the process. It was the Ascendants, after all, who millennia ago had driven the Eav-oq into hiding, a retreat that protected the wormhole and those who dwelled within it from being discovered.
