“First, we should have lunch,” Sisko said, pausing where he stood and meeting her eyes. “Then, when we’re done, I think we should begin to plan a dinner party.”
Rena
Rena awoke distressingly early the next morning, a full ten minutes before the house computer was programmed to chime. What could have awakened her? Noise from the street? Unlikely. At this hour, most of the fishermen had been out in their boats for a couple of hours, and few of them lived this far up in the Harbor Ring hills, preferring that their houses be close to the docks. Marja would already be downstairs in the bakery, which was on the other side of the house, and Rena knew from experience that Marja would have to drop one of the biggest mixing bowls or—unthinkable!—slam an oven door for her to hear it up on the third floor. So the question remained: Why was she awake?
Guilt, perhaps. Her stomach knotted as she contemplated the looming confrontation with Marja. When she had arrived, yesterday afternoon, Marja had been at services. By the time her aunt had returned home, Rena had already fallen asleep and was just now waking up for the first time in fourteen hours.
Images from night before last swam up from memory: Jacob. He might be in Mylea now. Would she see him again? Not that he would wantto see her, or she him, for that matter. To think she’d been with the son of the Emissary all that time and not known it! Thinking back, she couldn’t honestly say he’d lied outright about his identity, but he’d certainly withheld it. In retrospect, there had been clues in some of things he let slip, and the fact that she hadn’t put the details together before was now a source of embarrassment.
She remembered the single holo the newsfeeds had been permitted to take of the Emissary and his newborn daughter—the Avatar, as some believed. Many, many images had been taken of Sisko over the years, but the press had been cooperative about not taking images of his family, a privacy demand the media had no choice but to comply with. Sisko had made it clear: If one newsfeed ignored his request, all the others would be cut off. Perhaps that’s why she hadn’t recognized Jacob the way Halar had. Halar had spent most of her middle years digging through the comnet, saving every file and picture she could find, becoming an expert on all things Sisko in the process. If it hadn’t been in the headlines, Rena hadn’t bothered, being more concerned with her art and Kail. It seemed appropriate now that they were adults that their childhood obsessions still defined them: Halar was studying to become a prylar, Rena was still painting and with Kail—sort of. Or maybe neither.
Rena sagged back against the narrow bed, sighed, hauled herself up into a standing position, and wobbled across the cool wood floor to her tiny ’fresher.
After pulling her wiry black hair back into a loose knot, Rena quickly scrubbed her face, took her allergy medicine, and cleaned her teeth, not thinking about any one thing, but letting a dozen stray thoughts course through her consciousness. After the initial foundation work was completed, she worked up the nerve to look herself squarely in the mirror and was pleased to see that things could be worse. Her complexion, naturally creamy brown, masked the bags (with a little help from a little powder), but the lines around her eyes were difficult to disguise. Scrunching up her eyes, she stared at herself and recalled her grandfather’s comment: It’s not the years; it’s the distance traveled. Only last month, she had plucked the first silver hair from among the black and she could see another growing in its place. Marja had told her that her sister, Rena’s mother, had gone completely gray by thirty. Rena hoped that environment had been a factor: her mother’s life had been much more difficult than hers had been.
When she was a young girl, Marja and Topa had told her tales of her mother and father, Lariah and Jiram, so many times that they were, to Rena, like characters in a story. Their tale went like this: Her mother, Lariah, and her father, Jiram, had grown up during the Occupation. By day, Jiram had fished, like most of the men, and Lariah had worked with Topa and Marja in the bakery making Cardassian scorca,the flat bread the Occupation troops craved. “They were the bravest people in town,” Topa had told her over and over. “They could have been like everyone else and just done what they were told, but they wanted life to be better for everyone.”
“Especially me!” the young Rena would say (her recurring line).
“Especially you,” Topa would say.
No one else in Mylea had been brave enough to give up their soft lives; everyone knew how bad living conditions were in the big cities, the industrial centers, and the mining camps. No one wanted to take a risk.
But bravery was not always enough, or so the story went. One night, someone made a mistake or, possibly, the Cardassians just got lucky. Lariah and Jiram had not returned from their mission to free a group of prisoners, so baby Rena went to live with Marja and Topa. Somewhere along the line, she had learned that Topa, too, worked for the resistance, but had the sense or the luck to not be caught. As she grew older and understood things more clearly, there came a point when he would say, “They were the bravest people in town,” and she would mentally append, Except for you.
Enough,Rena thought, unknotting her hair and trying to rake the wild locks into submission with her fingers. This was all twenty years ago. You don’t even remember them. The Cardassians are gone now.Padding back into the bedroom, she took the clothes she would wear today from the hooks on the back of the door: black skirt (or pants), black shoes, black or gray shirt (or sweater, depending on the chill in the air), and a white pullover with purple fluting. Now all she needed was her apron and the transformation would be complete. Seeing herself in the mirror, she said, “Hello, Bakery Shop Girl,” and started downstairs to help Marja.
Every late spring, the intercoastal salt marshes north of Mylea were infused with newly warmed seawater from a southerly warm current bringing along the immense schools of tiny fish that, in turn, brought the bigger game fish. At almost the same time, give or take a week, a mass of damp, cool air descended from the mountains and mingled with the warm sea air, creating a dense white fog of such peculiar perspicacity that it was renowned around the planet and treasured by artists, holographers, and, in particular, lovers.
Before leaving Mylea for university, Rena had often enough read the expression “tendrils of fog” in stories and assumed that the author had described a condition that he had seen. Now that she had been away, Rena knew the truth: Most writers didn’t know realfog. In other towns, fog was wispy and insubstantial. In Mylea, you could practically wrap it around you and wear it like a coat. In other places, fog was merely the ghost of a cloud; in Mylea, fog was like an ambassador of the ocean coming up onto land to remind it who was really in charge.
Lovers walking in Mylean fogs were almost always sure to lose themselves and wander into shadowy gardens and secluded corners. The lonely and the lovelorn claimed to feel soothed by visions of those they had lost too soon or never known. Harsh breezes never disturbed the vapors, but soft breezes would often waft through the streets, making the tendrils curl and dance like ocean waves. Even after the sun rose, the fog would linger and shroud the shops and houses in a translucent silvery veil. In Mylea, in the proper season, at the right hour, those who were open to wonder could find anything there they could possibly wish to see.