Inside the gate, they walked beside the weatherbeaten Temple Ring rampart for more than a hundred meters, from pool to pool of puddled, pale lamplight. The occasional skimmer filled with fishermen off to their predawn preparations zinged past. Within hours, the darkened storefront windows would be lively with color and light as the first catches of the day were poured into tanks or cleaned, filleted or chopped into steaks. A little light-headed from the ale, she noticed that the air was lightly scented with the perfume from the late-blooming trees that lined the street. Lovers strolled up and down the street, arms linked or hand in hand. Last year, before she had left for the university, the sight made her feel part of an exclusive club of those who had been lucky enough to find a special someone. Tonight, thinking about love made her feel like a boat cut loose from its moorings.
Turning off before they passed the harbormaster’s station, Rena and Jacob walked up brick-paved Moonshell Road, snaking back and forth across the hill past shops and houses.
“What went wrong tonight, with Kail, I mean? You were so determined to make it work.”
So now it’s my turn to answer the questions,she thought. “Our relationship has been unraveling for a while now. When I came back from school…”
“Everything was different,” Jacob finished for her. “I know that feeling. Something similar happened to me when I got back from the Gamma Quadrant.”
This was new information, and Rena reeled off a fusillade of questions. “You were in the Gamma Quadrant? Really? For how long? What was it like?”
Laughing, Jacob said, “In order, Yes, really. A few months. And, hmm, it was, in no particular order, thrilling, terrifying, informative, exhausting. In brief, just like here, but more so.”
“Not just like here,” Rena said. “See, all those words you just used seem like the opposite of sleepy, rural Mylea.”
“Not to me,” Jacob said. “Not to you either, I bet.”
“I’m still here,” Rena said with a sigh, “because I have to be.”
Jacob shook his head. “Promise or no promise, after Topa’s services, you could have gone anywhere you wanted—nothing but honor held you to your obligations. But you decided to stay here anyway. Why?”
“I’m not sure that’s a question I’m prepared to answer for you, Jacob Sisko.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to pry. Maybe I should have just stayed with the question I really wanted to ask you.”
She felt a slow smile bloom on her face. “Which was?”
“What attracted you to Kail in the first place?”
Rena laughed a little heartsick laugh. She hadn’t been expecting this. “Because he was handsome. And he liked me. And…he wasn’t always such a fool. Something happened to him while I was away. He became bitter.”
“Or maybe something happened to you,” Jacob countered.
The only appropriate response seemed to be a shrug. “Maybe. Who ever knows about those kinds of things?”
Jacob wore an expression of mock hurt. “I do,” he said. “I pay attention to those things.”
“But you’re supposedly a writer,” she said. “It’s your job.”
“And you’re supposedly an artist,” he countered. “It’s your job, too.”
Pausing for a long moment outside the door to her family’s apartments, they both looked at each other, neither certain as to what they should say.
“I’ll talk with Parsh about Yyn—if you still want to go,” Jacob said at last.
“As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve never been. It would be good to get away for a couple of days.”
Silence again.
She didn’t want to say “I’ll see you tomorrow” because she wasn’t certain she would see him nor did she feel a kiss good night was appropriate. She settled on a polite “thank you for walking me home” before letting herself inside.
Surprising herself, Rena stood inside the foyer and watched him disappear into the night. She told herself that she was just enjoying the night air, the sounds of small night birds whirring through the air, the smell of blooming trees, but watching Jacob fade as he walked away, that was part of it, too. An idea for a new painting came to her then, and she looked forward to morning so she could start. She padded up the stairs and dropped onto her bed, falling swiftly into a dreamless sleep.
Morning came too quickly, though Rena felt surprisingly rested for having slept so little. She stumbled out of bed and toward her washbasin when she noticed a large-ish drawing notebook on the floor by her door. At first she thought it was one of her old sketchpads from secondary school; the unwrinkled, clean paper said otherwise. She retrieved the new sketchbook from the floor and a flutter of hardcopy slid out from between the covers. On the top of the page she read, in familiar, spidery strokes of Bajoran characters:
Everything old can be new again, including your art. Jacob.
Last night, He must have returned after they parted and slipped this under her door. She scanned the hardcopy pages and quickly discerned that they were a story. Momentary gratitude that Marja hadn’t yet discovered that Rena hadn’t locked the exterior door gave way to delight as Rena realized that Jacob had taken a familiar Bajoran magic story and given it a modern twist. On wobbly morning legs, she made her way over to the window seat and, by golden pink tendrils of dawn light, read Jacob Sisko’s story. A hopeful smile crept onto her face as she scanned the words.
Everything old can be new again.
Cenn
Cenn Desca had never been to Terok Nor before. In fact, he’d seldom left Bajor at all, except on three other occasions, all of them Militia business. The first time was when he was still a junior officer, part of the crew on a ship escorting ill-fated colonists to New Bajor in the Gamma Quadrant, almost seven years ago. Although that voyage had involved docking briefly at the station before continuing on through the Temple, Cenn had never needed to leave his ship. For that he was grateful. The view of the hideous structure outside his viewport—an absurd assemblage of rings and arcing towers that the Cardssians seemed to think made a good design for a space station—had been enough. There were so many things wrong it, he didn’t know where to begin…although the arrangement of the docking pylons in such a way that the largest ships were forced to converge on the smallest possible volume of space was certainly high on the list.
The other two times he’d left the planet had been as a sensor-tech on scout ships patrolling the edge of the Bajoran system. Neither of those had required stopovers at the station at all.
Now that he was here, stepping off the turbolift that had carried him from the docking ring to the Promenade, he again felt grateful that his duties hadn’t required him to visit before. The place was still far too Cardassian for his comfort. The passage of time, Starfleet’s presence, and their changing of the station’s name to Deep Space 9 had done little to alter that. He felt uneasy passing through its gearlike airlock portals, walking its dimly-lit decks, stepping over its high-lipped thresholds. The bewildering array of aliens he passed along the way didn’t help.
Having to go to the security office was the worst part of all, however. He wondered how many Bajorans had never walked out of this place.
He ascended the short steps, the double doors parting at his approach. Ro Laren looked up from behind the security desk, and Cenn realized too late as he entered that she was in the middle of a conversation with someone on the comm system. He started to back out of the office when she held up a finger, indicating that he should wait exactly where he was.