The Sato Series, Episode 3: a new Frontier

Cassidy and Cameron were inside by the fire with their infant daughter, Chance, and they were watching Erin Janeway for Kathryn and Seven. Not that Gretchen would let go of the child for an instant. Gerry was equally taken with Chance, and he wanted to spend some time with Cami. He got impatient and went to ask Robin if he couldn’t please bring his grandbaby in out of the cold. Robin adored Gerry Thompson, had helped to counsel him when his wife of forty years, Violet, died. She agreed to come inside, saying she was freezing anyway. Robin’s parents, JoAnne and Mason Lefler, were supposed to come for Christmas dinner the next day, and Robin was nervous. She had not seen them since before she married Kieran and Naomi, though they had come to she and Lenara’s wedding.
“Robbie, can you take Hannah inside too?” Naomi requested. “Nara shouldn’t lift her, and I want to do the snowball war.”
Robin smiled, handing Cami to Gerry. “I need your testosterone a second,” she quipped.
Gerry laughed. “I keep telling Kieran and Cassidy they can have all of it they want,” he laughed.
Robin took Hannah, and followed Gerry back to the porch. “You mean you’d help them have a son?” she asked.
“Of course I would. Without hesitation. Keep it in mind, Robin. Otherwise, Sato is going to be overrun with girls,” he teased.

Out in the back yard, the snowball fight of the post-Dominion war era was raging. The teams consisted of Naomi, Kieran, Lenara and Cassidy, who had been summoned from indoors to anchor the troops, on one side of the back yard, and Laren, Kit, Emily, and Jenny on the other. When Kathryn, Seven, Harry and Phoebe came dragging the tree along, they quickly took sides, with Harry and Phoebe opting for the younger Wildman team. When the snowball supply was thinning, Laren made a frontal assault by charging the opposing fort, leaping over their wall in a barrage of cold pellets, but she dove for Cassidy, tackling her and rubbing snow in her face.

“This,” Laren declared, smearing snow into Cass’ nostrils, “is for that sweeping kick in the dojo the other night,” she scolded.
Cassidy was laughing so hard she was breathing the snow, and heaved Laren over, returning the facial scrubbing. “Yeah? Listen, Bajoran, this is for that move in bat’leth class last week,” she replied, shrieking as she stuffed Laren’s face in a drift. They wrestled to exhaustion, and the combatants had to laugh. Cassidy was getting bested easily, but she was a great sport about it.
“Kelsey!” she hollered, “I need reinforcements!” she begged.
Kieran’s teeth glittered, and she tackled Ro Laren, knocking her off Cassidy. Before long there was an all out snow brawl between the teams, with Lenara hanging back due to her pregnancy.
Somehow, Kit ended up on top of Kieran, smearing snow in her face, knees pinning Kieran’s shoulders. Kieran bucked her off and shoved her in a snow drift, laughing as Kit disappeared from the waist up. Jenny and Emily had Laren down on her back, force-feeding her snow, until Naomi saved her. Harry was tussling with Kieran, then, and Kathryn and her sister were going at it like cats. When the adults were too tired to keep acting like children, they agreed to go inside and dry off, and help erect the Christmas tree.

______________

The Christmas tree was decorated and the smaller children were sleeping on Gretchen’s bed. The adults were drinking cocoa and listening as Kieran, Seven, and Naomi sang Christmas carols in three-part harmony. The three women had perfected their blended voices while they were roommates in San Francisco, during a period when Kathryn and Seven were separated. The women were quite good together. Outside, snow fell in soft white flakes, blanketing the earth in stillness and crisp cold. Ro Laren had never seen a snow storm. She stood at the window, fascinated by it.
Kit stole up behind her, kissing her cheek and sliding warm arms around Laren’s waist. “That’s how it gets on the ground?” she asked. “It falls out of the sky, like rain?”
Kit nuzzled her ear tenderly. “Yeah. That’s how it happens, honey. Would you like to go for a walk in it, see it first hand?”
Laren smiled softly. “Will you keep me warm, Kittner?” she asked, dark eyes flashing humorously.
“Count on it, Vermiel,” she whispered tenderly. Vermiel was a Bajoran term of endearment, which translated loosely as “beautiful lover”. “I’ll get our coats,” she offered.
Outside, there was no wind, and only the quiet of the Indiana winter and the deep cold to surround them. Kit held Laren’s hand, wading through the drifts of snow on the path to the pond. The moon was full overhead, and there was plenty of ambient light as it sparkled on the groundcover.
“There’s a pond down here,” Kit informed her. “We swim in it in the summer. I wish we could come back, then. It’s so lush and green and peaceful here. But then some of my earliest and best memories of my life with Naomi and Kieran happened here,” she explained. “This is Gran’s orchard,” she explained as they walked through the skeletal apple trees.
Laren stopped then, pointing to the way the light reflected on the fallen snow, the way that the right angle could make the illusion of color in the banks. “That is beautiful,” she sighed.
Kit took her in warm arms, kissing her deeply. “Ro Laren,” she whispered against her hair, “you are beautiful. I am so happy you came with us.”
Laren found Kit’s lips again, kissing her intently, lingering over the impression of warm mouths in the cold air, the brisk slap of winter on their cheeks, softened by the nearness of Kit’s face, her body encompassing and fluid around Laren’s. Laren peered up into golden eyes, thinking that the Pagh of the Prophets was nothing in comparison to the energy between Kit Wildman and herself. “You almost have me convinced,” she murmured, kissing Kit more deeply.
“That I’m glad you came?” Kit asked, smiling at her lover with utter adoration, watching as the fluffy snowflakes fell on her hair and melted, leaving droplets of water glistening in the dark strands of it.
“That you think I’m beautiful,” Laren supplied, glancing shyly at her.
Kit lifted her chin, covering her lips once more. “I don’t think it, I know it,” she assured the Bajoran. She pressed Laren’s hand to her chest. “Do you know what I mean? I feel it in here, I feel it about you—as if your beauty were a tangible thing that fills me,” she tried to explain it. “I just look at you, and everything else ceases to exist, Laren. The people around us, the noise, the activity, the conversations. When you look in my eyes, no matter where we are, or what we’re doing, it’s like we’re making love for that split second, like my Pagh is in your hands, and you could crush it or cherish it, whichever you please.” She swallowed the welling emotion. “And you could, you know. You could walk away, and never look back, and I would be left with my hands out, begging.”
Laren kissed her sweetly, letting the words wash over her. “Do you worry about that, Ja’clu?”
Kit nodded, leaning against the craggy bark of the tree behind her. “This arrangement, it’s really at your discretion, Laren. I know that. And I know I can’t stand to lose you.” She kissed Laren’s forehead tenderly, eyes closed with her overwhelming love. “When I married Jenny and Emily,” she said softly, “I never felt anything was missing, or that it wasn’t enough. Still, all of my life, when I dreamed, I would see dark eyes haunting those dreams. There was an elusive form, a woman, but she was never clear, except for her eyes. I dreamed her once so vividly, her touch, her kiss, her laughter, and it healed me in ways I can’t explain. When the abuse was particularly bad in my home, I would think of her, and I would feel—protected, somehow, less vulnerable to him. I would imagine being in her arms, and I could close him out, and be whole in myself. When I met Emily, I thought she was the same as the woman in my dreams, because Ems has those dark, haunting eyes. But then we became lovers, and it wasn’t like the woman in the dream. I stopped thinking about that other woman, then, and followed the relationship with Emily to its conclusion. And then Jenny came into my life, and we fell in love, and it was consuming, and sweet, and sustaining in ways I can’t explain. But it wasn’t the same as the woman in the dream. Kieran had loved me so much, and so perfectly that by then most of the old wounds healed, and I forgot about those dreams. When we evacuated your group from the dolamide mine, I only got a glimpse of you as the medics took you off the ship, but you seemed familiar, somehow. The night I was introduced to you, I was kneeling in the floor at Kathryn’s party, and you kept staring at me, like you recognized me. And the memory of the dreams came back, and I saw that woman clearly in my mind. And I knew it had been you, all along. There was just a spark and a flood of memory, and I knew you were her. When you told me about your vision with the orb, I wasn’t really surprised, not totally. Because I had seen you, too.”
Kit breathed the cold, exhaling slowly, and Laren tried to touch the fog that issued from her sigh. “The night I kissed you in my quarters, Laren,” she continued, “when I saw you standing there, crying? I had seen you crying so many times in my dreams. My God, I could feel you, how sad you were in them, and I would always be trying in the dreams to reach you, to touch you, to tell you it would be all right. And that’s why I kissed you that night, why I couldn’t stop myself. And the second my lips touched yours, I remembered kissing you a million times in my dreams. The night you told me about your vision, when you said I was your Pagh, and I asked how that could be, I swear, I half expected you to say ‘because I was the one in your dreams’.”
Laren stared breathlessly up at her. “Why did you say no, then? When I asked you to marry me, why did you turn me away?” she asked, still injured by the fact.
Kit touched her face gently, willing her to understand. “Because no matter how certain I am that this is destiny, I made promises to Emily and Jenny, and I just can’t break them. I wouldn’t be me, any longer, if I could do that to them. I know it’s hard to understand, honey. And I’m so sorry if it pains you. Has it been awkward, living with us?”
Laren shook her head. “Not really. It’s strange to see you interact with them in an intimate way, like when you kissed Jenny the other night. But I understand how you could want to, how you could feel close to her. The love they feel for you is so apparent, and I know they miss being more intimate with you.”
“I haven’t been with them because I don’t want to make it so difficult for you that you can’t stay,” she admitted. “I’m afraid to take that step. I’m afraid the ice is too thin where I’m standing.”
Laren kissed her gently, longingly. “Kit,” she said softly, “they are your wives. I know you have to find that with them again. But I am just barely coping with the situation, for now, and trying to gain some level of comfort just with them as people. Don’t get me wrong—I adore them, and I think they are so kind, and so special. I certainly understand how you fell in love with both of them. Jenny is so funny, and energetic, and Emily is so brilliant and sweet. They are patient with me, and cooperative in ways I didn’t expect. They are like our most vocal cheerleaders, trying to make sure I’m happy in the situation. They took me diving the other night, so I would know how in Florida later this week.”
Kit smiled. “They did, huh?” She was going to kiss them both twice.
Laren nodded, smiling warmly. She laced her fingers over a low hanging branch above her head, thinking. “Emily even used her credits to replicate a wetsuit for me. I’m not used to people giving me things. It was unnerving. And I hate to admit it, but part of me worried there was an ulterior motive,” she added.
“I understand that completely. All survivors have that problem, thinking no one is ever just nice for the sake of being nice. But Laren, I know them, and there are no ulterior motives, except that they want me to be happy, and they want desperately for this to work. So do I, because I know my life is as barren as these apple trees without you,” she asserted. “I am so in love with you, it stuns me. And I can’t begin to express how much I want you in my life, how permanently. It’s like all the love I feel for them combined, plus all the admiration I feel for Kieran, and all the awe I feel for Lenara—all of that wrapped up in one huge emotion. That’s how I feel about you.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of good stuff, Kit,” she chuckled. “You are the sweetest woman I’ve ever known. That night you kissed me, when I said my mother was beautiful, and you said ‘like her daughter’, my heart just skipped. I think I’ve been off balance ever since that sentence came out of your mouth,” she confessed. “I certainly talked myself out of loving you, afterward, but you see how well I stuck to my guns,” she laughed softly.
“I know it’s not everything you wanted, Laren, but I’m selfish enough to be glad you gave in,” she confessed, golden eyes sparkling like the snow.
“When you kissed me in my kitchen, the morning after we made love the first time, and you said ‘Let me love you, Ro Laren.’ That’s when I knew I was never going to get a single wall in place. I even tried to get B'Elanna to talk me out of the relationship, but she told me just one look at me was enough to convince her it was too late for that. She told me you’d break my heart. She warned me,” Laren remembered.
Kit held her close, face pressed against Laren’s damp hair. “I never meant to do that, Vermiel, I swear it. You mean so much to me,” she persisted.
“I know that now. You brought me here with you, and your grandparents and Phoebe and Harry must think you’ve lost your mind, from the looks they’ve given us. But that you’re willing to do something so unorthodox, and that Emily and Jenny are too—that tells me a lot about how important I am to you.”
Kit kissed her tenderly, smiling down at her. “Your hair is soaking wet from the snow,” she mentioned. “We should go in before you catch cold.”
Laren laughed. “Bajorans don’t get colds,” she reported. “However,” she raised her eyebrows, “we do get hot.” She chuckled at Kit’s immediate reaction, pupils dilating in the dim light. “Show me this pond of yours. I understand everyone has had sex in it, including Captain Picard and Doctor Crusher,” she laughed at the thought.
Kit laughed with her. “Yeah, they got married right after that,” she recalled. “The pond seems to have a magical effect.”
Laren took her hand and led her through the orchard. “Maybe we should go for a swim, then, too,” she decided.
“Can’t,” Kit smirked. “It’ll be frozen. But we can ice skate on it, if you want.” They reached a clearing with a wide expanse of snow, under the clear, cold stars peeping through the clouds that dropped the white flakes on their heads. “I’ll show you how to make a snow angel,” she enthused, dropping Laren’s hand. She walked out into a thick drift and fell backward, arms flung out. She moved her arms and legs, leaving the impression in the snow bank. “Now come pull me up so I don’t step in it,” she reached up for Laren’s hand.
“It really looks like an angel,” Laren murmured. “It’s very pretty,” she added. “You did this as a child, I take it?”
“Oh, heck yeah. I grew up in Illinois, which is just east of here. Much colder there, because I lived further north. Every kid grows up making snow forts, snowmen, snow angels, ice castles. We would sled all winter, and snowtube down McCracken’s hill, and one of my favorite things was just to go to the top and roll down the hill through the snow. It’s like a frozen roller coaster,” she detailed, moving them along the trail to the pond.
“It sounds wonderful, Kit. You seem to have some very positive, happy memories from your childhood,” she noted, grateful it hadn’t been a complete loss.
Kit nodded. “Yeah, there’s always good if you look hard enough. Kieran taught me that. Damn, Laren, that woman can laugh in the worst situations. Kathryn told me—” she struggled for composure, “that Kieran was so afraid Seven’s baby wouldn’t survive them getting stranded on that jungle planet, Kieran put herself on quarter rations for the first two months. The next four months, she was on half rations. And it turns out, Mom guessed right. Erin would have died if Mom hadn’t been willing to do that. And when we found them, Mom was just joking, and laughing, even though she was dying inside because it meant she had to lose Seven. So I try to remember that if she can stay upbeat, I never have an excuse for getting down.”
Laren breathed appreciatively. “Prophets, no wonder she was so thin when we found them. I’m surprised Seven let her do that,” she added, wondering how the Borg could allow such a sacrifice.
“Seven didn’t know,” Kit replied. “Can you believe that?”
Laren shook her head. “She’s a better person than I am,” she said darkly, remembering many a fight over food in the camps. She had fought daily to get enough to eat, and it would never have occurred to her not to steal food from anyone weaker than her. That was survival, and the reality was, you fought or you starved.
“Here’s the pond,” Kit announced.
The surface was like a glazed mirror, solid and thick, and there were patterns of cracking and refreezing that made sections look like broken glass.
“Let’s go sliding,” Kit invited her, running for the ice and letting her shoes glide over the surface. “It’s very slick, so start slow, or you’ll break your arm,” she warned.
Laren stepped gingerly onto the ice, and immediately fell on her behind, feet scuttling like a cartoon character on a banana peel.
Kit giggled and came to help her up. “Are you okay?” she asked, preparing to pull Laren to her feet.
Laren pulled back and Kit slipped, too, landing on top of her. “Don’t laugh at me, Kittner,” she snarled playfully, heaving Kit off of her and onto the ice, face up. Laren pounced on her, kissing her forcefully, tongue thrust in Kit’s mouth.
Kit wasn’t laughing any longer. The aggression left her breathless and aching, and Laren pressed her down on the ice, moving suggestively between her legs. Kit held Laren tightly, gasping into her mouth, oblivious to the cold beneath her backside. They lay there together, kissing on the frozen pond, snowflakes falling all around them and shrouding the earth in perfect quiet sheets of white. Laren’s playfulness dissipated like the snow melting in her hair, and suddenly, there was only emotion, the beauty of the landscape, and Kit, warm and willing beneath her.

When the lovers returned to the house, only Kieran, with Lenara in her lap, Robin holding Naomi in the floor, and Emily and Jenny remained. Everyone else had wandered off to bed. Laren and Kit came in, soaking wet and shivering.

“Sam, are you two nuts?” Emily asked, jumping up to help them get their wet clothing off. “Jenny, get them towels, and that blanket,” she directed, pointing to the throw on the couch.
“Ems,” Kit kissed her softly, “It’s gorgeous out. Huge flakes falling and melting and sticking everywhere. And it’s so quiet,” she reported, her face filled with joy and wonder.
Jenny returned with the towels and helped Laren dry her hair. “You’re crazy. It must be twenty degrees out,” she scolded. “Come sit by the fire, I’ll build it back up a bit,” she offered, leading Laren over. Laren’s jeans were wet, but her undershirt was dry. “You need to get these off,” she urged the older woman, grasping her pant legs.
Laren obediently tugged the pants down, but they stuck on her boots. She laughed at the predicament.
“You just can’t manage wetsuits or blue jeans, can you?” Jenny asked her, laughing up at her as she knelt in the floor to help. “Sit on the hearth, I’ll get these off,” she chuckled, unbuckling the galoshes.

“It really is fantastic out, Jen,” Laren agreed with Kit. “So incredibly peaceful. I’ve never seen snow, not up close. I’ve seen it capping the mountains on Bajor, and the Sierra Nevadas in California, when I was at the Academy, but never touched it,” she enthused. “And it looks so different at night,” she said, her voice a near whisper. “It sparkles and dances in the light, and makes the whole Earth look like prisms,” she breathed, her thoughts still in the darkened world outside the house. “Thousands of crystals shimmering in the moonlight, blanketing everything in softly sighing color.” She smiled absently. “And your toes are freezing and wet, and your hair is gathering the melted remnants of the storm, but you don’t even mind the cold or the dampness, your lungs are so busy filling with the brittle air, and your heart becomes as light as the flakes themselves. Everything is silent. A gust of wind makes the snow drift and rustle, and for that one sacred moment, all you feel is the beauty around you.”

Jenny sat at her feet, listening. In fact, everyone in the room was listening in rapt attention, stunned at the eloquence of the normally reticent Bajoran.
“Laren,” Jenny gazed up at her, certain she had never seen Ro so animated, or so lovely. “That was an amazing description. That’s exactly what it looks and feels like,” she nodded.

“It’s like the enchanted fields,” Laren said softly. “In the legends of Bajor. Where the Prophets played as children,” she explained. “Magical, and you just fall under its spell, because you can’t help it.” She studied Jenny’s expression, so eager and attentive. “Like when you showed me the Great Barrier Reef—how quiet and serene it was down there, like nothing else existed but us and the motion of the water, and the colors. That’s what the snow falling felt like. That same serenity. That same myriad of color. And our feet scuffling through the drifts made the most amazing sound, like the flakes whispering over themselves as our feet made them fly—it was the only sound for miles,” she said, awed by it. “How could you leave a planet this beautiful?” she asked.

Jenny’s throat ached with tenderness for this woman, who had admittedly gone years at a time without seeing daylight, whose existence had been reduced to labor and squalor and deprivation. She couldn’t explain to Laren that you just take for granted the most exquisite places when you grow up with them. It sounded too ungrateful. “It wasn’t an easy choice,” she replied. “But space is just as mesmerizing. Don’t you think? Aren’t stars streaking by the ship like the crystals in snowflakes, leaving rainbows behind us as we go? Think about the snow falling from the blackness above your head, and is it really different than the blackness surrounding the stars as they hang there like suspended snowflakes?” she asked.
Kit and Emily stood mutely, listening to the two women as they described their impressions of nature, waxing poetic. “That’s their connection,” Kit said so only Emily could hear. “That’s their common ground. Their sensitivity to everything visual,” she said quietly.
Laren nodded slowly. “I can see the comparison. I can imagine it, if I close my eyes. Space is like an endless snowstorm.”
Jenny smiled up at her and Laren smiled back. Jenny grinned, then. “And the milky way, that’s like the snow drift where all the stars fall, and gather, and stick in a dense cluster. Like a huge, cosmic, snow bank.”
“Yes!” Laren laughed, “that’s just what I was thinking,” she nodded eagerly, pleased that she needn’t explain.
Jenny finished with Laren’s boots and jeans, leaving her in her underwear in front of the fire. She draped the blanket around her shoulders and put throw pillows down in the floor for her. “Sit here, and let me tend the fire,” she said quietly, still thinking of snow and stars.
Laren moved where Jenny directed her, pulling the blanket tighter, shivering, while Jenny stoked the fire in the hearth, flooding the room with renewed heat and light. “Sweetie,” Jenny said kindly, “while you’re sitting here you should do your gel application. It’s plenty warm now and you can cover your front side with the blanket,” she encouraged her.