Chapter One
Her father had told her stories of her mother, a woman that seemed like a goddess from the way he told the tales. A woman that decided her own fate to the last and refused to allow her society to dictate to her. She was bold and courageous, never backing down from any confrontation. When she decided to do something, she would continue along her chosen path, until what she set out to do was completed. Despite all that she had been rejected time and again by her own people, for being unable to control her emotions properly and had to eventually leave her home planet. She had been on a small trading planet when she had met Ka'Vi's father and had answered an advertisement he had placed for a second crewmember aboard his ship. Her father was human and her mother Vulcan, but that did not stop their minds from being compatible, or as her father said falling in love at first sight.
They had spent several years together traveling throughout the star systems, going wherever they wanted. Taking clients they chose and delivering family items had been her mother's idea. She had pointed out that it would be a lucrative business, as the ties of clan were strong the galaxy over. However unknown to either of them life had started to develop within her mother's body. It wasn't until her mother felt the first soft thoughts and the new bond forming that she had realized that she was pregnant. She couldn't bear to be separated from the newly formed life growing inside her, regardless of the risk to herself.
She hadn't told Ka'Vi's father about the expected birth of their offspring, as she believed that he would attend to her welfare before that of the baby. She had seen a doctor in secret while they had a lay over off planet and the doctor had pronounced that both she and her offspring appeared to be in good health. Although he had also admitted that he had very little experience in such matters and had not known that humans and Vulcans could copulate. He had asked for her permission to publish a paper and her mother had erased his memories of the event, implanting instead ones of a normal Vulcan pregnancy. She had then left the hospital and gone back to find her husband debating with their new suppliers.
Months had passed, until only a few weeks remained until the birth of her child. Then the unthinkable had happened, somehow her child was in distress and their life signs were fading. She realized that she had to perform an emergency operation to get it out of her womb. She had looked to her sleeping bond mate and had decided, before giving him a meditative in order to insure he remain asleep while she operated. She wrote him a note explaining what she was doing and telling him that she loved him. She then wrote a letter to both her daughter and to her clan, intending both of these to be given to the respective parties once her child was grown. She had no intention of informing her clan of her daughter while she was still a child, as she was afraid that they might seek to take them from her.
Unfortunately there were complications in the surgery, her father had little knowledge of Vulcan biology and so could not tell Ka'Vi what had gone wrong. In the end it didn't matter, for something had gone wrong, Ka'Vi had lost her mother that day, although Ka'Vi's mother had managed to transfer her essence to a Katra jar that had been aboard the ship. As a child Ka'Vi had drawn comfort from the jar and had often touched it to feel the essence of her mother.
As for Ka'Vi, she grew up aboard her father's starship and when she was considered grown, her father gave her a starship of her own. To her there was no greater joy then to be among the stars, she loved to explore and find new planets and that was how she had stumbled upon the one she had chosen for her home.
It at first seemed barren despite the water on its surface and the atmosphere that supported life. Ka'Vi went down to explore it and realized that a meteor had crashed into one side of the planet; the resulting shock waves had killed off the indigenous population. She liked the hot climate of the planet and how it was fairly isolated from other star systems and so had sent an application to colonize it. Her application was approved and she had built a house on the planet's surface, before returning to space.
After she had a home outside the starship, she began to collect Vulcan art and artifacts, as well as Vulcan texts, as she was interested by the culture of her mother's people. She had even special ordered seeds for Vulcan plants and had set up a circulatory water system in order to insure that they received the nutrients they needed in order to grow.
She found herself content with her life, other than the dreams she often had of a shadow figure that seemed to call to her across space. Sometimes his image was clearer to her, then at others but always she longed to be close to him. They would talk in their dreams about the stars and he had always been there, a part of her mind. When she was younger, she remembered his face being much clearer to her, but he had become a shadow figure when she was around nine years of age. Up until that point they had communicated their hopes and dreams to each other, she had told him about the planets she had seen with her father and enjoyed how attentively he listened to her. However afterwards he seemed not to recall conversations held the previous nights and it became much harder to communicate with him. Still he appeared often in her dreams and she discovered that if she slept at certain hours, she would be more likely to see him.
She had looked for a reason behind his presence in her mind, knowing that he had to exist; as she doubted her imagination could supply such detail. She had found it in a rare book of early post Surak poetry, a man had written an ode to whom he called the other half of his soul. The poem was very beautiful and she had discovered more poetry in regards to the phenomena she was experiencing. After a while she began to experiment with her emotions, her father had taught her control as her mother requested of him, but had left what she was to do with her control up to her. She had found that she could see him more clearly and was herself more at ease when allowing some of her emotions to go through her control. She liked the way it made her feel, as attempting to control all thought unsettled her, although she could do it and she found that giving totally into her emotions caused wild mood swings and made her even more uncomfortable then fully controlling her emotions did.
However suddenly one night when she fell asleep his image was completely clear to her. He looked anguished and she tried to go to him, but as always she was prevented from doing so. "What pains you so?"
"My mother is dead, my planet destroyed, my logic is fracturing." He replied and she stared at him in surprise, she had never realized that he was Vulcan, which meant that the planet that had been destroyed had been Vulcan.
"Where are you?" She asked, she could feel that he needed her and she would respond to his need of her. She had been too afraid before, to hesitant of rejection and unable to see him clearly. Now however she had to go to him, to reassure him and to help her people, even though she had never met them. Those strangers were still her clan, still her race, she could not abandon them.
"I am helping my people as best I can, we are to go to a refugee camp upon Earth, in what is called Death Valley. We believe that the climate will be the most suitable to our needs, until a planet can be discovered for our relocation. Where are you, why do I feel as though I have talked to you before?"
"We have communicated often in dreams from a young age, although after a while you seemed unable to recall it or me and each time we meet, I have to reintroduce myself to you."
"Why then have you not sought me out, if you are somehow tied to me, you should have tried to find me." He said and she could see how his eyes showed pain.
"I did not know how my clan would receive me and I felt afraid that you might reject me. In addition I didn't truly know what was happening, why you were appearing before me in dreams, it wasn't until much later that I determined why this was occurring."
"What did you find out?" He asked and she smiled.
"That your soul and mine complement each other, I discovered a reference to what was happening in an early post Surak text. The references to such phenomena stop after about one hundred years after Surak's death. I have considered that something had occurred to stop such phenomena from happening."
"Why would someone not wish for this to happen, you are a very dynamic person and I find our conversation to be most pleasing."
"I don't know." She admitted and she felt herself start to awaken. "I'll see you soon."
"No, don't go, please don't leave."
"I cannot stay." She said and a moment later was plunged into darkness, a moment after that she opened her eyes.
