A/N: This story is currently undergoing major editing and revision to bring it more in line with my other story. So, if something looks different, you're not imagining things. Feel free to comment on the changes, and definitely let me know if it makes more sense now (or not).

Disclaimer: The story and original characters are mine, the rest is not. I make no profit from this writing exercise.

Skin

Chapter One: The Discovery of Time and Change

December 2257, Nyeri, Kenya

"Nyofu, take these clean towels up to the bathroom," said Ukarimu Uhura to her eldest daughter. She had just taken them out of the dryer, and was anxious to replenish the stock of them that she kept in the large closet just inside that room. The family considered themselves blessed to have the rare feature: a linen closet actually inside the bathroom. It meant they had a convenient place for all the normal supplies, as well as the supplies reserved for the female members of the family. She was proud of her home. It was a spacious ranch-style dwelling, with orderly rooms – everything in a specific place, tasteful decorations reflecting simple natural forms – nothing outwardly reflecting their Kikuyu heritage or African identity as a whole, the walls bore subdued colors in shades a famous psychologist said were soothing, and a sturdy fence surrounded the whole. At one time, she'd imagined that the wooden fence surrounding her home would keep out the things that threatened her world. Ukarimu had stopped believing in symbols of safety that could be touched long ago. No, those could be breached, or corrupted, or circumvented all together. It just took one tiny crack in the defenses, one small lapse of discipline for all to be lost. It was better to rely on faith, on tradition, on having an unbending spirit.

Ukarimu was getting on in years, but she was still the unrivaled head of her family. As such, she directed the cooking, the cleaning, and made the major decisions. True, as father and husband, Kwasi should have the final word on things, but it was common knowledge that Kwasi had little interest in leading. He preferred to dream of and design beautiful clothing, of all things. Useless things when there was real work to be done. So Kwasi had swallowed his dreams, stifled his artistic gifts, taken over the farm his wife had inherited, and spent his days enforcing Ukarimu's will. Right now, Ukarimu decided that her eldest female child had either not heard her command, or was deliberately trying to ignore her. That was simply not allowed. So she repeated the order, this time with a bit more feeling and a touch of urgency.

"Nyofu, take these clean towels up to your daughter in the bathroom. The girl wanted to take a shower as soon as she got here. I'm sure she's hungry, too. Take her the towels so she can get clean and come down to eat. I'm sure they don't feed her properly in that place. How can anyone in San Francisco truly understand what a girl from Nyeri needs to stay strong?" Ukarimu added an icy glare to her simple words. Adult or not, this was still her house. Nyofu would obey.

"Mama, send one of Hodari's children to take them to her. I'm tired from my own travels. I went all the way from here to Tanzania and back this afternoon." She waved a hand in the direction of cacophony that suggested elementary school children were nearby. Hodari, her eldest brother and firstborn of the Uhura children, had settled his wife and four young children on the same property. There was always a small person underfoot, someone who could easily run an errand. Nyofu had begun her travels early that morning at the request of her university professor, Dr. Eric Twombly. He had asked her to pick up certain documents he needed for his latest project. She had done so, and had used another three hours for her own doctoral research. Now, she was tired and tense. Nyofu hadn't set in her mother's house in seven years. She'd talked to her mother, but had not returned home once she'd stepped across the threshold. The last time she'd been there, she'd been told she wasn't welcome. Her daughter, Nyota, was welcome to come and go as she pleased, but Nyofu was not. In her mother's eyes, she was unclean, defiled. Today, she was here to welcome Nyota back to Nyeri at her mother's request. Today, she would stand with her brothers and sister, and they would celebrate her daughter's accomplishments at Starfleet Academy. Nyota would graduate next spring, most likely with all sorts of honors, and hopefully, a position on Starfleet's shiny new flagship, the Enterprise. Even if Nyota was not chosen as a member of that ship's crew, her future was bright and full of possibilities. Nyofu knew that when she completed her own studies, there would be no celebration inside these walls. Her deeds would have to be glorified elsewhere, with others. It bothered her that no matter how hard she worked, no matter who much she accomplished, no matter what she overcame, she was never praised by her mother. Thinking on that fact, and not the festivities to come, she refused to look at Ukarimu.

Ukarimu, however, was not in the mood for having her orders questioned or altered. The woman, a little over seventy years old, standing five feet, ten inches tall, and weighing one hundred ninety pounds, moved swiftly in the direction of her daughter, towels in hand. She took the stack and brought them down next to Nyofu in such a way that they thumped her on the head on their way to landing on the table beside her. The older woman's gray-brown eyes, forecasting a storm if her daughter did not move from her comfortable seat on the family couch, met her daughter's sullen brown ones that did not quite announce the bitter tasting anger that was rising in her gut. "Nyota is your only child. Would it kill you to show her some kindness once in a while?"

Stiffly, Nyofu lifted herself up from her seat, gathered the offending towels in her arm, and walked out of the room towards the stairs. With every step, she ruminated on the fact that, even at forty, she still could not defeat her mother in a direct test of wills. Her heavy steps took her closer and closer to the bathroom, towards her daughter. She could hear the heard the girl's voice through the door.

Nyota was singing in the shower, unable to hear the earlier commotion and heavy footfalls that followed. Happy to be in Nyeri one more time before graduation and thinking of the future that beckoned, she sang. Thinking of all the new friends she'd made and new things she'd experienced, she sang. Filled to overflowing with memories of a sweet good-bye, Nyota sang.

Nyofu was instantly irritated at the warmth and joy that bubbled out of her daughter's voice and into the hall. How could the girl be so happy in this place? This place where independent thought was stifled? Where it was threatened into silence by icy stares? Where it was burned away to nothingness as if hit squarely by a phaser? That was the thing that was wrong with Nyota, she thought. The girl loved this place, that woman. It was that woman's fault. The distance between herself and her daughter, the years she'd spent apart from the other half of her soul...it was that woman's fault. Kwasi's too, though she couldn't bring herself to hate her father the way she did her mother. In many ways, he was just as much a victim as she was. Nyofu reached the door to the bathroom, took the knob into her hand, and opened it without knocking. She was not prepared for what she saw.

Nyofu stared at her daughter. The girl had changed. In fact, she could no longer think of her as "the girl." It was inaccurate. The person standing in front of her was female, yes, but no longer a girl. Her little Nyota was still little in some respects. She had never managed to catch up to Nyofu's five feet, ten inches in height. She estimated her daughter's height as being around five feet, seven inches tall. Nyota's skin was lighter than her own coffee skin, something approaching a pecan color. Her hair, wet from the shower, was plastered to her head and on down her back. Very unlike the twisted and locked tresses that cascaded down her own. Nyota's slightly almond shaped eyes were stretched wide, as she was startled from when Nyofu had opened the bathroom door despite the young woman's plea to wait until she'd covered herself. Nyofu's round eyes were open wide, too, but in disbelief. Her nostrils, wider than her daughter's, were flaring as she breathed. Nyota looked back at her mother, knew the deep breaths that flared her mother's nostrils were directly connected to the rapid furrowing of her mother's brow, and strongly suspected she knew the reason for both.

It was Nyota's skin, smooth with youth that had caught her mother's attention. It was her skin. Nyofu stared at her daughter's skin. She stared at it for a long time: Nyota's skin that Nyofu had lovingly rubbed with shea butter when the girl was an infant. Nyota's lovely skin was marred. Not permanently, but still marked here and there. They started at her neck and then continued downward…to her shoulders…and further downward…to the tops of her breasts. Nyofu suspected there were more marks, ones leading a direct path to an inevitable conclusion, but her daughter had taken refuge behind the shower curtain. Someone had been very busy.

What do you say when you discover that your child is no longer a child? Nyofu wondered how to respond. What she wanted to do was ask, no, demand to know who was responsible for the marks. What was his name? If that was truly what the marks were? Of course that what they were, she chided herself. Didn't her husband leave such marks on her? Sometimes he left other marks, like the scar on her ass, but that was a different story, really. Her man, nearly seven feet tall with blood from the stars. His grandfather, a Klingon named Koreth, had made his way to Earth after surviving the Augment Virus that had threatened his people's existence, leaving his own world behind. The virus caused him to look Human, much to his dismay. He lived out his disgrace in plain sight among the natives of Nyeri where he decided to settle, and mixed his blood with that of his employer. Their son, Keth, a half-breed, had done similarly, although in his case, it was a researcher who fell to his charms. Nyofu's husband was the second generation born of the two bloods. His blood was diluted, thin, but he was still enough of his grandfather to need to dominate, to conquer. Had Nyota willingly let some man claim her, mark her, leave his stamp on her for all to see? Nyofu forced down the shock, willed her eyes to close to a normal size, slowed down her breathing.

"Those things on your neck," Nyofu began. "Are they what they look like?"

She watched her daughter force herself not to try to cover more of the offending sections of skin with the shower curtain. She watched Nyota's eyes as the young woman realized that her mother could do nothing to change what had already happened. Nyota lifted her head, slowed her own breathing, and allowed the antelope-in-the-headlights look to fade away. The young woman faced her mother and made a decision. She would answer her mother, this time.

"Yes." One word told many tales. There was no need to ask about the other marks.

"Did you give your consent for that? Did you allow him to mark you like that? Or did he just take what he wanted?" Nyofu phrased her words carefully. Maybe there was still time to take her daughter back. Maybe there were still things Nyota didn't understand about men. Then Nyofu could teach her, talk to her. They could find common ground, perhaps. Ukarimu would never share such knowledge with Nyota, but Nyofu would.

"I let him mark me. I wanted him to." Nyota looked defiant. She was losing her shame at her nakedness, was beginning to draw strength from somewhere. Did she get it from the memory of her lover's touch, perhaps? Wasn't that what she did? Nyofu watched as her daughter gently touched one mark on her hip, almost absentmindedly.

Nyofu sighed loudly, let go of much of the anger she was feeling. It was useless to be angry with the passage of time. Time could not be touched. A girl-child did not stand before her. A young woman had taken her place. No, it was easier to go on blaming others for the time she had not spent with her daughter. Did everyone else know about this man, or was she the last to know? The last to notice that the girl was gone, and a woman was now in her place? Nyota was twenty-one now. There was nothing left to do. No explaining, no mothering, no laughing over mandazi* and tea. Time had passed. Nyofu thought of reaching out to touch her daughter's shoulder, to see if her skin still felt the way it did when the young woman was but an infant. She raised her hand, and noticed her own skin. The color had never been the same as Nyota's, but once upon a time, hadn't it been like hers? Hadn't her skin once been young, vibrant, aching to be touched by a man's knowing hands? Maybe it was not yet too late. Maybe there were still things she could tell her, teach her, and prepare her for. Nyofu asked her daughter one last question.

"Have you lost anything that cannot be replaced?"

Nyota's answer was not the one she wanted to hear.

"Yes." There was something to the tone of the answer that suggested there was more to the answer than her daughter was telling. Did she truly want the details? No.

Time had caught her off guard. There was nothing left to say. Except...

"Nyota, I don't like seeing those marks on you. You must not let yourself become some man's plaything."

"I'm not his plaything, Mama. He loves me."

"How do you know that? Because he told you that while he was satisfying himself?"

"No, I know because he showed me. Because he opened his heart and mind to me and showed me that he loved me."

Nyofu shook her head, unwilling to believe that her daughter, so young, had already found the thing it had taken her many years and many tears to find. She left the towels on the top of the toilet, turned, and walked away, closing the door behind her.

*mandazi - Kenyan version of a doughnut