Wrapped in one another's arms, they both slept deeply and peacefully that night. When they awakened, sunlight was streaming through the window.
"Oh my God! The cows..." Anij started. They both hurriedly dressed and rushed outside with the buckets.
Jean-Luc picked Anij up and spun her around, then stood her on her feet again and kissed her lips. "It feels so good to be alive!" he shouted.
"Yes, it does," Anij said quietly.
"I feel like celebrating some more," Jean-Luc said when they returned to the house. "I've spent far too much time lying around, and that's not like me at all."
"What would you like to do?" asked Anij.
"What I'd dearly love to do is to look out over Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower with you," Jean-Luc said softly. "Did you know that Paris is called the 'City Of Lights'? That's because it was one of the first cities to use streetlights. There are so many wondrous things I'd like to show you, Anij." He sounded just a little sad.
"Tell me about streetlights. Are they similar to candles?"
"A streetlight is much brighter than a candle, Anij. I have something similar that I could show you." Amongst his things he found a flashlight. He showed Anij how to turn it on, and she marveled at its brightness.
"A flashlight such as this one is operated by batteries." He opened the compartment where the batteries were stored and showed them to her. "A streetlight is operated by electrical current. A wire runs from each light to a generator, which provides the energy for the light to shine."
"It's amazing that such a tiny object can contain so much energy." Anij played with the flashlight for awhile, taking the batteries out, inspecting them, and putting them back in. To Jean-Luc, her child-like fascination was endearing.
"A streetlight is similar, only much bigger?"
Jean-Luc nodded. "If you can imagine, not just a single one, but an entire row of them lining each side of a street, then you can imagine what Paris looks like at night."
"Oh, I would so much love to see it!" There were tears in Anij's eyes.
"I will take you there some day," Jean-Luc vowed. "I don't know how right now, but I will find a way."
That night the sky was beautiful and clear, and Jean-Luc and Anij lay looking up at the stars.
"I wonder which one is the one around which Earth orbits," said Anij.
"Our star is a very ordinary, average, medium-sized, middle-aged one," Jean-Luc told her. "It's not nearly large enough to ever form a supernova or black hole. When it dies, it will be just an ordinary white dwarf. Luckily for us, that's still several billion years away."
"What is its name?"
"We've always simply called it the sun, and never felt the need to give it any fancier-sounding name." Jean-Luc smiled.
"Besides Earth, how many planets circle it?"
"There are eight others, but most are very hostile to life as we know it. Mercury rotates so slowly that its day is longer than its year, so it's always extremely hot on one side and extremely cold on the other. Venus has a very dense atmosphere filled with gases that are toxic to humans. Mars, as well as Earth's single moon, has been colonized somewhat over the past couple of centuries. Beyond Mars are the gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Being made of gas, they lack a solid surface to stand on, but they have many satellites, some of which, such as Europa, have been colonized to an extent. Beyond Neptune is the icy dwarf planet Pluto, which also has a single satellite, Charon."
"It sounds really fascinating," said Anij. "So much variety."
"Until the late twenty-first century, we thought that we were rather unique." Jean-Luc laughed.
"Tell me about Earth."
"Oh, Anij, there's so much to tell, I really wouldn't know where to start. There are Antarctica, a continent covered with ice and snow year round, Australia, which is mostly bush country and outback and has many unique animal life forms, the jungles of Africa, the deserts of the mideast, the rain forests of South America, the fertile plains of Northern Europe, and oh, so much more."
"Tell me about France."
"It's a beautiful country. It's bordered by Spain to the south and Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy to the east. It's also right across the English Channel from the British Isles. I've told you of Paris, and there's so much more. The beaches, the vineyards...in Paris there's a museum called the Louvre that has many world famous works of art in it, Da Vinci and many others. It's an an amazing place to visit."
Anij was silent, deep in thought. Unlike Jean-Luc, who had visited, or at least passed through, much of the known universe, she had never left Ba'Ku. She was amazed at how much falling in love with Jean-Luc Picard had changed her. For the first time in her life, she could feel the restlessness of wanderlust stirring within her.