It won't be too many more chapters before the timelines are together! Thank you for sticking with me on this journey! 3
Twenty-one
Under different circumstances, the routine of Kathryn's southerly migration might be comforting.
Every day there was something very specific to accomplish — cover as much ground as possible, shelter, rest, survive — and the passing, changing landscape offered much to occupy her thoughts.
When she did not allow herself to dwell on the bigger picture, it was a mode of living in which she could function well enough.
But as she (and time) moved, the nights were getting harder, and the bigger picture more challenging to ignore.
Part of it was the now-firm grip of the autumnal season. Mercurial teases of warmth regularly gave way to invasions of wind and precipitation from the north; a frequent reminder of winter's inevitability.
Even many dozen kilometers south of the lake where she'd spent the bounteous season, the nighttime chill signaled summer's near full surrender. The harsh reality of its fading meant Kathryn spent many nights unable to find or sustain warmth.
She didn't know enough about the planet — its position relative to its parent star, or that star's spectral classification — to calculate the length and nature of the seasons. She knew nothing of the global ocean-atmosphere circulation, or any of the large-scale, oft-coupled systems that drove a planet's climate. There were far too many variables to guess at what was to come, and these thoughts quickened her steps during the day.
It was easy to imagine how early humanoids on countless worlds had invented Gods, myths and legends to explain nature's power. Were she aboard Voyager, it would take all of a few minutes to answer the many geophysical unknowns that now painted her future so uncertain.
Alone on the planet, with only primitive tools at her disposal, the answers were out-of-reach.
With the light of day deepening toward its last, shadows long, Kathryn made camp beneath a stand of low trees not far from a stream.
She'd been at it for nearly three weeks, and it was without much thought that she unloaded her belongings and unhitched the tools she needed.
The pride she had once felt, in her many, daily acts of survival, had faded; her actions were now mostly repetition, purpose muddied in the monotony of it all.
She gathered tree branches, and labored hard to split some larger logs from a thick, fallen limb, working at it with a stone, and then a hafted antler she'd fashioned into a cutting tool.
The sun set as she was piling the wood, and the evening chill settled in. Thankfully the brush she'd lain as kindling was dry enough and the fire started easily, a welcome flare of warmth.
She knew she was hungry, but it had become too familiar a feeling to arouse any sort of urgency; rather, it was just another part of the routine. Find food, eat.
Tonight's meal would be fish, and she grabbed one easily from the stream with her small, sinewy net.
A couple of times recently, she'd managed to catch one with her bare hands, a surprising skill she would continue to hone in case animals became scarce and the harvesting and drying of sinew no longer possible. Water weakened the material over time, and so her net would not last indefinitely.
It was a gruesome undertaking, extracting the animal tendons, but they formed the strongest roping material she had. And having spent the better part of her life facing down difficult tasks with grit and resolve, she did not shirk from the gutting and pulling apart of the creatures she captured, even as her stomach still sometimes turned, and she had learned to harvest every useful substance.
The winds were calm, the sky clear, and she guessed no rain tonight. She'd been bitten by that assumption before, but she was tired; seated by the fire, and glancing at the thick, stocky branches around her, she decided to made do without a lean-to. It meant a certain vulnerability as she slept, but a break from the physical labor of building a shelter was welcome. And maybe she would stay warmer on a night like this, sleeping right next to the fire. She willed the logs to catch, knowing they were damp inside.
She had to think strategically about her stops. Pass up a hearty offering of good wood in the name of covering more ground, and risk meeting darkness and harsh weather where supplies were scarce or difficult to obtain; make a habit of stopping too early, and risk failing to outrun winter's eager tendrils.
The night was like any other as of late, but as Kathryn laid the fish to cook over the fire, quiet darkness falling from above, she realized suddenly that tomorrow would mark her one-hundredth day on the planet.
It was meaningless — just a number, rooted in the planet's particular rate of rotation — but as she drew in her next breath, a new, shadowy melancholy seemed to invade her lungs and settle there, quietly. Threatening from within.
Meaningless, she said aloud — to the trees, to the sky.
The sky.
Even with the glow of the fire, and the still-lingering brush of twilight, Kathryn could see the brightest stars above.
Freed now from the hazy curtain of summertime humidity, the night sky of the waning season was a wonder to behold, and a comfort in the cold night — for while the stars and sky objects were poignant symbols of all she had lost, they also permitted her fantasies, allowed her illogical hopes. There, she found an indulgent escaping she once would not have allowed but now so desperately needed; one more battlefront where she fought with the ever-creeping hum, persistent and baneful, that said: "Why bother?"
She heard it sometimes when she searched for food. And when she gathered water, or pressed forward over difficult terrain. In those moments, it was a sorrowful, aching loneliness that filled her, thieving her fire and crushing her will.
Giving up was not in her nature, but neither was living in solitude.
Keep going… Keep moving…
The words would play in her head during the day, an endless refrain pitted against everything that bid she do otherwise — rhythmic and sometimes distracting enough.
Then she would stop, shelter — build a fire, settle in — and the stillness would fill her her.
But some nights, as on the 99th one she spent beneath odd, stout trees, the stars of the galaxy would unfurl above her, revealing the very essence of so much that still gave her life.
It felt at times that all of her heart and soul were out there — somewhere — bonded in dreams waking and not to those she had lost. Her crew…her friends…her family.
And…
Hardest of all, that 'and'…
The fire crackled, sending glowing embers upwards — water vaporized, escaping from inner crevices. It would be like that for a while, but she was lucky; the logs were catching.
After she ate the fish — ungracefully, the mess of the thing left scattered some distance from her camp where she consumed it, not wanting to draw animals near when she slept — she sat back beside the fire, skin and fur blankets drawn close, soft, weathered scarf around her shoulders.
Often, when her evening tasks were complete, Kathryn would drift off, weary from the day of hiking and laboring, her mind feeling a separate thing from her body, heavy and unfocused.
But on this night, her mind was as sharp and crisp as the sky above, and sleep not fast at hand.
She thought over her day's progress, the particular changes in the landscape, and what that might mean in terms of climate zone. She reviewed the day in the fashion of a mission report, even while at the same time she knew it had little purpose.
She'd not written much lately, and in fact carried now only two of her original journals. She'd probably shed another soon; she seemed to carry less and less with her as the days wore on.
She spotted "Planet 2," which she'd tracked against the stars many weeks ago. Bright — probably a neighbor, or maybe a gas giant.
Tomorrow if the weather was fair, she'd hike hard. She was closing in on what appeared to be a mountain range, likely to slow her progress. She'd push herself before then, gain as much ground as she could.
Another sharp crack from the fire jolted her gaze back downward from the sky. A wave of warmth seemed to accompany the noise, and Kathryn closed her eyes, welcoming it.
Join me…
The voice in her head, unbidden, but unsurprising — a haunting echo she used to push away.
Now, alone — so very alone — she drew the memories to her being, clutched at them as she did her animal skins, breathing their warmth — their very essence a respite, a beacon amid darkness that gave her reason to go forward. If she could just live there, for a little while, the night would pass...
Traversing space and time, beckoning her to better days, begging her to meld with unreality — to believe, for just right now — the stirring, astral reels of memory soared from depth.
There was…the pull of a bicep, sunlight casting highlight and shadow over its contours; contracting, relaxing. Hands working soil.
Their amused, dirty brush against her cheek…
(Join me…)
And the warmth, as he drew her fingers into the dirt for the first time, and a gardener she became.
The stolen moments she couldn't help then but to claim — watching, hidden from view, as forearms tightened, arms labored. Building. Always making. And offering — always offering. Ready to take her into the whole of him. Inviting her into the warmth she'd somehow thought would always be there. Arms she wished enfolded her now.
Laughter.
Shoulders broad and firm — fearless, accepting. Bearing weight unconditionally, offering to carry all. The water, shining in the light of a moon, sliding from him as he rose from the river — and the thumping of her pulse when he floated onto his back, looking up at the sky, unaware of her observing.
(Join me…)
Simple — always so. And yet…
A hand, reaching out, helping her off the bank. The water was chilly, but she was on fire.
In her mind, a different ending, where she did not swim off in her own direction, retreating from him, from the burning in her core. Where she did not assume she had all the time in the world, or that she'd find the solution to get them back home, or that the safety of a distant, manageable love was something worth clinging to. Now, she went to him. Revealed herself fully, reaching out, claiming the moment as one of truth, like it was all they had — because, as it turned out it was. In the knowing of today, there, then, in that wide river, she was wild and free, living from the most authentic part of her being.
Arms, his arms, around her, holding her against him, treading the depth with both of them, keeping them afloat. And his lips against hers, hungry — his touches coming with an ease unexpected, as if this was simply the right thing, the true thing.
And when he swam them back to the bank, lifted her to the edge, and drew himself up and above her, there was nothing else. Their wanting was of a strength they'd never known before, and they drew together in a beautiful, savage ecstasy, knowing that this was the right of things…
The crackling fire threatened to bring her back, but she fought. Tucked deeper into her animal skins, and willed her bittersweet memories, real and not, to carry her into sleep.
Too many light-years away, Chakotay sat in Kathryn's Voyager quarters, a closed book on his lap he'd yet to open. Probably wouldn't, but it was hers, and somehow just holding it, in her space, sitting below her window, he felt a desperately-needed strength coursing into his veins.
He stared out the window, at the nameless expanse of space, and she filled his thoughts.
I will find you, he said out loud, his voice a whisper.
The stars had no response.