Stardate 2260.315

"What's next, Hadrian?" Dagny called, adjusting the pitch of her voice to keep from waking the sleeping baby nestled in the sling around her torso. Safi had been whining and fussing all night and had only just now fallen asleep. Even still, it would be time to check on her soon, but it would also be easy enough to squeeze in one more patient. She was in bad need of sleep but there was still so much to do.

A man with blond hair fading into gray at the temples clucked his tongue, pivoted on his stool, and called, "Can you handle broken ribs and probably some torn knee ligaments?"

Dagny grinned, prompting Hadrian Moore to nod to a teenage human girl slumped against the wall and bearing all her weight on her right leg. The girl started to hobble in Dagny's direction, but Dagny held up a hand and replied, "If you've got a bad knee, I'll come to you."

Dagny tiptoed over empty hypospray vials and moved a cot out of the way to get to her next patient. The past three hours had made a shambles out of their humble clinic and they weren't done yet. There were still nearly a dozen people lined up along the wall waiting for medical care, some drooping in chairs and others sitting on the floor.

"I was here first," a woman called from behind her.

"You've got a teensy cut on your scalp, Madge," Hadrian sighed, looking up from his own patient, a Tellarite man with a broken arm.

"Doesn't feel so teensy to me," she grumbled. "And besides, if it's so teensy, you could patch it up, lickety split and I could be on my way."

Dagny peeked over her shoulder to see a human woman with light brown hair matted with blood but she didn't feel like getting involved in the argument that was teetering on the edge of breaking out. Hadrian had done a good enough job of triaging all the non-critical patients and Dagny didn't have the energy nor the can-do attitude to question his judgement on this particular evening.

She cupped a hand around Safi's head, leaned down on one knee, wincing at the pressure it was putting on her lower body. "Hi there."

"Hi," the girl mumbled. Upon closer inspection, she wasn't as young as Dagny had first thought.

"I'm Dagny."

"Greta."

"How old are you, Greta?"

"Seventeen." The girl's eyes fell on Safi and she winced. "Cute baby."

"Thanks."

"She doesn't look very old."

"Not even a week yet."

"I don't know how anyone could have kids in a place like this."

Her words stung for several reasons. Dagny was tempted to make a comment about Greta practically being a kid herself, but because she wasn't even four years older than Greta, it would only come across as sanctimonious. But she'd also just said aloud the thing Dagny had been thinking for the past several hours: what was she thinking, trying to raise her daughter in a place like Bergeron colony?

"Uh, so you're here for a busted knee?" Dagny said, trying to focus on the task ahead.

"And my ribs."

"Right." Dagny grabbed the tricorder from the holder on her hip and muttered a few words of agreement. Mending her ribs would be easy enough—only two clean breaks—but the damage to her knee would probably require Dr. Voris' experience. Unfortunately, he was up to his elbows in surgery, both literally and figuratively.

Dagny grabbed a bone knitter from the pile of scattered medical devices on the reception desk and said, "Can you lift your left arm over your head and pull your shirt up a bit?"

Greta took a slow breath and complied after two false starts. "How'd you get this job?"

"I was trained as a paramedic," Dagny explained. "I came to the colony specifically to work in the clinic."

The only reply she got was an ugly frown. "I hate pulling weeds in the fields. All it's ever gotten me is a sunburn and torn up hands."

"I can repair your calloused hands -"

"They're fine," Greta interrupted. "Besides, there's not exactly a lot of crops left."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean those people who attacked us, whoever they were, they burned them. Scorched to little crisps. I guess I was saying I'm in need of a new job and I get the feeling whatever's offered to me next won't be much better. Who can I talk to about working here?"

Dagny was too engrossed in Greta's most recent statement to answer her question. Obviously everyone knew by now that the colony had been attacked several hours ago. The details of who, why, and how were still sketchy—some said Klingons, others said Gorn, some claimed it was part of a territorial dispute and others insisted the colony had been accidentally targeted. She'd spent the last several hours treating casualties but most of the injuries had come from the ensuing chaos of people fleeing into the tunnels for safety once violence broke out on the surface.

She'd just sort of assumed the attack had been some random fly-by with phasers, based on the three patients with radiation burns consistent with certain classes of phasers, but as the vast majority of the colony was situated underground and casualties had been relatively minimal, she'd figured they'd escaped the worst of it. How could she have forgotten about the crops?

They might live underground, but their food came from the surface, thanks to the Federation quarantine. There were supplementary greenhouses in the tunnels but from everything Dagny had ever heard, it was not nearly enough to feed more than a thousand people. She'd been worried before but now she felt sick to her stomach.

"Didn't you hear me?" Greta asked.

Dagny's eyes refocused on the bone knitter in her hands. "Huh? Uh, no, I'm sorry."

"Did Sam die?"

"Who?"

"What do you mean, who? Samantha Bergeron. How long have you been here?"

Dagny rubbed a sheen of sweat away from her forehead and started to worry her temperature monitor would go off, but then she remembered she was no longer pregnant and wasn't wearing it any longer. How could she have forgotten something so obvious, particularly when she was currently wearing the baby on the outside? She was tired and hungry and it was a wonder Safi had remained relatively content these past hours.

"I've been here long enough," she replied grimly. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little out of it. And I don't know about Sam."

"If you're so scatterbrained, maybe I should wait for the man over there," she mused nodding in Hadrian's direction.

Before she could offer a curt rebuttal, Hadrian quipped, "You're better off with Dagny. She does this full time."

"Doesn't seem like it," Greta sighed, rolling her eyes and pursing her lips.

Rather than let the girl's sour attitude get to her, Dagny powered down her bone knitter and with all the courtesy she could muster asked, "How do your ribs feel?"

"Like they've been worked over by a Klingon street fighter."

"Broken bones will do that."

"What about my knee?"

"We're going to have to wait for Dr. Voris, I think."

As if on cue, he emerged from the surgical suite, pulling a surgical cap from his head and chucking it in the sterilization bin. The eyes of all the conscious people in the room turned to him but he didn't acknowledge their curiosity. If he noticed, he said nothing and proceeded in Dagny's direction.

"Is Aisla still here?" he asked, once he was about two meters away.

"She's in the convalescent ward keeping tabs on everyone. Is everything ok?"

He was about to answer but Greta interrupted. "Are you Dr. Voris?"

"I am."

"The nurse says you're going to have to fix my knee."

"You will receive treatment but currently I have more critical patients to tend to."

Greta made an ugly face and again rolled her eyes to such a degree that it almost demaded to be called a feat of human physiology. Voris headed toward the convalescent ward and after telling Greta she would be right back—a statement that was not well-received—Dagny followed him.

"Is something wrong?"

He leaned close to her and said almost in a whisper, "Samantha Bergeron is dead."

"What? How?" she said, forgetting to lower her voice. "How can that be?"

Voris' eyes scanned the room before giving Dagny a stern look. "I would prefer to keep this quiet for now."

"Keep what quiet?" Hadrian asked, coming up behind them.

"Ah, we're just running low on pain-killers," Dagny blurted, trying her hand at the first lie that came to her mind.

"I would offer to make some more but seeing as how I know as much about chemistry as I do making wedding cakes, maybe one of you two would prefer to do it."

Voris cocked an eyebrow and gave a small nod. Dagny knew how much he hated lying, but it was starting to occur to her that keeping Sam's death quiet for as long as possible was probably a smart move. Tensions were already high enough after the attack—the loss of the colony's namesake and founder, long-time unofficial governor, and current councilwoman would probably send everyone into full on panic. The longer she thought of the wider implications, the more Dagny started to panic.

She didn't get to dwell on it for long though. Safi squeaked against her chest and quickly found enough air in her lungs to stage a performance of shrieking, and as she had done many times already that evening, she prepared to ferry her baby upstairs to feed and change her.

"You should retire for the night," Voris said grimly.

"I can keep going," she insisted, raising her voice to be heard over Safi's cries. "I just need to get her situated and I'll be back down."

"She is not yet a week old," he replied. "You both require rest and our agreement was that you could work in the clinic for short periods on light duty."

"I'm fine, really. I just-"

"Safi is not as resilient as you."

He turned his back to her and resumed course for the convalescent ward and it took everything in her power to resist grabbing him by the shoulder, whipping him around, and demanding to know if he really intended to insinuate that she was exposing their child to harm. People were staring though and the last thing she needed was a bunch of witnesses to what should certainly be a private conversation. Even still, her jaw was clenched so tightly her back molars threatened to explode.

By the time she reached the top of the stairs and shut the door behind her, she was crying alongside her baby. She gingerly untangled Safi from the sling around her chest, thinking if she wasn't already crying from a whole host of confusing emotions and frightening current events, she'd be crying from the pain in her aching breasts. Not that it really mattered why Dagny was crying: the game of testing various hypotheses of why her baby might be screaming bloody murder was now underway.

Half a dozen attempts at breastfeeding and bottle feeding, two rounds of dressing and undressing, a tour through every method Dagny knew to hold, cradle, and rock a baby, three scans with a tricorder, and about eighty lullabies later, she still had no answer for why Safi was so upset. For the first time, she was unable to comfort her child. The longer she cried, the more frazzled Dagny became, and the more frustrated Dagny got, the harder Safi cried.

Olav and Henrik had been colicky babies. How could she forget the entire Skjeggestad family turning into zombies following several months of sleepless nights? But Safi seemed a little too young to be experiencing colic, but Safi was also not fully human. Maybe Vulcan babies were different. The idea that something was wrong with Safi and she didn't even know how to tell because all of her experience was tied up in caring for human babies started a whole new cascade of emotional turmoil.

Eventually exhaustion started getting the better of both of them. Dagny collapsed onto her bed, stripped Safi down to her diaper and laid her on her back, and then laid down next to her and gently massaged and stroked her stomach. It took a few minutes but she did quiet down. Despite her near delirious level of fatigue, Dagny wanted to spring from the bed and sing for joy. Maybe she wasn't a bad mother after all.

Dagny jerked awake some time later, half panicked and half confused. Her sudden movement woke Safi, who instantly began to fuss. How long had they been asleep? She rubbed her eyes and then scooped her little one into her arms before a real tantrum could set in.

Even for all her experience with babies, the newborn ones never ceased to amaze with their miniature scale. It was mind-boggling to know that pretty everyone started out life as a tiny little thing that could fit in the crook of an arm.

"Hello, little one," she murmured. "We had a little nap, didn't we? I bet you're hungry. You wouldn't eat earlier."

She lifted Safi to one of her badly engorged breasts and managed to endure several minutes of her daughter's mouth assaulting her nipple before trying the other breast and getting a better latch. Every mother she knew had always made breastfeeding look so easy. She so badly wanted to give up, go downstairs, and replicate her a bottle of formula, but she managed to stick it out without crying too much. Her breasts were so enormous they almost looked like a crude caricature.

When Safi had taken her fill, Dagny slipped her into her crib and eased herself back down onto her bed and slowly tried massaging the swollen masses of flesh that had once been a pair of breasts barely large enough to fill out a small bra. She was so tired the thought that she was still awake almost made her angry, but her breasts were hurting too much to sleep. For the last nine months, she'd assumed she knew what she was signing up for, what with having almost a dozen younger siblings, but five days in and this motherhood gig was turning out to be much harder than she'd ever imagined.

Voris stared up at the ceiling. Dagny was still dressed and lying flat on her back on the next bed, arms splayed outward and snoring loudly. Two bags of half-melted ice rested on each of her breasts in what Voris supposed was an attempt to relieve inflammation associated with engorgement or an obstructed mammary duct. He would inquire about it tomorrow.

The raucous sounds of her airways were rather jarring, but that wasn't what was keeping him awake. Wondering how he could protect her and Safi for the next 259 days was the primary source of his insomnia. There was no logic in worrying, particularly when he was utterly powerless to alter his current set of circumstances.

The afternoon's attack had been relatively small scale but Voris recognized everything changed the moment phasers scorched the surface. He rationally understood that safety was an illusion and he had never been safe on Bergeron colony, just as he had never truly been safe on Earth, just as his mother and sisters hadn't been safe on Vulcan. To be sure, some places were certainly safer than others but on this day, Bergeron colony had been rendered unsafe not only because of a violent outside attack, but also because it had lost most of its food supply.

Even if the attackers never returned, eliminating the majority of the colony's food guaranteed people would go hungry and creatures of any species, even Vulcans, tended to do peculiar things when facing the threat of starvation. Yes, life on Bergeron colony had been irrevocably changed.

He was pondering possibilities for leaving the planet prior to the end of the quarantine—there were none, really—when his ears picked up the soft gurgles of the baby in the cot between Dagny's jagged snoring. Apparently he wasn't the only one awake. He sat up carefully to avoid creaking sounds from the bed and peeked at his daughter. She was flexing her arms and legs in a motion that roughly suggested she was trying to climb and invisible ladder.

She had been asleep in her crib when Voris had come upstairs two hours earlier and if Safi was sticking to her usual schedule, she would be crying for food very soon. Dagny grunted in her sleep and rolled onto her side and seconds later, Safi began to frown and whimper. The attack had forced Dagny to work far harder than she should have so soon after giving birth. She needed rest. Deciding it was only logical that he should tend to Safi's needs since he was already awake, he hoisted the baby from her cot and gently propped her high onto his chest.

Her frustrated cooing ceased immediately and for several seconds, Voris repelled feelings of joy that his touch had provided Safi some consolation. He gently stroked her back and felt her body relax further against his. Deciding he was very much content if she was, he sat like that for a time. The sparse, feathery black hairs on her head were swirled into disarray and what a profound thing it was, to know she had acquired that hair from him. A few times he felt the bizarre impulse to do what he so often saw Dagny do, which was lean down and kiss the crown of her tiny head, but what would be the logic in that?

Voris had been overwhelmed these last months trying to balance Dagny's chaotic emotions and had thought things would settle for him once she'd given birth, but the experience of fatherhood was creating new emotional turmoil for him. He hadn't expected to feel this way. Childbirth and childcare were perfectly routine functions and many Vulcans experienced aspects of one or both in their lifetimes but as far as Voris could discern, no one he knew had ever suffered from overwhelming feelings of love and tenderness simply from holding their own child. Or perhaps many people did and simply did not speak of it.

Eventually her whimpering resumed and her fragile body started to struggle against his grip, so as smoothly as he could manage, he stood and transported his young charge downstairs to replicate a bottle of fortified formula. He was halfway to the replicator when she finally broke into a raucous chorus of cries. He turned his eye to the convalescent ward where several patients were still recovering following surgery and did his best to soothe her so that he might avoid waking them.

"Please, be quiet," he said, bouncing her in a light up and down motion against his chest with one hand while he entered his order into the replicator. Thinking of Dagny's desire that he should impart Vuhlkansu on her, he added, "Sanu, nam'uh ralash-fam. Please, be quiet."

She was not yet a week old and could only communicate through reflexive facial expressions and wailing, so he did not blame her for her disobedience. Unfortunately, there were others who did. "Shut that brat up!" called a male voice from the convalescent ward.

A bottle appeared in the replicator dispenser and he grabbed it, calling back in a loud whisper, "My apologies!" He did not prefer to continue standing in the main area of the clinic within earshot of the four patients in the ward, but he also didn't prefer to retire upstairs and needlessly wake Dagny. The only other option was the surgical suite, which was also currently serving as the temporary morgue.

As the surgery's door closed behind him, his eyes naturally fell on the biobag in the corner that contained the physical remnants of the colony's founder and former de facto leader. He had done everything he could to save her, but her internal injuries had been just beyond repair. In the rush to get everyone on the surface to safety, Samantha Bergeron had fallen down the long row of narrow stairs and been trampled by several hundred people, at least according to several accounts, but there was no way to determine how credible those accounts were. As of now, no one even knew who had attacked the colony or why. There were hundreds of witnesses and zero answers.

Were Samantha Bergeron still alive, she'd have already come by the clinic and assessed situation and talked with some of the casualties. She would have given him a report of everything she knew. Voris understood the council was new and therefore not operating as efficiently as desired, but there had been no emissary to deliver news or reassure frightened colonists. She had never liked the mantle of leader, but she'd had a natural talent for it. She had been the first to greet them when they'd arrived and now she was reduced to a corpse in a bag in the corner of a side room in the clinic.

He experienced sadness and some trepidation that he instantly quashed, but Safi's cries shifted pitch and grew more frantic. He wasn't sure how he knew, but it was easy enough to understand his daughter was afraid. Was she picking up on his emotions, or was something else frightening her?

He turned his back to Samantha Bergeron's body and tried to slip the bottle's nipple in Safi's mouth, but she was completely inconsolable and wanted nothing to do with the formula. Rather than allow his anxiety to bloom, it occurred to him he might test his hypothesis. Was Safi really sensing his emotions and if so, if he could calm himself, would she be calm also?

Holding her as securely as he could, he carefully lowered himself, folding his legs to assume a cross-legged seated position. He cupped Safi's head with his hands, resting her on his forearms and watched the motions of her face as she bellowed. Then he closed his eyes, exhaled, and did his best to block the extremely distressing cries of his infant daughter from his mind. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. In and out he breathed, welcoming the peace that washed over him.

She didn't stop crying but her cries did become the more familiar cries of a hungry baby, rather than a terrified one. When he reopened his eyes, he found her green-faced and tear-streaked. He waited for her to catch her breath before trying the bottle a second time and the moment he touched the nipple to her lips, she gripped it with ferocious tenacity. A flurry of smacking and snuffling ensued.

"Finally!" shouted a very muffled voice from the other side of the door. Voris didn't like that his patients' sleep should be disturbed, but it was an open ward with little in the way of privacy or soundproofing. It was regrettable they should be woken by a crying baby, but a baby was just one of the countless things that might generate noise in such a place. Besides that, Safi was not only no longer crying, but she seemed largely content now.

She was halfway through the liquid in her bottle when she suddenly spit the nipple out and began squirming. Seconds later, a muted scream pierced the silence. Dagny was awake. Rather than wait for Safi to resume crying, he quickly scooped her into a cradle position, exited the surgical suite, and headed toward the stairs.

He was about a meter away from the first step when he nearly collided with Dagny in the darkness. She was crying and now Safi was crying too, and the irritated patient in the adjacent ward yelled, "What's a guy got to do to get some peace and quiet around here?"

"My baby," Dagny yelped, reaching for Safi. Voris felt strangely reluctant to give her up because she was his baby too, but decided it would probably be unwise to keep a mother from her child.

"Is something the matter?"

"I woke up and she was gone," Dagny choked. "Just gone."

"But I was absent as well. Did it not occur to you I might-"

"Won't you shut up?" the man from the ward howled.

Voris and Dagny exchanged looks and though he couldn't discern the finer features of her face in the dark, he sensed it was dawning on her that her child had never been in any danger and she was embarrassed she'd caused a scene in the clinic in the pre-dawn hours of the morning.

"Shhhhh," she whispered, her breath rustling Safi's thin layer of hair.

"Perhaps you should take her upstairs," Voris urged. "I'll see to the patients in the ward."

They went their separate ways, and five minutes and a long-winded lecture from Mr. Donaldson about wanting some "shut eye," he trudged up the stairs and discovered Dagny setting Safi down in her cot.

"I didn't mean to wake anyone up," she murmured, sitting on the edge of her bed.

"I believe the honor of rousing the ward belongs to Safi."

Dagny frowned. "I didn't even hear her cry."

"I woke a short time ago and discovered her awake and in need of food so I took her downstairs to avoid waking you."

"I don't mind getting up to take care of her: it's kind of my job."

"Yesterday you insisted that I take a more active role in caring for our daughter. I cannot do this and also allow you to accept sole responsibility for caring for her."

She held up a hand and sighed. "I know. I'm being illogical. I'm tired. It's been a long day."

"Yes."

She drew in a heavy breath and held it before letting it escape through pursed lips. He wondered if now would be the correct time to ask after the inflammation in her breasts but she spoke first, and on a completely unrelated topic. "I'm scared, Voris."

"Explain."

"You really need me to? We were attacked today. Sam is dead. We were so busy I didn't really have time to dwell on it but now I'm overwhelmed by it. What happens now?"

He thought of his concerns over the food supply, but rather than speak them aloud and add to her fear, he replied, "I do not know."

She slowly lowered herself into a sitting position on her bed, ran her fingers through her tangled hair and said, "Safi was born less than a week ago. Just yesterday we were discussing our plans for getting out of here in eight and a half months. Living in San Francisco and going to medical school and now all I can think about-" The emotions growing within her halted her speech.

He understood her uncertainty—he shared it—but a lifetime of learning to repress emotionalism related to fear made him unable to fully appreciate the full depth of her anxiety. Then he stole a glance at Safi sleeping in her cot and experienced a strange tightening in his chest and pulling sensation deep in his belly.

"There is no logic in worry," he offered.

"And surely there can't be any logic in doing nothing about it either?"

"What would you do? What would you have me do?"

"I don't know. Your father and uncle are very important people. Isn't there something they could do?"

"They have substantial authority on New Vulcan, but New Vulcan does not speak for the Federation. And while my father is well-known throughout the Federation and my uncle perhaps more so, I don't believe they possess the influence to affect the quarantine or our current situation and even if they did, I doubt they would."

She made a face. "Not even to help their son and nephew?"

"It would be an abuse of power to express favoritism for a relation in a matter such as this. Furthermore, my father and I do not speak-"

"You're telling me he wouldn't even want to help you if your life were in danger? I know he doesn't care about me and he called Safi a half-breed, but you're his only son."

He watched Safi twitch in the cot. "Why are you raising your voice? Are you angry with me?"

Dagny pinched her forehead between her fingers. "No, I'm just throwing ideas out there and trying to brainstorm any kind of idea that will get us out of here. I'm not angry, I'm afraid. I'm on edge and I know when I'm tense, it seems to make Safi more tense. I feel like she senses my mood or something."

Voris nodded. "She is still very young, but she is displaying signs of atypical empathic response."

"What do you mean, atypical?" Dagny's face turned a curious shade of grayish white. "Something's wrong with her?"

"I would not classify it as wrong, merely that it is not observed in a many Vulcans and has never been reported in humans, which makes it surprising that our daughter might be capable of non-psionic telepathy when neither of her parents are. But as I said, she is too young for me to perform an assessment-"

"Slow down: what are you telling me?"

"Safi appears to sense emotions within others to an unusual degree. All Vulcans have some innate telepathy, but as with any ability, it manifests differently in every individual. Approximately two percent of Vulcans report possessing of some form of telepathy without the need for physical contact, which includes sensing emotions within others, somewhat like the recently encountered Betazoid species are rumored to be capable of. However, it is believed the true incidence is higher and may even be as high as ten percent."

"If it's really as high as that, why does everyone act like it's so rare?"

He paused to consider his words. "Telepathy is a taboo subject for many off-worlders because it creates an enormous imbalance of power. Many within the Federation know Vulcans are capable of telepathy but they also know it requires some form of touch and there is security in the idea that if one avoids physical contact, one can also opt out of an invasion of privacy through telepathy. Few would take delight in knowing another person could delve into their thoughts at will across great distances, and so, those Vulcans who can often keep it to themselves."

"And you think Safi can do this?"

"It is impossible to assess these abilities in newly born infants due to confounding variables such as parental bonding and lack of complex communication skills. It is only a casual observation and I have only recently made it, but you have corroborated my hypothesis."

"Is this bad?"

"No, it simply is. However, I have little experience in child development. It may be that I am mistaken or she will outgrow it."

"No, I guess I was kind of asking myself out loud. I'm trying to wonder what it would be like, growing up and able to feel what others felt. It seems like it would be such a terrible burden. And wouldn't it be confusing, not only to her but also her peers? What if this keeps her from making friends? Would living on Vulcan where people suppressed emotions be better for her? Or worse? What if-"

"It is premature to consider such things," Voris interrupted patiently.

"It's not though. If she really is picking up on what other people are feeling, me being upset or afraid or angry affects her. I don't want to hurt my own baby."

"All children can sense their caregivers' emotions to some degree."

"True, but if I were Vulcan like you, I wouldn't feel emotions and this wouldn't be a problem."

"She is half human and you are her human mother. You must be as you are."

"What kind of paradox is that?"

"Life is full of paradoxes; reconciling them is a fruitless pursuit but accepting them is a mark of wisdom," he replied, vaguely aware he was paraphrasing a passage from Surak's teachings.

She rolled her eyes and leaned over to assume a prostrate position on the bed. "It's late and we should try to get some sleep."

"I regret I do not have a simpler answer for you."

"Me too."

He wanted to ask if she intended to dress for bed but as it was already the early hours of the morning, he supposed it didn't matter. Voris retired to the lavatory to perform his customary hygiene routine and five minutes later, slipped under his quilt wearing the same undershirt and underwear he'd worn during the day, deciding now that Safi was generating so much laundry, perhaps it would actually be wise to attempt to be more efficient in his use of clothing.

He tried focusing on deep breathing to settle his mind, but his previous worries of providing for Dagny and Safi and keeping them safe resurfaced. He had told her not to worry, that worry was illogical for circumstances out of one's control, but he was guilty of it too. The breathing patterns coming from Dagny's bed suggested she hadn't followed his advice either.

"Are you awake?" he asked.

"Yes." He couldn't think of anything meaningful to say, but she broke the silence with a startling revelation. "I miss melding with you."

He allowed himself nearly a full minute to process her words, then cautiously asked, "Would you like to meld now?"

"Only if you want to."

"I would not mind."

"Ok, but do you want to? Would it be weird?"

He supposed it probably would, but he could not deny he missed the comfort of her chaotic mind and having her warm body pressed against his in the night. She was no longer pregnant so there was no reason they should continue the practice, especially because she was not his mate, but he could also think of no reason two adults should not meld if they both consented to it.

"I believe I would like it," he finally replied.

His hears picked up the rustling of fabric and the faintest slaps of Dagny's bare feet on the floor, then she peeled back the quilt and slowly lowered herself into his bed. He raised his hand to her face like he had done so many times before, but unlike before, she uttered a sharp gasp.

"Is something the matter?"

"You accidentally rubbed my breast."

"I- I would never-"

"No, I don't care if you touch them, just not right now: they're just really engorged and tender."

While he was stunned by the implication she would permit him to casually touch her breasts under better circumstances, he was still concerned that she was in such pain. Swollen and tender breasts were common in newly nursing mothers, but he was not convinced this level of pain was normal.

"Is it possible you have an obstructed mammary duct or mastitis?" he asked.

"I don't think so. There's no redness and I don't have a fever. I think I just need to get into the flow of regular feedings, so to speak."

"While I trust your assessment, would you permit me to examine you?"

"Tomorrow. I promise. But right now, please just meld with me." She placed her left hand over the back of his right, sending gentle waves of pleasure coursing through him.

He was slow to pull away, but eventually he did and settled his hand along her jaw. Her mind was teeming with fear and doubt, but it was so quiet compared to how it had been when she'd been carrying Safi. Her eyes drifted closed and her lips curled into a half smile.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Your gratitude is unnecessary," he replied.

"I know, but thank you anyway."

"You are welcome. Good night Dagny."

"Good night, Voris."

He closed his eyes, only dimly aware that neither of them had actually spoken the words of their conversation aloud. Perhaps their bond was deeper than he knew, but he was too tired and relaxed to dwell on it for long and soon they were both adrift in a sea of dreams.