Chapter 9

She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there's time to change.

-- Train, "Drops of Jupiter"

Jethral was admirably patient as he showed them the sunlit rooms above ground. Ever the gracious host, he took time to explain the religious meanings of myriad subtle rituals he performed before icons and statues as they walked. He described the history of the monastery and the generations of Guardians that tended it. And he introduced Julian and Ezri to several brothers and sisters of his order, most of whom received the visitors kindly.

Only when they'd toured the Archives and Julian was safely immersed in a volume of chronicles did Jethral draw Ezri aside. Guiding her to a small study that smelled of faded parchment and ink, he slid the door halfway closed to mute even the quiet rustle of the Guardians at work among the manuscripts. He turned from the door and gazed at her, and his expression grew solemn with the weight of his thoughts.

The silence of the room was profound but unthreatening. After a moment, an odd smile creased his face and he shook his head in wonder. "By the Gods, Ezri."

She took a steadying breath, not quite sure what she was going to say to him. "Jethral...."

He shook his head to silence her. Then, delicately, he reached forward and plucked the copper chain away from her neck. A gentle tug, and the charm slid out of her collar, carved side facing outward.

Jethral nodded. "Yes, I thought as much. Your companion, I notice, made less of an effort to keep his charm hidden."

Ezri leaned against the wall, rubbing her temple. At least Julian wasn't in earshot. She made an effort to sound teasing. "Should we have asked your permission first?"

Her friend chuckled warmly. He pulled out a chair and gestured for her to sit. "Of course not, Parent."

She blushed. "Oh, don't...."

"What is it?"

Ezri sighed and sank into the chair. When she lifted her head, her smile was abashed. "Never in a hundred years would I expect you to call me 'Parent,' Jethral."

He gazed at her fondly. "It is simply tradition. It in no way diminishes my regard for you."

"I've known you long enough to trust that," she said. "But if we're still as close as we were before I left, I'd rather you just call me Ezri."

"Very well." Jethral dipped his head, watching her with a fatherly expression. "I would not wish to see you hurt because of ignorance, Ezri. How well does your companion know your true nature?"

"Oh, you don't need to worry about that," she said. "He was a dear friend to Jadzia and an even dearer one to me. And right now, he understands more about who I am than my own family does."

"I would hope," Jethral said wryly, "that this means Reassociation is not a concern."

She laughed a little, clasping her hands in her lap. "That isn't a new worry for either of us, believe me. That's part of the reason we're here together." She faced the Guardian squarely, glad that she could put conviction behind her words. "But I know him, as well as I know any of my friends who survived the war. And many times, it's felt like he's one of the only people I know who doesn't blame me on some level for not living up to an expectation, either for Dax or for Ezri."

Jethral pressed her arm, kindness and certainty reflected in his eyes. "Then I am glad. I know the circumstances of your Joining were... complicated. But what you did was right. No one worth knowing would blame you for making such a decision." He hesitated for a moment. "Unless you blame yourself."

Ezri suddenly found the floor fascinating. Jethral gave her respectful silence for several moments, then spoke gently. "And how well do you know your own true nature, Ezri Dax?"

She took a deep breath. And when no real answer surfaced, she exhaled, her shoulders drooping slightly.

The Guardian nodded in understanding. "It's only been a year. You have time to find yourself, Ezri - and Dax has time, thanks to you."

"I know," she said. "It's... getting better, I think. Things aren't as confusing as they used to be. I can use the memories I have to help people, and I've been glad for that. I just...." She lifted one hand, a resigned gesture. "I wish I could figure out how to talk about it - I wish I could find a way to talk to him about it. I know he wants to understand."

"A rare and admirable quality," said Jethral. He leaned forward in his chair, reminiscent. "If we lived in a different era, a different awareness, there would be more that shared your friend's compassion. There were customs among our people, long ago - ancient rites meant to forge a bond between the Joined and the Unjoined." Then he laughed sadly. "I'm afraid that only old spiritual fanatics such as myself know of these rituals now. The incantations became foolish and obsolete to our leaders by the time your third Host passed away."

Ezri smiled a little, remembering. "I know. Emony saw the Commission's rise to power; things were never quite the same after that."

Jethral was silent. He closed his eyes, perhaps gazing back on the old stories he had scribed so many times. Then, abruptly, he held her gaze with the intensity of his own. "Zhian'par guar'Koj, kal'thai zim guar'vena."

For a long moment, the words were strange and ghostly, their only meaning to her carried in the strength of his voice. But recognition stirred from far within her Joined minds, and with it, understanding. The translation spilled from her, somehow beautiful in the drab tones of Federation Standard. "One soul of Many, reach out to the soul of one."

His face was alight. "Remember that, Ezri. The words are ageless, even if the ritual itself is long in disuse. It is the heart of who you are, your true obligation to our people as a Joined being - a Parent of Knowledge, of Spirit, of Compassion." Reaching out, he clasped her hands until the hesitant expression faded from Ezri's face. "Don't stop trying to bridge the gap. If there is a way, you'll find it."

She swallowed, willing her voice to be steady. "How do you know?"

Jethral smiled. "You are Dax."

*****

"Reach a mutual understanding." Julian tipped his head back against the cushions of the couch and gave Ezri a wry look. "Now, why am I having a hard time believing you used the term 'reach a mutual understanding'?"

Ezri sighed, though it looked like she was enjoying the banter. "I admit I might have been a little more forceful than the records show...."

Julian raised an eyebrow.

She huffed in mock exasperation. "Okay, okay, it was more along the lines of 'shut the hell up.' But you can't exactly put something like that in the Archives, now, can you?"

He laughed merrily. "Dax. You're unbelievable."

Ezri responded with a dismissive wave of her hand. They'd been pulled into discussions about the history of Dax ever since they'd returned to Beltarr's one small inn for the evening. After just an hour's time in the Archives, Julian had heard and read enough to build up a great deal of appreciation for the Symbiont's legacy.

He'd also picked up on a lot of entertaining anecdotes hidden between the lines, and he could resist teasing her about them.

"It wasn't that impressive," she said about this particular tale. "I don't even know why they archived it. All I did was settle an argument on religious texts."

"As well-read as you are, I'd say it was a simple task - had you not been swimming in the brine pools at the time," Julian insisted. "I had no idea that Unjoined Symbionts were even aware of the outside world, much less able to listen in on spoken conversations."

She smirked a little at the memory. "When people bicker while they're tending a pool of telepathic beings, that's a little hard to avoid. Having to sense a shouting match is much worse than having to listen to one, believe me. And this happened in the short duration before I Joined with Torias; I still had Audrid's sense of elocutionary decorum fresh in my mind." She shrugged, trying to look innocent. "Let's just say, the next time one of them reached into the water, he got a bit of a shock."

Julian grinned. "Yep, that sounds a lot like you."

Ezri lifted her chin with half-serious, half-amused poise. "It is me. And really, it's nothing special...."

"Hah," he snorted. "You can't fool me. I'll bet the stories I read aren't even the half of it."

She made a slight effort to look modest, then shrugged, not disagreeing with his assumption. "I'd better keep you far, far away from Jethral while we're here. He'll tell you all my embarrassing stories if I let him."

He gave her a sly look; she rolled her eyes affectionately. A brief silence fell. The fading daylight cast a glow through the window, warming the small but comfortable room where they sat.

Julian hesitated somewhat, thinking out his next question. "What were the two of you talking about for so long, anyway? If you don't mind me asking...."

"Oh, I don't mind," Ezri said. If anything, she was only more at ease. "It wasn't vastly important - just the typical father-figure conversation. Catching up on old news, chatting about my future plans and current romantic endeavors, alluding to ancient incantations for extrasensory synergetic bonding... you know, the usual."

Julian looked at her blankly; Ezri played innocent. "Oh, don't worry," she said sweetly. "He likes you."

"Wait, wait - incantations for extrasensory what?"

She chuckled at his wary expression but waved it off. "Not what you're thinking. We were talking about how isolated the Joined are becoming, and Jethral quoted from a bonding ritual called kal'thai to make a point."

"Kal'thai." He repeated the word a bit clumsily with his Human accent.

"It's a remnant of an ancient language," Ezri explained. "Literally translated, it means 'blue flame.' A poetic description of symbiotic electrochemical signals."

Julian nodded, remembering the flickers of sapphire blue energy that leapt from Symbiont to Symbiont through the brine medium. "The word's old enough not to register with a Universal Translator, at least. I gather the Symbiosis Commission doesn't have much use for poetry these days."

She smiled, a little ruefully. "Hardly anyone knows it now. Symbiont energy was held in much higher regard centuries ago, before science got in the way. There are myths about its great healing powers, spiritual connotations, things like that. In any case, kal'thai also describes a certain old ritual that centers around that energy. It's a way for a Joined Trill to telepathically reach an Unjoined."

Julian tipped his head. "I've never heard of this before."

"That's because it's almost never used," said Ezri. Her voice was slipping into an objective tone that reminded him a little of Jadzia. "It's not easy to carry out, and it's been all but forgotten anyway."

"So let me get this straight," Julian said. "A kal'thai is basically a temporary Joining?"

"Not exactly. It's... well, it's hard to describe. It's like a very intimate conversation. Sometimes it was used in marriages, or as a way to draw a misguided person back to a steady path. And long ago, before the Symbiosis Commission took over, kal'thai was used to determine which Initiates were suitable for Joining."

"Interesting," Julian murmured. Then he gave her a curious look. "Have you ever experienced one?"

"In nine lifetimes? Once," Dax said, grinning at the memory.

"Were you the Joined or the Unjoined?"

"Unjoined. I was Tobin Rel then, five years before I'd ever heard of Dax. And I went through a kal'thai with a four-hundred-year-old Symbiont in the body of a woman almost three times my age." Her smile widened as she spoke, and by the time she got to that last detail she was laughing mischievously.

Julian grinned back, puzzled. "What?"

Ezri's eyes sparkled. "Well, you see, for the connection to work there has to be physical contact between the Symbiont..." she gestured to her abdomen, "and the Unjoined recipient. A hand pressed over the carry pouch can work, but the preferred method is an embrace. Maybe it allows the Symbiont to connect more completely, maybe it's symbolic of the Unjoined laying aside inhibitions and giving the Joined complete trust, who knows. In any case, this Joined - Aranya, she insisted I call her - preferred the latter method." Ezri leaned forward gleefully. "I was very shy. And Aranya was very... aggressive."

The image this conjured up made Julian shake with laughter. "Priceless! I can only imagine what was going through your head."

Ezri laughed too, but a thoughtful expression crept into her eyes at his choice of words. "Oh, it was... it was terrifying, I'll admit. But unbelievable. She had so much to show me, such an impossible amount of knowledge." She shook her head in wonder, drawn into the memory. "I can't explain it. But when the ritual ended and Aranya pulled away, more than anything I wanted to regain that... depth. I don't think I - Tobin, I mean - ever would have been Joined to Dax were it not for her. And Aranya Por remained one of the greatest friends I've ever known, up until the day she died. When I was Joined, she was so proud of me...."

Julian gazed at her, trying to read the emotions playing over her face. "Where is Por now? Have you managed to stay in touch?"

There was a slight catch to Ezri's voice as she replied. "Aranya was Por's last host. The Symbiont died in an accident five months before Dax was passed on to Emony."

"Oh. Ezri, I'm sorry."

She laughed, brushing a hand over her eyes. "It was over two hundred years ago, Julian."

"Still...." He trailed off, not sure of what to say and desperately hoping he wasn't intruding on forbidden ground. But the emotions on his face must have been the right ones, because Ezri gazed at him compassionately and then hugged him, leaning her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, and they stayed that way for a long moment. The sadness between them was very sweet.

Without warning, Ezri lifted her head. A tear lingered on her cheek and she absently brushed it aside, then reached out to take Julian's face in her hands. An odd excitement sparked to life in her eyes. "You know...." And she searched his face intently, thinking.

"What is it?" His voice sounded a bit strange. He cleared his throat.

"If I can... yes. Yes, I think I can." She smiled so brilliantly that Julian had to catch his breath. "Let's do it."

"Do what?" he whispered.

"You and me. Kal'thai."

"What...?" Julian felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. "Ezri, I'm...."

"Human. A very strong Human. And I'm Dax. I make things happen, remember?"

He had to grin at that, but he was still astonished that they were even considering this. "But why? Why do you...?"

"Because," she said, frustrated that she couldn't find the right words. "Because I want to know you. Because I want you to know me. Because we're together." She seemed satisfied with this last explanation, and touched the charm hanging from his neck. "We're together."

Captivated by the strength of her emotions, Julian could only nod in agreement, return her embrace when she drew him to her and kissed him tenderly. "All right," he finally breathed, smiling in wonder. "All right."