Laura sat at the front of the classroom silently working on lesson plans for tomorrow. The students were doing a worksheet and softly talking to each other.
"My sister's and I are gonna go build sand castles after school. Do you wanna come?" Kestra was walking through the aisles and heard a young girl lean over and whisper to her friend.
"Yeah," the girl beside her said excitedly.
"Nobody's building anything if you have to stay after school to finish your work," Kestra said as she leant down behind them. Both girls turned their heads quickly and blushed when they saw they'd been heard.
"Sorry Miss Kestra," the first girl said. Kestra smiled.
"Don't worry about it, Katie. I'd be excited if I got to build sandcastles too," she said conspiratorially. Katie's face lit up.
"You could build castles with us," she said happily. Kestra laughed.
"I can't. I'm busy after school too," she said, "so how about we finish our work so we're not all stuck here at the end of the day."
"Okay," the girls said, eagerly returning to their worksheets. Kestra stood back up and caught Laura's eye as she nodded her head toward the girls and smirked. When the students had finished their work they were all released for the day.
"Bye Katie. Bye Melanie. Have fun with your sandcastles," Kestra bid them as they left. The girls waved excitedly before running out of the tent. When all the children had left, Kestra turned back to the room. She and Maya cleaned up while Laura finished the lesson plans.
"You're still watching Iris today, right?" Maya asked. Kestra beamed.
"Yes, of course," she replied happily. Maya smiled.
"Thank you so much. It'll be so nice to have an evening to myself. I love her but she's a handful," she said.
"I get it," Kestra said with a laugh, "I'm happy to lend a hand. Iris and I will have a great time together. Won't we?" Kestra cooed as she picked up the girl. Maya came over and placed a kiss on the girl's forehead.
"See you later baby. Mama loves you," Maya cooed before turning back to Kestra, "thank you again. I'll see you tomorrow, Laura." Laura waved as Maya left. Kestra walked over to Laura with Isis on her hip.
"I'm gonna head home. It's okay with you if I have Isis there for the evening?" she asked.
"Of course," Laura said with a smile, "I'll be there shortly. I just have to finish up here."
"See ya," Kestra said as she left the tent. Kestra walked down the street, hugging Isis tightly to her chest. She made it back to the tent and sat with Iris cradled in her arms. Kestra rocked the baby to sleep and thought of her parents. She thought of the last time she had seen her father. It was the day she'd fallen through the wormhole. She'd gone to visit him at Starfleet headquarters. Her parents had come for the funeral of Admiral Picard. Deanna had left soon after for a ceremony on Betazed, but Will had stayed a few extra weeks with Kestra. They'd gone camping in Alaska where Will's father used to take him. It had been a wonderful experience, and she and her father had never been closer. He opened up about his past and his own childhood. She wondered when he would have found her disappearance. She'd piloted the shuttle that brought him back to the freighter he would be taking back to Nepenthe. He might not have known about her disappearance for weeks. The shuttle flight had taken a day and a half. Perhaps they hadn't noticed she was missing for months. Will had probably made it home and gone about his business as usual. Maybe they never found the wormhole. She just disappeared without a trace, and they had no way of knowing how or why. She looked down at the baby in her arms and felt a surge of empathy for her parents. They spent their whole lives trying to protect her. After Thad, they'd practically closed themselves off from the world. They'd been reluctant when she'd asked to study on Earth. She'd just received her first assignment to travel to an undeveloped planet to participate in a duckblind mission. She wondered who'd taken her place. There were only four students chosen for the project. She hadn't let herself fall into the habit of thinking about home for a while. Ever since they'd been on New Caprica she'd had friends and enough to do to keep her busy. But now, holding this child, she thought about all the things she'd miss back home. She wouldn't get to finish school, or make a career. She'd had an anthropology professor that had offered her an internship after her schooling was complete. She could have had a career, started a family, lived a full life. Now she was starting over and there were so many unknowns. How could she think about things like children and settling down. Even thought she'd made friends and had a job of sorts, she knew she didn't belong here. Most people didn't even know what she was, and the ones who did wanted to kill her for it, excluding Lee and Laura of course. Kestra had always assumed a family would be a part of her future. She'd grown up so close to her parents that it seemed the natural next step for her to take. She'd never put any thought into the decision to have a family until the choice had been taken away from her. When she'd been stranded alone on Kobol, she realized how much she wanted to settle down and have children. It may have been a side effect of the inherent loneliness of being cut off from civilization, but Kestra longed for a family like she had growing up. She wanted a husband to love and children to nurture until they're grown and ready to create paths of their own. These longings inevitably led her to thoughts of her own mother and the emptiness the loss of Thad and now Kestra must have created in her life. This time, however, she thought of Lee. Unintentionally, her thoughts turned towards him and what her children would look like if he was their father. She was shocked by her own train of thought but didn't stop the thoughts. She imagined building a home with Lee out in the mountains on New Caprica. She imagined kids running around the forest and teaching them to hunt like her father taught her. They were wonderful thoughts. The happiest she'd had in a while. Kestra smiled down at Iris and imagined what it would be like to hold her own children. When Laura returned from the school she found Kestra singing softly to the baby whose eyes were dropping closed slowly. When she was confident Iris was asleep, Laura approached Kestra.
"That was beautiful," she whispered as she ran a hand over the sleeping child's head.
"It's an old earth lullaby," Kestra said fondly as she watched Iris.
"Did your mother sing it to you?" Laura asked. Kestra chuckled softly.
"Actually no," she said with a smile, "my father did. My mother wasn't much of a singer, but my dad… every bone in his body was musical. He even taught me to play his trombone when I was little." Laura smiled as Kestra fell back into memories of her home and her father. There was something wonderful about the fondness with which Kestra remembered her home. It made Laura feel as if she'd experienced the same things. She wondered briefly if it was an effect of Kestra unconsciously projecting her emotions, but she didn't have the heart to interrupt what were clearly good memories. Laura walked away softly, and left Kestra with her memories. When she returned only a few minutes later, she found that both Iris and Kestra were fast asleep. With a slight chuckle, she grabbed a book and sat opposite them as she waited for Maya to come back for Iris.
