Two turns and a stretch of hallway later, Chakotay rings the chime on one of a dozen identical doors. Not his quarters then. A Bajoran woman in her twenties opens the door. I stare at her. Except for the noseridges that mark her as Bajoran, she looks downright Midwestern with her blond hair and high cheekbones. If it wasn't for the characteristic earring, she could have been born in the farmhouse next to ours.

'Kate, this is Mora Naprem, one of our nurses and probably the closest thing we have to a clothing store.' The last part is said with so much humour that I don't know how to interpret it. 'Mora, this is Kate, we picked her up at the last stop,' Chakotay said. His oblique reference to the Cardassian prison surprises me. He makes it sound like I got aboard a routine transport at one of its designated stops! I only half-listen as he asks Mora if she has a change of clothes for me. Mora turns to me, appraising me with a look remarkably similar to Phoebe's when I ask her opinion on my outfit. It's a bit disconcerting and I have to consciously stop myself from fidgeting nervously.

'I might have something,' she finally says, still looking at me as if I'm a fascinating science query instead of a person. 'You sit down,' she orders Chakotay, waving vaguely in the direction of a couch. 'We'll be back. Come on!' she says to me, flashing me a bright smile.

She grabs my hand and drags me along through the narrow causeway that she stuffed with a couch and a non-descript cupboard, into a slightly wider but oddly shaped room of about seven square meters. She places a tasteful screen between us and the entrance, cutting off Chakotay's line of sight.

There's a bed here and, awkwardly wrenched in between the bed and the wall, an old closet. Due to its precarious situation, one of the closet doors can't open. The other door doesn't look like it can close, showing different piles of garments inside, some looking ready to topple over any second.

'I don't think you'd fit into any of my clothes, but I might have something in here that'll work for you…,' Mora says, her voice slightly muffled as she starts sifting through the collection of clothes. I idly wonder where she got it all. I can't imagine that the Maquis make regular stops for something as trivial as shopping. Mora is pulling out something shockingly pink. I wince. I'm very sure that's the kind of colour that would send Phoebe into a thirty-minute rant on how it clashes with my hair. Mora holds it in front of me, but thankfully immediately recognized that it's far too large, and throws it back haphazardly into the closet. Quite a few pieces are unceremoniously discarded in this manner, without me having to utter as much as a single word, but eventually Mora finds something she deems suitable. It looks like a dress, but I don't have a chance to take a good look at it before she hands the small bundle over to me and points me to the shower.

It must be the smallest bathroom I've ever seen. There's not even a sonic shower, only an old-fashioned water one. Luckily, I've always been partial to the real water variety when it comes to bathing. It's a bit of a hassle with my wrist but it's simply wonderful to be able to clean up. I take a few minutes more than is strictly necessary before drying off and pulling on the outfit Mora picked for me. It's a simple blue dress. If I understood her muttering correctly, it used to belong to Mora's sister, which explains why it's not several sizes too big for me. It's perfect. The fit is good and aside from the colour the dress couldn't be more dissimilar from my uniform if it tried. Fingering the soft material, I can almost pretend that the past few days were a bad dream. This could be a costume for a holodeck program. I could be going dancing in 22nd century Spain or –

I abruptly cut off the thought. What's the point in pretending? I'm on a Maquis ship and I need to keep my act together. I step out of the bathroom and back into Mora's room. She's lounging on the bed, still browsing through her clothes. When she notices my entrance, she's silent for a moment, looking me up and down with a haunted look in her eyes. I decide I don't want to know what happened to the sister who used to own this dress. A moment later she perks up, complimenting me and smiling brightly as if to drive away her momentary sadness. I undergo her fluttering with more grace than I ever showed Phoebe. She's still happily chatting away when she pulls away the screen between the bed and the couch. Chakotay is lying on the too-small seat, sleeping peacefully. Mora giggles and pulls me past him out the door. As the door hisses closed behind us, I try to protest.

'But he was going to show me to sickbay!'

Mora just laughed. 'He must be exhausted, the poor guy, he probably hasn't slept since yesterday morning! Let him sleep. Besides, I can show you to sickbay. I have to be there soon anyway. But how about we get some breakfast first?'

Until this moment, food was the last thing on my mind. But now that she mentions it, I realise I'm absolutely starving. When did I last eat? I don't even remember. Probably soon after our shuttle left the Al-Batani what feels like a lifetime ago.

I gladly follow Mora, casually listening to her easy chatter as I look around and try to memorise everything I see. If I want to get out of here, knowing how to get around is a good way to start. We pass quite a few people in the small corridors, mostly humans. They greet Mora perfunctorily and give me no more than a passing glance as they walk past, either too busy or too tired to linger. That suits me just fine. The less attention I draw the better.

It doesn't take us long to reach a sort of mess hall. It's a rather crowded room, with ramshackle tables and chairs crammed in everywhere. About a third of the tables is occupied. A series of viewports on the far wall shows that we've reached the exterior of the ship. I've spend enough time on older starships with my father to know that the back wall of Mora's room was also on an outer wall. I recognized the chill emanating from it, despite the isolation. We must have crossed straight through the ship to the other side, which suggests that the ship is even smaller than it looked from the outside.

There's a replicator to my right, a few feet from the door, but Mora walks right past it to the corner. When I follow her, I realise why. The replicator is broken. Instead, she leads me to a large pot on a small simmering fire. She scoops out a large helping of something unidentifiable, ladling it into a bowl and hands it to me before getting some more for herself. I examine the contents warily. It's a great brown blob that looks as if it's been digested before, with bits of alarmingly bright red and blue sprinkled haphazardly around. Even Starfleet ration bars seem appetising in comparison and I wonder if I'm really that hungry. My stomach reminds me loudly that I most certainly am. I groan half-heartedly, catching Mora's smile out of the corner of my eye.

'Come on,' she says', let's find a table. And it's not as bad as it looks.'

I give her a pleading look. 'I don't suppose there's any coffee?' I hazard, but follow her dutifully anyway. Mora doesn't even dignify my question with an answer, but simply plunks down in a chair that seems barely up to her weight. I follow suit more resigned. Mora hands me a spoon, grinning at me encouragingly if a bit mischievously. I sigh and dig in. And almost gag.

In truth, the stuff isn't as terrible as it looks, though the difference is marginal at best. A fact of which Mora, judging by her wicked grin, is very well aware. I give her a dark look.

'Sorry,' she says, rather too cheerfully, and shrugs, 'Bolian cook.'

I give her another skunk eye, but prepare to dig in anyway. Before I can, however, the bowl is neatly grabbed from between my fingers. 'If you don't like it, you don't have to eat it.' Someone growls nastily. I look up to find a tall woman, human by the looks of it, standing right next to us. Her colouring is about similar to Chakotay's, but the foul scowl on her face stops any further similarities. She's sizing me up and I wonder if she's teasing or testing me. Either way, I won't back down to her and stare right back. Her smile grows.

Mora disturbs our silent staring contest. 'Oh lay off her, Sahreen,' she says in an almost bored tone, not even looking up from her own bowl. 'She's not here to horn in on your territory, just to get something to eat. I don't think the Cardassians fed her properly.' The last is said with a significant glance at the dark-haired woman. The message apparently hits home, because Sahreen straightens up and dumps my bowl callously back on the table. 'Enjoy the sludge,' she snipes with a malicious grin before skulking off. Mora keeps on eating, unperturbed, as soon as her back is turned.

'Don't mind Sahreen,' she says, 'she's got more anger than she knows what to do with, but she's basically harmless.'

I follow her lead and dig up another spoonful. 'What did you mean by her territory?' I ask, before taking the bite.

Mora shrugs. 'Nothing. That's the problem.' After those mysterious words, she runs her spoon once more over the almost completely clean bottom of her bowl and, when that fails to yield any more sludge, drops the spoon and gets up. I hurriedly shovel the last of my own goop in my mouth and follow suit. We quickly rinse out the bowls and spoons before putting them back next to the still bubbling pot.

'Now that you're all cleaned and fed, ready for sickbay?'

The thought alone makes me smile. 'Lead the way!'