Even safely in her cell, Juliette felt nervous showing T'Mar the badge. It wasn't just how the Loresinger had said it, but the loathing he had felt. Tal Shiar.

T'Mar cupped the badge in her hand. "Fascinating. And you found it at Danek's home?"

"I did. But I am not sure whose it was. I thought it was just a piece of junk that someone had thrown away."

"A logical assumption; It is quite damaged like it was in a fire." T'Mar looked up at Juliette's face and her frown deepened. "Your eyes are all red. You said you would tell me if you were in pain."

"It only really hurt toward the end."

"We should tell Master Surot about the Klingons. Fighting on the Plain of Blood is forbidden. They will kill him."

"I know. But telling would let Master Surot know we were on the summit. He is at peace with his death. I have felt it - and yet I have never felt anything like it." She placed two fingertips on T'Mar's forehead.

T'Mar closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and nodded silently. "Oh, I do see. And -" T'Mar looked down to her hand.

"What?"

"The badge is vibrating. Very lightly, but I can feel it."

She placed the badge in Juliette's palm. The hum was faint but noticeable. Pulse. Pulse. Over T'Mar's shoulder, the console blinked. "Look."

T'Mar pressed some buttons on the console and whispered commands. "For some reason being close to the console made it react somehow." Characters flowed across the console as an array of buttons appeared. Juliette and T'Mar studied the console in silence.

"I have never seen commands like these," T'Mar said.

Juliette set the badge on the console. "It's just like when we started with the holo-projector. I'll get my notes."

They pried meaning from the symbols on the console long after evening chimes. Juliette felt her attention wavering from fatigue. They still didn't know how the pin was drawing power from the console, but without it, it wouldn't function - its ability to store power was listed among the multiple rows of red script providing a litany of malfunctions and damage.

"The console keeps trying to access something on the - badge," T'Mar said, "It is actually some kind of communicator and more. See how it has integrated into a monastery network?"

"Network? There are others?"

"I cannot tell. The network is encrypted - but there are two separate routines trying to break the code. One-one has been running for almost two months."

Juliette frowned. "So this network has been around for two months?"

"At least."

"I have seen no other badges like this, have you?"

"I have never seen any like this one. But maybe the others don't look like this."

"I'll move my sleeping mat and hide it underneath. Maybe all it needs is more power. We can check it again after the morning classes. I'm sorry I won't be able to help with the garden tomorrow. Maybe we can work on that instead of the holo-projector."

"I suppose it can wait one day, your father's staff needs to examine the blueprints anyway. Are you going out again in the morning?"

"I have to."

T'Mar arched a brow with a long stare but said nothing more as she left.

#

In the earliest of the morning, she walked through a desert of blue shadows, navigating mostly by what she could sense, like the poisonous Coil-lizard that sulked under a boulder. A few meters away, A small troop of kli'mari hauled away the corpse of a wri'ked.

She stood at the edge of a stand of anemic Gespar and closed her eyes, conjuring the storm that chased her to the monastery from memory - the wind, the heat, the lightning. Especially the lightning - the ripple of its power across her arms and scalp, the shiver at the back of her neck. She let the ripple flow down her body, through her spine and legs down into the ground through the soles of her feet. It's storming. Can you feel it?

They could, and did, the prickle rippling over them, giving the ur-worms life and energy to burrow upward from their feast of gespar root to the surface. But the storm wasn't there, just clear air and confusion.

As the ur-worms mulled on the surface, Juliette felt a presence with which she had grown familiar. Each time, she'd remained a little longer before running. This time, she went to the other side of the copse and watched the sehlat approach.

Her skin wasn't as taught against the ribs - The coarse fur on her haunch had almost fully regrown, and she no longer limped, not even a stitch.

Danek had been wrong about wasted zattre. When she had returned to dig up more the kli'mari stockpile had been transformed into a rocky crater. She had felt bad for the kli'mari, but they had other mounds, hidden among the rocks and gespar. She always made sure to leave some.

The sehlat enjoyed ur-worms far more than zattre and lapped them up. Each one made a wet popping sound in her mouth. From beneath the boulder, the coriz hissed. She shouldered the boulder aside. The exposed lizard hissed and flared. She snapped it up, ridges and all.

Juliette edged closer, until she could feel the rumble of its low growl in her skin. The sehlat continued to stare out at the desert as she chew on the lizard, but Juliette felt her attention shift to curiosity, edged with an excited caution that so easily mixed with her own.

Juliette had planned on retreating long before the Ur-worms were gone, but the ground was bare. Even the lizard had been swallowed. The sehlat's head was as large as Juliette's torso, and her investigative sniffing at Juliette blasted her with gusts of humid air.

Juliette locked her gaze on the Sehlat's eyes as it towered over her. The sun crested over the horizon, painting the desert in gold. In the sehlat's shadow, Juliette reached.

The air was cool, and she watched the splatter of liquid red in the sink. There was pounding. P'Nem?

"Juliette, is that you?"

She should apologize about the floor. Now the red soaked through the cloak and dripped in the sink. Drip. Drap. Drop.

P'Nem stood in the doorway of the convenience. She hid something behind her back before Juliette could focus on it. P'Nem knelt where Juliette leaned over the sink. Her touch felt hot against Juliette's cheek. She reached out for comfort but hit a wall that gave just a little, then gently pushed back. Her awareness drifted back to the sink. Drip.

"Your skin is cold. You are in shock, Juliette. What happened? Do not use your mind. Speak"

Juliette forced the words out. They echoed airily in the small room. "I don't know. She wasn't angry…"

P'Nem reached over the sink and gently pulled at the cloak strips wrapped around it. "Let me see."

The strips were soaked through and red as the torn flesh underneath. Juliette looked at what P'nem set on the table to examine her arm. It was a pistol. She's Tal Shiar. She should run, but nothing moved.

P'nem voice lost its usual flatness. "What? This is - your arm is - this is very serious. What- what do you remember. Juliette?" She followed Juliette's gaze to the pistol. "You could have been anyone. All I saw was blood on the floor, and you didn't answer. Juliette, must you focus."

"She was hungry." As she heard herself, Juliette thought her voice sounded airy and wistful. She rested her head against the sink. P'Nem pulled her up to lean against the wall.

"Who was hungry? What were you doing out?"

Juliette tried to process the words, trying to remember -

Snarling, hot breath at her neck.

She took Juliette's other hand and put it over the soaked fabric. "Squeeze and hold. I'll be right back."

Juliette looked away while P'nem worked, peeling away the section robe, soaked with blood. Juliette barely remembered tearing away a piece, sobbing, wrapping the mess - not for first aid, but because the ruin she wrapped didn't look like an arm anymore.

Look, I found a branch in the desert - no, its a wounded felit bird. I'll nurse it back to health and it will sing.

The wrapping made it go away, so she could avoid the cold realization that she'd really done it this time. This couldn't just be fixed, and she was in the desert - very alone.

But not alone. She was there, snarling, tossing her in the sand while Juliette staggered, cradling the ruins of her arm,

"I should have told Box-"

"Why would you tell your gift box you were injured?"

Juliette felt cold and other thoughts screamed for her to shut up, even as warmth spread from her neck downward She felt heavy and insubstantial at the same time.

"There-there was no one else to tell."

"You should have called me."

Juliette closed her eyes, but it didn't stop the spinning. When she opened them, P'nem was talking quickly with Lorot, and together, they took her to the hover. Juliette leaned against P'nem as the hover bounced and whined across the Sas-a-shar. The stars spun - she was too dizzy to reach for P'nem for calm, but felt the Vulcan's attention never leave her..

Under the bright lights of the infirmary, P'mera eye appeared huge and bloodshot through the scanning lens. She muttered about bone laceration and tendon repair as Juliette tried to push away a miasma of typically restrained thoughts. Who had Betazoid blood? These synthesizers were for Vulcans. Get the medical supplies from the summit facilities, there must be something for the Betazoid tourists. Infection? Everything is dirty. Was there any word from ShiKahr City?

Staggering in the desert, don't look, it's a wounded bird.

But she kept following. Herding, every stumble made her close, put her hot breath, those growls. Watching. Waiting for her to fall down and not get up. She couldn't focus, couldn't get a sense of the sehlat's mind. All she could do was stagger forward, sobbing. It will be over. I will die.

She jerked awake. P'nem sat next to the bio bed, her eyes closed as if meditating. Juliette had never seen dark lines under her eyes, her jaw clenched tight enough to pop. Her eyes slowly opened. Juliette wished she could pretend she was asleep, but it was too late. They studied each other quietly.

"Your injuries were very serious."

"I regret causing causing inconv-"

"This is not-," P'Nem said with a tone that surprised Juliette. P'Nem took a breath. "This is not about inconvenience. This is about finding appropriate blood-substitute from ShiKahr, and contacting your parents to consult with doctors who understand Betazoid trauma, and waiting when there was precious little time."

"But how-"

"We told them a Betazoid making the pilgrimage across the Plain of Blood had been attacked by an animal. We told them lies to cover for your lies to cover for Master Surot's lies to cover for more lies. I came to the desert to be done with lies, and yet, for a monastery of truth and logic, we seem to be in a garden of falsehood."

Juliette said nothing, mostly because her mouth was so dry. Her arm throbbed, and she finally dared to look.

Don't.

Her arm was encased in a midnight tablet from elbow to wrist. Inside was a misshapen shadow. Her hand hung limp out the end. She pinched a finger with her other hand. It felt warm, but she didn't feel the touch.

P'nem interrupted her examination. "Did you consider, Juliette Sri, that you could have died in the desert and no one would have been able to find you? If the Sehlat hadn't simply-"

"She wasn't hungry when I-"

"Juliette, enough. You were reckless-"

"She would have starved."

"This is not Betazed. On Vulcan, animals die in the desert. It is how nature works."

"It was not nature, it was our fault she was starving. She was injured and couldn't hunt."

"I shot it because it attacked us."

"She attacked us because we were in its territory when the storm came. She hunts during the storms." Juliette couldn't keep the anger out of her voice.

"We were out in the storm because I promised your mother-"

"My mother would have let you break that promise if it meant you didn't kill anything."

"That-" P'Nem's shoulders slumped. "Is most likely true."

Juliette wanted to push a retort but stopped. Compassion. "You didn't know. I didn't know. I was just trying to make it right."

P'Nem pinched the bridge of her nose. "How long have you been feeding the sehlat?"

Juliette stared downrange to her feet, fighting to keep her anger from becoming action. "Ever since the sandstorm when we went out to get zattre."

"Juliette, look at me."

She really didn't want to cry. She was too tired to yell. She could only look at P'Nem and stare. P'Nem's looked just as weary.

"You could have been killed, and no one would have found you. Juliette, have you considered how you parents would feel if you disappeared on Vulcan and they never even found your body?"

"I just-"

"Did you think about how Lorot and I would have had to try and find you, and consider all the possibilities of what could have happened to you, and accept with growing certainty that you were dead? Have you ever spent time considering all the ways someone could be dead, and gone, and yet never know which one of those possibilities are, in fact, reality?"

Juliette swallowed and shook her head.

"Count yourself fortunate that you have never had to, and that Danek and T'Mar are, by some incredible luck, fortunate still."

Juliette looked down, this time her cheeks burning. "I-" She tried to imagine. Mother, Papa, Lara, Kanara. Any one of them gone - how frantic she would feel, reaching for them, not finding their presence and yet, never knowing what happened. She'd just be gone. "I would not want you to have to consider that."

"I should hope not. In any event, you are not to feed the sehlat again."

"But-"

"But nothing. The storms are returning, and she should have healed by now. She will find her own food. Sehlat are by far the most intelligent predators on the planet."

Aside from Vulcans. Juliette thought.

"You will be quite tired for the next week or so. The regeneration pack focuses almost all your energy on healing. If you wish, you may convalesce with Lorot and me. I am sure P'Mera will be grateful for the assistance."

Juliette nodded. Grateful to have one less Betazoid in her infirmary was more like it. "I would like that."

"This is not some kind of holiday. You are expected to meditate, first and foremost, and as you get stronger, you will catch up on your classes."

Juliette nodded as graciously as she could. "Of course, and I will do my utmost not to be a bother."

P'Nem sighed softly as if it was already too late and she was reconsidering the offer. But only for a moment, and then her face was her usual mask.

There was no avoiding Master Surot. P'Mera seemed almost pleased to announce his arrival. He just sat and looked at her while P'mera arranged equipment and restocked shelves.

"The arm?" Surot asked, not toward Juliette.

"Had Betazed not been able to provide a reasonable bio-synthesis, we would have had to amputate," P'Mera said with a matter-of-fact tone.

"And what would this amputation have entailed?" Surot asked.

"Most likely separation at the elbow, unless the infection spread, then at the shoulder," P'Mera replied with a clinical air that made Juliette woozy.

"They are doing remarkable work with prosthetics these days," Surot said dryly. "P'Mera, I would have a word with Novice Sri alone."

If Surot was trying to scare her, it was working. "Master Surot, I do regret-"

"Getting injured? Or getting caught."

"Both?"

"I would have thought exposure to the Kolinahr Masters would have imparted some wisdom."

"I-"

"T'Mar told T'Sana how you left after you did not return for the mid-day meal. Your foolishness has provided a poor example for those that hold you in regard, and only gives more reason to those who feel you should not be here.

"I understand you are staying with Danek's family while you recover. When you return, T'Sana will escort you to and from your room and classes. She has been instructed to check on your location every evening and every morning. Seeing you. Not just checking her console, which I would remove your access from if your parents were not so adamant that such remains. I cannot fathom why it is so important, but if you abuse this privilege again, the consequences to yourself or anyone else are on you and your permissive family, Juliette Sri."

Master Surot didn't even wait for Juliette to nod before he rose and left, the audience concluded.

"What about your lies?" Juliette blurted, and immediately wished she hadn't.

Surot turned about, stone-faced. "What lies?"

Juliette tried to imagine walls to block him, throw up layers of static. She wasn't even sure how to block someone out of her mind. She wasn't even sure she could. Or that she'd know if he was reading her. She looked down at her arm. "I'm just here because you're supposed to keep the alien here - that I'm useful."

Surot was silent for a long while. "That is someone else's plan for you."

"Who?"

"I cannot say, and it does not matter."

Juliette looked up despite her cautious. "Doesn't matter? I'm here because someone thinks I'd be important-"

"You are here for many reasons, Juliette Sri, and of all those reasons, I have been the clearest about mine - I am convinced we can help you, and we have proven it so. People will always want you to serve their purposes, but you must serve your own."

Juliette clenched her jaw in the silence until she was too tired to do so. When she looked up, Surot was gone.

The bio-bed folded into a chair-like shape, one that could be wheeled down the hallway and with some effort into the holo-projection chamber.

Please let there be a malfunction. I'm too tired to be yelled at again.

Mother was neither furious nor panicked. She was calm as she and Lorot examined her arm. Very calm. That meant things were extremely bad. There were little things, too. Papa wasn't smiling. At. All. Everyone's eyes had dark circles. Kanara's long braid had snarls, and even Lara didn't have a sarcastic remark but sat pale and tense as she glared from the periphery with raw red eyes.

"Daughter," Mother's voice trembled just a little. "relate what happened, as you remember."

Juliette did as best she could but left out being stalked as she fled back to the house. It seemed so much like a dream that she wasn't sure it had happened, and there was enough stress already.

House Sri confirmed what the Vulcans had said. Yes, they had placed an emergency call for medical assistance to both Betazed. Yes, a hasty story had been concocted to get supplies from ShiKahr City. The entire family had probably been awake since, and now they were here, she didn't want them to go, but the effort made her limp and mumbly. Her mother's lips on her forehead felt cold and distant as if there were hundreds of light years between them.

Because there was.

"Did you tell your parents you would be staying with us?" Lorot asked Juliette as he helped her sit in the back of the hover.

"Yes, I did," Juliette said.

"And they were comfortable with the fact you would not be contacting them for over a week?"

Juliette took a deep breath, pulling the words from memory. "Yes, Matron said she expects to see her daughter hale and whole in a week and a half…" she trailed off at the last.

"And?" P'Nem asked.

"And woe to any Vulcan fortress that is not good on its promise."

P'Nem and Lorot exchanged a look.

Juliette dozed on the way back to the house. Voices mixed with the rumble of the hover.

The Betazoids grow weary of this.

Can you blame them, Mine Husband? This has been ill-wrought from the start.