Graceful, ten-legged creatures blinking patterns at each other in neon blues and purples grazed off trees with sticky red leaves in the distance. T'Pren imagined she was one of them, stepping delicately over shrubs and streams of salt water and communicating with whistles she and her father could hear, but that her dad's human ears could not.
"Pren," murmured her father, Muroc, knowingly, calling her back to attention. "T'Pren. You must sit still for me."
She smiled sheepishly at the handsome, reedy Vulcan standing a few feet away, paints carefully mixed in the palette in front of him while one hand was poised with a brush above a canvas. She couldn't see what he painted, but she knew it was supposed to be her.
"I'm sorry, Father. I'll be still like a..." T'Pren bit her bottom lip and searched the empty inbetween spaces of the air in search of the perfect simile. "I'll be so Vulcan for you, you'll see."
For reasons Pren was too young to understand, the tiny shift of Muroc's lips that was his smile was tinged with both fondness and something else...something that hurt.
"Is that not right?" she wondered uncertainly, trying -- and only partially succeeding -- not to make too much facial expression so that Muroc might be proud of her.
After a moment's contemplation, he inclined his head lovingly at the little auburn-haired girl sitting on a teal stone in a vast yellow meadow. "My lively girl, you may be whatever you choose to be. Vulcan, human, or tribble, you will always be my little dream."
A smile bloomed brightly across her pale cheeks and her green eyes -- human eyes -- caught the light from the two suns climbing slowly through the sky.
Something resolute and defiant moved through Muroc. "Stay just as you are," he instructed her. "You will tell me when your cheeks begin to ache." He put brush to canvas and fell to work with renewed inspiration.
"Who is this--" The girl stopped herself and corrected dutifully, "For whom is this painting, Father?"
Looking up only to double-check his daughter's features, Muroc replied, "This is for your Vulcan grandparents."
"Won't they dislike it if I smile?" T'Pren wondered earnestly.
This time Muroc met her gaze and held it with the depth of one Vulcan heart to another. "That would be impossible." His lips pulled up just a little one more time. "Now be still, child, or we will never finish before Daddy returns."
She was still for a while, but a question burrowed through her patience until she could no longer hold it in: "Father, I would like to ask one more question please if I may."
"You may always ask questions, T'Pren. That is how we learn."
"When will I meet my Vulcan grandparents?" she asked.
"Girl."
Muroc hid his face from his daughter behind the painting and was a long time in answering. When he did, it was barely audible: "I do not know. One day."
"Girl!" A sharp pinch on her arm pulled T'Pren from her dreams. Her eyes flew open and she sat straight up in her cot to find herself staring at one of her Cardassian guards. This was not one of the kind ones, but he was indifferent, and that was better than the pure hatred she experienced from some of the others.
Muroc's voice was still in her ears, the suns' warmth on her too-pale skin. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt natural light or breathed fresh air.
"T'Pren," she offered softly to her captor. "My name is T'Pren Inabnet."
The Cardassian rolled his eyes and pulled her out of bed by her arm. He'd heard as much every time he addressed her for the past three years. These days she said it more out of habit than actual hope.
"You are what we say you are. Now move."
And the girl moved.
Home 
