"On the hillside."

Posted on Thu Jan 25th, 2018 @ 8:34am by

5,363 words; about a 27 minute read

Mission: Meanwhile...
Location: Bajor

-Start-

{Bajor, Jolana province}

The quaint cottage home smelled of old thatch, leather, well used blankets; the same nostalgia inducing odors that waxed soporific recollections in sunlit plumes of dust. Now it also smelled of game and stewed vegetables, of hearth and home. Vicente spooned the mix in large gulps, his adopted kin dining with him at a large table.

There were over two dozen people here, many of them still without names, but their personalities and identities were well established. Cousins, Siblings, lifelong friends all. They were larger than life, large in nature, just big warm happy people. Lui had always had that affect to her, now he saw where it came from. He chewed a delicious piece of real meat and the flavors forced his eyes to close in recognition.

"Poor boy, what are they feeding you!?" Vicente heard this every few minutes, it was his cue to say how full he was only to have more stew given to him.

In truth, since his radiation sickness and treatment he had not been able to hold down much food. Lui's grandmother made delicious meals and despite her extreme age, was active and spry. Even the worst tasting medicinal therapies couldn't hold his appetite back from her table. Mouthful after mouthful of the savory salt and roasted meat, using a steel spoon likely used for a century by children of this house. He also noticed the small bowl, the higher chair and knew he was a surrogate sibling for this family. Realizing it rationally did nothing to diminish it, it was nice for once.

Plus, he didn't mind being treated like the little brother, so long as the stew kept coming.

He answered Grand Azi's question between mouthfuls, steam escaping on his breath.
"Mmremp....Replicated rations, sugary snacks, dehydrated meats mostly. Lui always had a case of Jumja on board so if my sweet tooth got too bad-"

Azi Lui Sacco, Grandmother of Lui Kania spoke in powerful tones right over Vicente, as the elderly do so often with children. She was hard to read, if actually angry or just ribbing her daughter, Lui's mother.
"...Jera, you are the one taught your daughter to be a glutton. She still turned out a hero, despite the coddling and sweets, that's just her strength of character shining through-

Jera Kania was no pushover, "Oh ma, nobody cares, Lui always loved her sweets. Just because you had to live during the Occupation don't make us. Vicente, we will send you home with more Jumja than you can eat in a year I make it for all of my children."

There was a moment where the family within earshot heard her say it, and all individually looked at him with a smile or nod. As if asking for objections and hearing none. The lull passed as the children charged through underfoot running after what Vicente hoped was a furry and cute pet.

A close look around did reveal the sticky wooden debris all over, the kids here lived a blessed existence, never knowing he horrors of previous generations and deprivations. This very Ranch had hosted a successful operation even during the Occupation. The Bajorans who lived in the area had relied on the Sacco Plantation to keep some semblance of normalcy. The Cardassians used them as propaganda for collaboration, but to see it now, there was peace.

Vicente was smiling widely, he was too close to crying again to follow up on her statement about being one of her children, so he simply replied,
"Challenge accepted, I'll be back before a year to get more."

Time had healed some of the hurt, and family had let him feel the pain shared and the burden of it lessened. They had toasted, they had cheered, they had all wept. Three long days, as customs dictated, for family to come and go and gather for a time. Few stayed the full three days, but Vicente did. Now it was his last night, her funeral was in the morning and then he had to get back. Though he pined for the return to normalcy he could only guess what was happening at the Starbase he left behind for this mission.

Vicente had traveled in silence for two days to Bajor, with her casket in cabin with him. As much as he had wanted to think it would be a time filled with poetic reflection or solemn reflection, he was instead brought to realize how pointless he found it all. Struggle, effort, the cost of success, what was the point when death was so final. She was laying right there but would never again move, his friend... dead. He just couldn't bring himself to load her in the cargo hold, it felt wrong. Later on, he would remember Lui telling him that she hated how bodies were treated like waste. That if she "went out" she wanted dignity in her final repose.

He had imagined riding next to her and talking to her spirit for closure, but instead he felt an awkward guilt. There was almost a resentment building to the casket she was in. He lacked the emotional depth and wished he could have just left her in the hold with the freight and mail. He managed a few statements of some worth, a few more that weren't. He cried a lot too.

Bajor was gorgeous and invited him graciously, escorting him to the site from orbit. When he landed on the family farm they all knew sadness had come, but they also knew what the meant and why and it mattered somehow. Lui had told them all about their adventures, at least as much as she could without indicting herself or impugning anyone with a burden of doubt. They had lived vicariously through heist and folly, worried over long silences. Now at rest, Vicente brought her share, the payout of her lifes work for the family.

He had not said much over all, preferring to observe the large and boisterous family clan ease one another's loss. His own family was estranged, he was an apostate traitor to his lineage so he said good bye forever to them many years ago. He had forgotten the feeling of acceptance, of home. He wished he could have it with his own but those choices were made, never to be taken back. He had felt it to Lui, and had great fondness for Quinton and Kas, but home was far away, always.

His throat clutched, as emotions held his hunger again. He felt the burning and overflowing in the eyes sensation of crying, and he didn't stop to check them. Lui was his closest friend, a sister and role model he now had to replace. And the fact he never could was permanent, gnawing. A reminder his time would come soon, that he yelled for her in the darkness but also for himself, to feel alive where she could no longer. He breathed because she couldn't and was grateful to experience it.

A cheery voice and voluptuous bosom suddenly entered his stream of consciousness. She hugged him tightly and for a moment all that mattered was the hug never end. One of Lui's sisters, Arlaha, cooed in his ear the way young women do. It disarmed him right away.

"Heyyy, save those for later." Her eyes batted unintentionally, the subtle cues occuring to her to cheer him up still mysterious to her.

Vicente chuckled, "Yeah when they bury her I'll likely need them. Thanks." He held her hand and looked at her letting the moment draw too long, he stammered but she gave him an out,

"Have you seen the whole place yet, the stables? Lui's Pako had a foal last year." She was going to invite him to go riding, that would surely cheer him up, not realizing she was a vision of beauty to the boy.

"Umm, no. I did want to go see the Quarry though, She said that quarry was her playground.

Arlaha looked at him oddly, "I don't think so Vicente, maybe not this trip okay?"

Vicente whispered to himself mostly. "Lui said to bury her on the hillside facing the quarry."

"...I don't know why she would say that. We want to bury her on the overlook, it is a stunning view..." She was upset over something, Vicente knew he had said something to upset her, ..." and we will have enough tears and flowers... ok?"

She looked at him with tears in her own eyes, opalescent badges of pride and loss, an alchemy of memory and guilt producing bucolic sadness.

"So I guess that's what she wanted... she just said I spent all my time as a kid in the Quarry... I assumed..."

"What now?" Her face took on a curious and hurt expression.

Vicente looked at her with intent, "She had moment towards the end where she could speak and we... she mentioned, well she mentioned lots of random things but I heard her say she wanted the hillside of bluebell flowers where she would run to the quarry as a kid. Said she left her earrings there as a memory in the earth."

Arlaha stared at him, through him. She didn't know what to say, but she did not like what she just heard. "That doesn't make sense Vicente." It looked like a half dozen other things flashed through her thoughts but she stood and made an awkward farewell. He watched her go, looking disturbed the whole way.

He had lost his appetite with her sudden departure. What did he say to make her leave?

***

Vicente dozed, the steady ebb of misery coupled with a heavy meal twice as large as he had ever eaten pushing him to a deep slumber before long. He had researched what he could understand about Lui's request. Nothing much was helpful, but her reference to a memory in the earth was a poem dedicated to a mass grave at Gallitep after the Occupation ended. He dreamed of blue bell flowers, and of Bajor.

He had not seen the farm in its entirety, there had been so much going on, but he knew he had to go. Lui was there.

Vicente awoke, the dreams cruel gift lingering, making him feel the pining for his departed friend. A vice on his heart kept him from breathing for a moment, and it also stilled his mind to consider.

It took a moment to rest and recover from the dream, but the notion of Lui immersed in those bluebell flowers…

The house stirred and he awoke to Jera and Azi awake in the Kitchen preparing the morning meal. They discussed in low tones the plans for the burial, and the location.

“Can we see the fields overlooking the quarry? Lui mentioned these flowers and her old-” Vicente asked, but he stopped at her sharp glance.

Azi, the oldest among them with eyes who had seen the worst of days, spoke sharply, far more so than she intended to cut his question short. She and Jera were only making tea, but Jera turned pale at the question.

“We do not go to the quarry Vicente. Lui would not have mentioned it kindly I think.” The way she said his name made him flinch. It was the first time he realized a wolf may lurk underneath the quilted robes. Jera was clutching the Lita root, its shavings hanging in a pulpy mass unfinished on the zest blade.

He knew he had again made a hurtful statement. He wanted to ask and know more but was too afraid to speak lest he inflict further harm. A moment passed before he pleaded,
“Please, I don’t know why she asked, and I wouldn't mention it again, but she said she wanted it… She wanted the hillside overlooking the quarry, laying down in the blue bell flowers. I dont know why that is painful but it is what she said.”

He was bold, voice strong, but the slight waver at the end broke both of their hearts.

Jera began to openly weep, not with shuddering sobs but still remembrances in opalescent form. She spoke without tone or inflection,
“The quarry, was bombed during the occupation. Lui and several others did it to kill Glinn Ikat. Over a hundred Cardassians died, but many of us also died.”

Vicente wanted to push for more but stopped himself. He didn't dare upset them further.

Azi figured it out, she let out a slow breath in agony as the pieces tumbled in her mind. “Blue Bell Flowers. They grow despite the radiation. We buried all of our dead, and when everything else died, a patch of blue bell flowers arose. Lui’s body is irradiated. Just like they were. Oh by the prophets Jera, she knew she would kill the grass.”

Realization dawned, and Vicente found this knowledge heartbreaking. She would kill the soil wherever she was buried, but not that flower. That flower which thrived when all other withered, a solemn and proud remembrance of life and death, the eternal cycle between. A fitting thistled rose in allegory to her life well lived.

Vicente found his voice. “Can we go see?”

Azi looked to Jera who had also found a spark of composure. When Jera nodded, she set the pulp down, unused.

Azi seemed as though she was ready, in exactly what she was wearing. Jera pulled several overcoats and shawls over her shoulders to break the wind and chill of the morning. They gathered a few meager supplies for the short walk, comm, water, a blanket to sit on. Through it all not one word was exchanged.

Two kilometers, and the last stretch bore the evidence of shelling even a century later. Grass had returned, but not much else in the gravel and sand left behind. Once over the hill, Vicente could see the open plains which had to have once carried such majesty, now cruelly abrogated into a blasted hole, strip mined and left to collapse. Why would Lui want to look over this scene?

Jera stopped at the crest of the hill. Azi caught up with Vicente helping her along. They could see dozens of purple patches in a regular fashion cropped up in the grass. Graves. Each one a Bajoran lost to the mines, or to the explosions which claimed the mines and their captors.

Azi wasn’t out of breath, despite the walk, but she spoke in a breathless hush.

“Die free, or work to death.” It was the motto for the Jolana resistance cell. It wasn’t pretty but it was accurate. Germaine.

Jera made a small hand motion, a small prayer made to the prophets in memory of her losses.

“So, now you see. Why would she want this?” Jera asked plainly. This was clearly a site of great pain for her, but to Azi it made sense. Perhaps it took the benefit of age to use the wisdom pain brings, or perhaps the prophets answered her prayers and her questions.

“Many of them died from the fallout and contamination after the bomb. Lui never forgave herself. They died of radiation.”

Jera closed her eyes against the stinging emotional clarity. “Buried among those she felt responsible for, died of the same cause a century apart. The prophets are sometimes avaricious with their lessons. She knew all of this was to pass. Knew we would be standing here.”

Vicente felt a stir, something deeper at work.
“She said she played here though… this isnt something I see anyone playing in.”

Azi was remembering, she saw the rolling fields and bubbling brooks, remembered the youthful summers spent basking and cavorting.
“This wasn’t always such a bleak landscape. Before they blasted a mile deep into Bajor, this was a forest. Lui would have been very small, and infant when they first began carving it up.”

Jera was still confused, “Lui never went there. We told her what would happen if she was caught.”

Vicente let the tableau roll across his awareness without conscious thought. He tried to reconnect to the dream he had, of blue bells rising tall, and… something hidden. Lui herself maybe, or possibly some new realization of her past.

He saw it before they did, but they all saw it at the same time. A small grove of trees offset near the Quarry. Despite the fact there were no vermin or prey in the field, a hawk circled overhead. Jera knew the hawk should not be there, and Azi wondered what kept it there if not the Prophets. What was a hawk doing in a lifeless plain, where maybe a few dozen trees with underbrush dotted the hills?

Vicente found himself walking towards it, compelled by unknown prompts within him to see it with his eyes up close. Jera and Azi followed without comment. They all knew the surreal spirit walk they were on would end abruptly if they called to it or delayed its wishes.

Vicente walked with purpose, parting the wispy tall grass and leaving a wake.

Azi walked in ashes.
Jera slid past the graves dug fresh in her memories.

Morning sun began to creep over the horizon, putting a timeline to their twilight wander. The hill kept them shrouded for now, but soon, the dews and mists would give way to the bone dry heat and wind. This moment, magical on the morning of her burial, wouldn't last forever.

This spurred Vicente, who left the two ladies behind in a gentle pace which put him far in the lead after a few minutes. He passed a tree, the first one he got to see up close. Peeling bark and diseased heartwood had created a sickly affect, marking the trees march to inexorable failure. There was also metal in it, a piece jutting out. Vicente looked closer and gasped, “Madre dio.”

A chain was grown into the tree. The puffed and inflamed wood rising around it like an infection. People had once been chained to this tree. It was good then, that it wouldn’t live much longer he thought.

More steps into this hallowed cemetery and he found himself enthralled with an image, of a child playing in these woods. He tried to imagine them thick, with branches and foliage and animals scurrying underfoot, but he kept adding people in chains to this mental image. He couldn’t help it.

He realized he had stopped for some time when Azi spoke softly to him, to stir him from his nostalgia.
“These woods were once full of life. But I cannot imagine what Lui wanted to see here.”

Jera had turned to look at the hill they marched from, the trail still evident in the still morning. She was imagining Lui coming here, telling herself the story as it came to her.

She knew the rough and gruff Lui played of course, she could keep up with the boys in sports, and was smart as a whip. She ran, played sports and had adventures. When the Occupation came she had turned into a fierce warrior, her innocence consumed in the fires of resistance. She had never mentioned coming out to the Quarry to play. How could a child have kept such a secret?

Vicente noticed the mouth of a cave, a small dark hole, hardly visible under the passage of time with mud and branches obscuring the mouth. With delicacy he removed the branches, letting mud and water rush out. He was filthy by the time he was a foot deeper into it but he pressed on. Time was almost out, but it didnt matter, the sunlight could come, he was here!

Azi and Jera had also taken some of the branches from him and soon the path was clear. Jera, who would never stop being a mother, even now, called for Vicente to stop.
“I don't have my palm scanner, we don't know what's in there?!”

Vicente knew. At least he thought he did. One final effort got him and with a little help all of them across the blocked opening and into the cave itself.

They stood in a small space, the sun was creeping in, illuminating the small space. Vicente’s dream came to him. Like hiding was how he felt, like he was hiding, peering through the branches. When he turned around to face them he saw a flash of the bluebells on the hill. His dream returned all at once.

An image of eyes peering through the thicket, of people just on the other side of the wall, bad men who didn't know she was hiding! She snuck food and water to the slaves here, she “played” in these caves because the Cardassians did not know or care an extra starving Bajoran child was running around their workcamp.

Jera found something as well. Another moment from the still images inundating their collective conscious. She found little grooves etched into the rock. With a smile, Jera took a knee near them, peering down the valley of the groove following the line to outside the thicket, directly at the cave mouth.
“Lui was here… Oh prophets…”

With a grace to her trembling hand belying the tremor, she felt the groove, knew it was for her hobby rifle. There were little grooves just like this one all around their homestead. Lui liked to stabilize her long shots, when practicing she would often sight and trigger pull for hours. Wearing the ruts over time and constant practice they saw her as a child, then as a teenager, sighting her foes, learning the arts of war right under her mothers eye.

“She left us to fight in resistance, she burned her earring and cast her name aside to become this fighter for a terrorist cause. It sent her away from here. Even as a child when I thought to protect her, she trained for war.”

Jera had forbidden it, told Lui of the horrors the Cardassians visited on family of Resistance members. She told of the horrors of who had already been lost, thinking it would stir her feel afraid. It had only made her resolved, and she never stopped fighting. Even so young, unable to truly free those poor people she had found a way to help.

Vicente shook his head, his thoughts along the same lines. “No. She didnt train for war. She just didnt want to be coddled. She wanted to do something. She was always like that. She fed and watered them, hell the Cardies probably let her since it meant less work for them. And she grew up to be the same fighter as the little girl who ran water and food to these desperate people.”

Jera went through several emotions at once, in this place it felt as though no lies could be said and ultimately she knew to accept the truth as it was. She had never had control of or any input over how Lui turned out. The source of their animosity, their divided and angry nature had largely panned from Lui joining the resistance after so many of her kin had been enslaved.

“Die free, or work to death.” It had such a defiant and resigned combination, a unique bittersweet much like the Lita tea she preferred. It numbed the throat, eased its pain.

Lui had coordinated with the slaves here to assemble the bomb from volatile elements here in the camp. Containment breach in low orbit wiped the entire work camp and valley for miles. Only topography spared these caves, these sparse trees that only propped up memories of the terrible past.

Azi was smiling, thanking the prophets.
“My prophets have taught me still, even in this old age. I cannot imagine a better place for Lui to rest. I will call Uton, we will bring everyone here. Rest Jera, for you have reconciled with your daughter! Praise the wisdom of the prophets. Praise you dear boy.”

Her praises were equanimous. She was giddy, and elan erupted from every lilting note in the honorific hymns. She hugged Vicente, who stood in this holy place, and felt something stir in him he knew would evince sweeping changes in his life. She had taught him in this moment what it was to have people remember you, and how it felt when your own mother didn't even know you.

“She was happy with you, out there. She found love?”

Vicente smiled, Jera had no clue the men Lui had broken in her days. She wasn’t a conventional beauty by some standards but by the end of the first conversation it took firepower to get a man off the scent. Some things best for a mother to not hear though unless she asked.

“Yes, she lived surrounded by people who loved her and thanked her for being in their life. She walks with the prophets.”
Vicente expected the usual bile in his tongue after saying anything religious. Not here.

Jera surprised him though, “To hell with the Prophets. They watched Bajor burn, did nothing for us that we didn't do for ourselves. Lui didn't believe… it was probably because of me. When I lost Harik… Lui’s father…” Her voice trailed. She had held the homestead in a delicate peace, meeting quotas without resorting to the cruel and draconian slave ethic employed without restraint elsewhere.

Azi and her husband, Olun, they joined the first resistance cell they found. Years of guerilla tactics, and when they used the homestead for a base once, the Farm was found out. Lui’s home was lost. The Cardassians used a low yield torpedo from orbit to dispatch the cell, uncaring of side damage.

Except she came back, and returned the favor.

Vicente had taken Jera’s hand and the two walked deeper into the cave, hoping to see anything else. There wasn’t much surface to explore, the packed earth and clay moist in the gloomy musty recess. Jera was still trying to comprehend this whole new life she had not known about. She imagined her daughter bringing food, and over the years learning and befriending them. She might have been the only good thing these poor souls had.

“Vicente, like brother, like son. But I wonder if you have…” She paused, pain wracking her senses, new understanding and wisdom carving itself into the chasms of thought welling within. She continued with his rapt attention on her, “Are you with your mother as I was with Lui?”

A dozen years regressed in an instant and he felt the vertigo of time over take him. He had shut the door firmly on any rekindling with his mother. His father had left them against his will, victim to circumstance he was. He would rather talk about anything than his family, the pain and tragedy a constant companion.

Still, Jera asked, so he answered. “Yes. I last saw her on her birthday, but we didn't speak much. I just gave her a gift, and I didn't tell her it was a farewell gift.”

He stopped there. He always stopped there, right before the crushing emotional trauma clutched his heart. Jera gave a gentle, knowing nod.

“She thinks about you. It won’t matter what you said. I know. Once you are gone, she will think of you, and she misses you.”

“She spoke of you often when she cooked, or knit. I didn’t know it had been so long.”

“I would give my eyes, my life, my very breath to speak with her. You must go to your mother Vicente. For me. Please.”

A small wicker basket and quite a few perishable goods had once been stored here, the debris which remained long decayed past recognition or use. Trusting in the compulsion which had carried them all so far Vicente moved to brush it aside. Jera stopped him, her eyes seeing what his did not. Age was funny, though you saw less, what you took in mattered more. A glint in the light among matte surfaces, a brief photons moment and she saw them.

Under the rock, and dirt of ages, fallout ash and rain soaked clays a single jade stone gleamed. With reverence beyond her kin she delicately moved the piles of sticks, sifted the gravel and unearthed what was buried and forgotten. Lui’s treasure, her triumph, what they had all thought taken from them by locusts and fire was restored in grace.

Slaves weren’t allowed their earrings, were not allowed their birthstones for ritual and died unadorned. Atrocity coupled in heinous form to bigotry, but now before them was a tableau of willful defiance. Smuggled, improvised or jury rigged, the slaves wore whatever they could with pride. So long as it was junk metal, the Cardies cared less.

Stripped of dignity and worked nearly to death only to collaborate in a plan to kill their slaver captors but die in the progress. They had given her their dignity in the final moments, for safekeeping here. They looked her in the eye, and told her to run, and threw themselves into the line of fire. When she was far enough away, they also set off their warp core bomb, scorching the country side a mile in its aftermath.

In her hands, and scattered beneath their feet,

Earrings, hundreds of them.

***
The ceremony went off well, a lovely stretch of hill with constant sun and son a thick patch of Bluebill flowers for her. She looked over what was once a field of her childhood dreams and innocence, now as time and chance would have it, a cratered battlefield slowly returning to nature. Vicente wanted to say goodbye to everyone but time was getting critical, he would be left behind if he didn't leave soon.

She whispered to him, innocent in nature but a razors edge of emotional seduction just underneath. Arlaha hugged him, he let her hold for as long as she wanted. He held tightly, and felt he was okay being left behind if this was what he stayed for. She knew it wasn’t meant to be though, and released him to his adventures.

Gently, she said, “You need to come visit soon, I’ll message you. I know there aren’t many relays that far out but I hope you’ll get them.”

With bittersweet emotional colic, he finally let go at her subtle bequest. It was time. Golden skies of the post midday sun soared and the hour of his departure had arrived.

“We will come back this way. Once we’re back we can just talk like normal and in a few months… I think we can be back by this area maybe, I’ll ask, maybe take on a job…” His voice trailed, and the moment ended easily, without awkwardness or regret.

Bidding his farewells, Vicente left the home with a heavy heart, but feeling a strange happiness woven into it all. Like a salt with a caramel, and he found a wry smile wouldn't leave his face.
As he looked into the stars, the long journey back was when he found the romantic voyage he had imagined. Two long days now seemed hardly enough time for contemplation. His feet propped on the console, music playing under the star streaked canopy, Vicente said good-bye to his friend.

Reflection on Jera’s words brought his thoughts round back to him. Now that he had peace he knew she was right, and no matter their history he knew Jera was right. He opened a document on his padd, typing one word and erasing it over and again. There was no way to say hello to someone he had left behind. Finally a word fell on the pad and he didn’t delete it.

“From”

His name was a trite thing to put into the first line. He found sweat on his brow and his palms began to sweat. Why was this so hard? Rather than delete another word and be back from square one he found inspiration and pressed on, inspired by Jera.

“From your son, who also thinks of you…”


-End-

 

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