The yard surrounding the hostel was nearly empty. The banquet tables held the skeletal remains of their earlier feasting. Sprays of starlight appeared between the tree branches. Low, throaty laughter came from the dimly lit porch, where groups of festival visitors had gathered around tables to play games or drink wine or talk late into the night. Still no Jacob. Circling around back and through a tree grove, Rena nearly tripped over the legs of a couple who hadn’t bothered to find a more private place to begin their celebrating. She was about to start down the path to the beach when a hand touched her sleeve.
“Rena.”
Jumping nearly out of her skin, she spun on her heel. “Don’t you ever leave like…” Her voice trailed off when she saw that Jacob carried a candle between his hands.
She didn’t know what to say. In her heart, she had known this would happen—hoped it would—and now he stood before her, his face cast in warm yellow candlelight, and she had to decide.
“I know you’ve made promises to Topa. I know you feel like you have obligations to Mylea,” he said, his voice quaking from nerves. “You have to believe that I’m not asking you to walk away from those commitments—”
“I know,” she whispered. She knew from the story he wrote for her, from the inspiration she felt to create when she spent time with him. Through his eyes, she saw Bajor and life more clearly than she ever had. The tightness in her throat released and in its place heat tunneled through her. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
“Whoa—” he sputtered, holding the candle away from his body. “Let’s not follow the legend too literally or we’ll be glass by morning.”
Smiling, she kissed him again; then, wordlessly, she led him inside.
Jacob had time only to place the candle on the dresser and lock the door before Rena had pulled him down to sit on the bedside.
“If this is going too fast for you, we don’t have to—”
Placing her finger against his lips, she shushed him. She slipped off her sandals and sweater and she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, resting her head on his shoulder. Because they were comfortable that way, they sat in silence. Jacob traced circles on her bare arm and shoulder with his finger; his feather-light touch became more exploratory, and she shivered.
To halt him, she flattened her palm against his chest. With trembling fingers, she unfastened his shirt, parting it to expose his skin, and pressed her cheek against him. He smelled like musk and candle smoke and the field grasses above Yyn. She began a delicate trail of kisses up his breastbone, murmuring his name, until he captured her face in his hands. The inscrutable expression on his face worried her for a fraction of a second until he claimed her mouth with dizzying intensity. We’re going through with this,she thought over and over again. He wants this as much as I do.
Breaking away from their kiss, Jacob reached over her to deactivate the lights, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her down onto the bed. Lying side by side, they faced each other, at first not touching, having only the candle’s sepia glow to see by.
My turn.Sitting up, Rena reached for the tie of her blouse, loosened the neckline and pulled the blouse over her head. She felt his gaze. Before, when they had been together, it had been under the cover of darkness. Now, having him look at her, she imagined the way she studied the subjects she painted, and was filled with nervous excitement.
From behind, his hands went gently around both sides of her waist, fanned against her hips, and he buried his lips in the slope between her shoulder and neck. Arching into his touch, she cradled her neck against his shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling at last that things were as they should be. Complete.
When the midmorning sunlight woke Rena, she rolled onto her side to find Jacob watching her. She must be a sight: her hair in its customary wild and bushy morning style, her lips swollen, and virtually every centimeter of her aching from exertion. She stretched, raising her arms above her head, and then, feeling oddly shy, pulled the sheet back up to cover her fully. “Hey,” she said, offering him a drowsy, crooked grin.
“Hey yourself,” he said, looking at her expectantly. Resting his head on his elbow, he seemed a little too self-satisfied for Rena to be at ease.
Wrinkling her forehead, she said warily, “You look like you’re going to explode if you don’t say whatever it is you’re thinking—”
“I…I think I might be in love with you,” he blurted out.
She arched an eyebrow in surprise.
“I know it’s sudden and all—”
And then instinctively Rena knew, without being told, that his declaration came from genuine feeling and not from the emotional miasma of sex. Smiling, she leaned over and planted a firm kiss on his lips and pulled him on top of her, relishing his weight. “Besides that other thing, what were you thinking just now?”
“Words…ideas…the nucleus of something I want to write later. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but I feel like I’ve been seeing life through a broken lens that’s suddenly sharply focused.”
Rena smiled knowingly against his chest. “That’s an artist’s job: to see the truth of the world and people and communicate it. Often, we fall back on what we know, not what we see. There’s a difference.”
“You sound like someone I used to know,” Jacob said. “She died. One of Dukat’s men killed her. It was…” He inhaled deeply, then sighed. “I miss her.” Looking down at her and leaning in toward her, he touched his forehead to hers. “You would have liked her. Ziyal was an artist, too. There’s a display of her work on the station. Have you heard about it?”
Rena shook her head. “No,” she said. “I haven’t paid much attention to what was goes on up on the space station. But I’m certainly going to look her up now.” As he drifted into memory, she felt a brief flash of jealousy. She asked, “Did you love her?”
He considered her question then said, “In another time and place, I might have, eventually. But no, we were just friends, for the short time we had togteher.”
“And you cherish that,” Rena said, “just as you cherish every other moment of your life, and everyone in it.”
“You understand,” he whispered, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. “I feel like you see me.”
“I see you because I love you,” Rena said without thinking about the words, and knew it was true.
Then he whispered something against her skin that she thought she heard, but couldn’t quite bring herself to believe.
She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Ask me that again.”
Epilogue
Sisko
All in all, it had been a merry evening. His guests started arriving just after sunset: Opaka first, followed by his friends from the station, with the first minister arriving last. Thankfully, they had mostly heeded his edict and dressed in casual civvies: Kira in a dark red dress and boots, Asarem in a long rust tunic and trousers, Vaughn in an evergreen crewneck sweater and jeans. Only Sulan had not shed the trappings of her vocation, but she seemed quite at ease in the humble purple vestments of her order, so Sisko was not disappointed by her choice.