Destiny's Hand

5 Practically Perfect

Year 2789, Drithou 3rd Thursday, dawn hour:

Feet dangling over diverse greenery a death's distance below, the young woman shivers in the dawn rain. Motion in the corner of her eye warns that someone approaches along the top of the dull gray wall, a person taking careful steps while holding a large black umbrella with an extra curtain of cloth completely blocking head and shoulders.

Young Katelle shifts her butt. The wall isn't intended for sitting. It's narrow enough that if her knees were flush and back straight she'd tip over to smash down on the boring grass side.

Katelle watches, mouth like a fish, as the person steps precariously closer. She almost thinks it's a man, flat chest and a tilting of the umbrella suggest broad shoulders. Something about the displayed poise encourages a feminine guess.

A woman's voice solves the mystery. "May I join you?" Recognizing Farm Hand Rouna Turkeyhunt, an old family friend, Katelle half smiles and shrugs before staring back down into the lush jungle below.

The green is broken only by skeletal gray branches that periodically poke through and beckon. Having skipped a night's sleep for a few days, her mind helps her see the dead and dying trees as ghosts. They sway for her. The bushes between them are like her mother's cheeks. The leaves turn pink when she blinks. If she slips, she wonders if the jungle would part lips and swallow her. But, she has a guest. Her mother was always clear to not be rude to guests.

Rouna grunts as she carefully maintains a hold on the umbrella and sits down beside Katelle. "If I wasn't so wise I would admire you, sitting here meditatively enjoying your dawnday with nothing but potential ahead."

Katelle brushes wet hair out of her face and glances with raised brows towards the covered woman who says, "You are a young wonder woman. You have a beauty now at fifteen that is going to ripen into something that will influence people more than my humble looks ever could. You've grown a network of contacts and good-will with your babysitting. If you don't squander it, you'll have quite the social web when those loving children mature.

"A natural artist too, I heard how impressed Medical Manager Valkurn was. He takes his troupe's rehearsals more seriously than the actual performances. Any praise during one is sacred, and you had him salivating." A blush bursts across Katelle's light skin. "He was so deflated that you dropped out; I almost suggested a sorrodog.

"He left that premier's social early, claiming exhaustion." Chuckling, Rouna says, "Such a calculating precise man and you upended his world by hopping around for fifteen minutes. I even caught a reaction from his new bodyguard at your name. Only time I saw that hairless oddity give away he wasn't a statue."

Katelle remembers Quis, the shaven man, without even eyebrows or lashes. He had stared at her like she was a butterfly and his eyes pins. The desire by him and his boss to possess her was so unflinching that she gave up dancing.

Rouna says, "I think a lot of things come easy to you that are hard for other people. I've peeked at your school evaluations. They are inconsistent. Sometimes high, sometimes low, suggesting to me you are purposefully sabotaging yourself."

Katelle loved dancing, but she had to measure the joy in motion against the danger of men's desire. Physical assault of any kind is rare on the generation ship. So, years ago a much younger Katelle was understandably surprised that the man that lured her out of sunax sight didn't have the promised something special to show her. Beaten but not yet broken, she had managed to tap her onesuit's emergency response beacon soon enough that help arrived before the worst happened.

Rouna shifts so the ring of cloth lifts enough for her to point ahead and says in a deep voice, "'We won't make it as Pravidians if we succumb to cowardice'."