This is an "Alternate Continuity Paradox" Post
(for an explanation of what that means, see From the Ready Room post "From the Writer's Notebook" dated 81008.0200)
Timeline 2, Post One of Two
Dust to Dust
by Fleur Le Marc
80906.00
Concurrent with More Questions Than Answers
-=The Takesian Plains, Bajor=-
Timeline 2, Post One of Two
Dust to Dust
by Fleur Le Marc
80906.00
Concurrent with More Questions Than Answers
-=The Takesian Plains, Bajor=-
Fleur stood in the small kitchen, stirring a large pot of noodles. She would soon add sauce to them and serve them for the evening meal.
By this point, they could feed five hundred people over the course of a day, and a second kitchen had been set up across town with one of the Ranjens overseeing it carefully.
The sounds of construction came in through the small window which overlooked the camp, and Fleur wiped sweat from her brow.
She had been not only working in the kitchen but after hours, in the evening she had been assisting with the construction work, which was continuing twenty-two out of twenty-six hours a day.
Ignited by the knowledge that someone off-world still cared what was happening here, the people of the Plains had truly rallied, and were now doing their very best to rebuild their villages with their own hands.
Even more remarkably, something else had happened since Fleur had come here.
News of the rebuilding, with supplies donated by private, anonymous benefactors, had spread across the planet. Embarrassed that they were being out-done by those not even of their own world, the Bajoran politicians and even the Vedek Assembly had been spurred into action.
More supplies and workers were arriving daily, and the transformation happening to the first camp was spreading out into the surrounding villages.
By all accounts, when she looked back on the changes that had occurred all around them, Fleur considered them nothing short of miraculous.
Her hands on participation in the construction work had changed Fleur considerably; emotionally, and physically as well. She now sported streaks of highlights in her hair from the intense glare of the sun. Her skin was tan and her body, which had been tiny and thin before was now tiny and powerful- new muscles apparent in her arms and legs from the strenuous physical work she had undertaken for the first time in her life.
She found the physical exertion to be even more of a comfort to her, in the darkest moments of loneliness than the familiar surrounds of the kitchen.
When her mind drifted to thoughts she would rather not entertain, of things that she knew could not be she would turn again to action, refusing to allow herself the luxury of self-pity or regret.
There was no time for these things, with precious children like Tressie and Pace to feed, clothe, and build a town for.
"Where would you like the sacks of flour to go, Fleur?" Pace asked, as he hefted two bags, one over each shoulder.
The boy, merely sixteen, had undergone quite a transformation himself in the time since Fleur had arrived.
Once receiving proper nutrition, he sprouted. His shoulders broadened, his form filled in, and he looked at last like a healthy young man and not a suit of clothes hung out on a thin, wiry hanger.
"You can just put them on the counter, thank you Pace," Fleur directed. "I will start the bread as soon as I finish adding everything to the sauce."
"Mmmm. Delavo Sauce," Pace murmured. "I'm so hungry I could eat a whole pot of your pasta, Fleur."
"You will eat until you are full, I promise you I made enough food for an army from the last shipment of supplies." Fleur pointed to the refrigeration unit, which was now running on actual power, and not a generator any longer. "You should see what is in there."
"I would love to, but I have to get back. I just hope that I can get to the building site without having to get rid of Itsa again.”
Fleur could not help but smile. “She likes you, Pace.”
“Nahhhh.” Twin circles of crimson appeared on his cheeks.
“Oh, yes she does. She is a very sweet girl, no?”
Pace shrugged shyly. He rested his elbow on the counter, and propped his chin upon it. “Fleur, how do you know when you’re, you know,”
“No, I do not know,” she hurried about her work, “When you are what?”
“When you’re falling in love?”
Fleur stopped and stared straight ahead.
Pace immediately wished he could retract the question as it was apparent that something, or someone, had made the subject painful for her.
He had seen a passing expression on her face now and then since she arrived, a certain sadness he didn’t understand. Now, he understood it.
“Nevermind,” he said, “I’ll see you later.”
“Wait, Pace,” Fleur turned to the sink, washed her hands quickly and then dried them with the towel tucked into her apron pocket. “I can’t tell you what it’s like for everyone else, only how it was for me, yes? But if you want to know.”
He nodded.
“Falling in love was not something I expected. I wasn’t looking to do it, and that is the thing about love.” She held her hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “We cannot choose where and when it finds us. But I promise you, when it does,” she put a hand on his shoulder gently, “You will know it.”
She wished there was someone older and wiser around whom she could ask a question now- if you fall in love with someone who cannot love you in return, how do you learn to forget?
“I have to go. Check on Tressie.” He announced, moving to the door. “She’s been playing with the other children playing in the yard,"
Suddenly, Fleur's eyes flashed concern. "Where in the yard?"
"In the back, over by the,"
"Mon Dieu, they should not be back there, I told the Ranjens that they were going to start," Fleur's breath deserted her, and she began to untie her apron.
A sense of dread overtook her, and she tossed the apron onto the counter. "Find Stiela, tell her to keep everything here on warm and not worry about the bread," Fleur instructed. "Then find me out there. Hurry, Pace."
She ran as fast as she could go toward the crowd of children, who were singing and playing games of pretend in between the remains of storm-twisted trees.
"Where is Gillan Tress?" Fleur asked the oldest child she could find. "The baby?"
"She was with Kail the last time I saw her," The boy answered, "Why, what is wrong, Miss Fleur?"
"The wells," Fleur said, running off in the direction the boy had pointed. "They started digging the new wells last night and I told-" she took off as fast as she could go, and began calling Tress's name at the top of her lungs. As many children as she asked, no one seemed to know where the baby was.
It was then that she heard the sound of a faint, familiar cry, and she stopped short as she teetered precariously over the edge of the unmarked well.
"Oh, God, please," Fleur cried, jumping back and dropping to her knees. "No."
Pace came upon Fleur's location, and he screamed Tress's name as he realized what had happened. "I don't understand, they were supposed to be watching her,"
"Go and get Drial Dier, and anyone else you can find. They have to bring rope, we have to get her out," Fleur gasped, as she leaned over the edge and looked down into the hole. "RUN!" She shouted to shake the frozen Pace from his shock. "NOW!"
"Tressie, it's all right, it's all right," Fleur called to the child, who cried softly below the surface. Fleur could not see how far down the shaft had gone, but she could see that the baby had apparently fallen in such a way that her arms and legs were trapped, she was bent over in the middle and that had stopped her from falling to the bottom of the incomplete well.
Why anyone had left it half finished and uncovered like this, Fleur could not imagine, but she was thankful that she heard no sound of water, indicating that while the baby was stuck, she was at least not now for the moment in danger of drowning.
She tried her best to soothe the frightened baby, minutes feeling like hours as they passed slowly by until the first help began to arrive.
"We've got ropes," Dier said, as he ran as fast as he could to Fleur's side. "Here, shine the light down there and look." he gave Fleur his wrist lamp, and she could verify that the baby was stuck but was not submerged. "There is no water, who started digging here and,"
"This well is old," Dier explained. "It had been covered before the storms by a small structure. This is not one of the new ones."
"How do we get her out?" Pace shouted frantically. "Tress, I'm here, we're going to get you out!"
"We can't make the hole bigger with the large equipment," Dier explained. "The ground is too unstable here, prone to collapse. That is why the newer wells are not going here."
"No one can fit down there to use hand tools, it's too small a space." Dier's fellow law enforcement officer, Thand, decided. "Unless we send one of the children,"
"No." Fleur began rolling up her sleeves. "I can fit."
Both men eyed her, from head to toe.
"We don't have time to argue! You have to send me down there. The baby keeps trying to shift position, and if the land gives way she will fall, or be," she saw the terror in Pace's eyes and stopped. "Give me the goddamned rope." She took it from the awestruck Dier and began to tie it around her waist. "Do you know how to make a strong knot, Constable?"
"I...do," Dier stuttered.
"Then make one now." Fleur handed him the ends of the rope. "If you please."
More people had come to see what the fuss was, and Thand begged them to stay back. "Please, the ground is unstable," he pleaded. "Stay back, and be ready to bring more supplies if we need them."
Dier stepped back and regarded Fleur, now harnessed by the rope. "Are you certain?"
"Just hold on tight, will you?" She asked, ready to descend. "I need something to dig with. Anyone have any tools?"
Dier had a small hammer on the tool belt he was also wearing, having spent the afternoon working double duty in construction. "This is it."
"It will have to work. Pace," Fleur grabbed the boy by his shoulders. "Help Dier hold the rope. I'm going to get her out."
Pace nodded, and the three men all held tightly to the end of the rope as Fleur took the hammer into her hand and got down onto her knees so they could lower her head first into the hole.
She switched the wrist lamp to high, and uttered a silent prayer as she felt herself descend into darkness.
"Are you all right, Fleur?" Dier called, straining to see down the dark well shaft after Fleur’s light had vanished into the abyss.
"I need another rope!" Fleur shouted, realizing that if the ground gave way, she wanted the baby to be tied to some manner of lifeline.
"Sending down," Pace called, lowering the second rope. Fleur could only reach the baby's one arm, which was stuck up above her head. The baby had stopped crying, and Fleur hoped that the eerie silence meant that she was too tired to continue, not that she had been cut off from her supply of oxygen by her awkward position.
She looped the rope under the baby's small armpit, brought it back up and tied it as tightly as she could.
She was about to secure it to her own rope, but something stopped her. They were holding the other end of Tressie’s rope at the top, that was what mattered.
She began to chip away then at the ground just beside the baby, all the while fighting overwhelming dizziness and a wave of nausea as the blood rushed from the rest of her body into her head.
She had barely begun to try to free some wiggle room for the baby when the sandy walls began to collapse around them.
Fleur could only shriek, not even having time to get out an articulate plea for help as the baby, and she, began to fall.
Above at ground level, Dier called for more people to help hold the ropes, as they began to fight the drag of the unfeeling ground as it filled in around the woman and child, trying to suck them away and claim their lives as its own.
"Collapse!" Dier cried frantically, "PULL!"
As the drag on them grew stronger, Dier had a desperate choice to make.
They could not hold both ropes.
Which one did he tell them to let go?
“Let go line one,” he instructed, and voices raised in protest. “Let it GO and pull line two! NOW!”
As the collapsing ground fought their every attempt, the rescuers finally managed to pull one person free of the cave-in.
The second rope disappeared down into the well, slipping away along with the life it was meant to preserve.
After what seemed an eternity, they pulled a small form up and out of the well. Gillan Pace panicked at the sight of his unconscious sister.
"No," He fell to his knees, collapsing and releasing his hold on the rope only after he was certain it was safe to let go. "Tress,"
The baby began to cough, and then wailed loudly. She was, without a doubt, very much alive.
A shout went up from the assembled crowd. "Where is that medkit I asked for!" Dier raised his voice above the growing noise of the crowd, as word began to spread of the incident, and of the outcome.
“What happened?” Prylar Delle hurried up to Dier, “Is the baby all right?”
“Yes, she’s,” Dier hesitated.
“Thank the Prophets,” Delle sighed with relief. Then something occurred to her, and she began looking around, searching for someone. “Wait. Where is Fleur? I was told that she,”
Pace looked up at the Prylar now, his eyes dark with sorrow. His face was covered in dust from the cave in, and tears spilled, creating streaks down his cheeks. He shook his head, and Delle moved toward the group assembled still at what had been the mouth of the well.
“Isn’t there something we can…” she wished that somehow, there might still be hope.
Dier, who had handed the baby off to one of his associates, shook his head. “Prylar, we really must secure the area so there isn’t another accident. Please.”
“Yes. Everyone, please, let the Constable do his job,” Delle whispered.
As she began to try to fathom what had just happened, Delle became aware of the sound of a young male voice, praying aloud.
She turned to see Gillan Pace on his knees beneath a nearby tree, chanting words he knew only too well.
"Raka-ja ut shala morala... ema bo roo kana... uranak... ralanon Fleur Le Marc... propeh va nara ehsuk shala-kan vunek ."
-=Fleur Le Marc=-