Unworthy - Kirsten Beyer [1]
Miral drooped her head a little and focused her attention on what remained of her cranberry snack bar. It was possible that some of her afternoon treat had made it into her stomach, though judging from the large chunks of pressed grains, nuts, and berries that clung precariously to her sticky cheeks and fingers and dotted her overalls, she had spent most of the last hour playing with her food rather than eating it.
“Dunno,” Miral said, pouting.
“Look at me,” B’Elanna commanded. All the years she had spent in charge of Voyager’s engine room had prepared her to face critical systems failures, devastating encounters with hostile alien species, and spatial anomalies, but throughout it all she never had to use the tone she found herself using most often with Miral. Then again, her subordinates in engineering had rarely, if ever, lied to her face.
“Miral Paris, look at me,” she said again.
Miral gave her a cursory glance before filling her mouth with all that she could of the remaining snack bar.
“Miral,” B’Elanna snapped.
She finally got the child’s attention. Tom’s blue eyes, wide as saucers and pleading for mercy, met B’Elanna’s. Just below them, Miral’s full cheeks ballooned to almost their maximum as her baby teeth furiously chewed and strained against her tightly closed lips.
B’Elanna struggled not to smile. She had spent weeks teaching Miral table manners and apparently the only part that had really stuck was the importance of chewing with one’s mouth closed.
It’s a start, B’Elanna acknowledged to herself even as she fortified her determination to curb Miral’s penchant to repeat words B’Elanna often uttered in frustration despite the fact that they were completely inappropriate for a child. She suspected that Miral only did it to elicit a response from her. However, it would never do for her to greet her father in a little more than two weeks, after not having seen him in more than a year, by saying, “Hello, p’tak!”
B’Elanna insisted a little more gently, “You do know.”
“Are we there yet?” Miral asked, spilling a few crumbs down her front.
“Don’t change the subject,” B’Elanna said, seeing right through her daughter’s pitiful attempt at a diversion. “There are certain words that children should not use, even if adults may use them sometimes. You still have many words to learn, and when you have learned them all, you will get to choose which ones you want to use. Until then, I choose for you. Is that clear?”
“Sorry,” Miral said, sighing, clearly terribly put-upon by this regulation.
“I love you, honey.”
“Love you, Mommy,” Miral tossed back more out of habit than genuine emotion. “Mommy, sing the good night stars song?”
“Don’t you want to wait until bedtime?” B’Elanna asked.
“No, you sing. Kula sings bad.”
Kula was a holographic nanny B’Elanna created to tend to Miral during their long journey when the shuttle’s systems required B’Elanna’s complete attention. Miral’s criticism suggested that Kula’s vocal subroutines might need a little work.
“Okay, honey, you start.” B’Elanna nodded.
Star, star, bright in the sky,
The time has come to close your eyes.
B’Elanna felt as if her heart were melting; the little girl’s charm kicked into high gear and her voice was thick with happiness.
Star, star, never you fear,
I’ll wake tomorrow and you’ll be here.
“Warning,” the computer’s voice interrupted.
Star, star …
“Hush, honey,” B’Elanna said quickly.
“Quantum phase stability at ninety-five point nine six nine percent and falling.”
An unpleasant jolt of adrenaline shot through B’Elanna. This was the last leg of a journey that had begun two and a half years ago. A renegade Klingon sect that believed Miral to be the Kuvah’magh, or Klingon savior, had decided the best way to avert the apocalypse Miral’s birth signaled was to kill her. Ever since, B’Elanna and her husband, Tom, had sacrificed their own happiness protecting their only daughter; they were to reunite once and for all in just a little more than two weeks.
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