The BLTS Archive-  Moral Dilemma
by Amiroq. aka Gypzy (fitchett@netaccess.co.nz)

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Disclaimer:  Paramount owns everything Voyager-related...

(c) Amiroq. the KiTfox 1999

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You were the first person I saw when I came here. You walked across
the plains - walked! - toward us, wearing leathers you had cured
yourself and carrying a wooden spear. It amazed me. I'd never seen
anyone so primitive.

That evening, you took me to the deep water-well where you always went
fishing, and let me watch while you tickled a trout for your father's
supper. And when I asked to try you said, "Not unless you want to eat
it." You must have heard that I can't stand fish.

When we got back you took me to the little hill outside the village,
and while my captain and crewmates negotiated with your father we
looked at the stars, and you told me stories about them and your
people. And while we lay in the moonlight, a comet went past and you
told me it was a sign of something wonderful to come. I decided you 
were slightly crazy, but kept listening.

It was late in the night when my captain came out to find me, and I
was still listening to you telling me about Tayeni and Coyode's war,
and didn't hear her coming until you finished. "That might have been a
wonderful story if I had heard the start," she said. And you replied,
"All you need is the moral." Then you said, "Every story has a moral."

She took us away after that, but I came back the next day. It was only
0630, and I thought you might not be up, but you had been swimming
since dawn. Your dark dark hair was plastered to your face, and I
suggested we take a pre-breakfast stroll on the beach. So we sat on
some rocks by a pool, still as the mirror in my bedroom at home, still
as my dog the day it died and ever since. And I told you it was my 
turn to tell a story.

So I told you a story. It was about a girl, I said, a girl who had no
father to speak of, and only arguments with her mother; all the
children hated her so she had no friends, and the only things she had
to talk to were her school books. "What is the moral of that?" I asked
you.

"Everyone must know grief before they can understand joy." I believed
you.

So I told you another story. It was about another girl, who had been
born deformed and ugly, who ran away to sea, as your sister had, to
explore and meet people. And she met a boy whom she loved very much,
and he said he loved her, too, even though she was deformed and ugly.
"What is the moral of that?" I asked you.

You pointed to a shell in the rock pool, a shell with the orange-red
legs of a hermit crab showing, sitting in the opening. "A hermit crab
lives in a shell," you told me, "but when he grows out of it, when it
becomes too small to hold him, he leaves it behind and finds a larger
one. He moves on, and forgets how badly suited his previous shell was
for him, because even if he is beautiful, his shell is what people
see, and what people judge him by." I believed you.

So we pressed noses, and kissed, and as I left you called after me,
"You're not ugly." And I believed you, because it seemed you could not
lie.

I thought about what you had told me while I worked that day, and when
I was relieved, I decided I was the crazy primitive one.

The next day, we were due to leave. My captain knew how I felt about
you, so I was left with a choice.

My career, or my love.

I chose you.

What is the moral of that?

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The End