Melanie Ezell's Big Closet Ultimate Writer's Challenge (Week 10: Heaven's Gift)
After decades of struggle the occupation was over. The invaders from the neighboring star system had packed up and gone home, and all of Bajor was celebrating their hard won freedom. Although to 15 year old Rothko Jor it just seemed as if one type of hegemony had been replaced with another, and that some Bajorans would never be free. But he hadn't taken into account the will of his planet's gods, or the intercession in his life of a mysterious sacred object known as the Orb of Change...

TOUCHED BY THE PROPHETS
Laika Pupkino ~ 2011

STAR TREK, DEEP SPACE 9 and PARAMOUNT STUDIOS
are all copyright 2011 by Laika Pupkino...

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“I HATE YOU!” I screamed. “HATE YOU! HATE YOU! HATE YOU!”

A terrible thing to shout at your own father but over the past hour he'd made it abundantly clear that he didn't care about me or anything I wanted. He had my whole life mapped out for me, and I apparently had no say at all in it.

“Stop whining like a spoiled little princess,” he hollered back, “We all have our duties. You act like it's a hardship to do what the Etengaras of this family have done---and have found it an honor to do---since the days of your great, great, great, great, great-”

As angry as he was, Pap wasn't about to make any pleas for me to stay and talk this out as I turned and stormed out of the room.

With a mumbled, “Sorry, I can't do this...” I darted past Mam, who had withdrawn to the kitchen after Pap jabbed a finger at her and ordered her to stay out of the “man's business” of our argument. She'd been in here eavesdropping and no doubt fretting over our mounting war of words as she prepared a batch of pepperbread twists for the oven. She moved aside for me, nodding that yes, this was probably my best course of action for right now.

I ducked my head and plowed through the open back door's bug barrier forcefield without bothering to switch it off, then paused on the patio deck to survey the landscape. Fields, orchards, the distant skyline of our district's main city and the even more distant slope of Mount M'lah, which here at the start of summer still had that one oval patch of snow up near its peak, like the eye of some pointy headed cyclops...

'Where to now?' I wondered.

'Anywhere but here,' I decided a few seconds later, leaping from the deck and tearing across our vegetable patch to the stream that defined the western edge of our property.

I'd splashed halfway across the creek when I decided that kicking through the knee-deep water felt good on my legs and feet. That there was something gratifying about its resistance, and the silty squish of the stream bed's mud pouring in through the slits of my sandals. And so, still having no clear destination in mind I began trudging downstream.

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What had started as a day of celebration had turned into the worst day of my life.

Or no ....... I'm sure the day my brother and my father were taken away had been a lot worse than this. But that was so long ago. I'd been too young then to really understand what was going on, only that these big lizard men in their creepy black leather and polymesh uniforms weren't being nice at all.

Bajor had been a conquered world since long before I was born, in fact since right around the time my parents were born. But the Cardassians hadn't found much worth exploiting in our small resource-poor province, and hadn't considered our population of farmers and craftsmen to be any threat to their rule. So while they'd never been nice to us---they travelled around in packs that liked to indulge in arbitrary acts of recreational cruelty---they did not start to seriously tyrannize our area until late in the Occupation. But when they did they came down hard. The random executions and these mass arrests with only the flimsiest pretext of a reason...

They were herded into one of the soldier's transport vehicles, where other men and older boys sat hunched over in the metal mesh cages, and as it pulled out Pap waved at us---trying to act like everything was going to be just fine---but inside he was sure the two of them would be Cardie landfill by sundown, and he was wracked with fears over the kind of future me and Mam would be facing without them around to run the smithy.

He'd been right to worry. The years ahead were hungry ones for us, with fear our household's demanding new lodger. We had barely managed to hold onto our land and the machinery of our family's trade, Mam turning down every offer to to buy this equipment---even though selling it would've helped a lot in the short term---as if she'd feared that to let it go would be to admit that she'd lost all hope of her husband and eldest son ever returning- an admission that would seal their fate somehow.

Which might seem like a superstitious way to think but here they were back at home after all this time, so who can say it hadn't worked? Zineen and Pap had both survived nearly a decade in the labor camp when so many hundreds of thousands didn't.

The occupiers had been driven back into space, deciding it would be more profitable to go make trouble in some other part of the galaxy, and we were finally free. Not just our family, our town or our province but all of us. An entire planet suddenly liberated!

Every village and household was holding a three day festival of giving thanks to the Prophets. And even here months after the last Cardassian had beamed up to the last of their orbiting starships, our newfound liberty had been all anyone wanted to talk about during last night's feast. How amazing it felt for our streets to no longer be patrolled by strutting offworlder with disruptor rifles; or to be able to speak freely without fear of being anonymously "reported on" and brought in for questioning over some offhand complaint you'd made; and that our schools could now go back to teaching real stuff instead of that mess of lies and ludicrous attempts at thought control known as the Hearts and Minds Program. After forty years of stuggle we were free to live our own lives and to forge our own futures...

And then this morning I'd found out that all this wonderful freedom stuff didn't pertain to me.

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Pap had used the morning's lull in our festivities to have a quiet talk with me, trying to get re-aquainted with his youngest son, who had become a teenager since the last time we'd seen each other. And I'm sure his intentions were good. But I wasn't prepared for how conservative his ideas were.

As grim and dangerous as the occupation had been, some of the changes it had forced us to make in our lives---the social conventions that we'd had to abandon---had been oddly liberating for some of us. Like the expanded role that women took with so many men absent. Or how our caste system was no longer seen as very relevant in a world where all Bajorans had become equal in their oppression. The friends that Mam and I had banded together with for support and for survival were from every D'jarra, a thing that would have been unthinkable a half century before.

But what my Apala had been dreaming of during his awful years in the labor camp was coming home to a world like the one he'd grown up in, where the old ways were honored and people knew their place in life. And as we talked (or should I say he talked-) I found out that a lot of the things I'd been daring to hope I might be destined for---dreams that Mam had encouraged in me when it was just us two---were impossible to him, just plain wrong, and wicked for me to even think about.

Like my dream of travelling in space once I was old enough, working on a freighter or a passenger ship and visiting new world after new world...

“We're Etengara,” he said, “Members of the Etengara caste don't become spacefarers.”

“Why not?”

“We just don't.”

“That's no kind of reason!”

But to him this was all the reason he needed. He needed me to carry on the family trade. “That name ROTHKO across the front of our smithy. That's your name, in case you haven't noticed!”

“But you have Zineen for that. He loves the idea, it's all he's been going on about. And you'll find plenty of men to work for you.”

“That's not the point!”

“What are we, ants? Programmed to do one thing and we can't do anything else? Why does a certain trade and a certain family have to go together anyway?”

“Because they do. They just do.”

“Not in most of the galaxy. And the Terrans say that choosing your profession is one of the inalienable human rights that everyone should have.”

He sighed, and said slowly, as if I was stupid, “I don't care what kind of Federation propaganda you grew up watching on those guerrilla broadcasts. We're not most of the galaxy! We're Bajoran, living the way the Prophets set forth before time began. And the males in our family have always been metal-smiths.”

I was pretty sure this wasn't a good time to tell him that my plans didn't include being a male of our family any longer than I had to...
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'Your father and brother have been through a horrible ordeal," Mam had cautioned me, "Give them some time to get settled, Daughter...'

And despite my impatience to finally be able to stop lying about who I was, I could see that her strategy made sense. So I only touched on this issue obliquely; trying to get him to see what this word 'freedom' he'd been uttering with such relish could mean if it was actually put into practice. “Then why were we fighting the Cardassians for all those years if as soon as we get rid of them we're going to turn around and be like them, telling everyone who they can be, what they can or can't do? I mean don't you get it?!”

“Are you calling me a CARDASSIAN?!!” he exploded, and things between us went downhill fast from that point.

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And now I was splashing down the little stream, cursing him. I wasn't planning on running away, wasn't in any state of mind to plan anything, I just knew that I'd needed to get away for a couple of hours. Although I was starting to wish I'd taken the time to put on some real shoes and maybe brought along a jug of potable water...

All my life Mam had told me about what a wonderful man my father was, and I'd grown up imagining him as a wise and gentle, almost saintly figure. It was only when the Occupation had ended and we'd learned he was alive and was coming home to us that she started preparing me for how old fashioned his views were and how stubborn he might be about them.

The clothes I had loved the most were the ones she said we needed to hide, since what she called my “gender issues”---issues far more central to my sense of self than what line of work I might go into---would need to be broken to him very carefully.

While we'd had transsexuals on our world for a few centuries; ever since it was accepted that there were those who had male or female bodies but possessed a pagh of the opposite sex, a spiritual imbalance that deserved correction; to my father this was mostly a problem that the Ih'valla faced (“You know those sensitive artist types...”), or maybe those overly-intellectual academics of the Shouree caste, who could reason their way into believing almost any strange outlandish thing. But the idea of anyone from our caste or our family being “like that” was inconceivable to him. So any talk of my being a candidate for body changing medical procedures was a long way off, Mam had warned me.

But if he had been that flabbergasted at the idea of me travelling offplanet or finding a career outside of the family business---both of which were becoming commonplace in these unsettled times---I could see that he'd never accept this, no matter how gradually and carefully we layed the groundwork for it.

Life to him was all about doing your duty, and these notions that personal happiness might be better found elsewhere were some decadent foolishness that had nothing to do with reality. You just had to suck it up and do what you were supposed to do, according to traditions that had been around so long they didn't bear examination. Happiness would come from that, if not today then next year or the year after. And if it never did, then at least you weren't being weird.

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The stream continued past the corner of our property, threading between the neighbor's halaberry orchard and our village's array of solar energy disks. I saw a nice round rock on the creek bottom, picked it up and thought about relieving some of my anger by chucking it through the brittle membrane of one of the disks, but it would just grow back. Instead I just dropped it (plunk!) as I threw my head back and screamed; a roar impressive enough to make a whole flock of rubywing doves explode straight up from the halaberry trees.

Or maybe it was the flash of light that made them do this. Because in that instant I was rushing headfirst through a blazing white space, and then with a weird twisting sensation I was back at home, standing in our kitchen. What the Hell?

There was sheetwood nailed crudely across the kitchen windows, just like we'd had to do during that summer two years ago, after the ground war between the Cardies and the Bajoran Army of Liberation had wandered so close that our home was getting scarred up from beamfire, and all the windows on this side of the house were knocked out by the photon shell that had landed in the corner of our lot.

But then I realized that this actually was that summer. That somehow time had spun backward and I was thirteen years old again. I heard voices out in front room, loud and arrogant...

Mam walked into the kitchen, not noticing anything different about me, her expression begging me to not say anything that could get us into trouble. And on her heels tromped in two of the biggest Cardassians soldiers I had ever seen. The one who had been doing all the talking held the rank of Gul, the other was just his muscle, an intimidating if not very bright looking Sargent.

I remembered this encounter well. I'd been reminded of it every day since then, whenever I ran my tongue over my front teeth. They had come here to accuse us of feeding Resistance fighters, and if it wasn't us then we knew who was doing this, and it was our duty to tell them who. It would be easier on everyone in our area if we pointed them toward these criminals.

Maybe I had been compensating for my embarrassment over how I was dressed at the time, but I'd said something that was braver than it was smart, something like: “That's the difference between us and you Spoonheads, we don't sell out our friends!”

But this time---with the benefit of hindsight, or was it foreknowledge?---I managed to keep quiet. So that I wasn't sent flying backward by a punch, several teeth loosened and one knocked clean out. I looked down at my feet, not trusting what I might say to them.

There was a weird lull in their conversation. Still not looking up, I sensed fear pouring off of my mother, and from our uninvited guests an intense interest in me that made my skin crawl even more than scrutiny from these creatures usually did.

“Shy, isn't he? ... He?” the Gul asked Mam for confirmation as they approached me. “This is a boy, right? I'll confess I can't always tell the difference with your species, when they're this young.”

At that age my hair hadn't been cut in years. And while long hair on a boy or a man wasn't unusual, my umala and I had been fooling around with mine, not expecting any company that morning, and I was wearing it up in a feminine style held in place by an ornamental comb that had been my Grandmam's. Plus, while I wasn't wearing anything too girly on this day (not like when I was sent out as a courier to our Resistance friends up in the hills...) I'd put a little fao-fao powder on my cheeks and on the ridges across the bridge of my nose; something no normal guy my age would ever do. In the hardships and uncertainties of this life you enjoyed whatever small pleasures and moments of beauty you could.

We knew that they had detailed files on everyone in the district, and hadn't needed to ask us half the things they'd asked, so she told them, “Yes, he's a boy. We were just, uh...”

“It's alright,” he purred sympathetically, “I understand better than you probably imagine I could.”

His goon started braying idiotically at this---('What a pervert!')---then caught himself and tried to pretend he'd been coughing.

I could feel the Gul's hot Cardassian breath on me as he leaned in close, and put a leathery finger under my chin and raised my face until my eyes met his. “What's your name, pretty nestling?”

Suddenly Mam had a kitchen knife in her fist and was moving in on them with it, holding it underhanded, all business, shouting for him to get his filthy lizard claws off of me.

I was surprised to see how well she handled it as a weapon. No! Don't-

Another bright flash engulfed the world and I was flying through the burning white void again, safe from those two evil men but also now unable to stop the nightmare that was about to unfold; Because I somehow knew that in this other version of reality this was when she died---give or take twenty minutes of agonized screaming---after which I had been sent off to 'do my part' in this war, to the Cardassian joy house where I would spend the remaining years of the occupation entertaining and giving comfort to high ranking legates and administrators of a certain persuasion, hating them and hating myself, as I learned the skills that would serve me in my postwar life, the life of a whore, since like so many other of the joy house girls (and 'girls') I would be branded as the most shameful sort of collaborator and refused any legitimate employment.

And then suddenly I was standing outdoors again, back in my own reality, relieved beyond belief.

Multiple realities? Whatever that awful interlude had been, it wasn't like anything I'd ever experienced before. I would say that I'd gone temporarily insane, had hallucinated the whole interlude and all that knowledge about a life I'd never led, except for how drastically my surroundings had changed from a minute ago...

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The legs of my trousers were totally soaked, which felt weird now that I wasn't standing in the stream anymore. I was on a ridge overlooking some valley. Still on Bajor I assumed, but where?

The sun and the pale lavender disc of our second moon hung in the same positions in the sky that they'd been in before my vision and this mysterious relocation. And this mountain over to my right, if this was the far side of Mount M'lah then I was somewhere in the Paia Province, about a two day hike from my home. So this was probably Golden Dawn Valley below me, the one that had that famous monastery.

And sure enough, there it was. Way down at the other end of that long green furrow of a valley, the traditional five stone domes sticking up and its bright alabaster perimeter wall cutting in and out through the trees.

The thought "I need to go there." popped into my head, although I couldn't say why. And then-

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I was tumbling through the whiteness again for what could have been seconds or minutes, and again there was the same moment of deceleration that had such a weird unreal feel to it, since the version of me I found myself merging with hadn't been moving.

I was standing in a noisy room full of excited, shouting humanoids. Bajorans, Humans and Bolians, all out for a night of drinking and gambling in this barn-sized one room casino, and a few orange square headed aliens from a species I didn't recognize. Plus one calm unsmiling Vulcan couple, who seemed to be slumming in this place devoted to something as illogical as having fun. All of them looking quite sophisticated and glamorous to my rural Bajoran eyes.

Well, all except for the lumpy little big-eared and baldheaded troll standing directly in front of me, dressed in a sequined tuxedo jumpsuit in a combination of colors that would be ugly on any planet and probably illegal on several. And with that constipated look on his face he was wrecking my hallucination or whatever this was.

“Well?” he asked irritably.

I'd never seen one before but I'd heard stories about them, this species that you were never supposed to let try to sell you something. I snapped my fingers as the name came to me, “You're a Ferengi!”

He gave me a lopsided smile that showed off a set of file-sharpened teeth, which made me think not of the cunning predator he probably wanted to be seen as, but some sneaky little parasite that you'd glance down to find sucking on your ankle. He smirked, “Your powers of observation never cease to astonish me, my Dear. But don't you have something you should be doing?”

“Huh?” I asked, distracted as I was by the female body I was realizing I now occupied, which was fighting to bust out of the skimpy spangled outfit it wore.

Wow, it all looked and felt so real! These graceful hands with the perfectly painted nails, so unlike my own stub-fingered ones, and yet moving exactly as I wanted them to. And all the other features of mine that I could see and feel. These smooth bare legs leading down to a pair of those strange shoes you see offworlder women wear sometimes, where the whole back end is raised up on a little post.

“I'm a woman,” I murmured in disbelief, now feeling the slick coat of lipstick on my lips. I started looking around for a mirror, which I figured a place like this would have a few of. And it did, behind the bar we stood next to. I found myself breaking into a gigantic smile at the sight of me. I wasn't just dressed like a girl, somehow I really was one. And it was good to see that my missing tooth had been cloned and replanted.

“I'm a Ferengi. You're a woman. Me Quark, you Jira. Save it for comedy night, wouldja Sweetheart? And get over there and relieve Wendy,” he grumbled, nodding toward a pretty human girl in an outfit much like mine, who was the croupier for some kind of game of chance, “She's tired, she's losing her concentration, and she's COSTING ME MONEY!”

“Dabo!!” chanted the circle of gamblers as the roulette-wheel thing bleeped and one of them won.

I nodded that I'd get right to it, hoping that I'd be able to figure out the rules of this game as I went. But before I did I just had to steal another glance at myself in the mirror.

My age must have been somewhere in my twenties, with my hair actually a bit shorter than I'd been wearing it a minute ago but in an awesome cut that I would have to remember. I dragged a stray wisp of it into place behind my ear, gave the grouchy little alien a reassuring smile---Gotta look good for the customers, right?---adjusted the front of my outfit, tugging it upward and managing to cover another inch or so of my breasts---which I loved but didn't want the whole universe spilling their drinks on---and set out shakily on these weird red shoes for the gaming table across the room.

Now this was an excellent hallucination to be having! If that other, nightmarish one had been some version of my past, then I hoped that this was showing me my future. To be honest, working for this sourpuss of a Ferengi seemed like it would stink, but if I ever did wind up employed here I could always quit once I'd found something better...

There was a big doorway leading out of the side of this saloon into what appeared to be a shopping mall. The architecture was Cardassian but oddly the signs were in Federation Standard, with the occasional Bajoran word.

Then it dawned on me where I was. That space station the Cardassians had put in orbit around our planet, which I'd seen propaganda pieces about on their official network, saying how wonderful it was that we had this big ugly thing up here to protect us from ourselves. Terok Nor; or whatever it was being called now that our new government and the Federation of Planets were moving into it.

And this did seem like what I imagined a Federation operation would look like. Well lit, with cheerful little ornamental banners hanging here and there; these shoppers from many different worlds milling about, looking happy and unoppressed. And whatever security they had in place here was keeping a low profile.

This was life out in space, just like I'd always imagined it. And here I was, a proud female citizen of the Cosmos!

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Another bright flash engulfed me and sent me flying through the burning void again, and with a wrenching snap I was back in the present and my male body again...

I'd crossed the whole length of the valley I had been viewing from that hilltop and was standing outside of the monastery I'd just been wondering about. This ancient wall stretching away to either side of me was unmistakable; and even here up close it appeared to have been cut from a single enormous piece of white quartz. But as solid and impressive as the thing was it clearly wasn't intended to keep anyone out, since it had all these big gateless archways in it, every thirty meters or so all the way around.

I hesitated at the thought of going in, but then reminded myself of all the times I'd gone out in girl mode, carrying messages between our village and members of the resistance, and those tense encounters where I'd had to do a lot of fast talking to some sour, suspicious Cardassian while wearing a disguise that would've been impossible to explain. Now that had been real danger! So what did I have to fear from these men and women who were of my own people and peaceable servants of the Prophets?

But it wasn't them that I feared, was it? It was the growing strangeness of my day, and that I was clearly caught up in something freaky and supernatural and beyond my control. But if there was an answers to what was happening to me this was where I would find it.

I entered the grounds through the nearest gateway. Just inside was a fountain encircled by a low stone bench. I parked myself on a dry area of the bench, taking in the beauty of all the well kept lawns and flowerbeds, trying to decide which of these buildings I could see from here I was supposed to go to.

I didn't know much about life in a monastery, or really about this faith that I nominally belonged to. While our politicians love to rhapsodize about how it was our deep spirituality that got us through the occupation, it was Bajor's dirty little secret that the occupation had had a polarizing effect on the population when it came to religion. Some individuals and families had become more devout, their belief that all this must be happening for a reason helping them endure our planet's time of enslavement, while others it turned toward atheism. My family---which is to say my mam and me---were somewhere in the middle, believing in the Prophets but trusting in them less with every atrocity we heard about; seeing them as something that it was best to leave alone, being too strange and unknowable to be what you'd call friendly.

But now for some reason these Bajoran gods that I'd never seen any good evidence for had magically whisked me here. That is unless all this weirdness had been someone messing around with a transporter beam and using some sort of mind control machinery to give me those visions. Although this seemed even less likely in some ways, since I was no one important---just some teenager from the sticks---and I couldn't imagine what any plotting renegade Klingons or shadowy invaders from another dimension could hope to gain from tricking me like that.

Then again, I didn't see why The Prophets would take an interest in me either. I sat there, feeling awfully thirsty and wondering if the water in this fountain was safe to drink, waiting for either a sign about what to do next or to disappear in a flash of white again.

Maybe there was some Mylar or Prylar here who I was supposed to talk to about my life, who might give me some clues about how to deal with my father. Things like this were mostly what Mam and I talked to our village Ranjen about. Not great matters of the soul or destiny but the sort of counseling you could get from any secular psychologist.

Though when it came to my current problems my course of actions seemed clear, if quite daunting to me. The first thing I needed to try was to convince my ultraconservative Apala that I was meant to be a girl, somehow getting him to open his heart to this thing he'd never imagined, and to love me as his daughter.

And when that failed there were a number of options that grew increasingly miserable, in terms of any hopes that I could still belong to my family in a meaningful way. Pap had his set of dreams that had helped sustain him during the nightmare years, and I'd had mine. It was just sad that there didn't seem to be any place where these two sets could intersect.

What was especially aggravating was that if I'd been born into just about any other D'Jarra I'd have an easier time being accepted as gender variant. Not all castes had the same values, and no one expected them all too. “Their way is not ours,” we shrugged, as if these differences in attitude and behavior were something almost genetic, passed down not through spirally strands of organic molecules but by something written invisibly on the different castes' spirit. When a member of the Ih'valla wore his d'ja pagh ring through his nose instead of the right ear we accepted that artists and performers would always have a need to express their "uniqueness" in some way, so we tended to give them some latitude about their quirks and affectations. Or if a Te'nari married and brought home some weird looking alien woman, we figured that because their life of trading brought them into contact with so many different species it wasn't such an odd thing for them to be comfortable with different cultures or even physiologies.

But as the self-proclaimed “backbone of Bajoran society”, we Etengara didn't do any strange stuff like that. And we sure didn't go changing our bodies to become the opposite sex! The more I thought about it the more it seemed like if I was ever going to live as myself it would be at the cost of my ties to my family.

And maybe I had known this all along. Maybe this was the real reason I'd always been in love with the idea of shipping out on some starbound freighter with just my duffel bag and a willingness to work wherever they put me. Not because I'm such an explorer at heart, but because it was the easiest way to avoid the conflicts that my becoming a woman would be sure to create within my family. A cowardly cop-out; slinking away like some weaselly little-

A voice from out of nowhere interrupted my thoughts. “Hello there!”

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One of the monks was standing next to my bench. I must have been deep in thought to not notice him approaching me. He had a nice smile. The sort of eyes you'd want in a man of faith.

“You seem troubled.”

“I don't know,” I shrugged.

He sat down beside me, “I think you do know. I'm a professional at this, I can spot a troubled soul at three hundred meters, and I'd say you're hurting pretty bad.”

“Yeah but ........ I've sort of been thinking here. And I can't really say my problems are that terrible. There's so many people who have been through so much. The farmers who can't work their fields because they're full of mines. Or because the Cardassian poisoned their well as they were leaving here, no reason for it, just being Spoonheads.”

“That seemed pretty low even for them,” he nodded. “You've been testing and purifying your water, I hope.”

“Of course. Or like my father and my brother, who just got back from spending nine years in a labor camp.”

He whistled in astonishment. “Nine years!”

“They came home, looking like skin and bones---and this was after they'd spent two month in the hospital, one of those recovery wards they have for the camp survivors---with scars all over them that I don't even want to ask about. When I think about someone going through something like that...”

From the blunt, no-nonsense way he spoke this monk didn't sound like he'd been born into the priestly caste. Maybe a farmer, or a tradesman like my pap. He said, “There's always someone who's got it worse than you. And it's useful to remember that, to help put your troubles in perspective and remember that there's things to be grateful for. But to use it to make yourself feel guilty and undeserving on top of whatever's hurting you, that's not productive. Unless you just like being miserable."

“I don't. Or at least I don't think I'm like that...”

“And besides, we always think material problems are more 'real' somehow, because everyone can see them happening; so the empathy comes almost automatically. But they're not. A problem of the spirit can kill you just as dead as a Cardie disruptor. And without peace of mind, all the comfort and luxury you ever wanted will taste like ashes in your mouth. So trying to put our own spiritual or emotional problems on a scale with someone else's physical hardships, it's like comparing apples to oranges.”

“What to what?”

“Two different kinds of fruit, I think. It's something my new friend from up there says,” he shrugged, pointing upward, which I thought for a second was some reference to the Prophets, until he added, “Commander Sisko.”

“Oh, from Terok Nor.”

“Deep Space Nine,” he corrected me, “He's come by here twice, seems interested in learning everything he can about Bajor, including our religion. Just the fact that this Starfleet honcho thinks we could have something to teach them shows me they're poles apart from the Cardassians. I have a pretty good feeling about them. Although you can't blame the folks who are cynical about this and fear the worst from any ties we might form with them; Afraid to even hope...”

“Like my Pap. He's a reeeeal Etengara,” I droned sarcastically; “With all the xenophobia you'd expect.”

“Well from what you just said, he's seen about the worst this end of the galaxy has to offer. That's bound to have some effect.”

“I know,” I sighed, a sense of guilt hitting me hard. “We got into this big fight, and I was so mad because he didn't understand me. And sure he was being really thick-headed and stupid about the whole d'jarrah thing. But I shouldn't be thinking just about what I want, what I need. Or not right now, with him jumping at every sudden noise and my brother not in very good shape either; hardly talking, just wanting to sleep all day ....... I mean phekk! Maybe I am just a spoiled little princess like he says.”

“Ah yes, classic working-class father. Trying to demean you by casting doubt on your masculinity,” he grinned ruefully, like he'd experienced this himself.

“Yeah, but...” He seemed like somebody it might be okay to be honest with, so I told him, “In this case there's something to it. I'm not what you'd call real 'male-identified'.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Does that shock you?”

“Nawwwww! I've seen it before, believe me,” he said with a big warm disarming smile, and reached his hand toward my face, “Do you mind?”

I shook my head no. This is what our priests do after all---it's how they look into your immortal pagh---and most just start grabbing without bothering to ask. He slid his hand along the ridge of my ear above my ring and cuff, hmmmmm-ing and haaaaah-ing and muttering 'I see....' before letting go with a look of comprehension. Congratulations, Mrs. Rothko. It's a girl.

“And this was something else you two were fighting about?” he asked.

“We haven't told him yet. Mam knows, though.”

He stood up, “Tell you what. I have some free time before the noon services. Let's continue this talk in my office. It's in that big building there.”

“Your office is in the main temple?”

“Yep.”

“But then that would make you....” Which was when I noticed his robes, the differences between them and the ones worn by any rangens or prylars I'd ever seen, “You're the Vedec!”

“Vedec Bariel Antos, at your service,” he said, bowing in a comically overdone way, and we set off down the stone path toward the temple.

I'd always pictured the Vedecs as stern old men with beards down to their belly button or mummy-like old crones who hadn't smiled in about a century, their eyes clouded with great and important thoughts, so I was surprised that the Vedec here could be someone so young. For all its hardships, the Occupation and its aftermath sure have shaken things up in our society.

And I would be even more stunned to find out a year from now that this unassuming, regular guy of a Vedic (“Call me Antos”) was being considered as the next Kai, the leader of our entire religion. (Things would not go well for him in a few months time---after the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant was discovered, throwing our planetary and interplanetary politics into turmoil; and after a woman as ruthless and underhanded as any Romulan magistrate would manoever her way into becoming our Kai by crushing everyone who stood in her path---but that's a whole 'nother story.)

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There wasn't a service going on at the time, and we were the only ones in this big dark space hemmed in by giant wooden columns. It smelled nice in here, but I wasn't sure what the smell was.

Around the perimeter were the pews that Bajoran temples have for the elderly or disabled who might have a hard time sitting on the floor. Vedek Bariel swept his hand at one, “Have a seat. People won't be showing up for a couple of hours, we can talk in here. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Some water would be great.”

“How about some sweet iced halaberry tea? I just brewed a batch.”

“Even better,” I said.

My eyes were finally adjusting to the dim light, and as Bariel walked away I noticed the ancient jewelled wooden box---a meter or so on each side---sitting on the altar. “Hey! Is that what I think it is?”

“That's it all right. The Orb of Prophecy and Change.”

“Our Temple doesn't have an Orb. Or not a real one.”

“Few of them do. There's only nine of these orbs anywhere. I'm grateful that our humble little sangha has been chosen as the home for one.”

“I guess you would be,” I said as he disappeared into the temple's little kitchen, leaving me alone with it.

To me the Orbs were like something out of a legend. These big heavy hourglass-shaped crystal things that depending on which sect you asked, either each held the Celestial Temple of the Prophets within it, or were like computer terminals linked to it somehow. You saw them in the religious paintings that people had in their homes and shops: hanging in the clouds like bright stars to guide the First Fathers out of the Swamp of Vaum. Shooting out rays to strike down the armies of the Pah Wraiths. Or just hovering benignly over someone's rooftop, protecting good children asleep in their beds. It was hard to say which of the stories about them told over the eons were true and which were just myths; but somewhere back in history each was given its own little dollhouse to sit in, and they didn't do much flying around or smiting of the wicked after that.

The Cardassian authorities had possession of most of the Orbs during their reign here, and when they couldn't get them to do anything they declared them interesting artifacts with some anomalous spatiotemporal properties, about which the superstitious peons who founded our faith had spun a whole lot of fairy tales. But no one could deny that they levitated there inside their boxes---which isn't a common occurance in nature---and that they put on a heck of a light show when they chose to, and that they'd given some of the people they'd spoken to over the centuries prophetic visions that had proven amazingly accurate. And so it was spooky being in here by myself with something so sacred, which allegedly had all these powers, especially since I now suspected that it was this very Orb which had hauled me clear into the next province in those weird two jumps...

Without warning the hinged doors on the box before me swung silently open, revealing the glowing crystal spindle thing turning inside. My scream brought Bareil running.

“What's wrong?”

“It opened! Does it- should it do that?!”

He seemed excited by this, “It does sometimes. Don't be afraid.”

“But it sees me,” I said, because I could feel that it did, “What does it want?”

“Only it knows that. But The Prophets don't speak to just anyone. This is good. You've been chosen.”

“Oh great,” I groaned as the blue thing spun faster and started sending rays out into the room. “So what do I do?”

“Just keep looking into it. Open your heart to the Prophets...”

I had the feeling they were going to open my heart whether I wanted them to or not. I fought off the urge to run, afraid that if I tried I would find I wasn't able to. I gulped and nodded- Here goes nothing!

Those two previous white flashes that had taken me places had just been warm up exercises. This one vaporized me.

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I was in a place that was no place, and not in any past, present or future version of my body, but having no body at all that I was aware of. It was like one of those festival rides that are supposed to show you what it's like after you're dead, only not all fake looking like them. There was no up and no down. No left or right, forward or back, inside or outside. Just a lot of random freakiness that only seemed like experiences I'd had over the course of my life, everything burning bright with color, but these were colors I had no names for...

People appeared before me, one after the next. My mam. My pap. Schoolteachers that I'd had. Old people from the village who were now dead. That bastard of a Gul who had punched my tooth out. Except when they spoke to me they didn't talk like them. They didn't talk like anybody would talk.

These beings taking the form of my memories didn't seem to know what the hell I was, and it seemed like having me here in their space was as weird to them as being here was to me. Only they weren't terrified like I was. Not because they were what you could call brave, but it was like they lacked any context for apprehension.

I can't say how close this is to what they said, or if they were even speaking in words, but it started something like:

IT IS CORPOREAL. LIKE THE SISKO, said my kindergarten teacher from the front of the classroom.

“Like the what? You mean Sisko, that Starfleet guy?” I asked her from my ridiculously small desk.

BUT IT IS NOT LIKE THE SISKO, said Zossh Bora, the friendly old man who had run the village market until recently.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked as I slid a bag of kava fruit across the counter to him.

THIS ONE IS NOT PUT TOGETHER CORRECTLY, said my Pap, hoisting a jug of spring wine to his lips at last night's feast.

IT IS NOT WHAT IT IS MEANT TO BE, said my brother as he held me pinned to the ground, some incident from a decade ago that had been either a friendly tussle or an actual fight, I couldn't tell which from this disconnected shard of memory.

“I'm right here, you know. You can talk to me!” I shouted from the end of a long twilight hallway.

ALL CORPOREAL LIFE IS LIMITED BY ITS LINEAR PERCEPTION. IT IS NO DIFFERENT, said my mam with a clear note of distaste.

They all seemed to be talking around me to each other, and I was giving up on trying to be part of this conversation, but there was one thing I just had to say, even if I didn't have much hope that they'd get my point, “I really wish you'd stop calling me 'it'. Could you do that? Call me 'she', or 'he' if you have to; but 'it' is something that mean people say about someone like me, like they're saying you're nothing. It really makes you feel like crap!”

And maybe I could have some influence on whatever was going on here, because they did stop calling me 'it'. That Ferengi casino manager from my last vision looked up from cleaning a drinking glass with a dishtowel and said, BUT BEYOND THAT HER SUBSTANCE IS IN CONFLICT WITH HER PAGH. SHE SUFFERS BECAUSE OF THIS...

THEN WE CAN REMOVE HER FROM LINEAR TIME, END HER SUFFERING. suggested the rainbow petaled cartoon flower that tutored me and helped me with my homework from Mam's cheap little holo-imager; her giggly encouraging voice sounding spookily flat and detached.

The one thing that seemed clear was that these things were arguing about what to do with me. When I looked this Orb-stuff up later I found that most of the experts on Orb experiences seem to agree that an argument like this wouldn't happen. That the Prophets tend to speak with one mind and one voice to the mortals they encounter, even though you're hearing it from a bunch of different people.

But Vedec Wejawe, who's had exchanges with seven of the ten Orbs (and is one of the most genuinely spiritual people I'd ever met) explained this to me in a slightly different way. He said that that there can be disagreement between the individual prophet-entities, but it isn't like any argument you would ever hear in our Universe. The actual Orb experience doesn't much resemble what your mind will later insist had occured when you were inside the Celestial Temple, because everything that happened to you in there (plus to anyone else who ever had or will have an encounter with the Prophets-) actually takes place simultaneously, since in there time does not exist. It's like that old joke: “Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once...”. And it's only after you come back to normal time/space that you remember your encounter as something that took place in a sequential order, a sequence that's entirely the creation of your puny brain, trying to organize the experience into something it can understand. Or I think that's what Vedec Wejawe had said...

BUT SHE MUST EXIST IN THEIR REALM. SHE MUST BE THERE FOR THE RECKONING, said one memory-phantom.

THEN WE MUST USE WHAT THE SISKO CALLS “CHANGE”, said another.

Another warned: WE CANNOT INTERFERE WITH WHAT IS FIXED IN THEIR TIME.

NO. BUT WE CAN ALTER THAT WHICH IS HERE WITH US...

Anyway, to make a long story full of lofty alien double-talk short, I was relieved that they were deciding not to remove me from linear time---(which sounded too much like “Let's kill her and put her out of her misery" for my liking)---but to turn me into a girl instead.

Because even though I didn't have a body at that point I could feel something changing as they talked back and forth. It felt like my soul had been standing inside a box so small that it was forced to hunch over, but I had been in there so long it didn't even realize there was any other possible position, and then all of the sudden I got to stand up and stretch. Or that's as close as I've ever come to describing it.

THEN THIS WILL BE DONE, said friendly old Zossh Bora who ran the village market, standing on the scaffold on that drizzly morning that he'd been hung as the Cardassian informant we'd known existed but could never pinpoint, who had been responsible for the deaths of nearly a thousand of our friends and neighbors.

And as he dropped through the hole and his neck broke with an audible snap there was a thundering flash of white-

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.

I really hoped that what I was experiencing now wasn't another of those hypothetical detours in reality but the real thing; because I was back on the ancient stone floor of the monastery's temple, the doors of the Orb's box were swinging shut, and---(“Ah, you're back," said Bareil, who startled as he got a better look at me, then nodded and smiled- "Well that's certainly different!”)---and I was a girl.

And I mean totally. I didn't have to go exploring, feeling myself up in front of the Vedec to know this, I just knew somehow. That this was the same body I'd had in my vision of being on the Federation space station, although somewhat younger this time. My own age. I don't know how the Prophets managed this; They're gods, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

Vedek Bariel was reciting something under his breath, a single line in what sounded like a very ancient version of our language. I caught the words 'wonder' and 'joy'. He said to me, “You seem pleased with whatever happened to you in there.”

“I sure am,” I grinned.

“Would you be willing to tell me what happened to you in there?”

“I would, but give me a minute. It was all so...” My recent experience was still swimming around in my head, disjointed and unclear. My legs started wobbling.

“Of course, take your time. Are you feeling all right?” he asked with concern.

“Oh yes! I feel very, very, very all right. I feel...”

“Blessed?” he suggested.

I nodded hard as the tears started coming. Grabbed him, hugged him, thanking him, thanking the Prophets. Yes that was the word. Blessed...

He guided me over to the nearest pew and I sat, parking my new butt down on it. I was glad to see that while my boy clothes fit me a bit loosely here and were kind of tight there, I wasn't at risk of having them fall off of me and they weren't even all that funny looking. Sort of like what my Mam would wear when she went out to work in the garden.

Bareil fished a timepiece out of one his robe's big pockets and studied it, "I guess I need to get someone to cover for me at this morning's service. This act of the Prophets---as perfect in their wisdom as they might be---is going to need sorting out at the mundane level..."

"You mean with my parents and everything? Boy I'll say!" I laughed.

“I'll tell you what. In a little while I'll take you into town over there. I have a friend, a woman doctor, who I think should have a look at you. It's not that I'm afraid you're unhealthy, but because when I take you home, I want to be able to tell your folks what she says about this."

"That's a good plan," I nodded. My homecoming was going to be very interesting.

There's this new procedure that I've heard they're doing at the Sexual Wellness Institute on Raisa, that sounds like nearly as good a way of curing a transsexual's body/mind dilemna as what happened to me today. It involves sending a person through a transporter and rewriting their DNA while they're in a disembodied state inside the buffer field, then putting them back together as their desired sex, with all the right parts in the right place just like they'd been born that way. But that type of cure would still leave me with my father ranting and raving about what a disgrace it was and 'what are the neighbors going to think?'

But being able to tell him that this had been done by the Orb of Change and Prophecy? He was the one who was always talking about the Prophets and their will for us. And hadn't Mam always joked that it would take an act of divine intervention to get my Pap to change his mind about something? My smile---which was already so big it was starting to make my face hurt---got a lot bigger.

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.

When Bareil offered to take me home I figured we would be using some sort of groundcar, and I was surprised to find that his order had their own runabout.

“More like a crawl-about,” he joked as we lifted off, “It's got no shields and the front windscreen's cracked, we won't be taking this into space any time soon. But it's perfect for little hops like this...”

Doctor Direyah (“Call me Vani”) was really nice. She'd been stunned to find out why I was seeing her, but she believed her friend the Vedec, and had always believed that the Prophets were capable of performing wonders like this, things that science would be hard pressed to explain. And after checking me out she said I was a perfectly normal fifteen year old Bajoran female.

And now she wanted to come with us when I went home, to answer any questions my parents might have. Or at least the ones she could answer.

When I thought of how I had left home this morning, storming off suddenly without even a decent pair of shoes on, and the way I was returning---as a girl, in a spaceship, with a Vedec and a doctor in tow---I had to laugh at the thought of how astonished Mam and Pap were going to be. Although it was nervous laughter, to be sure.

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We'd swung around Mount M'leh and I saw our village ahead. Vedec Barial and Dr. Vani were talking and I was basically spacing out. Lost in thought. I kind of understood what had happened to me with the Orb, but my brain had those other mysteries to chew on. Like my mysterious journey, with those visions of my past and then my future.

Bariel had suggested that it would be a waste of time to try and make perfect sense out of that part of it. The Prophets dwell in a realm outside of time as we understand it, and when they intersect with us it doesn't follow the rules of our world. He warned me that just as that awful deal with the perverted gul had never happened (I'd been punched, and threatened but there was none of that creepy sexual stuff...) the other vision was only a possible future, and might not ever come to pass. And he warned me that my linear existence could be disrupted again over the next few days, some kind of reality-scrambling cosmic aftershocks...

I'm glad he'd said this, because three times in the next week I had those white flashes and was thrown into some little scene, a different bubble of reality each time.

In one of them I was still a baby, I think, because everything was candy colored and blurry and nothing made any sense at all. And in another I was a middle age woman running our family's smithy, which was bigger, this whole foundry with about fifty workers, and I was in my office up in the loft, looking out over it all while I did some paperwork.

But my favorite was from a life of mine that seemed to be ten or fifteen years from now, where I was a Starfleet ensign on a ship called the Thomas Jefferson; standing the night watch on the starship's mostly empty bridge with an Earthwoman named Lt. Khadijah. Not a very exciting few minutes, just a couple of girls chatting and trying to stave off boredom.

What was wonderful about it was how normal being a woman felt. And I was telling her about today of all things, my transformation by the Prophets. And she was fascinated by my story, and seemed to be believing me for the most part. She said that her religion too had a prophet, only he wasn't a wormhole alien but a man chosen by the Earth God to spread His truths. And she said that the way I was transported across space sounded like something that had happened to her prophet, when he was suddenly wooshed from one city on their planet to another- one of the great miracles of her faith. She asked me if I'd seen Heaven along the way.

“No,” I said, as a scary feeling of unreality washed over me, “But what happened that day ...... I think it's happening again. I mean I'm not sure I'm really sitting here talking to you ....... This is weird!”

“Are you okay? Do you want me to activate the ship's Doctor?”

But before I could answer there was a blinding white flash and I was back at home again; sitting in the parlor with my Pap and Mam, three days after my visit with the gods of Bajor.

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Pap looked at me. He couldn't deny what he was seeing, “I don't know what to think about this.”

“A miracle is what it is,” Mam told him. “The Orb box opened for her. The Prophets saw the truth about her, and they helped her. They made right what was wrong. How can you deny it?”

“Are you sure it was the Prophets? And not ...... the others?” he gestured awkwardly. He wasn't even going to say their name.

“I was at the Monastery, Father. In the temple, with the Orb. That's the last place the pah Wraiths would be! The Vedec himself saw me disappear and then come back changed. I went to the Celestial Temple. Is being a female so horrible that it has to come from Evil? You love Mam, don't you?”

“Of course I do. And I love you too. But I ..... I just don't understand. Why this? Why us? Why does this have to happen to our family? People are talking about this, it's this big story. And then today a reporter from BAJORAN FAITH magazine showed up. What can I tell them when I ....... I don't understand any of this.”

Mam rubbed his wrist consolingly. That big nasty scar the Spoonheads left there, like something had taken his hand half off. “You survived a decade in a Cardassian labor camp. Surely you can handle a bit of talk from the neighbors ....... And the reporters, just tell them what you're saying now. That it's not something you wanted but you're trying to accept it. That you're praying to the Prophets for understanding.”

“That's not a bad idea,” he nodded, looking toward the family shrine. The cabinet beside it where his robes hung, “I should do that. Pray, I mean. Because the Prophets...”

“What about them?”

“Well if this is truly their will, then who am I to speak against it? Compared to their power, their wisdom, I'm like a microbe. And we're blessed just to be able to witness their workings, and to know that they're in the world...”

Mam nodded, smiling. She and I went outside, to the edge of the woods to pick opalnuts and left him to commune with our gods.

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.

“The Orbs represent a tangible, tactile, physical proof that there is something beyond Bajor with a power greater than ours, a power to shape reality, to destroy, and to create.”
-Vedek Solis Tendren