Revelation (PG)

DISCLAIMER: These characters and situations are the property of Paramount Pictures, except for the ones I made up. ***

Revelation

Odo and Kira had chosen to marry on the spur of the moment. Having made the decision while walking together on the Promenade, they decided against prolonged reflection, for fear they would lose their nerve, or a formal ceremony, for fear that painful memories of Jadzia's wedding would depress the mood. Instead, like their first kiss, marriage followed directly upon impulse. They had headed straight for the station's Temple with two hastily commandeered witnesses, Quark and Leeta (chosen because the Colonel and the Changeling had decided to join their futures in front of the Ferengi's bar) and prevailed upon the Vedek to wed them then and there. Having chosen this route to wedded bliss, however, had forced them subsequently to endure, for many weeks afterward, a most protracted series of chiding congratulations, belated wedding gifts, and scoldings for not inviting this or that person to the wedding. Even an after-the-fact reception at Vic's in the holosuite did little to calm the protests of those on the station, and, as for friends on Bajor and elsewhere, some of them were still just learning of the nuptials and sending gifts with this or that sarcastic message attached.

Returning to their quarters at 1800 hours on a day three months after the event, Odo encountered a large package in front of the door that could only be still another wedding present. He carried the box inside and opened it. The gift was a beautiful, hand-carved vase made of polished corydium, a Bajoran mineral notable for its interlacing bands of colors. An intricate design, applied in liquid gold over the stone, enhanced its natural beauty. On the base, in letters of that same gold, the initials BPN were inscribed. Attached to the side of the vase was a mini-PADD whose message read: "Congratulations, Odo, it's about time! Nachas."

It was a sign of how much his friendship with Bram Nachas had waned during the years after the Occupation ended that Odo had not bothered to inform his former undercover Bajoran deputy of his marriage and was somewhat surprised that news of it had reached him there on his farm in rural Rekantha province. Still holding the vase and admiring its workmanship, Odo sat down and thought back on the last time he had spoken with Bram face-to-face, more than seven years ago, and the reasons that it had been the last time . . .

While the Occupation continued, Odo had kept anxious watch on the casualty reports from the Limetra mine, to which the Cardassians had returned Bram to serve out the rest of his life sentence. As far as he could discern, his friend was still laboring there and remained healthy. Upon the Liberation, however, Odo had completely lost track of him. The prudent thing for the Provisional government to have done would have been to compile complete lists of everyone freed from every mine, labor and refugee camp. Odo would certainly have done so, had he been in charge. Unfortunately, freedom had brought chaos to Bajor, as well as jubilation, and record-keeping, so prized by the Cardassians, had not remained a Bajoran priority. Odo had tried inquiring as to Bram's whereabouts of Prelar Tam, his former lover, but those inquiries, like others about her general welfare that he had sent from time to time after Dukat had permitted her to return to her family, never received an answer. Perhaps Bram would find him, Odo hoped, since he hadn't changed *his* address. On the other hand, would Bram reasonably expect that the Chief of Security under the Cardassians on Terok Nor would be continuing in that post under the Federation on Deep Space Nine? He barely believed it himself.

Yet Bram did eventually contact him on the station, about half a year after the Liberation. His message brimmed over with news of great changes in his life, delivered in the offhand manner that was the Bram Nachas trademark: "So Odo, still on the station, are you? You'll have to tell me how you pulled that one off. I'm at the Prelar farm in Rekantha. I made straight for it after the Cardies left the mine, and Tam and I are married now. We're the Bram Prelars--it solves the Bram-Tam problem. We've just had our first child, a son. I'm naming him after you, Odo, and I hope that you can present him to the Prophets at the Naming Ceremony ten days from now. Take a shuttle to the provincial capital, and I'll have a pre-programmed ground car waiting for you. Bram Prelar Nachas. Oh, by the way, we intend to have a very large family, and we've gotten a good start. I'm half a year married and already the father of two boys! A little over three years ago, Tam's mother discovered an abandoned baby in their barn, a half-caste left there by some poor Bajoran girl, I'm sure. They found him on my birthday, and Tam thought that it was a sign from the Prophets, so she's been raising him as her own. His name is Meeto."

Odo had digested this torrent of information with a mixture of delight and surprise. That Nachas would name his first-born son after him touched the shape-shifter deeply; that Tam would take in a part-Cardassian child, after what she had suffered at Cardassian hands, totally baffled him. Then he started to do some calculations, and the matter became more explicable, although he still couldn't quite imagine that the baby's being Tam's own could quite cancel out her revulsion at raising the son of the man whom he strongly suspected the child's Cardassian father to be.

Accompanied by two DS9 Bajoran militia deputies who had formerly served in an unofficial capacity with Bram on Terok Nor, Odo therefore arrived for the ritual at the Prelar farm feeling both great pride and great curiosity. He had no sooner stepped out of the car than Bram rushed up to greet and embrace him. He was wearing a vest cut from of the multi-colored Tholian tunic that Odo had sent back to him along with his affirmative response about attending the Naming Ceremony. The big Bajoran then immediately steered Odo in the direction of a striking dark-skinned woman with jet black eyes and hair, and a large bear of a man with a ruddy complexion and thick, sandy curls. Odo noticed that the father's left arm hung limp and useless at his side; he wondered if that had been the price exacted by the Cardassians for the man's having raised a son who had crushed the skull of one of their soldiers.

"These are my parents, Bram Selina and Bram Chadras, Odo," said Nachas, by way of introduction. The man and woman both grasped Odo's hands heartily and began to speak effusively, and at once, of their indebtedness to the man who had played such a part in preserving the life of their only child, whom they had believed lost to them for nearly twenty years. Despite his protests that Nachas was himself most responsible for his own survival, the Brams talked on so gratefully that Odo, growing embarrassed, surreptitiously began to look around. He saw Nachas engaged in animated conversation with the two deputies, but Tam sat several meters distant, holding baby Odo and surrounded protectively by a large crowd of people whose varying shades of red hair indicated them to be other members of the large Prelar family. Neither Tam nor any of her relatives had made the slightest move to greet the delegation from Deep Space Nine.

After a quarter-hour, the Vedek called for them to assemble for the ceremony. It was very brief. After the holy man sang several chants, he asked, "Who presents this child to the Prophets for their protection?" Following the instructions Bram had sent him, Odo took the boy from his father's arms and then held him before the Vedek. "Who gives this child a name?" the Vedek continued. "We do," said Tam and Nachas in unison. "We give him the name Bram Prelar Odo." The Vedek next anointed the palms of the wiggling baby Odo and the souls of his feet with consecrated koba oil, and the shape-shifter handed him back to Nachas. There was one concluding chant, and then the proud father invited everyone to sit at the tables and drink spring wine, after which they were welcome to refreshments laid out on the rear porch of the farmhouse. As Odo walked with the deputies to one of the tables, he reflected on two curious facts. As of yet, Tam had not spoken to him or looked him in the eye, and her "foundling" son was nowhere to be seen.

*** Only when the deputies had excused themselves to go to the refreshment tables did Bram slide himself into one of the chairs at Odo's now vacant table. "Enjoying yourself, I hope, Constable," he said.

"Very much. It's not every day someone names a child for me. I'm not sure I deserve it. I've always felt terrible that I couldn't protect you from Dukat's anger."

"That's all past, and I survived it. Besides, if you hadn't made me your deputy on Terok Nor, I'd never have met Tam. Nothing will ever cancel out my gratitude for that."

They fell silent. They hadn't seen one another for almost four years, during which countless changes had overtaken each of them. The lack of recent common experience rendered conversation awkward. Odo had never had any gift whatsoever for making small talk, but at length he gamely put forth an effort.

"So, you and Tam plan to remain here on her family's farm?" he asked

"Yep. The land is incredibly fertile and the harvests bountiful, now that the Cardies aren't confiscating all the crops. Bajor won't have an easy time of it becoming self-supporting again. Getting farms like this one up to full productivity is a key necessity for the future. We're lucky that four of Tam's six brothers lived through the Occupation. I think I can take up the slack for the other two."

"And you'll be content being a farmer the rest of your life?" Odo would have thought that Bram had engaged in quite enough manual labor for the time being.

"I never make plans involving the rest of my life," Bram said philosophically. "It's what I need to be doing now. In my spare time, though, I've been indulging myself doing a little craft work, making stone-carved utensils, bowls, jewelry, that kind of thing. I figured, why waste all that experience putting tools to rock that the spoon-heads so kindly provided me?"

Odo acknowledged the joke with a small chuckle. "I would never have thought of you as an artisan," he added.

"Oh, I'm a man of many hidden talents, Odo."

As he was about to reply, Odo noticed a small boy approaching them from the direction to which Bram's back was turned. By his vest, made of the same Tholian cloth as Bram's, and his greyish complexion and tell-tale neck and brow ridges, Odo concluded him to be the "foundling" Meeto whose absence from the Naming Ceremony had puzzled the shape-shifter. The boy was proceeding slowly, with his waist bent, walking on the balls of his feet, sneaking up on them as it were.

"I think we have a visitor." Odo said softly, gesturing in Meeto's direction.

Bram got up and spun around. The boy froze in mid-stride. "Meeto, you rascal, come here," Bram boomed out, opening his arms wide. The boy's face lit up with the most beautiful smile Odo had ever seen. He broke into a run. Bram swept him up, raised him into the air, swung him around by the wrists, as Meeto chortled with delight, and then set him upon the table. The boy leaned forward, balancing on his hands and knees, and regarded Odo with great interest through large, golden-brown eyes with deformed, elongated oval pupils. Seeing them, Odo had the confirmation of his instincts about the child's actual origins.

"Hel-lo, O-do," the boy said in a lilting voice.

"Ah, you know who I am?"

"Sure. You're Pop-pop's old friend, Constable Goo, who can ooze through rocks and make bad people go away."

Bram blushed. "You'll excuse me, Odo. With children you sometimes have to make things simple so they'll understand."

Odo smiled and made a dismissive gesture. Bram had always liked to spin tales, and here was a new and apparently eager listener.

Meeto retreated, putting his arms around Bram's neck. "Brown Bram's my new Pop-pop," he said solemnly. "I asked the Prophets for a Pop-pop for ever so long, and now here he is."

"Brown Bram?" Odo directed the question to both of them, but the boy was the one to answer. Stroking his father's cheek, he said. "This is brown Bram, and I'm grey Bram"--he held out his other hand to Odo-- "and Mom-mom is pink Bram."

"And who is your new brother?"

Meeto screwed up his face in concentration for several seconds and then announced triumphantly, "Beige Bram!" The boy then swept back his longish, thick, deep auburn hair to reveal a clan earring carved out of polished corydium, with its alternating bands of browns, roses, greys, and whites. "Pop-pop made me this earring, and he says the Bram Prelar clan will stay as strong as this stone and have just as many different colors--"

"Meeto! Come here this instant," called out an angry female voice. The boy looked up and saw his "Mom-mom." He scrambled down from the table and threw himself into her arms.

"You were told in no uncertain terms to stay in the house with Gramma," Tam continued in the same harsh tones.

"But I just wanted to see Constable Goo," the boy protested, as tears began to fill his eyes.

His mother picked him up and gave him a kiss. "I'm sure Constable Goo has better things to do than put up with your pestering," she said, somewhat more affectionately. Odo started to assert that Meeto was not in any way pestering him, but Bram put a warning hand on his arm and shook his head.

Tam acknowledged Odo with a frosty, "Constable," and carried the boy away. He looked over her shoulder, flashed Odo another of his beautiful smiles, and waved good-bye--until his mother jerked his hand back down.

After they'd gone into the house, Bram, holding his head in hands, looked up apologetically. "So, Odo, you see how it is."

"Yes, I see." Odo paused to let his friend say whatever he was willing to say on the matter.

"I doubt it required any prolonged exercise of your detective abilities to see through that 'baby in the barn' story, did it? Even without getting a look at the boy himself?"

"I had my suspicions," Odo concurred. "When I saw the eyes, I knew for certain."

Bram breathed a deep sigh. "If I'd been with Tam when she found out she was pregnant, I'd have never let her take the risk of carrying the child to term. But I was back in the mines, and she thought she'd never see me again. The odds were very strong that the baby was mine, and I guess she couldn't bear to give up the chance to have some part of me with her. Out here in the countryside, there weren't any fetal scanners, any facilities for doing intrauterine DNA analysis. When the boy was born, and it was clear he wasn't mine--- Well, the least *I* would have done was to take him to the hybrid home." Bram did not need to say what was the *most* he would have done to spare Tam the horror of having to raise the son of her defiler, and Odo did not need to ask him.

"Has Tam told you why she kept the child?"

Bram shook his head. "She insists even to me that he's another woman's bastard. I simply can't fathom what she was thinking. But if she bore the sight of *his* monstrous eyes looking up from the face of the baby at her breast, then who am I to ask her to repudiate the child now. You see what a bright, sweet, affectionate little fellow he is. We plan to love him to every extent of our power and hope for the best."

Odo looked carefully into Bram's troubled countenance. "I gather, however, that you are still uneasy about the boy?"

"Who wouldn't be? The things that fiend did--often they're caused by a taint in the blood. Of course, Tam is desperate to block that all out, to keep Meeto far away from anyone who knew what that man was like." Odo had by now deduced that since Meeto's birth no one in the Bram or Prelar clan had ever pronounced the name "Telessian" or uttered the phrase "Meeto's biological father," and that none of them ever would.

"That's why Tam has been less than welcoming to me?" the shape-shifter inquired tactfully.

"I apologize for her rudeness, but you're the last person in the quadrant she'd want anywhere near the boy. We had a furious argument about your even coming here for the ceremony. Odo--" Bram broke off and looked away.

"What is it, Nachas?"

"This is going to be the last time we meet face to face. We'll always keep in touch, of course, but you won't be coming back here again, and we won't be visiting Ter- Deep Space Nine. I'm sorry that we can't preserve a closer friendship, but Tam is adamant. She wants both of us, and the boy, completely separated from any reminders of the awful things that happened on the station."

"I can understand how she feels, even though I regret it. I don't have many friends, close or otherwise," the Constable replied in a calm, non-judgmental tone. Actually Odo was devastated, but it was hardly going to do any good to make Bram as miserable over the situation as he was.

Bram clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. "I wish things could be different, with all my heart. When it's a friend on one side and the woman you love on the other, there just isn't a choice. I hope someday you can find out for yourself what I mean."

"It's highly unlikely that I ever will, Bram."

"Come on, Constable, you're always so pessimistic. Remember, you were the one who was forever insisting that the Occupation would never end."

Odo smiled. "I'll take consolation in your instincts." The smile faded. "It's probably better if I leave now, isn't it?"

"I can't deny it," Bram answered, shaking Odo's hand heartily, muttering a good-bye, and walking away to rejoin the rest of his guests without looking back.. . . . .

***

As he reflected on their lost friendship, Odo thought ruefully how much easier it might have been, during all those years when he had nursed his unspoken love for Nerys, if he'd had Bram to confide in, instead of being driven, reluctantly and at last, to share his torment with Quark. Well, as Bram had said, "That's all past, and I survived it." Now, like the Bajoran, he too had finally gained the woman he loved.

At that moment, the woman he loved stepped through the door. Odo's reminiscences had reawakened the intense and painful longing for Nerys that had possessed him for so long, and that longing impelled him to sweep her into his arms and kiss her passionately, cradling her head in both hands, while working at the fasteners to her uniform with two others created for the occasion. Their record in bed had involved ten Odo-appendages, but right now his mind was set on going for an even dozen. Nerys, however, coming up for air, disengaged herself. "Whoa, Odo, you've obviously been having a more stimulating day in Security than I've had in Ops. I'm sorry, but I'm famished. Let me replicate a few bites, and change into something you'll have more fun peeling off me, and then we'll take a nice, long time about it."

"That sounds like an excellent plan," Odo purred and stepped back, somewhat embarrassed by his avidity. It was turning out that those outlandishly obscene jokes they used to tell about him on Terok Nor hadn't been very far off the mark. Sometimes he even wondered if they hadn't given him a few ideas.

Heading toward the replicator, Kira caught sight of the vase. "Another wedding present? Who's this one from?" she asked.

"An old friend from the mines. We've grown rather apart over the years, so you haven't heard me speak of him. I'm surprised he even sent a gift "

Kira picked up the mini-PADD and read it, grinning at the message. Then she turned toward Odo with an expression of curiosity on her face. "This Nachas. He couldn't by any chance be Bram Prelar Nachas?"

"Why, yes," Odo responded, surprised. "Do you know him?"

"Not personally, but by reputation, of course." Kira gave him a conspiratorial wink.

What was that all about, Odo wondered, and why would Nerys have heard of a stone sculptor who only sold to an elite, coterie audience. For a Bajoran, she had very little interest in the fine arts--not that he was planning to bring that up. "You know, despite his artistic achievements, it has always puzzled me that Bram didn't do something more with his life," he said instead. "In the old days, he showed so many leadership skills, even as a slave to the Cardassians, that I had always assumed he might take on some more public role in Bajoran society."

It was Kira's turn to look perplexed. "Are you trying to tell me that you don't know what your old friend really does? Bram Prelar Nachas runs Bajoran Intelligence."

"That's impossible." Odo harrumphed. "General Caldar Morel is the head of Bajoran Intelligence."

"The figurehead you mean, the public face. But it's Bram Prelar who's the brains of the operation. He directs covert ops, and everything else, from an underground complex on that farm of his. Come on, Odo, stop playing dumb; it's not a security breach to let on that you know. I got an unrestricted security clearance when I got promoted."

"I did not acquire such clearance by marriage and probably never will acquire it by any other means, given that your hour-long shouting match with First Minister Shakaar produced only his insistence, per the council of Ministers and the Vedek Assembly, that he would never entrust Bajoran state secrets to a person who had spent four years working for the Cardassians and had proven himself susceptible to manipulation by the Founders during the Dominion War," Odo responded quietly. "Bram could hardly be relied upon to perform such a sensitive function if he broadcast the truth of his position to a person denied access to confidential government data, even if that person did happen to be an old friend of his."

"Sorry, that was pretty stupid of me," Kira said, strengthening her apology with a lingering kiss. Her husband did not return it with any of the ardor he had displayed just a few minutes before. "Damn, have I ruined the evening then?"

"Not at all." He took her hand in his. "But I do confess that, right now, curiosity is getting in the way of passion. Do you have any information about how Bram got such a job."

"A little. Having spilled the big secret, I doubt I'll find myself in any more trouble for providing some of the background."

"Get yourself something to eat first, and you can tell me over dinner."

*** "So," Kira began a half hour later between bites of hasperat, "apparently this Bram was always a storehouse of information, down in the mines. Lots of times the Cardassians would catch Resistance fighters at things like stealing provisions or clothing that looked like normal, everyday Bajoran desperation. So they'd get sentenced to hard labor instead of being executed. For some reason, everyone who ended up working with Bram talked to him--damn more than they should have, if you ask me. Because he heard so much from so many, he was able to piece a lot of different things together, and he would make suggestions for strategy that some of them would carry back to their cells when they'd served their sentences. There were stories about him going around when I was in the Shakaar, and when I asked someone whether it wasn't awfully dangerous for one man to know what Bram knew, in case the Cardassians ever got wise and interrogated him, this fellow, who had worked with him, answered with absolute certainty, 'There's nothing any spoon-head could do that would make Bram Nachas betray us.'"

"I'm sure he was right," Odo agreed. "People just instinctively trusted Bram. I saw it all the time down there."

"Anyway," Kira continued. "Things got more official for him because of this series of coincidences. The Limetra pit, where he was imprisoned, contained this very rich ore deposit that the miners could only reach by walking over a very narrow rock bridge, and workers were constantly falling off it and through a relatively small opening into an unseen chasm below. It wasn't a long enough fall to kill, because they could always hear the miners begging to be rescued for hours, sometimes days, before they went quiet. Not that the Cardassians ever bothered to do so.

"One time for some reason they furloughed Bram to Terok Nor to work in ore processing, and who should he meet there, but Kren Ilsor, a man he had personally seen fall into the chasm. Well, of course, he asked for an explanation. It seems that Kren was sitting at the bottom waiting to die, and he could hear water running down the rock face outside, and his thirst was driving him mad. He'd had his laser pick with him when he fell, and he just started digging away at the rock, hopeless though it was. You could imagine his surprise when it turned out not to be so hopeless after all, and twelve hours of digging produced a small hole, through which the water dripped. It kept him alive for three more days of digging until the hole was big enough to squeeze through. He'd thought he was just reaching another ore pocket, but it turned out that he'd broken through to the outside of the mountain itself. The running water had over the years worn the rock face thin. He hid the hole with some underbrush and wandered out into the countryside, very weak with hunger, but luckily a Resistance patrol found him before the Cardassians could recapture him. When he had recovered, he went to work for us, and he was on the station co-ordinating sabotage efforts at the time he met up with Bram again.

"Bram said that he might someday be sent back to that mine, and he'd be sure to alert the miners that if they fell, there was a way out. He might even form an escape ring, as long as they didn't do it often enough to arouse suspicion, and as long as the workers knew that they risked being injured so severely in the fall that they couldn't make it through to the outside.

"As it so happened, the Cardassians *did* send Bram back, and he ended up getting very valuable information out with the men who made the escapes. Even though he was condemned for life, however, no one could ever persuade him to free himself. He just kept telling them that no one else could run the operation properly, and, besides, he could wait, because the Occupation was going to end with the spring thaw.

"When the Provisional Government was looking to start an intelligence service after the Occupation ended--and he was right about that, it happened during the spring thaw--a dozen different people told them to ask Bram Prelar Nachas to organize it. He supposedly informed them that he would accept their commission, provided he could operate out of his farm and never have to be away from his wife and children--and his sculpture studio. So they dug the intelligence complex under the studio, and he took the job."

"Amazing!" said Odo when Kira had finished her tale. He now understood that Bram had kept him at arm's length all these years not just to protect Tam and Meeto, but also because a Provisional Government that wouldn't give unrestricted security clearance to a man who had worked for the Cardassians might also have had some qualms upon learning that their head of covert operations used to work for a man who reported directly to Gul Dukat. He'd think about when to share *that* information with Nerys--if at all. Right now he had other things on his mind.

"If you've finished your meal, my love, I can suggest several delicious desserts," he growled seductively.

"All of them made with gelatin?"

"Of course."

Kira got up, grabbed his arm and led him toward the bedroom, moving sinuously backwards "How many hands will you need to take this dress off me, do you suppose?"

"Oh, I was thinking this one might require twelve."

Her eyes widened. "Mmm, mmm, Constable; as you say, excellent plan."

***

It took Odo many weeks to get over his surprise at learning about Bram's true occupation. Every time he passed by the vase, prominently displayed on a side table in their quarters, he felt the urge to shake his head and say, "Hmm, hmm, hmm."

That urge had however dissipated by the time that his namesake's eighth birthday rolled around. Having heard the previous year of young Odo's passion for and skill at playing springball, he asked Nerys to select a top-of-the-line set of equipment for the boy. One day after the gift was delivered, the annual PADD from Rekantha Province arrived, bearing an effusive thank-you message and a digital image of Bram Prelar Odo in full springball regalia. This time, however, rather than having a brief, impersonal update about the clan's doings during the past year appended at the end of the boy's note, the package contained a separate PADD from Nachas and a sealed paper envelope inscribed in ink, "Odo, read this after you read the message from Nachas, Bram Prelar Tam."

Tam had during the past few years developed an intense interest in recovering and restoring the hand-written messages, called "letters," by which Bajorans communicated with each other before the Cardasians arrived, a time when PADDs were unknown. So it didn't surprise Odo that she had begun writing these letters herself. Young Odo had informed him in last year's thank-you message that their mother had required him and all his older brothers and sisters to learn to "sign their names" as a form of personal identification, a form that people once had used in place of thumbprints.

What did surprise Odo, indeed shocked him, was that Tam would be addressing one of her letters to *him.* He was so curious that he almost ignored her instructions and opened the envelope before reading Bram's PADD, except that he wasn't in general a person who ignored instructions. Taking up the PADD, he called up Bram's message instead:

Odo, how's married life treating you? Didn't I tell you that there's nothing like it? I hope you and Colonel Kira are thinking about children. They'll make your bliss complete. Since I last wrote to you, we've added our eleventh. It's a girl, Igera; she's four months old now.

Tam and I have been terribly remiss not inviting you and your Nerys down here for a visit. Of course, you know why, but now that's all changed, thanks to some wonderful things that have happened to Meeto these past few months. Tam will tell you all about it herself, in the enclosed letter.

So, Odo, please come as soon as you can. We have lots of catching up to do. I'm attaching a family portrait, complete with essential information about each of the kids, just so you aren't completely overwhelmed by meeting the giant Bram Prelar clan.

Nachas

Indeed, they did have catching up to do. Odo couldn't wait to inform Bram of the security breach that had revealed the Bajoran's little "hobby" and to request a thorough tour of the "sculpture studio." And Nerys would probably want to consult with Prelar about the ins and outs of Bajoran adoption procedures, for, in addition to Meeto and their five biological children together (two boys and three girls, ages seven, five, three, two, and four months), Tam and Nachas had adopted five orphans of the Occupation, four girls and a boy, ranging in age now from twelve to nine. Two of them were hybrids, selected, no doubt, to keep Meeto from feeling isolated as the only "grey Bram" in the clan. Nachas joked that they had made it their personal mission to assure that the farm was well-staffed into the next generation, but given the equally prolific ways of Tam's four brothers and their wives, the Brams and Prelars seemed likely to guarantee future agricultural production in the whole of Rekantha Province as well.

Having never met any of the children save Meeto and Odo, the Constable clicked on the link to the portrait with considerable interest. In it, Bram and Prelar stood in back of the line of youngsters, their arms around each other. They'd both put on a little weight since Odo had last seen them but were otherwise unchanged. On one end of the row of children stood Meeto, instantly recognizable from his same beautiful smile and the reptilian eyes, with his two-year-old brother Elat perched on his shoulders. Beside him stood Odo, who, having the benefit of Bram as well as Prelar genes, was nearly as tall as the brother who was three-and-a-half years his senior. On the other end, the oldest daughter, twelve-year-old Brena, held Igera, the newest infant, in her arms. The rest curved down by descending height to a center occupied by the five-year-old boy Jamo and three-year-old girl Cralen. Among them, they did display nearly every color on the corydium stone that Meeto had shown him all those years ago. Under each child there was a hyperlink to a complete biography of interests and achievements. Odo decided to peruse these at his leisure, after reading the mysterious missive from their mother.

He opened the envelope Tam had addressed to him and pulled out her letter. Written in a firm, large hand in brown umber ink, it began "Odo, I hope you can forgive me"

All I've been able to think about since Meeto's birth was protecting him from finding out about his origins. Looking back, though, I wonder if it wasn't really myself I was protecting, trying to keep far away anything and anybody that might make me look upon my dear boy with hatred. It was a terribly misguided goal, and it's cost you and Nachas years of friendship.

That's all in the past, now, however, because there's been a miracle.

Odo gave a little grunt of surprise. Tam had always been religious, but wasn't it going a bit far to start talking about miracles? He resumed reading with heightened curiosity.

Three months ago, when Meeto came down as he always does to help me with breakfast, before the other children are awake, he said, very casually, "Mom-mom I've had a vision from the Prophets."

"You mean you had a dream," I replied.

"Aren't they the same thing?" he responded with that lovely smile of his. So I asked him to tell me about it.

"You were there," he began, "and suddenly this terrible dragon flew down and began scratching at you with long, sharp claws. But the Prophets took pity on you, and they shriveled up the dragon's wicked pagh, and sent down instead a sweet, kind pagh that had just returned to the Celestial Temple. And then you reached out to touch the dragon, and poof! it changed into a da'ot. And you picked the da'ot up and took it back to our farm to live in the pond."

I was nearly struck dumb. Da'ots are amphibious creatures that help us keep down the number of harmful insects. They have golden brown eyes with vertical pupils, just like Meeto's, and I'm always having to scold his brothers and sisters for calling him "da'ot eyes." As for the dragon, I was quite certain what it represented. With great trepidation, I asked Meeto if he had any idea what his vision meant.

"Oh, I know exactly what it means, but then so do you, don't you Mom-mom?" he said.

Then I broke down completely. He came over and put his arms around me, and kissed away my tears, and he said, in a voice that wasn't a child's, "Be at peace. There's nothing of HIM in me *except* the eyes."

In that instant I knew, absolutely, that the Prophets *were* speaking through him, and that I could lay to rest all my fears. For some time Meeto's instructors at the village school had been telling Nachas and me how unusually perceptive he was in interpreting our ancient prophetic texts. So I decided to take him into the capital and have him interviewed by the monks at the temple there. They were so impressed that they asked our permission to call in representatives from the Vedek Assembly, and when they had in turn talked with Meeto, they informed us that the boy had a pagh of the purest holiness any of them had ever encountered. If we would agree to let him be inducted into one of the scholarly orders immediately, and begin intensive training with a master, they believed he might grow to be the greatest spiritual teacher Bajor has yet seen.

You can imagine how hard it was for me to let him go, but when the Prophets select your first-born to do their work in this world, you don't refuse them. Meeto's been studying with Vedek Altimar at the Brekana monastery in Musila Province for six weeks now, and they've already authorized him to issue a prayer card. It's never happened before with someone so young. I've enclosed one for you and your new wife.

Anyway, that's our miracle. I look forward to greeting you and Nerys whenever you can visit.

Walk with the Prophets always, Odo,

Bram Prelar Tam

Odo shook his head in amazement and extracted the card from the envelope. Prayer cards were old-fashioned photographs that had the picture of a revered spiritual leader on the front and included one of his or her homilies on the reverse side. The few Odo had examined invariably featured aged sages with lined faces, so it was highly incongruous to see the beatifically grinning Meeto, his auburn hair cropped close, sitting behind a desk piled high with scrolls in a rust-colored acolyte's robe, his da-ot's eyes not quite free of childish mischief.

Turning the card over, Odo found out something he had never known before, that "Meeto" was merely a Bajoran nickname for the boy's full familiar name, a name that was not Bajoran. Odo didn't know whether the Prophets had spoken to Tam, also, when she had named the boy, or if she had on her own chosen to honor the memory of an unlikely martyr to the betterment of the Bajoran people. In either event, the name was a fitting one, and it reinforced the truth of the homily to which it was attached: "Out of our darkest evils, the Prophets sometimes fashion their greatest good--Acolyte Bram Prelar Selemet."

THE END



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