(no subject)

[sentinel_nameless]

 Little Warrior,

 

It is three in the morning. Shlev is asleep. I cannot sleep. It is my third cycle of insomnia. I will get a pill from Dr. Tsering if I have to. You would be impressed with me for actually visiting sickbay. I must make many concessions being here with Shlev including staying healthy enough to keep after him. He can evade anyone. 

 

Since I cannot sleep anyway, I may as well keep working my way out of your debt. 

 

You asked if I had a hairlip. Apparently because of a scar that the Other Me had. As is usual, you were trying to talk to me while I was eating. 

 

The answer is:

 

Yes. I was born three months premature, with a cleft lip and palate. It was repaired by my zhavey, a physician, after my birth.

 

I did not know until later last year (while I was working on the edge of Orion space, before coming to DS17). It was revealed in my thavan’s journals.

 

I have no scar from my facial surgery because it is an easy repair. It was done within ten minutes of my birth. I am now indistinguishable from any other thaan. But I was weak and sickly in the first few years of my life and I only survived being preterm because I was born on a star base.

 

Two hundred years ago, I would have been left on the ice. Even fifty years ago, I would not have been allowed to breed. 

 

I wondered how my parents managed to conceal this but I learned that my zhavey had borne me off world, on a Federation star base, in the hands of that same star base’s chief medical officer. She came into her season while offworld and did not wish to interrupt her research. The rest of the bond had come to be with her, and she chose to stay offworld to carry out her studies while they returned to Andor. She was going to return to Andor within two weeks of when I ended up being born, but ended up staying at the star base when she gave birth to me, and for several months after. My shreya came to see her.

 

It was during that time that she became close to my thavan. When my biological thavan died in the Great Preserve, the remaining bondmates invited  him to take my first thavan’s place. They were fond of him and he had lost his own bond. 

 

Now you know. You know more than I knew for most of my life. What else is that I have for most of my life believed that I am a high bond rating thaan. I am only such because my zhavey bore me offworld. If my actual early situation had ever been disclosed in the database, I would have been spared a lifetime of headache and I would have married you while we were still on Shingen. But I also would not have Shlev.

 

Yes, you are going to ask me why I did not tell you any of this before. 

 

At that time, I knew of nothing of the kind.

 

So now you know all of this, as uninteresting as it is.

 

If you were making a bet with Diziara, you can collect. Or pay her.