Once upon a Dream by Nora

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Danziger heaved yet another hundred pound crate on to his shoulders and out of the cargo pod to the new Transrover. He did so as carefully as possible, Julia having threatened death on the next person to drop one on their arm or any other extremity. He sent a rough smile to Alonzo who was grunting right behind him, having given up his shirt to the heat already. As he pushed the box up onto the back of the large vehicle he glanced over at the two Syndrome children who had come down in the second pod and were watching them quietly from a distance. One little boy, he guessed he was around seven, and a little girl who was only two or three. John had noticed Alonzo watching her earlier. She was so close to Ashley's age, she must remind him of the fact that if his own daughter had been born on the stations, she could be just like them. They two kids looked so listless and lost, their parents off listening to Devon explain the basics of living on a planet... Danziger decided it was time he and Alonzo took a break.

"'Lonz!" he called to the man, "Why don't you go get Ash?" Alonzo nodded, understanding his motives and headed off towards the camp. John moved towards the small children who were practically cowering from his approach.

"Hey munchkins," he used True's old pet-name and knelt in front of them, "I'm John. What are your names?" The boy looked up at him with big hazel eyes,

"Michael," he pointed towards the little girl, trying to hide behind the boy, "and that's Jasmine."

"What do you two think of your new home so far?" John asked softly. Michael shrugged a little.

"It's okay, but Mom says it's dangerous." John's eyebrows raised slightly at the young child's comment. He was about to ask Michael who his mother was, so he could reassure the woman, but his thought was interrupted by the giggles and laughter of father and daughter approaching them.

As Alonzo and Ashley walked up towards Danziger and the children, Ashley's eyes grew larger and she hid further and further behind her father's legs. Alonzo knelt and gently pulled Ashley in front of him.

"Ashley," John spoke up, "This is Michael and Jasmine. Kids, this is Ashley." Ashley looked on in shock at these two new children, never having seen any children besides Uly and True before. But children's instincts quickly took over and the young girls slowly moved towards each other. Jasmine smiled broadly, pointing towards a bush bright with yellow blossoms. She stuttered over the new word,

"Flll...flowwwer!" Alonzo smiled broadly as the girls raced off hand in hand, Michael laughing as he followed behind them.

A few hours later, long past dusk, the much larger group slowly started gathering around a glowing fire, the old colonists explaining the ritual to the new. Uly and True, after several rounds of begging, pleading and bribing, managed to convince their parents to let them stay up late with the adults. Now they sat proudly on the ground, determined to keep their tired eyes open.

True noticed the recent arrivals staring at the blazing fire in awe and worry. When a piece of wood crackled, she saw one woman actually jump in fright. True shook her head in bewilderment, was she ever that nervous when they arrived on this planet?

In the distance, a koba's gentle cooing could be heard, drifting in the wind.

"What was that?" a man, James Carper she thought his name was, asked nervously. True watched her mother... well, soon-to-be step-mother, send him a consoling smile.

"It's a native creature called a koba. They're not dangerous if they're left alone." True ducked her head, remembering all too clearly what happened when they weren't left alone.

Devon's words had little impact on the group. For the next half hour True watched as they jumped each time the wind swirled around the fire, letting off a gentle hiss, whenever the koba let out it's remorseful song, whenever they heard anything that wasn't mechanical. She thought it was ridiculous. They planet was perfectly safe once you knew what to look out for, and these people had it easy! They hadn't trekked across the continent with few supplies, little knowledge of the inhabitants and...

Her thoughts were interrupted as Julia joined the myriad of people crowded near the fire, and wilted into Alonzo's arms. She had been operating on Cameron's arm in his tent since the morning accident with minimal help from Vasquez, who was already at the fire. Everyone looked up expectantly,

"Cameron broke his arm in three places, and there was a lot of tissue damage, but I sealed the wound and he'll be fine,"

Julia could almost feel the collective sigh of the group. With the tension of Cameron's injury gone, conversations resumed where they'd left off among the colonists new and old. Julia looked up at her husband,

"Ashley in bed?" he nodded,
"Out like a light. Are you okay?" he asked. Julia looked up at him, with weary eyes,

"Fine... I'm just really tired." Alonzo pulled her close to him, slowly rocking her into a sleepy haze. Just as Julia was started to doze off, a voice drifted through the night air, tossing her back into reality,

"Mama?" Instantly she was sitting up, looking around for where the voice was coming from. Ashley stood a few metres away in her blue nightie that was really one of Julia's old shirts, desperately clutching a ragged stuffed rabbit that Yale had somehow managed to make out of scraps of material. Julia opened her arms and her daughter shuffled over and pulled herself into her mother's lap.

"I'd bad dream, Mama," she said quietly, snuggling her head under her mother's chin. Julia gathered her in her arms and rocked her slowly, much in the way Alonzo had been rocking her minutes ago, gently singing lullabies Devon had taught her as Ashley stared into the bright campfire.

"Often times I dream of music. Of a river that freely flows. And it sings a song sweeter than honey, one everybody knows...."

Julia hadn't known any lullabies when she first became a mother; her mother and father had never sung to her. Emotion, to her mother at least, was a sign of weakness, and her father had never argued the issue. But she was determined to be a better mother to Ashley than her mother had been to her, and learning lullabies had been the first step.

Still humming, Julia felt someone staring at her, a natural reflex she noticed was getting keener every day on this planet. She glanced up to see Richard Vasquez looking down upon her and Ashley in pure disbelief from a few yards away. She smiled slightly, understanding his surprise, and was pleased to see his expression of shock melt away into a broad smile. He left his spot on an old log and came and took an empty space beside his student on the ground.

"Congratulations," he said softly, "albeit slightly late." He had noticed the little girl running around the camp earlier in the day and assumed she was the Martin's daughter. He felt silly for not having recognized the tell-tale sapphire eyes and broad dimpled smile earlier. The little girl turned around in her mother's arms to look at this strange new man, tired blue eyes widening with curiosity,

"Sweetie, this is Doctor Vasquez," Julia told her. Richard smiled down at the girl, a touch of paternal pride in his eyes. "Doctor, this is Ashley-Jane,"

Ashley's forehead crinkled in thought in a way that made her look like the spitting image of Alonzo, then she turned to her mother,

"Mama? *You* docteh," Julia laughed, "We're both doctors, hun," Ashley seemed to contemplate that for a second and then curled up again and closed her eyes. As Vasquez turned to ask Devon more questions from his seemingly endless list, Alonzo leaned over his wife's shoulder, gently pulling his two favourite girls back to lean against him. His eyes were bright in the light of the fire, watching his daughter sleep so peacefully.

"It's moments like this that make you forget all the hard times," he whispered into Julia's ear. She smiled slightly, her brow furrowing in recollection,

"We've certainly had our share of them..." He pulled her in closer to him as a barrage of close-calls and near disasters flooded his mind. He would never forget the most horrifying moment of his life, when Julia had been bitten by a malicious koba. Their bites were almost as poisonous as their claws, and she had almost died in a series of seizures and uncontrollable shivering. 'But everything's alright now' he thought, pulling them a bit closer, 'and I'll never let anything hurt either her or Ashley again'.

Suddenly he felt the earth rumble slightly under him. Lightly moving Julia away and sitting up, he shot a look over at Uly who was already trying to catch his eye. They both stood up just as two Terrians emerged from the earth mere feet from the fire. The shrieks and gasps of the new colonists almost blocked out the low rumbling of the first as he motioned towards the passenger pods across the field. Yale calmly walked over to a cluster of the scared newcomers,

"Shh...these are Terrians, they're perfectly friendly. Please calm down." They quieted enough for Alonzo to make out what the Terrian was saying as Devon walked up behind him,

"He wishes you all welcome," he translated, looking slightly detached, "and asks us to keep our promise of preserving the manner in which we found the land." Devon nodded and smiled slightly,

"Tell them we will, and thank them for their generosity." Uly trilled softly, relaying the message.

The second Terrian moved past Alonzo and approached Julia and Ashley, still sitting on the ground next to the fire. He put out his hand and trilled. Ashley smiled, crawling from her mother's lap, and put her tiny palm into his. She looked several feet up at him without a speck of fear in her eyes, and let out a hushed series of trills. The Terrian trilled back and, as quickly as they had appeared, they slipped soundlessly back into the planet's surface. The new colonists immediately started mumbling among themselves, sending wary looks at Alonzo, Uly and Ashley. They had never seen these strange creatures before; seven feet of sinewy muscle with tiny emotionless eyes. Devon turned to face the group and stated the obvious;

"They are Terrians,"
Alonzo walked to his daughter and knelt next to her on the ground. She smiled at him and trilled out a complex sequence. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, but he shook his head,

"No, sweetie, you speak to the group," Ashley's mouth formed an o, remembering the talk she and her dad had about this just weeks ago. He smiled at her and mussed her hair,

"It's okay, it's time for bed though," he caught Julia's eye and she quickly made her way past the others and picked up Ashley. As the new colonists talked excitedly between themselves about what they had seen, Alonzo grabbed Devon's sleeve and pulled her to the side.

"Ashley says they told her that sadness and anger will soon come... and that hatred will follow. I couldn't understand most of what she said, but that was the basic idea."

Devon looked at him in surprise. The Terrians had a connection with the little girl that was different than their connection with Alonzo or Uly. Uly was their genetic link to the humans, their link to the planet. Alonzo was their liaison of sorts, communicating to them regularly on the dream-plane while he slept. But Ashley's relationship with the Terrians was unique, not quite understood by anyone. The Terrians seemed to speak to her in rhymes and puzzles, more so than with Alonzo, and yet protect the child as if she was one of their own like they did with Uly. Ashley was the only one who simply accepted their riddles for what they were without questioning their meaning, as if she understood their strange analogies. Devon sighed. As far as she knew, they had never given her such a dark message, but perhaps that was why the girl was so special; she seemed to simply take it in stride.

She saw Alonzo looking at her curiously, hoping she'd understood. She put her hands up helplessly,

"Your guess is as good as mine,"
Danziger started rounding the group up, catching their attention with his booming voice,

"C'mon everyone, it's time we all turn in," he shepherded the children towards their tent, "We have to get up and work tomorrow,"

Gradually, the colonists exchanged goodnight's, and although feeling a bit unsettled, headed off to their tents.

Danziger watched them go as he waited for Devon to join him at their tent. If the new colonists behaviour tonight was any model for the future, he had a feeling none of them would be getting much sleep for quite awhile.

'I can hardly believe all the excitement that's occurred in the past two days at camp. Our numbers have grown practically overnight from sixteen to nine hundred sixty-two, with the last few people coming down from the ship today, and everyone is still reeling from the change. The original sixteen of us are having an equally hard or harder time adjusting, especially Julia. Dr. Vasquez has been running her ragged these past few days; he insists on being brought up to date on this new planet, while at the same time administering to the needs of all the Syndrome children and their families. Julia even told me last night that she feels more like a secretary and less like a doctor everyday. Frankly, I can't help but agree with her.'

Bess looked up from her diary and stared around the bustling, enlarged camp. She had thought camp was busy before, but this was chaotic. Adding to the mess of people were Syndrome children drifting about, languid and sad, and their parents wandering around them looking out of place in slacks made of fine silks and shoes covered in velvet. Bess touched her own rough, weathered shirt self-consciously. It wouldn't be long before their fineries were worn into rags and useful only for patching other pants and shirts. She suddenly felt the presence of people around her and looked up to see two women, a brunette and a redhead, standing behind her. She smiled and stuck out her hand amicably,

"Hi, I'm Bess Martin." The brunette was the first to take her hand,

"Hannah Clements," she smiled warmly, "Lorianne Richardson," the other woman said in a much shyer voice.

Bess motioned for them to sit at the meal table she was currently occupying. Hannah wasted no time in showing her motives,

"I, that is we, were wondering," she said, leaning in towards the table slightly and lowering her voice, "what happened to your group these past few years?" Bess looked at her in bewilderment, and Hannah tried to expand on her question,

"I mean, to the people..." she sighed, tucking a few flyaway strands of brown hair back into their proper places. She looked around, making sure no one could hear them,

"Julia Heller... the ice princess of the medical ward... is actually married to the pilot of the Advance Ship? The sleep-jumper?!" Bess nodded and smiled in recollection,

"They fell in love just a little while after we landed. They've been through a lot together, more than most of us."

The two women exchanged glances as Hannah hastily changed topics and continued,

"Well, the last time I saw Devon Adair she was cool, single minded; she only cared about her son. She was just a step away from being cold-hearted," Hannah took a breath and looked to her companion as if for confirmation of what she said, "Now, she seems to have a relationship with that mechanic," she spoke the last word with a dainty nip of distaste. Bess stared at the women as if they had grown two heads.

"She and John have been sharing a tent for the past two years, he loves her more than life itself." Quiet Lorianne gasped slightly,

"You mean they're not married?" she queried, looking at Hannah in shock. Bess shook her head, a small frown scrunching her features. She didn't see a problem with them having a... conjugal relationship out of wedlock, but she had to remind herself that these women and most of the other settlers were from the upper class of station society, and for them this type of thing was almost unheard of.

"What about their kids? You'd think they'd get married for their sake, so save them from the shame and..."

"What?!" Bess cried out, not quite able to believe what her ears were hearing, "What shame? True has the mother that she's wanted her whole life, and Uly has a father that he loves with all his heart; what shame could possibly come from that?!" Bess gathered up her things and stormed out of the tent.

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