RAVENS AND WRITING DESKS

I'd never seen anything like it before.

The Admiral quirked an eyebrow at me and sketched a return salute before gesturing me to an archaic rotating wooden chair that squeaked and tipped backwards when I inadvertently leaned back in it. I immediately became bolt upright, wondering whether I could be pitched over if I leant too far back.

Not that the Admiral was using a ballpoint pen and writing on paper notepads, but I had the feeling I'd stumbled into an antique shop.

Gray haired Admiral Janeway being one of the antiques.

She punched a pair of buttons when finishing her conversation, and smiled at me.

"Welcome to Schools and Academies, Commander Dax," she charmed. "Welcome to Wonderland. We here are nothing but a pack of playing cards, but we at HQ at least have the virtue of always being right."

Eccentric.

"It's a writing desk," she said without my asking. "Nearly seven centuries old, from an area of North America Region called New England." You did not see wooden desks in ultra-Modern StarFleet HQ San Francisco.

Not that I'd seen much of HQ thus far. New on the job.

Not that you could see all that much of San Francisco out her wall of window either. An aged creeping Green Carnation had grown outside its planter shelf and was busily attaching roots and tendrils to the aluminum window itself. A vase holding six Black Lilacs perfumed the air with a delicate crispness about the desk.

On the other side of the window a large multi-colored mobile moved under the impetus of air currents, dancing a slow tarantella of errant motion.

I instantly enjoyed the view. Already I had noticed a tendency towards sere inhumanity in important Officers spaces that proclaimed their status with large windows. After a generation in DS9 and elsewhere I realized I welcomed the change from austere sterility.

Suddenly I also noticed the smile not too deeply hidden behind her eyes. I had a revelation. Somewhere in the back of my brain I had assessed all the new data laid out before me and come to a surprising conclusion.

The Admiral was posing.

She ran a tight ship in her department, I would wager, but she distanced herself from the usual crowd at HQ by being deliberately eccentric.

The wooden writing desk was as much a part of the theatre as the big sign on her desk that informed visitors that "The Truth will set you free - But first it will piss you off."

"Nevermore!" a voice croaked in my ear.

I almost fell over backwards on the squeaking swivel chair.

Admiral Janeway chuckled evilly as a large black bird took flight from the back of my chair, to perch on a shepherd's crook standing upright on the side of her desk. When it made a short circuit of the room, I could see it had a wingspan of much more than a meter. It repeated its cryptic statement about "Nevermore!" three more times as it spread its feathers and crooked a beady eye at me.

Curiouser and curiouser.

I think I goggled.

"It's a robot," she explained. "I'd rather have a real Raven, but the powers that be had a conniption at the thought of pets cluttering up the sacred byways and highways of StarFleet Command. They allowed a nice sanitary comfortably programmed robot, provided I paid for it."

I wanted to ask why it was saying "Nevermore!" but reined in my curiosity. I had a feeling I was going to have a lot of questions for the Admiral so long as I was assigned to her desk.

She rose to her full non-majestic height (some centimeters short of my own) and held out a hand. Her hair was gray, and yes, she was overweight, but she remarkably fit looking in her Undress Day tunic and trousers. Probably the ornate gold pants seams of an Admiral were a common sight in the corridors of power, here, in San Francisco StarFleet HQ. I had yet to adjust to so much gold braid being about.

"Your office is open to me and directly connected to mine," she explained as she took me on a tour. "Besides which you have your own access to the main office area. We share a front entrance, with the CPO guarding both our door-mats."

Standard sterile desk and my own Replicator. A third doorwaywas our next goal. A door slid out of the wall, and we went through.

"Outsiders have to come through the cute little Petty Officer out front," she said. "I made sure she was cute and she was shorter than I was. Rank hath its prerogatives. In any event, my staff can get hold of me more easily through this entry."

We stood at a T-branch and it looked like a jungle. There were plants visible everywhere

With a start I realized the Raven had followed us out of Janeway's Office, and was gracefully gliding and flapping its immense way across the many spaces apparent here. It perched far away, and then disappeared.

There was a sign affixed to a cubicle panel in front of us.

"Snarks hunted here. Rates Reasonable. Cheap even. Signed: The Barrister."

Janeway gave me the tour, saying quick hellos to some, carefully introducing me to others. In one circular space, a plump black-skinned man with a turban was watching a few dozen odd objects walk continuously across his circular desk top.

Janeway carefully backed us out, and we continued down to what had been the far wall.

I looked questions to the Admiral, and she said; "Amanrah Singh is a genuine idea man. He looks at unalike problems and finds bridges and mutual solutions. A true genius, I believe.

"When he wants to think on something, the sight of continuous randomized motions by a multitude of robotic objects relaxes him and lets him reach inside himself. The Vulcans use candles to focus. He uses Walking Oysters."

Walking oysters?

"Aren't Oysters shelled mollusks?"

"Yes," Janeway smiled. "They usually have no feet. These even had shoes on their feet, if you noticed."

The welter of mostly-human confusions that was Janeway's group sorted themselves out as my mind penetrated the superficial chaos to find the more-or-less customary patterns here. The work was divided up in some fashion, and everyone had their part of the load to carry. Undoubtedly very efficient. But in the doing of the work, eccentricity was allowed to flourish.

Of course, the collective individuality itself was a type of conformity, but no one seemed to care. They reveled in doing things differently here.

Most cubicle spaces were non-square, as well as their desks. Somewhere on the walls small figures bore names or nicknames.

One of the last cubicles had a nonanthroamorphoric figure of a playing card Queen of Diamonds perched on the entranceway. It had arms and feet and carried a royal scepter of some kind.

Then my heart stopped.

My wife perched like a bird on the bench before her desk.

The short cut red hair, the shape of her neck, the way her wrists rested on her knees, the yellow cream of her blouse.

I almost called out "Nerys!"

Then I realized it was not her. She was taller, leaner, and as she turned, much more craggy in her facial bones.

This was the first time in almost half a year that I had 'seen' her. My mind was still being unwilling to accept her infidelity and our divorce. Once again I reflected that having Dax inside me didn't seem to make me much wiser than anyone else.

Janeway noticed, and unobtrusively touched my side as she introduced me to the look-alike. I shook my head as the Admiral ladled a thick dose of charm on the cubicle's redhead. I couldn't remember the redhead's name a second after we were introduced, but I know I went through the motions. The Lt. Commander would be my exec and First, and I wondered how I'd deal with her in the future.

On the way back, Janeway spoke forcefully to me.

"My deepest apologies," she said. "It's been ten years since I was last on DS9, and I had forgotten how much The Red Queen could look like Colonel Kira."

"General," I automatically corrected. Then I stumbled.

"Red Queen?"

"The playing Card Queen figure she had perched on her doorway. Many of us have in-group identities. Amanrah Singh is known as The Walrus, his brother is The Carpenter, and I am known as--"

We reached the door back to Janeway's office. A large stylized domestic cat of white and pink stripes and an enormous head with plenty of teeth was blazoned on the door.

"--The Cheshire Cat".

"Dodgson!" I exclaimed.

"Right on the money," Janeway said. "It's a game we play amongst ourselves, and the rules of the game are to be found in the writings of Lewis Carrol. "Alice In Wonderland", "Alice Through The Looking Glass", and--"

"--the Hunting of the Snark", I finished for her.

Once inside, she flopped behind her desk, indicating I sit as well. The door opened for the Raven as it breezed in on a snap of large wings.

Alighting on the writing desk, it was chewing on a large piece of dark bread.

It took a minute for me to process what I was seeing.

"Do any of the more senior officers know, and how in perdition's name do you get around its habit of pooping at inconvenient moments?"

A kitty litter box lay in a far corner, and Janeway pointed to it. "He's enhanced, and has an IQ twelve times that of more customary Ravens. He's also desexed, so the poor dear will never produce progeny to struggle with humanity for the control of planet Earth, in case you worried. He's quite housebroken.

"I call him Edgar Allen, but everyone else calls him Poe. He has a word and phrase vocabulary of well over five hundred. A bit better than a ranking Cardassian Policeman.

"And yes, a few of my superiors know, but so long as the pretense is maintained that Edgar Allen is a robot, all is kopasetic."

I stared a question.

"Slang, old Earth, means all is running smoothly and without perceptible friction."

Eccentric. With a vengeance.

"What will be my nickname?" I asked. "I shouldn't wish to be known as the Yahoo."

"You're thinking of "Gulliver's Travels"", she noted. "You'll be given one by everyone else." I shuddered, a smile on my face.

"Or you can choose one for yourself, and maybe it'll stick. Do you have something in mind?"

"Perhaps. Tell me, what is your receptionist called? The pretty Chief Petty Officer?"

She leered. "Petty Officer Bellweather? Most everyone calls her The Beaver, from the Hunting of the Snark. But not to her face. She has a little clawed Bandersnatch on her desk, and she thinks everyone sees her as something ferocious."

Janeway sighed. "She reminds me most of a pussy cat, though. Something cute and cuddly you want to hold on your lap, soothe, and happily run your fingers through her fur."

I had to chuckle when an erotic image ran through my mind. Suddenly I understood more about the Admiral than I had expected.

"Would she purr?"

"I sincerely wish so. Alas, all that beauty and it's totally wasted on men."

We both smiled at each other. We understood each other on one point, at least.

Janeway suddenly flashed all her perfect teeth at me.

"It's a bit early, but whathell, I got rank. Would you like to have lunch with your new Commanding Officer? The food here is mediocre Replicator, but I know this little Burmese-Yemeni place just a short ride away on the BART. Would you care to join me? We can get to know each other better."

She rose to her feet again as the Raven squawked; "Oh you kid! 23 Skidoo! What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations!"

Janeway was a bit plump, but I wasn't a youngster myself any more, and she had a magnificent pair of breasts, I presumed. She'd probably enjoy my curlicles of Trill markings. I hadn't thought about another woman for too long a time. Maybe Admiral Janeway would like to lick my Trill markings. Make me giggle.

I'd like that.

-----------------------------------

My exec and I were enjoying Indian Summer. We were lunching off real Turkish Shish bought from the Andorian push-cart vendor in the Plaza behind StarFleet HQ. Willy Bell had explained about REAL Indian Summers, back in Rhode Island, and though this was California, she admitted today was a close substitute. She got tired of the daily rains and otherwise perfect weather always to be found here.

I'd never been on Earth before, being a maverick. Promoted out of the ranks during the Dominion War, sent to Babel Officer Candidate Academy, and never sent back to the ranks.

Willy had just missed the War (no loss), and she'd spent eight years on the DDs and LCs out on the Neutral Zone patrols with the Romulans. Despite problems, trade was constant enough that she'd gotten accustomed to Romulan Ale.

My belly didn't tighten up when she was around me. Not any more. But I still found myself touching her when I wasn't controlling my errant emotions. Just on the shoulder or arm.

Lt. Commander Bell understood, and tried hard to be neutral. But. For some months she'd made a point of keeping threeder holos of her lover on her desk. He was a Robo Tech specialist over at the UCMed Center.

I didn't touch any more, and Wilhelmina didn't surprise me when I saw her in a certain pose or attitude. For her part, she had more or less gotten to believe I wasn't some super-aggressive dyke about to rape her.

She'd carefully asked if I went to some of the local watering spas, but I wasn't being too social yet. I knew there were many places locally where I could socialize with other lesbians, but the mingles scene had never been one of my strong points. Not since I'd been Jadzia, and now Ezri.

"At least I don't have to try to match you up with some guys I know, or are related to", she'd admitted once.

So now we ate Shish on a wooden stick and snorgled. Socialized, recent Earth slang. We were doing something we'd only recently begun doing. We compared women and men.

I would make some judgment call on a complete stranger, female, and she would do the same on some passing male. Too vain, nice buns, bad clothes sense, great tits, that sort of thing. I had showed her some threeders of Nerys and myself, including a pair of flattering nude studies, and in return she flashed nude shots of her and her last two boyfriends. One was a cadaverously thin black-skinned man, and it had been then I had then admitted to an affair with a male Doctor named Bashir.

She was fascinated as I told her of life as a joined Trill. The thought of having been a male a few times, and a Mother of four children, well, it unsettled all her preconceptions.

Today we saw Admiral Janeway moving at a good speed across the Plaza, and that got us onto the subject of The Great Delta Adventure.

Cathy knew more than I did, and I'd been on DS9 when VOYAGER had come back to Alpha Quadrant.

Some of the Delta Quadrant Trekkers had disappeared, others had become Ranking Officers, with the VOYAGER Saga a useful promotion aid. Janeway had been at HQ, went out again with TFS-1 when Cathy was a Junior Lt. with the Neutral Zone force, and came back to HQ to become an Admiral of the Blue. She wanted out again, and would probably get it before long. Eccentric behavior and all.

I could imagine that Raven flying about on the Bridge of some POLTAVA-class super-ship.

Lt. Cmdr. Bell then asked me if I was going to dress up a bit for the Office Halloween Party. Ensign Farfalla was coming as a Harem Belly-dancing girl (and would give us a dance), for example, and Willy herself was coming as the usual - the Red Queen from Alice.

Janeway would probably come as Puss in Boots, like she usually did. Willy suggested I come as the Boojum, as no one else had laid claim to the character, and I was now nicknamed that for reasons thus far undisclosed. Maybe because it was myself Janeway always sent to deliver by-hand reports, sooth some ruffled feathers, and pour scented oils on roiled water.

I would suddenly disappear from sight and ken, and no one might see me for the rest of the day. I enjoyed meeting The Powers That Be (Chief Petty Officers and Yoemen), and their Ranking Officers and Admirals (who thought they were the bosses). The Fleet is run by Chief Petty Officers, you know. The fancy uniforms are just so everyone knows who to blame in case there's a snafu.

Having seen me soothe Very Important Ass, the Admiral was positive I was part Irish and had kissed the Blarney stone somewhere along the way. I'd been a male Diplomat not too long ago, and the habits returned easily.

---------------------------

Halloween was fun. I had flesh-colored pants and blouse, and had Trill spots painted on them exactly where the real spots were. Everyone asked, and I told them I really did have the fancy curlicues on my butt and pelvic mound, as illustrated.

No one had ever seen the Boojum, so visually I could be anything I wished. In this case the Boojum looked exactly like a Trill in pants and blouse.

Janeway had a cat's face painted on, triangular ears and whiskers to either side of her nose. She also had a robotic tail that swished around evidently erratically. Then I discovered she could control it.

We were in her office, and I was standing over a big threeder display Padd laying active on her writing desk, when I felt this soft hand fondling my rear end. As both of Janeway's hands were on her desk, it took me a few seconds to get over being startled.

Janeway leaned back and admitted she'd been wanting to caress those trill spots curling on my ass ever since I'd walked through her door that morning.

I adjusted my stance, placing my backside where she could more conveniently do some caressing with her hands, if she was a mind to.

Just like that, I realized I truly wasn't adverse to a little fun with the old Dragon. Thirty years she might have on this body, and she did not have a teenager's body, but it was probable she also had a sure hand when dealing with another woman. She'd probably be a hell of lot of fun.

It would be against all the Fleet Rules, of course, but I think neither one of us would be prone to distort things over a little happy coupling. An adventure, get some enjoyment together. That'd be Wizard. Just now and then, and no recriminations afterward.

I stood there, awaiting the feel of her hand on my butt cheeks. Expecting that touch, that caress, that invitation.

She hefted one cheek, then the other, and then gave an explosive sigh.

That was it.

She was again involved in her flow charts and was all business.

My groin was wet and hot and instantly tingly tight, and she went back to work like nothing had ever happened.

I didn't know whether to walk out in a sudden snit, or ooze all over the graying Grand Dame and force some more intimate encounter.

"I see nobody!" the Raven cawed. "Off with her head!"

I felt the same way. I wished to see nobody, so I disappeared like the Boojum.

--------------------------------

Willy had a big fight with her boyfriend before Christmas, and I wandered into her office space and commiserated a little.

She and everyone else on this side had a shared view over the bay, and I lost myself watching an unheard of number of Heavy Lifters towing strings of Cargo pods down to the big docks at San Jose. There were five in view, their Pauls inexorably following the giant Surface Effect Vehicles.

Willy was using a dull butter knife and directly extracting an unhealthy looking brownish something from a bulb and eating it.

"Crunchy peanut butter," she sighed. She capped the bulb, then uncapped it and offered me the use of a new butter knife. Standard office nomenclature. Everything but beds were stored in these drawers and holds. Willy (like The Carpenter and many others) kept a dish of wrapped fruit somethings perched atop her work-area divider.

"You want to try some? I just can't eat any now. It's all quite without flavor to me at the moment. Nothing spoils the taste of peanut butter like unrequited love."

It was unique and delicious. She pulled some square crackers out of a drawer and slid them over to me. Crunchy peanut butter on club crackers could be addictive.

I had a sudden vision of myself as the crunchypeanutbutter queen of the Trill home planet. What were these crunchypeanutbutters this was made from?

"It's made from crushed peanuts," Willy offered. I sighed, dreams of wealth vanishing. We had peanuts back home, and have for some time. I'd helped introduce the crop to the Trill home planet in a previous male incarnation. I was probably uniquely able to appreciate peanut butter. Different taste buds for different people. Some humans had some unable to appreciate certain vegetables like Broccoli and Cauliflower.

Willy asked if I had a date lined up for Christmas, and I said no. Her ears perked up when I asked if the Admiral might have a date. "Just wondering," I evaded.

"I've been here for three years," Willy offered, "and I've yet to hear of the Cheshire Cat being involved with anyone. Personally, I think she's still carrying a Torch as big as Rigel."

"Really?" I asked. "Who for?" Things were becoming clearer. Maybe I had been unfair in judging the Admiral.

"Well," she confided, "there's the one school who believe she still has a love for her First on the VOYAGER..."

"Chakotay," I supplied.

"...And the other school who think she still adores one of her females from the same ship."

"B'Elanna Torres?" I queried. I remembered an encounter on DS9, on the return from the Delta Quadrant. The half-Klingon had a tight little body to kill for and a bold way of checking out the women that made Nerys Kira clutch at me defensively.

"Maybe, but the cute Klingon has been married twice to males, and is evidently loving and living down in Baja somewhere. No, it was the Borg."

"Seven of Nine?"

"None other. If you recall that ex-drone married Chakotay, once Fleet let the both of them go on their merry ways, post return. He became a mystic or religious missionary of some sort, they separated, and reportedly she became involved in the troubles on the Friendly worlds. Present fate unknown."

"Tall, blond, a body to lust after, a few Borg implants showing, just enough to act like beauty accents," I added. "Make her exotic in appearance."

"Way I hear it, she took up with a Bajoran woman..."

"Ro Laren!" I butt in with.

"...who had been on VOYAGER with her. Fleet deserter, part of the Maquis fighter group, rehabilitated after the War, spent some time back in the Fleet, and resigned her commission.

"Disappeared off the screen after that," Willy finished.

"She spent a year and a half on DS9 when I was first the Senior Fleet Manager on that station," I said. "I was involved with that male Doctor I told you about, at the time.

"Laren was incredibly moody and quick to temper, and we talked a few times about her problems.

"She settled down a lot once she took up with one of Quark's Dabo girls named Leeta. However, once that affair ended, she asked for a transfer out and I granted it."

Face close to mine. "Ezri..." she began.

Not Commander Dax.

"...You've known both guys and gals..."

I almost said none of your business.

"Apples and Oranges," I replied. She got the reference immediately. "You can't compare, not really.

"I suppose I might find my exact pre-destined male mate somewhere. Highly improbable, but conceivably possible.

"In the meantime I constantly view each woman I see, and yes, I suppose that includes you, as my next wife. Marriage is a bitch sometimes - no, often. But having been married to an Alpha woman, even so I wish I could get into that state again with a nice female who isn't so - so - so much like my ex.

"The Cheshire Cat, our esteemed Admiral, is someone I've thought of in that regard." Crushed peanuts. Marvelous.

"Older, and bossy, and cantankerous in her own way, but she'd have a strong hand to her without needing a whip. Besides, I think she's a sexy old gal, and being older just means she's able and ready to give a weary old divorcee like me some good loving."

I had been warned once Willy's eyes shifted.

There's always a sirrush of minor noise in the Commons space. Therefore I couldn't tell for sure whether or not soft footfalls receded. But those footsteps were the Admiral's.

Willy waited for me to say something, ask anything.

"Where can you get this peanut butter? It's delicious."

I hoped like hell Janeway had overheard.

------------------------------------

For a break from the Winter rains, I started visiting a few of the more trendy lesbian places. My first (and last) cruise bar was a total disaster. Somewhat gratifying in an ego boosting way, but still a disaster.

If I'd drank everything offered me, and accepted all the offers, I'd have been co-existently involved in being falling-down drunk and in a non-stop orgy for a week.

It was the Trill spots that drew them, plus the fact I'm realistic enough to know I'm still pretty.

After that I kept to more societal venues. At a nice Syrian veggie restaurant frequented by womyn, I was the only single, and drew a lot of curious stares. And eventually many of the female staff and guests took the time to pat my shoulder and say it was too bad she stood me up, whoever she was.

A Bajoran Community picnic over to Richmond was a lot more fun.

I knew four major Bajoran dialects, and a surprising number of them remembered me from DS9. Two lesbian couples knew I'd been married to the ferocious Nerys, and I enjoyed being with them to the evening dark. With a number of addresses and call numbers in my pocket, we began breaking up, finally. One couple, no longer young, asked if I felt like a little fun together, and I was seriously tempted.

It felt like a long time since my last lover, and it was.

But I'd learned where Admiral Janeway was going to vacation this summer. Down in the islands and reefs of the Los Angeles Islands.

Did I mention it? I'd decided to seduce the crusty old Dragon.

------------------------------

A CPO down in Comm owed me, so I knew Admiral Janeway had called the Deep Blue, on the Universal coast, east of the Beverly Hills Sands, on the Mulholland Peninsula. It catered to divers, and I resigned myself to learning something about immersing myself in dark cold wet.

Which meant hypno-training and a number of evenings spent under the tutelage of a diving teacher who ran me incessantly through the drill in a holo-simulator. She was shorter than Janeway and twice as terse. Nonetheless Annila was a wonderful soul to learn from. She'd better be, considering her fees.

After half a hundred hours practicing Holo, the instructress took me down to the bay for beginner's dives.

They'd left Fisherman's Wharf as it was when part of California slid under the waves, and we joined the tourists first off. It was remarkably fun, despite the cold that penetrated our total-suits. At least since I had the implants I didn't need to carry an air tank with me, for these first immersions.

Just climb into the vacuum suit, key them to fit, and enter the water. The cold hit me first, despite the suit heaters, and then I gratefully realized the re-breather mouthpiece was performing as it should, and I could look around.

First thing I saw were a dozen tourists blocking my view, and my teacher took me further out into the bay some so we could skirt the roadblock. We'd rented the little tow-motors and we didn't have to overexert ourselves first off.

Fisherman's Wharf itself wasn't too exciting, except where a team from SFUC was reinforcing some of the wooden kiosks with a new injection of sealants, and incidentally cleaning some of the marine grudge off the 'advertising' displays. That was fascinating.

My female instructor had been out on more relevant sites in her younger days, but she was approaching Janeway's age now. Annila said she'd been with a team that investigated a Spanish Treasure Galleon off the Philippines, and a Phoenician vessel off the west coast of Africa. Annila had been on many sites, including the Bismarck, and the sunken Celebes Treasure cave.

Annila took me out to a torpedoed freighter off Carmel, which had become a preserved historical site. The more fool I, I wanted to risk my hide wandering the corridors of the ancient steel vessel. Penetration diving it was called. It was dangerous as a Cardassian smile and the instructoress commed me to avoid it until I'd gotten a few more years of diving under my belt. Maybe I wouldn't have been so eager if I had to rely just on my eyesight instead of modern vision equipment. It was dark down there, under four hundred meters.

I'd also re-started my more demanding exercise regimen. I had several skimpy bathing suits in mind which I fully intended to use to show my body off. I'd always known the partially clothed body was ever so much more enticing then a totally nude one, and at a slightly pudgy over-forty I needed all the help I could get.

Just in case I had medical tighten my derriere, breasts and tummy. And a small chin tuck. As mentioned I'm in my forties now, and I have to cheat just a little bit.

Besides I had a lot of company in that regard. Most of the females, including the married Orion girl, got the same areas nipped and tucked. Including the Admiral. Common knowledge.

Everyone in the outside world had a little work done, if only to fine-tune the body metabolism.

It was fun pretending not to notice the slightly improved Janeway. She had already lost some gut by resuming her running, and when her lovely breasts were tightened, she appeared five years younger. Poor dear, she didn't want to admit she'd had titty work done while at the same time she was dying for compliments.

One day we were working and I innocently admitted I wished my own breasts had held up as well as hers had (the unsaid portion being that she was so much more mature than myself). Like I'd never noticed hers before.

Honestly though, she did a lot of working out, that being the recommended StarFleet cure for a body going contrary on you. The Admiral's gut went a long ways towards disappearing thanks to that. The Medical work just made sure the effort showed in the finished product. I thought the finished product, including the non-muscle, ravishing. Made for ravishing.

The CPO out front, the Beaver/Bandersnatch, she admitted Janeway had never looked so young in the few years she'd fronted for the Cheshire Cat. To myself I wondered if Janeway had anyone in particular in mind who would benefit from this more alluring body? On the other hand, vacations were traditionally where everyone got a little adventurous. This was her first lengthy vacation in three years.

I could imagine her lounging on some beach, with most of her hanging out in oiled glory as she innocently checked out the other oiled persons also casually flaunting in display mode.

What we females do in order to attain to male ideas of glamour and sexiness. On the other hand I shouldn't talk, as much I had loved to look, leer, and fish for ripe females when I was a male.

By the time vacation rolled around for the Admiral, I had my own vacation time approved, and felt ready to brave the reefs and shoals of Los Angeles.

-----------------------------

It was a beautiful day at the beach and I felt no regret at having left DS9 and its depressing metallic claustrophobia behind.

One of the Universal Hotel's Room Service robots sprayed me with blocking oil before I went outside. Bearing my diving gear slung on my back, I was almost clothed in a one-piece white outfit that covered the essentials but little else. Lots of Trill spots to draw the eye. One could see the elaborate curlicues of Trill spots on my butt-cheeks in this minimalist suit. Even the straight girls were checking me out. Even with my slight abdominal pudge, slack breasts and all. At least my legs were in great shape.

Four males and one female introduced themselves before I had reached the Boardwalk. They called it Sunset Drive here. Probably after some lost thoroughfare built for gasoline-burning vehicles.

My goal was the Deep Blue, the diving nexus, and Janeway.

My careful plans to reconnoiter the area first were blown to pieces by a cawing voice complaining that "The Boojum Is Here, The Boojum Is here! Let's play croquet!" Sure enough it was Edgar Allen Poe. He circled me a few times and then I wandered in the direction he chose to go next.

I came upon Janeway by following the bird. "The Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie!" I eased my total-suit and kit down to the white sand once I stood alongside a prone short gray-haired female. One with a lot of cute nude female ass glistening under a spray of blocker.

As a male I'd always enjoyed stripping numerous females naked with my imagination. As a female I had always done the same, though in my female incarnations I'd done that to males as well.

"A fact so dread which extinguishes all hope!" Poe commented, as if reading my thoughts. On the contrary, I'd obtained a lot of mental fun in using my imagination thusly.

I didn't need to use my imagination with the Admiral.

She had on a one-piece of slightly more generous cut than mine, but hers was a soft clinging teal. She raised her head as Edgar Allen Poe shouted: "Have a cup of tea! I see Nobody! Snap-dragon Flies!"

I got to my hunches and openly enjoyed her body gleaming in the sun. Janeway smiled up at me over her Sunglasses and let me mentally unpeel what little green cloth covered the fringes of her choice buns. Nice legs. No cottage cheese or gelid horror. Not skinny and svelte, no, not by any stretch of the imagination. Ample amount of woman there. Though only the uncharitable would use the phrase almost-pudgy.

She greeted me, and then rolled on her side to let me admire generous amounts of Janeway visible through the lattice-work front. Her breasts, even after the work done earlier that year, were large for her short stature. I could already imagine playing with the generous beauties. I think her nipples got harder under my scrutiny. No, I'm SURE.

Her suit was universally one-layer cloth, and her groin looked amazingly nude with thin material clinging to every nuance of flesh. She looked quite un-pudgy now.

There were a half-dozen nudes within sight at that very moment, but partially clothed Janeway in all her still slightly-rotund maturity was more sexually enticing than any of them.

I could also probably strip her naked with my teeth without breaking out in a sweat.

I lithely rose (showing off!) and spun around so Janeway could, in turn, admire the short-haired Trill and her array of spots. She admired.

"Happy Unbirthday!" Poe squawked. "Off with his head!"

"Did you follow me down here?" she asked. I said yes.

"A Rattlesnake questioned him in Greek!" added Poe.

"Are you trying to seduce me?" she smiled.

"I don't know," I replied. "Do you WANT me to seduce you?"

She smiled that wry grin of hers. "I'm late! I'm late!" cawed Poe. "Drink me! Drink me! It's the Boojum!"

"I'm your superior officer," she added. "A seduction would be contrary to Fleet custom and rules."

"Then if my seduction is successful you can be the one on top," I replied. I had a big grin back at her.

"I'm at least thirty years older than you," she next said.

"Oooooh!," I said. "Does that mean you're experienced?" I kept the grin.

Poe interjected: "Eat me! Eat me!"

Janeway laughed out loud. A very brassy and honest laugh. Her chest quivered beautifully as she did. Already my vacation was worthwhile. She then stared at the bird, and smiled at him.

"Not yet, Edgar Allen. She has to court me first."

"Kelpheads! Watch out for the bends! Nevermore! The Flotilla Decima!"

Janeway eyed the diving kit and queried me with a raised eyebrow. "Am I to assume you're a diver?" I had a sudden vision of myself diving into her gray-haired groin. The Admiral was grinning so hard it was easy to imagine that she had just enjoyed the same wondrous obscene vision.

"Beginner status,' I admitted. "I need an experienced woman to be with me so I do not come to harm.

"Are you experienced, Admiral? Would you like to have me in your hands? Do you think you could teach me a trick or two?"

Oh, but this was wicked fun. Wizard.

"There's a cattle boat leaving in a half hour," Janeway noted. "They'll take us down to an Interstate highway cloverleaf, with ranks of drowned automobiles stretching for miles. Afterwards we can float with the current, and it'll take us back here.

"Think you're up to a challenge?" she asked.

"I don't deny things with my hands!" Poe added. "The Boojum!"

"I shan't know until I try it," I returned.

"The time has come!" Poe continued. "To talk of many things! Cabbages and Kings!"

"Of shoes and ships and sealing wax," I prompted.

"And whether prigs have wings!" Poe added.

"Pigs," Janeway said.

"I know that," the Raven said. Did Poe just answer me?

"Shall we go?" I asked the Admiral. Holding out my hand. She took it and pulled herself erect. The sun was shining bright upon the sea. Wizard!

----------------------------------

We had two tanks each, just in case we overstayed the limit of the re-breathers. We had injected responders so we could be kept under surveillance all the time. And we had tow-motors to ease our journey through the drowned wonderland of Los Angeles.

The cattle boat took us and some fifty other diving tourists towards City Centre, and slowly returned once we'd all gone overboard.

My Comm was working perfectly, and Janeway and I had our own private frequency as well. Under the occasional spindrift of a choppy day over central L.A., she introduced me to something breathtaking. Below us was a drowned Freeway during rush hour gridlock. The thousands of automobiles was a fabulous sight, even in the olive light of the vision mask. The shape of some of the ruined vehicles was difficult to decipher, what with the marine growth flourishing on their bulks. A UCLA team was cleaning some 'typical' automobiles and 'trucks', but most of them were colorful mysteries, inhabited by millions of colorful fishes and other creatures.

The Avoid signals in the responders made the moray eels and sharks back away from us, but the other denizens of the Deep Blue were accustomed to humanity and the tidbits they could mooch from the tourists.

Once I felt more adept underwater, Janeway and I ventured back and forth in side jaunts on our slow journey back. Much of ruined L.A. had been ground to fine dust by the billions of robot cleaning termites, the ones made of iridium. But entire neighborhoods were allowed to remain eerie monuments to the millions dead.

We found a little bungalow with the garage door up, and a heap that was once an auto parked inside. There was a riding lawn-mower on the front 'lawn', Janeway said, and a lawn deer. I couldn't believe they had any such insanity in front of their own homes, but Janeway carefully showed me the deer shape hiding underneath polyps, shells and multi-colored corals.

An octopus was hiding under the tool bench, and a ray wafted out of the kitchen when we thumped the walls. Most of the lesser lumps and bumps we had no idea what they were.

In Little Tokyo we rose nearer to the surface, and in the better light our journey a meter or so over the vacant streets with their ghostly uninhabited porches and sidewalks finally became depressing.

A combination of fatigue and the incessant cold inadequately countered by the transparent total-suit's heaters led me to call it quits for the day. We homed in on the signal of the cattle boat, and after they retrieved us, we hitched a more comfortable ride back to the Deep Blue.

Fully half the original number of divers who took the cattle boat out to the downtown site were already back on board by the time we were peeling off our total-suits and taking a hot shower in our cloth bathing attire.

My poor Admiral was shivering and it seemed only natural to pull her to me and hold her and comfort her. Just to help her get warm again.

We hugged each other. She stared into my eyes, as my hands found the skin of her back.

It was very natural that I bent down to kiss her. I didn't go all the way. She was going to have to meet me part way.

She did.

Then she broke our clinch and turned her back to me, shivering wildly. I wondered if I'd overstepped myself, and was weighing words of apology when she turned around again and pulled me down for another kiss.

She tasted of residual salt and saliva and warm water and anticipation. My skin sparkled where her hands wandered my sides and shoulders and waist.

She broke it again, without losing touch this time.

"I thought you were going to seduce me first?" she asked.

"That's what I'm doing."

She giggled. Not a teenager's giggle, fluttery and flighty. She was nervous and more than a little embarrassed to be doing this at her age. But it was wonderful to feel the breath in her as she stifled her giggles, and then let them burst out again.

Serious suddenly she reminded me: "I'm thirty years older."

Meaning if I was going to back out, this would be a good time to do so.

With an invitation like that I had to kiss her again, of course. Wouldn't you?

-----------------------------

"Cabbages and Kings! The Boojum is here!" greeted us when Janeway opened her cabana door. "Pass the tea!"

We folded into each other again as Poe winged his irritated way outside once more. It was very comfortable, the way we fit together. Like it was meant to be.

Our diving gear went everywhere, and I had her half peeled out of that tasty green thing before her buns hit the bed the first bounce.

"Ezri," she whispered as I suckled on her lovely liquid breasts. "I..." she began then hesitated as she arched her back to feed her other breast into my sucking mouth.

She wasn't fondling back. She was entirely too passive about this, because we both knew she was about to turn into a puddle of hot grease, just like I was.

"Could we...?"

I could have had her right then and there and she would have probably come repeatedly.

But she wanted to be hesitant. Maybe she was afraid, somehow. Maybe she was not afraid, but rather scared out of her mind, for all the lava flow of passion consuming both of us right now. Maybe it had been too long between loves.

I gave her a cue, if she wanted us to slow down a little.

"Will you have dinner with me?" My stomach reminded me at that instant it had been sadly neglected since my breakfast drink of nutrients.

"I think that'd be gorgeous," she said, her arms finally leading her hands to my back and sides.

She was afraid. She might be a hell-for-leather Alpha, but she was afraid. I could understand that, of course. Fear is a divorcee's middle name. She WAS thirty year older than this Trill body I inhabited at the moment, and she was suddenly thinking about life-mates.

We were going to have a number of serious talks about my being a joined Trill. I may have looked forty and I may have acted like I was forty, but I was also over three hundred Terran years old.

If we married, this would be - my ninth marriage.

Was I ready to marry again? Maybe I'd better look at this as more than just a sexual interlude.

The Dax inside me gleefully told me to seek the gold of her affections. All else would be dross.

And what if all she could stand would be a few escapades in her mature years?

Dax told me to make the escapades world-shakers then.

Dax always was a silver-tongued devil. And I wanted. Needed.

"Pass the cake around! The crocodile improves his shining tail!" Poe parked himself on the pillow and prepared to watch me do whatever it was he probably hoped I was going to do with Admiral Janeway. Voyeur bird. Wicked, wicked bird.

Even I burst out giggling.

It felt very sexy my breasts jiggling against hers.

----------------------------------------

The evening was chill, and I had warned we would have supper out on a terrace. It was startling to see Janeway come towards me dressed in her impeccable Dress Whites, the one with the masses of gold trim. She even had the little blue ribbon stitched to one shoulder edge, to indicate an Admiral of the Blue. She also had all her medals on.

About the only one lacking was the ribbon for the Dominion War. Somehow she'd missed all of it, adventuring all over the Delta Quadrant.

I was unsure of the reasoning behind Janeway's choice of dress, but it had the virtue of being warm. A strong breeze blew across the terrace, rifling strands from the Admiral's gray hair. For whatever reason her wrinkles and laugh lines appeared strongly in the pseudo-candle-light. They looked lovely. I wanted to kiss each one.

I had chosen a dark blue ankle-length dress with high collar and a transparent front so that my breasts were quite visible. I hoped she liked big breasts at least as much as I did. The half-circle of Trill spots accenting the bottom of my breasts were hopefully both exotic and enticing. If my nipples were stiff from the cold, still they looked welcoming.

I stood, and as expected, the dear came over and slid my chair under me. Very endearingly quaint and male-Alpha.

They had humanoid Waiter Robots at the Universal, and we settled on the Sczwehuan grilled pork with Bali-rice-stuffed shrimp.

It poured a dark Chinese Burgundy, and left us to ourselves.

""Have some wine," the March Hare said!" noted Poe.

For minutes I sat and admired the Fleet Admiral glorious before me. Poe crabbed that he was: "I'm late! I'm very very late! Weak tea with cream in it! I shall never forget it!"

I began by reminding Janeway of my status.

"I'm a joined Trill, Kathryn. I may call you Kathryn?"

"Anything but Katie," she grinned back. "Ezri."

"You're dating an older woman, Kathryn," I stated. "I'm over three hundred and eighty years old, or at least the Dax part of me is. That's three hundred years of living.

"I've pretty much done it all. Been a Father, and a Mother. Lover and mistress and fancy-dressed dandy.

"Your thirty years of age re this Trill woman is only important if you let it be important."

She'd been expecting soft words, not plain truths first off.

"Now then," I urged, "let's enjoy our food, our wine and each other's company. I hope you'll dance with me afterwards. If you allow it, I'd like to lead, by the way."

"I eat what I see! Have a Happy Unbirthday!" Poe added. "Don't give yourself airs!"

She led, when we finally danced in the noisy bug-filled night of the sub-tropical Los Angeles islands. I'd expected so.

"Soup, soup! Beautiful soup!" Poe suggested.

She smelled divine, and she let me kiss her repeatedly. She shivered delicately as my fingers traced her form and my lips enjoyed her face and lips. At the last, maybe more than an hour later, we simply stood together and searched each other's bodies and lips, denying tomorrow for tonight.

"It's late," she shakingly quavered, once she'd forced herself to back off. A hand passed lightly over my breasts and again I knew I had only to force the issue and she would be loving my nipples through my insubstantial bodice. In the end I relented. Her pace. Not mine.

Poe slept with his head under his wing, and slowly crawled to Janeway's shoulder once Kathryn put a caring finger under his claws.

"This isn't Kansas any more, Toto!" he cawed. "Nevermore!"

"Wrong author," Kathryn gently scolded. "Traitor." We kissed for the night when I walked her to the Boardwalk. I waved when she looked back. Just the once. She was magnificent in that white Mess jacket.

"Twinkle, twinkle, Little Bat!" came to me on the cold night breeze.

"How I wonder what you're at," I softly finished for him. No one heard me but myself.

---------------------------------------

We went diving together in the morning, taking the small tow-motors over to what once was the Century City Towers. They were both fallen, and their wreckage had become coral reefs, slowly building in the gentle surf into genuine atoll islets. One side of the stub of the south Tower was almost clean, and you could see giant schools of tiny colorful fishes playing in and out of the broken windows. A trio of sailfish were hunting there, and were uneasy until we backed off enough so that the Avoid signals in our responders were no longer bothering them.

We settled to the parking lot partially covered by drifting sand and green kelp, and watched in quiet fascination as a pod of twelve Dolphins came to investigate us.

Kathryn encouraged me to put out my hand, and a number of the intelligent aquatic denizens bumped their heads into my delighted fingers. Their squeals kept pace with us as we traveled down Olympia, their hunting never quite wandering very far from us.

Kathryn coaxed one down for a ride.

She grasped it as firmly as she could and the lovely creature speeded up as it turned towards the surface. The Admiral fell off as it broke surface, but it sported back and let a blue-clad woman who had been to the Delta Quadrant soar along the surface for nearly a kilometer. Kathryn held on tight to the dorsal fin and whooped loudly into the comm as she sailed the almost-placid waters of Venice Bay.

Kathryn came back on her tow-motor, the pod gleefully filling the water with happy sounds and constant nudgings of the land-dweller in their midst.

It was impossible to kiss or fondle in the total-suits, but she certainly tried.

Nothing would do but that she coaxed me to try a ride on the Dolphins sometimes resident in the Planetary Monument and Park of the Los Angeles basin. I carefully held on to the top fin and was immediately thrown off by the unexpected speed of the benign creature. Five or six nudged me to board the willing steed again, and I managed to hang on for some hundreds of meters as it more slowly sliced down into the Deep Blue and then surfaced.

Heorshe sped up and I screamed into the comm, knowing heorshe was going to jump out of the water. I broke away as the Dolphin split into the sky, and I was immediately cleanly diving back into the wet. Kathryn met me and we pantomimed kissing as I slowly rose back to the surface.

"The sea was wet as wet could be!" was cawed into my ear loudly enough that it easily penetrated the microns-thin envelope of the total-suit. Edgar Allen Poe perched on my astonished head, and flapped over to Kathryn's upraised finger when she stuck it out of the water.

"How the hell did you get out?" she asked the bird.

"Oh my ears and whiskers how late it's getting!" he answered.

"You're evading my question, you naughty bird!" she scolded.

"Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, Dorothy!" came back. "If I only had a brain!"

"Nevermore!" I teased.

"I'm not myself, you see!" he replied. "Time for tea!"

The Dolphins crowded around and Poe responded by jumping on board one of the upraised Dolphin heads and disclaiming: "The night is fine! Do you enjoy the view?"

Poe and his Dolphin raced off into the distance, his wings letting him glide from one head to the other as the pod frolicked across the gentle waves.

I felt bereft and betrayed, just a little, as the Dolphins sped off to play with Edgar Allen Poe.

"He'll be fine," Kathryn said. I hoped so.

He came back with a flock of seagulls after him. Poe was larger, but there were many gulls. Poe dived upwards, then made a flip and speed dived towards the water, half the gulls hot on his trail.

Not twenty meters from me he did a double flip millimeters above the mild waves and glided into a flap veer. Behind him three of the gulls fell into the water.

Poe came back and high, and then dived onto one of the gulls, beating it about the head with its beak until that bird also fell into the sea.

Then he was zig-zagging across the few wave top spindrifts and dodging until he pulled an Immelman loop and forced a following gull also into the water. As soon as the one disappeared in a welter of feathers and wet, he attacked another gull, forcing it to flip on its side and also hit the Blue.

When he rose back up, he stalled and fell on the following seagulls, seeking out one to which he attached himself and beat it unmercifully about the head with his sharp beak. This one also fell into the Bay waters.

Poe weaved, and bowled over one gull in a sudden reversal. It too fell into the cold waters.

Poe eight, gulls zero.

The gulls fled, working hard for altitude. Poe came back to us and the Dolphins.

"I'll send for the Police!" he warned. "Maiali!" he said with derision. "The hours have lessened! Maiali!"

"It means pigs in Italian," Janeway offered over the comm.

While Poe sported with the other intelligent creatures, we sank towards the bottom, linked to our tow-motors and slowly heading back to the Deep Blue. We became one being as hands and feet drawing the one closer to another.

Kathryn made a course change, and we soon came to a small atoll. We climbed over the growing barrier reef, and came on a small black-paved street with a trio of decrepit buildings on it. At the island's edge the sands were coarse, but much finer than gravel.

Kathryn was all over me, palming one closure on my suit after another open.

"Kathryn," I asked, "are you sure you want to do this?" My words belied my actions, for I was frantically shedding my total-suit at the same time my shaking fingers were trying to ease the suit off my gray-haired lover-about-to-be.

In seconds I was almost nude, and my fingers were ready to rip and tear if her teal bathing suit didn't yield to my touch.

We clenched each other tight. All pretense, and hopefully all fear, was gone from Kathryn as we fed each other our mouths in open combat. We broke and we finished peeling ourselves out of our respective bathing suits. How in blazes could so little cloth become such a problem to remove?

I eased her down to the compact white sands underneath a stand of coconut palms. A lattice of tall grass breathed in the salty breeze. Behind us a heaved blacktop road rose into thick brush and derelict roofs. Around us cried birds and small mammals and above us the blazing sun was tattered into a lambent fringe of light by the palm fronds. At our feet the waves played with our toes.

We were the perfect Holo-drama in that instant.

I lay Kathryn back, and she accepted her new role of being the loved one. I gloried in being the lover. I stood above her and caressed my nipples and the hairs of my mound, delving until my fingers came back wet and sticky. Below me lay a willing female, open and vulnerable.

We kissed again as I lay atop her. Her ankles joined and pressed me harder against her. My body was a sea of sensitivity too fiery to bear, and I itched and rubbed myself into her to kill the itchy burning.

"Drink me! Drink me!" Poe cried somewhere to the side. Our tongues met and our nipples clashed and my thigh found her groin swimming in wetness. I'd heard older human women got dry sometimes. Not this one. I heard the suck as Kathryn rode my leg, and twisted to increase the noise.

"The nights are very damp!"

She came for me then.

In the white sand, pacific breezes blowing through our damp hair, and surf booming in our ears, drowning all rational thought.

In a time of quiet following our burn, I licked my way down to her throat, then her chest, and then to feed her lovely liquid breasts into my needing mouth.

After licking the salt and sweat out of her belly button, I teased my way down to her thatch of white hair at the join of pelvis to groin.

I inhaled her scent, I said aloud it was a lovely scent, and then my tongue had to sample the briney syrup of her sexuality.

She came again.

She tasted even better afterwards.

"Eat me! Eat me!" Poe cried.

"Yes," Kathryn begged aloud. "Please do."

I nibbled on her clit.

"More", Kathryn begged.

"That's from Oliver Twist," I corrected. She came again on my single searching finger.

"Begin at the beginning!" Poe demanded. So I rose up to kiss Kathryn and slowly work my way down her body again.

"And go on till you come to the end!"

Later on I did exactly that.

-----------------------

Kathryn had me slowly and carefully after we had washed the sand off by a dip in the cold. She took a long time before she allowed me to cum on her finger and mouth. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. The day was beautiful. I hadn't felt so beautiful myself in years. Loving a good woman can do that to you. Her strong tongue and lips kept opening my vagina, until I had to clutch her gray mantle of hair and scream in my release. Her kisses were strong and beautiful.

Later, the breeze blew over my hands where they joined over her back. We leisurely ground our ever-wet groins against the other. I had never felt so attuned, so sensitive, so responsive as her body rubbed blissfully into mine. We made the most beautiful sucking noise as we turned our bare arc of joining into a wetness of lust. As I lay panting, Kathryn arose over my prone helpless form and rode my thigh into yet another spasm of crying and orgasm.

Sometimes in moments like these it as impossible to remember what sex the Dax me was, as the present me was submerged under the tide of emotions. The Dax part of me, old man or young woman, simply knew it was beautiful to have this demanding needing woman with me.

I was in love. Again. With a stocky gray-haired woman whose surrender was so complete and so sudden I was still shaking in reaction. Dax cried aloud in joy to have found another love.

I pulled Kathryn to me and she sat her beautiful pussy onto my adoring face. Somehow I breathed and worshipped her flowing sex at the same time. She was so perfect. She was so beautiful. She couldn't stop coming on my tongue and loving face. I kept her in place when she would have rolled off me. She tasted as if nectar from the Gods, her wetness was heavenly, her heat was matching my own flame. Kathryn groaned in pain and ecstasy as she frantically rubbed herself on my face and tongue for one last coming.

Exhausted, she lay near comatose as I bathed myself clean and came back to her. We held each other and were love itself in each the other's arms.

She had me thrice on her fingers as we lay side by side.

She was beautiful. Each wrinkle was a blow from life and it turned her into a treasure to behold.

--------------------------

Somehow we re-clothed ourselves and put our total-suits back on over the bathing costumes.

As we began our return trip to the Deep Blue Hotel, Poe re-appeared. He perched on the tiny tow-motors as they surface-worked, hitching a ride as we lazily let the mechanisms slowly take us back.

""And be quick about it!" stated Poe. "Or you'll be asleep before it's done!" came from him next.

We barely made it to the inside of Kathryn's cabana. We undressed again in a flurry, and threw ourselves on the bed in a determined move to continue our beautiful loving.

Later on we decided we had fallen asleep in exhaustion at the same time. Every muscle I had was aching when I awoke. My stirring brought Kathryn up from her profound sleep. We had curled together on the bed, and pawed the coverlet over our nudity. It was dark outside and dark blue-black Poe was snuggled very un-bird like in the valley between our two bunkered pillows. More kitten than giant bird.

"Ouch!" Kathryn exclaimed, when Poe gave her one quick taste of his sharp beak. "What was that for?"

"Everything begins with an M!" he explained.

He rose up and barely flapped away in time before my sweet Kathryn could wring his neck.

"'Tis Brillig!," he chided from a safe distance. "Alice doesn't live here anymore!"

"Do you wish to make love any more?" Kathryn teased.

Not to be fooled, I replied in proper Carrollian metre.

"I shan't wish it to do it any less."

She rolled her compact little body onto mine and shamelessly ground herself into the excited joined Trill with the stiff nipples. Me.

Poe returned to our bed, and carefully approached Kathryn.

"I forgive you, you rotten bird!" she said. "You pecked me when you were still mostly asleep." It gratefully bowed its shining purple-black head under the single-finger caress of my Admiral.

"A Parliament of one," she murmured happily. "Ravens come in Parliaments, like Porpoises come in Pods and Lions in a Pride." Her finger following the curve of intelligent skull as it sidled closer to me. I put out a finger and it happily bent into the weight of it. "I am not Master of this Parliament, and it always has something to say."

"Parliament full of buggers! Bunch of sods!" he said.

"Nitrogen narcosis!" it then explained, perhaps giving his own explanation for stabbing Janeway on the head. "Vorpal swords! Very sharp! Nevermore!"

In the evening lights Janeway was an ageless woman with hair the color of the shadows in the room. She grinned with all her teeth as my hand worked between us and relished the once-again wetness of her responsive groin. Her pussy was butter-and-syrup taste, and I adored it. Her scent was pure randy human female. It vied with my own sexual musk for dominion in the confines of our bed and room. Her room. I might as well check out of my room over at the Universal. I breathed deep, inhaling the sere bite of willing woman. This mature female seemed determined not to be the dried-up Dragon all female Fleet Admirals were supposed to be.

Dax chuckled as Kathryn giggled for my journeys through the forest of her white pubic forest.

Kathryn wriggled and sighed as a finger found the cave of her warm wet velvet glove of flesh. She made a happy sucking noise as I hooked three fingers into her pulsing clasping vagina.

We kissed as my digits slowly fed themselves to her steady impalement and withdrawals.

I was female. I was male. I was love.

"Eat me! Eat me!" Edgar Allen Poe suggested with a resounding spread of wings. "Drink me! Drink me!"

"You are a naughty, naughty bird," Kathryn said.

"But it seems a Wizard idea!" I answered. In slow motion I rolled Kathryn to the side, and re-positioned myself over a supine Admiral of the Blue.

"Eat me," my lover suggested. "Drink me. Make me scream."

Her groin was awash in Kathryn-syrup, with more of it leaking out to coat my face as I burrowed into her thick thatch of white hair. I thought she must have been a true glory to behold in her younger days when it was red.

I don't know how many times this eager female came on my tongue and lips and teeth and sucking mouth. Neither of us was counting. We ignored Poe, we ignored the time, we forgot all but the cries of passion and the unending work of mouth and face in her resplendent cunt.

"I love you, Kathryn," I said many times. Was I male or female? Ezri knew I was tingling wet female. Dax knew I was rampant erect male. Ezri Dax knew it was irrelevant.

"Adders don't bite!" Poe commented.

"But Trills do," Kathryn chuckled back. "Oh, they bite most delightfully, don't they, my darling love?"

So I bit her clit along with its cartilage. Kathryn's legs immediately flailed the air, and she squealed and giggled as I carefully pulled her clit out from her beautiful pussy.

After she had shuddered through another round of orgasms on my sopping wet face, she begged off for relief.

"My turn!" she stated, wriggling down to where her gleeful face was a centimeter or two from my small thick growth of curly hair. She admired it, carefully parting the pubic hairs to visually follow the miniature curlicues of Trill spots adorning my groin.

I love you," she breathed, her eyes closed as her tongue tried to follow the chanting chorus of unintelligible spots inked upon the skin of my body by my genes.

"You really have no notion how delightful it will be!" leered Poe. "He thought he saw a coach and four!"

"Could I ask a favor of you?" Kathryn asked.

We were becoming more attuned to each other as we loved each other. I knew she wished to see my Till spots and curls without the overlay of fragrant hairs. "We can remove it later," I replied to her unspoken request.

"Yes," she distractedly returned. "Other things come first."

Like me.

And then her again. And then me again. And then...

-------------------------------

"Where do you want to go today?" Poe asked, when we finally roused in the morning.

We took our little tow-motor and diving gear down to the packet robot-lighter as it made it's thrice-daily round trip out to the mountains to the south, across Venice Bay.

This time we were quite naked, not bothering with any suits, but definitely flaunting. I felt more naked shaved clean than I would have otherwise. More passive, more vulnerable. Dax was not embarrassed, but Ezri flushed under smiles tossed my way by other lovers. But my woman wished it, so it was. We held hands and kissed continually as we strolled and later sat, in the boat. Some people looked, but more in envy than anything else. I felt very male and dominant and very flaunting of my lovely gray-haired trophy holding tight to me. I felt very female and protected by her presence.

We could see our little islet as we back-fell into the Deep Blue. Poe flew on before us, no doubt, and hunted fresh insects, carrion fish, and seeds as we slowly made our way underwater to our little hideaway.

Hanging from our tow-motors were packets this time. We walked across the immaculate sand and over the distorted blacktop road to a swale of dune grass fringing dune. We carefully laid out survival blankets on the sand, and I fitted myself to my Kathryn as soon as she rolled onto the blankets.

She was beautiful and in no hurry. Neither was I.

We avoided the coral when we returned to the sea by following a fluke of sand that led us into deeper sheltered waters. Later we re-entered the sea quite free of tanks, total-suits and tow-motors.

It was exhilarating to be truly naked in the Blue. Nothing between me and the salty ocean but wonder. Kathryn was careful so long as she was with me, and we investigated the near-the-surface world beneath the ever-moving sky of shiny shifting patterns above our heads. A short squall line moved across our islet as we held our breath in the cold beauty of the pacific. The surface was incredible when viewed from below, as the thousands of rain drops patterned the moving silver wall above us.

And then we would return to our blankets and make love again.

"Beautiful soup!" Poe would caw. "So rich and green! Waiting in a hot tureen!" His serenades were moments of laughter as we rubbed female flesh to female flesh and relished being together. "Who for such dainties would not stoop?! Soup of the Evening!"

We would nap, make love, swim, and wait for whatever Poe would proclaim this time.

"It's six o'clock!" he finally said. It was not six, but it was later than we had planned, and we groaned. Back to civilization.

Poe was so full of insects and assorted islet whatevers he hitched a ride all the way back to the Hotel. We would suddenly ease ourselves under the waves, but he was always there when our tow-motors broached the surface again.

Afterwards he did, however, put a certain acidity in his delivery of: "I sleep when I breathe!"

He managed reprimand somehow in: "Up above the world you fly/Like a tea-tray in the sky!" quickly followed by a scathing: "You really Have no notion/How delightful it will be!"

I had not realized Ravens could be sarcastic.

"You're just too stuffed with sacrificial insects to want to fly, you lazy bird," Kathryn returned.

"The bitterness of life!" Poe quipped.

At times I could think I'm actually hearing a Humanoid-Raven conversation.

----------------------------------

Back in her cabana, we discarded our motors and gear, tongues wetting our lips.

"Fuck me," Kathryn said as I pushed her back onto the bed.

I moved to do just that, when her eyes and words smiled in a correction.

The Dax in me smiled to realize his male ego and skills were about to predominate. The Ezri in me smiled in eagerness to please this beautiful woman.

My admiral of the Blue directed me to her little cache of toys as Poe commented. Poe always had something to say in any situation.

"Oh my ears and whiskers!" the Raven said. "We called him Tortoise because he taught us."

I carefully fitted the unaccustomed 'live' dildo panty to my hips, Kathryn caressing me as she tapped the commands to contract on my soft hips. It shrunk to a perfect fit, and my lover ran her hands over the large red flaring head of her/my long cock. It taunted me with truths of what was yet to come.

I was Dax and I was erect. I had grown a penis stiff with blood and want. I was stiff with desire. I was going to fuck this pretty Dragon with the gray hair and make her beg before I gave her all of what I grew out of my male groin.

Kathryn wrapped her mouth around the flaring head, and I was able to feel it when she worried the plastoid with her curving welcoming tongue. She wrapped it around and up and down, worshipping what soon would be in her, fulfilling her, giving her centimeter after centimeter of warty grizzled bent manhood.

Kathryn leaned back on her knees, her hand still wrapped around my Dick. Cock. Prick. Penis. Meat. Sausage. Bulb. It was shining from the saliva coating it.

"You like this prong, bitch? You my bitch? You want this thing up your pussy, bitch? You want to get fucked? You want to get fucked till you're blind, bitch?"

The words were aggressive and masculine. It was the customary litany of the selfish male controlling and enjoying the dominance. Relishing the control of the moment.

This was Dax at his - not worst - but his most male.

But my hand was busy in Kathryn's mane of soft flowing gray hair, fingers searching the shape and warmth of her crown.

The juicy sound of Kathryn's mouth smearing me with hot saliva awakened every atom of love in me. She worshipped me and my maleness at that moment. I could do nothing now but coo words of praise and caring to her as she swallowed my entire length. Gone were the words of domination. Ezri was back in control.

Kathyrn pulled back, until with only her tongue-tip on the head of my aching cock, she dropped her head and pressed her lips down until they searched the base of my prick.

Sweet Kathryn rocked her head in a circle, giving herself to the giving stiffness that she knew and hoped would soon be in her. Her eyes linked to mine as I groaned.

"I love you, darling, sweet woman, dearest Kathryn," I crooned. "You are making me so hot and stiff. You are making me so stiff I'm liable to come down your wonderful wet throat."

At that she pulled back, but immediately swallowed and licked each of my hanging balls in turn. She swallowed me again, her tongue curving and recurving in caress as her head traveled back and forth on my hardness.

I was Dax and I almost felt the pressure of my sperm building in my balls as they tightened up. I was going to come liters in this wonderful beautiful woman.

I could not, I corrected myself. But Dax knew. Not Ezri. Dax.

I accepted my subservient role as Kathyrn dominated me even as I accepted my dominance as she knelt before me. This was the paradox I welcomed.

Dax had always known both of us bowed to the other even as we controlled. He always sought balance. Acceptance of the male's need for the strong woman even as he gloried in being a strong man.

Ezri remembered times with Bashir and Kira, when she had sought this balance, this fine tuning of roles and acceptances.

Here, now, she might be in control, as Kathryn whimpered. Kathryn lay back now as I slid over her sweating body. I glided on this layer of desperate need, and allowed my darling to direct my cock as it found her tangle of desire-scented hairs.

I used my cock to stir Kathryn like it was a spoon in her creamy bowl. My Dragon gurgled with fuck-lust and I smiled as we kissed. Her ankles were already wrapped around my ass, trying to hurry me, draw me into herself.

I was a puny dust speck trapped on a pane of glass. I was the Dark Waters flowing over a trapped soul. I was a sweat-runneled dreamer no longer trapped in the wool-gatherer's daydreams. I was strength. I was power. I was forewarned and I knew nothing.

My flared head stirred the hot wet entrance to her sex. No lube would be necessary. Not with the heat and butter of this woman beneath me. Craving me, fondling the first centimeters of joining as the head of my cock slowly dipped inside the clutching ring of her vagina's entrance.

I eased into her, a centimeter at a time. She clutched me, her legs tried to force me into herself, I would not hurried.

Kathryn whimpered. Or was that me?

I pulled out until only the head was clutched by her spasms of want. Then I slung my hips and inexorably fed myself to the wet velvet paradise that was Kathryn.

In the light, almost kissing, she smiled up at me in the strange moment of control and surrender mixed we have. I had watched this second of transformation for three hundred years and more.

I could see the wrinkles of age that had stabbed her one by one in the passage of lonely nights. I kissed her soft dry cheek, her sweaty throat, her panting lips.

I bottomed out inside her.

Then I pulled myself out of her again. In. Out. In. Out. Again and again, varying the rhythm and the angle, seeking to wring maximum response from the female giving beneath me. Three centuries of experience coming back to me without conscious thought. I was needing to give her the most I could. Desiring always to feel the spasms of ripples and rings of muscles as they tried to hold me and could not. Tight, but wet. Hot, and building.

We came together.

I was white foam coursing over stony shale. I was soft wavelets washing over tropic sands. I sweat upon Kathryn and felt my stiff prick stirring her once more. I belt and my prick entered her once more. She groaned anew, her eyes screwed shut.

"Oh yes, oh yes, oh, damn you, damn you! Uuuuhhhh!"

My teeth nipped at the base of her throat as I slung lower and parted her once more. She squeezed my waist desperately as she mumbled; "Oh shit, that's good!"

I was a great Magician. Building spells and wardings, weaving insubstantial implacabilities. I came with Kathryn. I was the Wizard of World's End, and my greatest castings were nothing against the need of the woman accepting my long male member.

We came together a third time and then we must both fall unhurried into a dark pit beyond easy divining.

I could not recall what Poe might have uttered during our time together.

He awoke us by declaiming; "You may charge me with murder! We shall need all our strength for the job! Some think it keeps best in an ivory Jar! I shall never forget! Nevermore!"

------------------------------------

Already we raced from one expectation to the other.

We ate on a terrace, or spread food upon ourselves with loud guffaws and peals of giggling. Kathryn wore her Dress Mess White uniform many times when we dined under sun or stars. Displaying her masculine dominance. Being my - not master. Openly being the one to lead.

She pulled morsels of meat off grouse and fed them to me one bit at a time. Whipped sweet cream over blueberry shortcake was given me on the tip of her finger. I dressed in little that did not display my breasts or form to its best advantage. I was her woman and gloried in it.

We swam and drank butter from the mill of the others loins when we spent time on our little islet. As if in conspiracy by Gods or Planetary Weather Board, each morning spent in the sands and dunes and waves was perfect.

We would groan in release in our gritty bed of lust, giving and taking in equal measure.

As with Kira Nerys before her, Kathryn adored being taken time and again by the male Dax within me. This was the heart of the contradiction that fueled my last marriage. Dominance by the one who groaned in continual female surrender and acceptance of masculine needs. Dax and Ezri, each able to enjoy the role necessary for the needs of the other person in our bed. The paradox that both strengthened and weakened our loving and bonding. I was male and I was woman, to a woman who needed to possess both control and giving feminity.

At bare moments I wondered whether Kathryn was strong enough to be married to both a woman and a male. At such times the diplomat who had managed over three human centuries of life shrugged and massaged my mental neck muscles into relaxation.

What would be would be. Time alone would tell.

On the plus side, the Admiral who stage-managed her aggressive façade of eccentricity at work was not likely to be as high-strung and volatile as Kira had been.

And Kathryn was a Dom driven by wants. Not needs.

All in all, I was feeling more and more assured. Until the morning Seven of Nine met us at the Deep Blue pier.

----------------------------

She had found us by design, so much she admitted. Few Databases could resist the determined prying of the ex-Borg, even today. The Admiral and she were old friends, after all. Much mutual water had gone under their respective bridges, back in the halycon days of the Great Delta Adventure.

I had to admit in my jealousy that Seven - Annika Hansen now - was still a young beautiful woman. She wore the new transparent blouse fashions of today, and her large breasts still quivered with the vibrancy of youth.

The implants remained that gave her the piquancy of exotic appeal, including one vibrant tracery of thick Borg metal spun across her left breast in an eye-catching lure. Her brow implant still gave her a perpetual air of disbelieving inquiry, and her chin still lifted in imperious regard.

New to me, and to Kathryn, was the wide toothy smile she flashed a dozen times as items sparked her live human sense of humor. She adored Edgar Allen Poe, and the fickle bird soon spent all his time on her shoulder, quoting a steady stream of meaningful nonsense.

"You have the best butter!" Poe quoted. She had the humanity now to blush and wear a sly-old-dogs leer as she eyed Kathryn and asked; "And how would you know what I taste like?"

Not the old Seven of Nine.

Kathryn hung on her every word, her hand continually found itself touching the tall blond woman, and her eyes glistened as she leaned close to her one-time protégé.

I sat dismayed to find myself relegated to the role of The Other Woman in an instant.

Nothing would do but she had to show Annika around.

Kathryn was bewitched. Fallen head over heels, and barely courteous to me as they left hand in arm.

An hour later I left our cold dinner to sit in our Hotel room. It seemed the best place to await the news of my destroyed romance.

I slept alone that night but did not sleep. I kept bolting awake whenever exhaustion and tears drove me under. Hoping to hear Poe cawing some tidbit of antique doggerel.

The next morning I wandered down to the pier and watched the naked pair of them board the cattle boat for a trip out into Venice Bay. I knew Kathryn was taking her to our islet of love. Poe noticed me, I think, but did not come over.

I was on the BART in an hour, returning to San Francisco and my post at StarFleet Tower.

-----------------------------

It hurt to hide myself in my work. Clothed in the protective enchantment of my uniform, I took no notice of the world of San Francisco. No one could see me inside my cloth shell.

Entering my space next to the Admiral's office, I wondered what I should do. Go to work, I suppose.

The next thing I wondered was on what.

My efficient modern StarFleet desk with its pop-up screen and varied accessories, was gone.

The petite receptionist, the CPO called The Beaver, was right behind me. She sidled over to it, one eye always on me. Trying to decipher what had brought me back from vacation so early.

"It's a writing desk," she explained. "A roll-top desk is it's exact description. Same period as the Admiral's flat-top writing desk." She ran her hand over the varnished wood, coaxing the rods of the wooden cover down and up again.

A shining metal console swung out from the side, allowing me to be of this century, at least. Another eccentric antique.

I mourned for my modern sleek ex-desk. I knew very well and afresh what it felt like to be replaced.

Sitting atop the blond wooden desk was a pedestal with oddments on it.

A pair of footprints were deeply etched into the pedestal base. A miniature pet was leashed, and the leash ran back to a point in mid-air.

It said; "The Boojum". Boojums are invisible, of course. Hence the footprints and the leash held by an invisible hand.

The pet was what finally made me reverse course.

It was a Cheshire Cat, with its broad ear-to-ear toothy smile half the size of the little peppermint-and-white striped beastie. A Raven perched on its shoulder.

Janeway was not surprised by my following her to the Islands. She'd expected it, and presumed she would be leashed by the Boojum. The Cheshire Cat in this statuette had become the willing and docile pet of the Boojum.

The Admiral had wanted me to find her, chase her, and seduce her. I was the prize sought after when she had striven so mightily to become an object of desire. I was the sought-after trophy. Not some faceless stranger she might encounter down there in the Isles. Me. She fully intended to pursue me until I caught her.

Admirals are sneaky and subtle beasties.

In an hour, and without changing clothes, I was on my way back to the Los Angeles Isles.

-----------------------------

She was on the BART platform when I got off it. Not waiting for me. Just on it, waiting to board the Bart when it made its return run to San Francisco.

She was still in a state of shock. Dazed after her break-up with Seven. In a fog of dismay and confusion.

It did not take much thinking to come to that conclusion. None whatsoever.

The transformation that came over her face once she realized she was facing me was pathetic. It was much more than embarrassing to see her shame stiffen into blank steel.

She'd been ditched, or rejected, or cast astray; and I was there in the flesh to see her nadir. She stared at me, then averted her face, fighting back tears in a face that had already seen too many of them.

Then she realized I'd come back for her. By that time I'd reduced my distance to her by half.

She felt very small in my arms, and was trembling as if her warp core was about to overload.

"Oh, Ezri, darling," she moaned into my chest. "I've really gone and screwed it up this time, haven't I?" My Fleet Uniform would wick away a lot of tears, I thought. As many as Kathryn could shed on me.

-----------------------------

We were perched on one of the little walls surrounding the rebuilt Hayden Planetarium parking lot. All those neat yellow lines on blacktop, and no petroleum-driven automobiles parked on it, excepting the exquisite 'typical' dozen salvaged and rebuilt from the flooded Freeways. Now occasional visitors came in on the Tube, and headed inside for the exhibits. Antique exhibits up top, and modern displays in the sub-basements dug earlier this century. I'd loved feeling the texture of the giant iron meteoroids exhibited here. The textures of the giants after they'd burned through Terra's atmosphere was awe-inspiring.

They had an asteroid named Icarus on exhibit over in Tarzana, on the San Fernando Bay coast. Maybe we might go see it.

I was obviously still thinking in terms of an 'us', rather than just a 'me'. But the asteroid would still be interesting. My academic bent reviving, probably.

I'd stood on a hundred asteroids and comets, but it was different having them sitting on the surface of a planet.

Movement drew my eye. We had our own Robotic waiter. Humanoid-form robots were much more common in the L.A. basins, and one had been assigned to shepherd us and serve us, by my Hotel. Kathryn was unsure what our next moves were to be, but on this she hoped I had a plan. I did.

I was going to improvise.

Just like I had been doing all afternoon and evening.

We could still hold, and make a pair. I had made that plain from the moment we re-united, there on the BART platform. Cuddle. Comfort. Draw and give support. Kiss. Even fondle. A little.

I still ached from wanting her. However, it could not be as it had been.

All things were new again, and we both knew there was not going to be a rush to passion. Not now. We'd had passion. And passion would return, if all went well. But not right now.

The supple Robot carried a wicker picnic basket, just like the ones we'd recreated so faithfully on DS9 for my fondly remembered jaunts on Bajor. First with Doctor Bashir, then with Nerys. Adrian had charmed me with the use of their antique utility. He'd introduced me to the concept of 'picnic'.

Kathryn was more than a bit wary, and perhaps still close to tears (though it didn't show any more). She'd been willing enough to follow my lead, once she realized we weren't going to have some gigantic war of wills complete with storms of yelling and accusations.

Neither were we going to slip into mindless sex either. I allowed closeness and kissing, but she understood we were going to have to establish a new balance between us.

Actually I did wish to slip into mindless sex with her. It would counterfeit reality as it had been, rather than as it now was.

I was a much more placid soul than Jadzia, and certainly Ambassador Dax. This being that I was, wished with all of her might that ignoring and determined forgetting might solve my dilemma.

Kathryn had her own beauty, of course. I wanted her physically, that was also true. However...

When I had viewed her, hand in hand with Seven, she had still been a desirable woman. I wanted that body.

We had commitments to make and wounds to heal first.

"I'm not going to make any rules, or demand concessions, or anything of the type," I softly explained. I looked at the wicker basket, and surprised myself by feeling a little twitch of hunger bite my gut. I hadn't had anything to eat for much more than a day and the body was reminding me of the fact.

"I love you,' I added. "It hurt too much to be away from you for me to have any illusions left about the condition.

"However, you hurt me. Badly.

"Punishment is not on my mind. Blind reconciliation is also not much of an option.

"But, dammit, Kathryn, I need to know.

"Just what the damned hell happened?" I rasped.

"Hello," she suddenly said. "I'm Kathryn Janeway, Admiral of the Blue in the Federation StarFleet, and I'm an ass. I'm afraid I didn't catch your name first off?"

"Sentence first - verdict afterwards!" Poe added. "Oh my ears and whiskers how late it's getting!" Another Raven-Humanoid conversation seemed to be occurring.

My head shook in a negative. The temptation was there. Just lean back and forget everything but holding her. I couldn't play that sort of game.

"Why?" I demanded. "Explain to me what happened? Seven shows up, and I get tossed like an apple with a worm in it."

"I was love with her for years," Kathryn began to explain. "But I felt ... Never mind why, but I never took that perfect physical creature to bed with me. Through all those years trapped on VOYAGER, I wanted to make mad passionate love to Seven, but never did. She was not only a beautiful adult, she was a child growing into her life, with myself in many ways being her new mother.

"And I was her Captain. I must guide, but not exploit. I thought taking her to bed would be abuse of a child.

"Suddenly we were back in the Alpha Quadrant, she married Chakotay, and it was too late. We went our separate ways, and I fell more and more in love with her as the years piled up."

A wave of the hand, admitting her stupidity to the both of us.

"My Beau Ideal became Seven. I had become obsessed. Over the curve.

"The passion lessened with time and distance, or at least thus I told myself, and I reconstructed my life in stages. I was wise enough not to collect mementos or souvenirs of Seven, but I tried to keep track of her.

"Then you walked into my life, and everything suddenly clicked into place. I told myself I'd been a fool. You were real and you could be the rest of my life. You were even lesbian enough that you'd been married for a decade to another woman, and one with an interstellar reputation for having an explosive temper.

"In short, some one who might accept me with all my flaws."

Kathryn had the grace to blush a little. "I schemed - not too much, mind you - to get you into my clutches.

"That succeeded quite well. Didn't it?"

"Very well," I admitted. "I'm clutched. It was a nice feeling, being clutched by you.

"Then you ran off with Seven.

"That was a bitchy thing to do."

I had to say something. I had to. Scream and shout, no, not my style. But I had to say something, or suffer a warp core melt-down. At least I had the nerve to sit there and not rush over and apologize for my harsh words.

"It all came back? All those lonely dreams of eternal love with Seven of Nine?" I prompted.

"It was like being reborn. Not quite, but close.

"We were both older, or at least I was older. Seven literally looked like she hadn't aged a day.

"She let me get close to her and proposed making love. Sex."

Kathryn started to look away, and then re-focused her gaze on me. She would not evade. I liked that, even if I didn't like what I was hearing. She'd been offered her dream and she left me for it.

"The sex was all I hoped it might be. And I had a generation of regrets to stoke the fires."

I let her touch my hand.

"She said we could have a little fun together." She spoke of Seven, of course. "A little sex, a little passion, a few laughs." He eyes were to the side, her thoughts further away.

"I ignored the warnings I was yelling to myself. You were there and even as I held Seven I knew she was going to go on without me. Tonight. Tomorrow. Next month. She'd move on and I'd be all alone again.

"My guilt at turning from you increased with each passing moment, but I was engulfed. Mesmerized. Bewitched.

"Stupid and horrible.

"Out loud, to quiet my warnings I told my insides we were going to be together forever and ever. I assumed." A wry smile. She was good at wry smiles, I'd noticed that at Fleet HQ.

"Eventually my triumph of the Will ran into the brick wall of her Duties."

For the first time ever I noticed Kathryn worrying the fabric of her trousers. She wasn't normally a cloth worrier. I refrained from laying a comforting hand on hers. She wanted and needed every volt of pain and needed every erg of concentration.

"Seven still works for Fleet," she whispered. She named no department, but I could think of at least two that officially did not exist. "Seven had to move on. Again. She received a summons while I was lying open and vulnerable. Literally. She left me. Just like that."

That wry smile again. "She always did have a damned stubborn sense of duty. It was one of the things I always admired about her. She was the definition of dutiful consistency itself, no matter what the task."

Kathryn did not expect me to rush to hold her. I didn't.

"I love her. Still do. Always have. Ever since those first days on VOYAGER.

"I love you, and I've been growing into that truth since I saw you ease that perfect pretty shy smile of yours into my office."

No tears liquid in the eyes, ready to spill brine down her cheeks. That was for lesser mortals. This was Admiral Kathryn Janeway.

"That's an awful long time to love someone." Damn that wry smile of hers.

"Especially when they don't love you back." A look away, the glance avoided, the eyes not met squarely, so little like the Admiral. "If Seven had loved me, back there on VOYAGER, she would have never went off with Chakotay.

"If she loved me now, she wouldn't have left me the way she did. She never spoke of love. Only flesh. She's quite the little sexual hedonist now, she is."

Wry smile again.

"More than once we were together and she'd be estimating the plusses and negatives of fucking someone else in view. She was eager to indulge in a few threesomes and foursomes while she had me tagging along.

A pause.

"I wanted eternal love and she wanted me to try a double dildo penetration while she watched. My dreams were of wedded bliss and Seven verbally estimated whether a passing beauty would fist on a public beach.

"Even on this Seven was not a creature of customary mankind. She was herself, and subterfuge and internal misdirection was not possible for her. Orgasms were the goal."

She suddenly stared into my eyes. No more avoiding.

"I think maybe I don't love her any more. Not now. Not ever again. I can't, not any more, not like I did. The real her and not the legend I remembered. But I still love the legend.

"I loved the dream. The tall perfect blond goddess striding down the corridors of VOYAGER like Odin. Or Loki perhaps. The Joker, the Grand Liar.

Kathryn shook her head in a no. "Not a liar. Never a liar. She was honest. I just didn't want to listen.

"Her cold exterior was once the true insides of her, and now she's just an eternally youthful blond with a great body and a hell of a lot of skill at eating pussy.

"Maybe my ideal perfect wondrous Seven of Nine did exist at one time. But I did not grab her and hold her and love her, back when it would have been possible to do so. Now she's just a myth created in my own mind.

"Myths are great things to worship from afar," she whispered. "But they turn into jagged glass in your hands when you try to hold them.

"It was great fun while it lasted. I felt twenty years old when she laid those long hands of hers on me, and I had visions of an eternity in her arms.

"But it was just a vision."

Her hand stole to cover mine, and I noted it was shaking. The confessional was just about complete, but it had exacted a toll.

"I hurt you badly. Unforgivably. Terribly. And I'm not going to ask for a kiss on the cheek and forgiveness.

"Mostly I spent years, hours, days, thinking of what a fool I was.

"I loved a legend and I loved a younger Trill. You have no idea how stupid and schizophrenic I felt sitting on the bed, in that dark Hotel room.

"Sitting naked in a dark room and examining your past mistakes is to be heartily recommended for all those seeking confusion and regret. It's amazing how slow the time passes when you're whipping yourself.

"And how fast."

Her hands were calm on her pants legs now. Then she leaned slightly forward and carefully laid her other hand on mine as well.

"But do you think we could try again?"

If I was going to demand anything, or expect promises, now was the time. I felt the veins in the back of her hand resting on mine and did nothing. No demands. Promises were just words, anyways. Better not to have promises or conditions or demands. Just try to rebuild things.

I'd been married enough times I should be good at it. And I think Kathryn would be a good wife. Not easy to deal with, but someone to wear well over the years.

Kathryn was indeed a woman older than my present body. She would probably die before I would. I had died enough times I could yet think of that at a time when I was anticipating living and loving and being shredded by passions.

Que sera, que sera, sera.

A pudgy old woman with another woman liable to become pudgy and older as well.

"I can't take you back," I began, rushing forward with the rest of my words when I saw the way her face paled and her face froze.

"Not as we were. Nothing can be as it was." I think I managed my own wry smile this time.

"Perhaps, though, maybe, we can start all over again."

Kathryn had reached that conclusion already, but had not organized it into coherent thought yet.

Her head was cocked and she had the restraint to deny herself any gleam of hope or even the faintest smile.

But I knew the Admiral had already begun laying out her next steps in her effort to conquer my resistance.

What she might not realize yet that I was already formulating my own steps in the Great Dance we were about to re-commence.

"We've still got a number of days left in our vacations," I reminded Kathryn. "The Islands are still gorgeous, the beaches are begging us to walk naked on them, and I haven't had any of that food in the picnic basket yet.

"What say we find some deep grass and have a little wine and you can tell me about Indiana and Phoebe, and is it true you posed for most of her Red Period nude studies?"

Kathryn smiled and her ears blossomed. Just a tad. They turned even more red as I chuckled.

I knew of the line of Martian sex toys known as the Scarlet Venus series. I must obtain one of the Dancer Dildos. The one where a human figure with arms outstretched above her head would wiggle and move in a slow sensual dance.

Kathryn, as she was forty years ago. She was immortalized as a dildo. She had to know, of course.

Kathryn, the younger her at least, was loved by millions of females throughout the Federation, and Klingon and Romulan Empires.

With micro-miniaturization applications, I could carve Kathryn's face (and a more accurate body) on one of the dildos.

Kathryn didn't know yet that my hobby was micro-carving.

A generation back I'd carved faces and bodies on a series of dildos for two new friends of mine. Beverly especially adored the ones with Jean-Luc's face. Deanna had immediately used the first Riker on herself. It had turned into quite an evening.

All of Kira Nerys anal plugs had Kai Win's face on them. I was already presuming tomorrows with Kathryn at my side.

"I'm never going to be able to delude myself that you and I are a couple destined for eternal love," I said to Kathryn.

"But maybe if I have no illusions we can be stronger."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Then again, the lack of sureties and assumptions might tear us apart."

It felt very silent on a ridge high above drowned Los Angeles. As if the Gods were holding their breaths. Waiting to see what happens next.

"I don't know, Kathryn. I don't.

"Maybe we'll last forty years. Maybe we'll last until next week.

"I don't know. And neither do you. But I'm willing to try it again. And you?"

"Yes," she whispered, and squeezed my hand.

No promises. But lots of possibilities.

The Gods breath stirred the collars of our blouses and played games with our short hair styles.

We would try again.

Privately I felt good about us, this second time around. But then I might be sadly deluded. Wouldn't be the last time, I was sure.

Suddenly I realized I wasn't aching to hold that wonderful woman's body now. Perspective. Now I could think about futures and possibilities instead of regrets and has-beens.

I thought of might-be's.

I was young enough that I could yet carry a child or two to term, if she felt the urge. Her child. She must have eggs in one of the Cryo-Banks, all StarFleet personnel did.

I'd like a young Kathryn to raise. We could have a girl between us, she'd have the Trill spots. Those were dominant genes. Or use a male donor. Maybe not. Maybe yes.

She'd be a handful, I knew that. Much as Kathryn must have been when she was young and immortal.

Privately, I remembered growing old, as a multiple mother, surrounded by family and care. I could anticipate holding Kathryn in times of trial and pain. A girl, a woman, a trial and a voice discovering, always discovering. That'd be nice. A younger mind chafing at ours, mine, hers.

Living. And in sickness and in health. That's part of living, also. Cowards try not to think of pain. That's why it's always such a shock when it occurs. Maybe Kathryn was thinking the same thoughts.

I hoped she would believe I would still be by her side when the days grew lean and cold and the wolves howled in the sable winter nights.

Grow old with me, my Dear, abide with me, I thought, the best is yet to come.

-----------------------------

What is it?" I asked.

I was sitting at my desk, and marveling at the - whatever - revealed beneath its antique roll-top cover once it had been opened up. I had a feeling this was another present planned before the recent debacle in Los Angeles. Much like the invisible Boojum perched on the desk top.

Something planned for the return planned by Kathryn. We were supposed to return as lovers, and we have, but not in quite the way originally planned. The plans of dykes and Admirals oft gang awry.

"It's an egg incubator," Kathryn said. "And the attached filche' is some forty essays on the raising of an intelligent Raven."

"If you don't hold your tongues I'll pick you!" Poe threatened. "Nevermore!"

It had a little aluminum panel in the top left side, and a flick of my nail made it transparent. Inside a fairly largish blue egg with abundant dots of brown and dark blue covered its exterior. I immediately thought of Trill spots. This bird's egg lay snuggled in swadding. My hand on its side vent revealed the slow circulation of air inside it.

"It's already moving inside the shell, according to its Computer. It estimates the baby bird will begin pecking its weak way out of its shell in two more days."

Kathryn almost blushed, to be admitting her sneaky plans.

"It was to be my first present to you, apart from the desk itself.

"You do want a Raven of your own, don't you? Or did I screw that up as well?"

Definitely blushing.

As we watched, a dong sounded, and a whirl of data futzed the little screen.

"Birthing process is now commencing," it tinnily stated.

I saw a small hole appear in its top, then the hole widened.

"It's a special present to you," Janeway swiftly said. "I guess I thought you'd like everything I wanted you to. Presumptuous, wasn't I?" My smile said it was fine, or at least that's what I hoped it stated. But then maybe Kathryn isn't a telepath.

"It's beautiful, Kathryn, and I'm glad you got one for me. I'd never have done so for myself. I'd be afraid you'd be offended."

"It's a second-cousin to Edgar Allen," Kathryn now continued. "From the some of the same grandparents. It's supposed to be as intelligent as Edgar Allen, and as big, and is already desexed.

"And you've got to hold it!

"Right now!"

When I did nothing, Kathryn touched the side and the lid swiveled up.

"Reach in! Now! Hold it!" she urged. "You want it to be YOUR Raven, don't you?"

Not entirely sure what I was doing, I lifted the little egg out of its soft nest. A major crack appeared stretching out from the little hole in its top.

Janeway's face was millimeters from my hand and its fragile burden.

"It's going to be born, it's got to be born knowing you, Ezri. You're going to be its mother, you know."

Another crack and I began shaking, knowing at last what was happening.

"Keep holding it,' she coaxed. "You want it to love you, don't you?"

I saw a momentary trace of beak, and thought I heard a cheep from the oncoming creature. The egg seemed so terribly small now, in my hands, but it trembled with the determined life within it. It was fighting so very hard, I knew, to come out into my world. It could die if it did not succeed in cracking this egg, and I reached out to peel some of the fragile prison from around it.

"No," Kathryn urged. "Yes. You can help a little. That's okay. But it's doing fine. Do you hear its stream of peeping? It's got a lot to say."

Suddenly I saw an eye gazing out at me. Then it was gone, sticky eyelids protecting its vision.

My Raven.

"What name are you going to give it?" Kathryn asked.

"Leonardo daVinci," I answered, with absolutely no forethought of the matter.

The Admiral stood erect, arms folded across her chest, nodding at my choice.

"Only this Leonardo will be able to fly," she decreed.

Poe perched on my shoulder, intent on the spectacle unfolding in my hand.

"Maiali!" he proclaimed. "Nevermore! I don't deny things with my hands! Off with her head!"

I looked askance towards Poe, but Kathryn waved my worries away.

"Edgar Allen won't harm it. Ravens only harm other Ravens after they've been condemned in a Parliamentary Trial."

At my look she continued.

"It's true. You'll see a Parliament surround a single Raven, and listen for minutes as it caws at them. Then suddenly they'll disperse and all fly away. Or they'll descend on the single raven and peck it to death.

"They hold trials. And no one knows what the Parliamentary Trials are about, or what the verdict will be."

"If this were only cleared away!" Poe surmised. "It would be grand!" Was he holding a conversation with me or Leonardo?

Poe paced around my hands, walking directly in that straight-forward way Ravens have, and peered at the baby sticky-looking creature barely showing in the egg. I was imagining intelligence in the newcomer's weak movements, in the way it cocked its head at me with its sightless covered eyes.

"We're all mad here," Poe advised Leonardo. "Take a memorandum on it!" he commanded.

END