Chandra gazes at the two figures kneeling closely to her on the large zafu in the center of the family room. She exhales as Rentor takes the small chain of interwoven gold and silver threads in his hands.
Dayla, his principal bond, lifts the other side and together, they both drape it around her bare skull.
The scar on her head is angry, but healed. It burns not with pain but purpose.
“You are of our family,” Dayla says. “Protected and sheltered.”
She looks at the five younger figures kneeling next to one another in a line. Dayla and Rentor’s children, ranging from age fourteen to eighteen. Kitana, the oldest, smiles at her, the tuft of pewter hair denoting her half-human heritage.
She turns back to gaze into the dark eyes of her new potential prelanka-na’—the ‘bond of mine’—a legal construct to reinforce the love and comfort that they feel.
Chandra closes her eyes as she sees two faces in her mind. A human male with green eyes, and a Vulcan female with dark eyes and long blonde hair.
One who had died on a desolate Klingon moon, the other who had fled from their bond after T’Varilyn’s death, immersing himself in work, after he had seen to Chandra’s survival from the bat’leth wound. The source of the scar on her head.
She feels a slight tug as each of them place the other loops of the chain over each other’s head. She closes her eyes as the two foreheads touch hers.
Later, as everyone sleeps, her eyes stare into darkness. Thoughts of her motivation for this move through her brain.
She was already the equivalent of a godmother to these children. Does she need another marriage?
Or is she merely seeking shelter from the grief and pain of the bonding with the two in her mind.
As she finally falls asleep, lying between the warm bodies of her future spouses, she can’t find an answer to that question.
T’Varilyn watches from her place in her mind. Her own thoughts troubled, for both of her loves.
Her t’hy’la.