Orilly had not known these specifics at the time, but she had felt the gist of it in her bones, and known that at that moment, the predator’s rights were weighted more heavily in the gestalt than her own or her sister’s. Her sister felt it too, and gave up trying to stand on her broken leg, simply laying there for the predator to take. “But I didn’t want her to die,” Orilly said. “I didn’t want to die either. So I…I threw rocks at the volirountil it ran. And I put my sister on my back and carried her to safety.”

At home, she went on, her family was disturbed, sensing that she’d violated gestalt. “Did they punish you?” Deanna asked.

Orilly seemed bewildered by the question. “The gestalt is punishment enough. I felt the wound I caused, felt it grow and spread. The mother’s babies died unborn. Within months, the rodents had overrun the area, the plants were dying. So many were starving.” She shuddered. “But my crime was worse than I knew. With the plants gone, the roots were gone, and when the next storm season came…there was a mudslide. The village was buried. Hundreds died.” She gazed up plaintively at Deanna. “I am a mass murderer, Counselor. The pain of it…feeling the gaping wound I tore in the Whole…in some ways, exiling me for my crime was almost an act of mercy.”

Deanna chose her words carefully. “I won’t presume to judge your people’s ways. But you did what you did out of love, to save your sister. And you couldn’t have known, even with the gestalt, that the indirect consequences would be so great. If anyone could have predicted the mudslide, it would have been prevented, or the village evacuated.”

“It does not matter. I knew that depriving the voliroand her babies would cost many lives—Irriol lives or others, it makes little difference. I heard the gestalt and I chose to ignore it…and others paid the price.” She lowered herself to all fours, resting her head sadly on her forepaws, and wrapping her trunks around them. “My sister was ready to give herself. She understood what I could not. And she did not forgive me for making her the reason for my crime.”

It was a while before Deanna spoke. “I had an older sister once. Her name was Kestra. And she died before I was old enough to remember her. I would give anything if she could be alive today, even if she hated me.” She slid out of her chair and to her knees, to meet Orilly on her own level. “Malar…you had a difficult choice to make. Either choice would have been just as painful, for you and for others. But either choice would have saved lives as well as cost them. The choice you made was made out of love, and the desire to help another being.”

“No. I was selfish. I could have given myself to the voliro.”

“Then who would have carried your sister to safety? You made the right decision for yourgestalt—the smaller one that was your family. So I know I can trust you with this small gestalt I’m asking you to help me form.”

She leaned forward, made sure to catch Orilly’s eyes. “I won’t tell you your sense of guilt isn’t valid. In fact, I think it’s extraordinary that your people can care so deeply for your world, feel such a profound bond to its life. If anything, Malar, the guilt you feel is a testament to the strength of your empathy. And that strength is what I need.

“So will you help me?”

Orilly tilted her head and spoke slowly. “You could order me.”

“I need you to choose this. To open yourself willingly. That’s the only way it’ll work.”

The cadet drew in a long, shuddering breath and sighed. “Very well. I will try.”

Aili Lavena fidgeted within her hydration suit as she headed back to her quarters after a long shift at the helm. The Selkie appreciated the garment for allowing her to function in Starfleet, to interact with air-breathers in a way she no longer could on her own, now that she’d outgrown her amphibious phase. But being enclosed in it for hours at a time could grow uncomfortable. She didn’t like the way her twin gill-crests, which started atop her smooth head and continued down her back, had to stay sandwiched within the stiff fins on the suit’s back, confined within the porous layers that kept oxygenated water circulating across their surfaces. Every day at end of shift, she was eager to get back to her water-filled quarters, strip fully nude and luxuriate in the freedom of it. It was often even nicer when she had someone to join her in luxuriating, but today she was just as happy to have some solitude. Arranging sex with an air-breathing partner could get complicated and strenuous. Aili likedcomplicated and strenuous sex, but right now she was feeling too lazy.

As she neared her quarters, she saw Dr. Bralik, the Ferengi geologist, approaching from the other direction. She waved absently to the small-eared female, intending to leave it at that, but Bralik seemed to have other ideas. “Ensign Lavena!” she crowed in her loud, nasal voice, whose grating qualities were only slightly muffled by the air-water interface between it and Aili’s dainty seal-like ears. “You know, I’ve been hoping to have a talk with you.”

Lavena stopped, accepting that comfort would have to wait. “Hello, Dr. Bralik. What can I help you with?”

“Oh, just a matter of curiosity, if you can spare a few minutes.”

“I’m glad to help, if I can.”

“Good, good. Now, let me see, if I’ve got this straight, you Selkies, you can’t breathe out of the water, right? I mean, of course, you’ve got that suit on and all, but is it just a convenience or do you need it all the time?”

It was a question she’d gotten many times, and she didn’t mind satisfying the Ferengi’s curiosity about her species. “In this phase of my life, I’m fully aquatic,” she said. “In the first phase of our lives, we’re amphibious, able to breathe on land at least part of the time, though we need to stay near water so our gills don’t dry out. Later in life, after childbearing, our lungs can no longer sustain us, so we live in the water full-time.”

“But you still have lungs, right? I mean, you’re talking to me.”

Aili smiled. “My lung is smaller than it was, and has changed in structure. It serves as a flotation sac, nothing more. And my voice is produced by muscle vibration, not airflow.”

“Hm. I’m no biologist, but that seems kind of an odd evolutionary twist.”

“We don’t have much land on Pacifica,” Aili explained. “We go out to the sea so we don’t use up resources our young need to grow. As humanoids we need to develop at least partly on land.”

“Okay. I’ll take your word for that. Still there’s one thing, though, one other matter I’m wondering about.”

“Yes?”

“So if you can’t breathe air even for a little while…how exactly did you frinxwith Dr. Ra-Havreii last week?”

Aili gaped at her, speechless. Bralik shrugged and added, “That is, unless Efrosians can breathe water. I asked Ravvy about that at lunch the other day, but he didn’t want to go into detail.”

“He…he toldyou?” The bastard had insisted he’d be discreet!

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you, did I upset you? Didn’t mean to, honey, really. I mean, I thought Selkies were pretty liberal about such things. Judging from the gossip I’ve heard from Ferengi males, though you can’t always believe that.”

“No, it’s…I’m certainly not a prude,” Aili insisted forcefully. Being thought of as a prude was perhaps the one thing more embarrassing to an aquatic Selkie than…well, the other thing her people thought of her. “It’s just…other species, you know, and their standards…I’d just really rather appreciate it if you didn’t talk about my liaisons to others. And I’m going to have a talk with Dr. Ra-Havreii about that, too.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Ravvy didn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t? Then, how—”

Bralik tapped one of her ears. “I may not hear as well as a male, but my quarters are nearby. I overheard Ravvy talking to Counselor Troi when he left your quarters.”