Fan Fiction
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Beyond My Knowing, chapter 1
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She’d considered it of course… After all, Daggin was nice. Fair to look at. They were friends. She liked him, very much. But… she didn’t love him. When she tried to picture a life with him – living in the same house, sharing a bed, having a family – all she felt was depression and sadness. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way exactly, why she was different, she simply knew that she was – that her heart was telling her that Tae was who she wanted, who she belonged with.
The trouble was of course, that Tae did not want her. It was obvious to see – even though she wished it wasn’t. Her eyes lit up when she saw the boy who she was going to marry soon. She talked about him constantly, and about wanting children and how she was looking forward to being a mother. Kes had played along and artfully dodged questions about her own hopes for the future, mostly by talking about her beliefs. About the legends of her people’s lost mental abilities, and how they shouldn’t depend on the Caretaker, how there had to be more to life. And she believed those things, Tae did too. It was what she and her friends all had in common, that they didn’t like the status quo. They’d built a garden outside of the city to show others that there were other things in the world than what the Caretaker provided them – things they could do for themselves.
Tae thought she just had high ideals and big dreams. And that was, in fact, true about her… But being true didn’t always mean the same thing as being the truth, and the truth, her truth, was that she would have traded all her high ideals and big dreams to simply have Tae return her feelings.
She wasn’t the only Ocampa to have feelings like this for someone of the same gender of course. And some of them, a comparatively small number, did end up marrying. No one stopped them. But mostly, she supposed, if one of her people had feelings like hers, they would simply take the path of least resistance and marry someone they didn’t love, just to be accepted. Because those few number of her people who did follow their hearts? They were shunned, one and all. No one talked to them. No one was their friend. All they had were each other, and the small community they’d built for themselves in a part of the city where no one else went. And Kes could have easily lived with that. If everyone she knew turned their backs on her and she’d had to move to that little community where only people like her ever went, she was sure she’d have been very happy with that in fact. Even if her parents and closest friends were among those to shun her, she wouldn’t have minded so much.
The simple fact was though, that it was never to be. And so, what she’d been left with were those big dreams and high ideals that Tae thought were so important to her. She smiled a little to herself. Well, they were important… they just didn’t make her feel any less heartbroken.
She didn’t know what the evening and the coming days would bring – who she would find in the settlement in the valley beyond that was at the foot of the mountains of rock – but if she couldn’t have love, then, at least she was about to have adventure.
She felt excited – really, truly, hopeful, for the first time. Her feelings had always been half-hearted before now, but now she’d seen the proof. Proof that there was more to life – the possibility of more, of a life beyond what she knew. A life unknown to her, and so a life that could be full of possibilities. It was proof that something wonderful and unexpected could happen, right around the next corner or over the next hill.
It was also true though, that her dreams, those possibilities she sought, they could turn out to be hollow for all she knew. But maybe they wouldn’t. And for now, that ’maybe’ was just what she’d needed to lift her spirits and get her to realize that maybe there really could be a life for her, even without Tae in it.
Because… when she’d accidentally seen Tae and the boy she loved kissing that night by the water, she’d just known. She’d known that staying friends with her after that would just be too painful. And she’d known that she couldn’t stay, that she had to make a new life for herself somehow.
And now, now it looked like she just might be on the verge of succeeding in that.
At some point, she dozed off and only woke up when the sun had already set. The light was already dimming, and the air already cool. She’d lost around an hour of time when she could have been walking.
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to be continued
also, I’m always happy to get comments (even really short ones)
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I loved voyager and was a bit sad that it wasn’t about the ship and crew but Kes was always one of my favorites. I’m late to the party but can’t wait to catch up.
thanks for writing. It’s fantastic so far.