”We aren’t, are we?” Kes wondered aloud. ”Still dreaming?” She took a moment and checked her senses. ”No, no, not dreaming.”

Anara sighed in relief. ”How… How have you done this, my zaraya? A miracle, you… you are a miracle…” She moved forward, tears in her eyes. ”Thank you…” She told Kes, touching her face, moving to kiss her just softly, even reverently.

Kes didn’t know how she’d, they’d, done what they had, but she could feel the relief and joy from her wife as if it were her own, and the belief in her, in them, now more fervently strong than ever. And she felt it not just as sensing it from Anara, but feeling it as though she were feeling those things too. Anara stilled, and Kes knew she was having the same experience from the opposite perspective, but… also nearly the same perception. They’d distanced for a while, but now they were harmonizing again. Neither of them had meant to, not meant to create distance, or to return to harmony. Not consciously as least. They both sort of stared into each other’s eyes, transfixed by the sensations of it.

There was a loud grunt from outside and Anara shook her head and looked over across the room towards the noise, her mind and senses a little dazed, unaccustomed to such clear sight through her own eyes. Kes turned along with her wife, taking Anara in her arms and soothing her as she used her mental abilities to sense outward for what was going on outside. Something wasn’t right. What was it?

Anara calmed in her arms and their minds reached harmony again, working in unison, sensing. It felt so right in the moment, as much as it felt baffling when the harmony was lost or disrupted. The feeling, in the waking world, was a dichotomy of comfort and mutual vulnerability.

A sense of the happenings outside took shape in their minds. Tresit and Artem… they were still sparring. It had gotten more intense, and Artem, especially, was working through a vague sense of frustration and unease he couldn’t seem to shake. He wasn’t so much angry at Tresit as at the circumstances of his life right now. Everything felt strange to him, and Kes and Anara could tell there was a certain… despair there. It was troubling, and they knew they would need to deal with that and help their nephew through his troubles over time. Still, the two boys were only very absorbed in what they were doing, and, though their thoughts were narrowly focused on what they were doing, they could tell that Tresit didn’t mind the vigor of the exercise, that, in fact, it was exciting him. He was enjoying himself… No, the sparing itself, even Artem’s disquiet, wasn’t what they’d sensed that wasn’t right, or not all of it at any rate.