–You want to ask me why I’m helping you like this, don’t you? I can tell.– Kes asked.

The woman looked to her a little startled. She asked something, it was something like ’do you know all of my thoughts?’.

Kes shook her head. –Not really. I can sense your thoughts, but I don’t know your language, or much of your frame of reference for that matter, so I can only really pick up on impressions from what you’re thinking and try to use those to understand what you’re trying to say to me… I probably only really understand about half of the time.– She admitted.

The woman took another sip of water, seemingly more at ease with her now somehow. Though Kes couldn’t be sure how much the woman really understood her any more than she could be sure she really understood any of this race of people. The woman asked something else then, something like ’Where do you come from? You are an…’ She didn’t understand the last part, it was something like… from above the sky? She must mean where the Caretaker lives, Kes considered. They were always taught that the Caretaker lived far above them, above their world.

–No, I’m from here. From below the surface.– Kes told her.

”Ocampa.” The woman spoke the name of her people.

–You know about my people?– Kes asked curiously.

The woman nodded yes, that she did. Saying that it was commonly known that, every once in a while, one of her people would come to the surface. Twice before, that she’d heard of.

–What happened to them?– Kes asked.

The woman shook her head and said that she did not know and had never met one herself, until now.

–That’s okay.– Kes said. –I guess it’s hardly important right now.– She looked over and saw that the boy was watching her with that same weary, curious look, but now there was… hope there, too. She picked up one of the two sacks of food she’d gotten and opened it. Knowing from what had happened with the water that the woman wouldn’t eat before her children had, she took out a piece of fruit and a biscuit and gave it to the boy. –Here, eat. I have enough for your mother, and your sister too, when she wakes up again.– She told him. He looked a little amazed by her, probably by how she was talking to him without words somehow. But he nodded and almost reverently took the food.