Unexpected Paths

Posted on Mon Apr 3rd, 2023 @ 6:50pm by Lieutenant Dani Kaapre

Mission: Looking Forward, Looking Back
Location: Deep Space Nine
Timeline: Many years ago
Tags: Sample Post, Introduction, character background.

Kaapre Dani wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders as she shambled along the Promenade at Deep Space Nine, her cheeks still burning with shame. Less than 52 hours ago, she had caught her husband tussling around in the hay with the mayors daughter. True, both she and the other woman were the same age, all of 20 years, and yes, they both suffered under the backwards mentality of their little community of isolationists. But that didn't mean that Neeja had any right to lure Dani's husband to infidelity just because the girl was bored! 

Twenty-six hours ago, Dani had walked out of the provincial magistrates office, freshly divorced. The Prophets could take Rye and toss him to the fires of the Pah-wraiths for all she cared. She never wanted to see the man again. She could still hear her mother chastising [i]her[/i] for his infidelity. She wasn't going to stick around and stand for that. Her temper had finally broken, and like a dam bursting open, Dani had told Rye, and her mother, and the mayors daughter, and the mayor, and most of the rest of the village for good measure, just what she thought of them.

Three hours ago, she stepped off the daily transport from Bajor to DS9, without a clue what she would do next. Or where she would stay. She knew that a few of the younger folk, people her age (not that she liked to think of herself as 'young', since that went hand in hand with being 'immature') had moved to the station and she planned to look them up. Of course, she should have called first. But that was neither here nor there. Surely Kartax and Sople would let her crash on their couch until she got her bearings. 

A chime rang out and drew her attention to the sweeping archways of a small temple. She knew the faithful kept a presence on the station, based as it was at the doorstep of the greater, Celestial Temple, into which the Emissary had ventured after the end of the Dominion War, to better commune with the Prophets. She knew too that supposedly an Orb lay within. And she had nothing better to do....

Five hours later as the stations night turned to day once more, and not Entirley remembering just how she had managed it, Kaapre Dani stumbled out of the temple her eyes faintly glowing. Her skin was flush, her hair seemed to blow as if under a breeze that no life support recycling system could possibly generate. Her shoulders were squared off, and her head was held high. She blinked away the vision that still lingered in her mind, show to her in the glow of a Prophets Tear: the clear blue sky, that sweeping bridge across a sparkling bay. Shuttles whizzing by over head. Lush green trees and strange, alien plants in a garden that weaved about a campus. An Academy. On the alien world at the Heart of the Federation: Earth. 

She had to go to Earth. Dani now knew beyond a shadow of all doubt, that whatever the Prophets had in store for her future among the stars. It started on Earth. It started...with Starfleet.