"No Such Thing As Faeries"
by Ardelle
To Julia, for saying "I WANT MORE!"
Part 4:  "All she did was go inside a door."

        Delia had grown to be three years old, but had not grown out of
her strangeness.  Her eyes shifted with her emotions, which always made
her mother uneasy.  Her hair was a crazy mass of silvery blond yet her
skin was as dark as ever.  Her shifty eyes were set at an odd slant,
hardly showing any white, and her face was strange, coming to a startling
point.  Her mouth was a tight, impudent thing and her nose was but a
stub.  She was short and wiry, with long fingers and toes.  Even at three
years old, she was thin.
        Or at least that's what you thought when you first looked at
Delia.  If you chanced to look longer and harder at her, you'd see her as
the chubbiest, merriest child in existence, her eyes mirror-dark and
defensive.  This was unsettling to the crew of Voyager, though no one
ever spoke of it.  After all, they were a Federation/Maquis ship.  They
were tolerant of every being that was different, or at least that's what
they told themselves.  No one went up and said it, but the child was
awfully strange for her ancestry.  Delia played a like a Vulcan, only
colder.  Whenever she spoke her sentences were always serious and
complete.  Strangest of all, she disliked playing.  She loved the
holodeck, especially one that her father had created that looked like the
moors of Britain.  However, she hated the carnival and fairground.  Delia
was strange indeed.
        Naomi disliked looking after her little cousin, and it was
probable that Delia didn't take to Naomi looking after her either.  But
sometimes Uncle Neelix or Uncle Harry were too busy to look after Delia,
and her parents were busy.  No one else on the crew considered the idea
spending more than an hour with that creepy girl, so it happened that
Naomi did it once in a while.
        "Hiya, cousin Delia," Naomi said in forced cheerfulness one day
when she had to watch her.  "How are you?"
        "Well," she said, her eyes a smoky green.  Delia concentrated on
making little swirls and scratch marks on a piece of paper with a purple
crayon.  Her mouth was drawn up in a thoughtful frown.
        "Thank you so much for watching Delia," said Tom Paris, patting
his niece on the head.
        "You're a life saver," said B'Elanna Torres.  The two were
married but had kept their names for the sake of less confusion.
        "Feel free to take her to the holodeck or the mess hall," Tom
added.  "Please inform us if she needs to go to sickbay.  I doubt she
will."
        No matter what situation Delia got herself into, she had never
been injured or ill.  This was actually very unusual, but her parents
assumed that in such a sterile environment there wasn't a lot that could
harm her.
        "Okay," said Naomi.  Once the parents had left she asked Delia,
"Would you like to go to the mess hall and talk with Uncle Neelix?"
        Delia made a face.  "No," she said.
        "How about the holodeck?"
        "Can we go to th'moor?"
        "I suppose so."  Inwardly, Naomi cringed.  She thought the moor
setting, though wild and beautiful, was rather boring.  It was just a
bunch of tall grass and swamps and stuff.
        "At night?"
        "I might not be able to find you in the nighttime setting," Naomi
said, trying to find an exuse.  Where the daylight moor was boring, the
nighttime moor was downright creepy.  All sorts of strange noises and
lights from nowhere.  "Wouldn't you rather go to the carnival?"
        "Don't want carnival.  Want moor!"
        "Fine," said Naomi, giving up.  "But we have to have the daytime
setting, okay?"
        "Okay."
***
"The sun is shining--the sun is shining.  That is the Magic.  The flowers
are growing--the roots are stirring.  That is the Magic..."
-Colin, "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett
***
        Naomi set her head on her hand and watched Delia play.  They'd
been there for hours but Delia had not tired and would not be coaxed
away.  She ran around, hiding in the tall grass and giggling, smelling
the damp earth and admiring the fragile flowers.  She made little houses
out of the tall grasses.  Naomi was reminded for a moment of a friend she
had, a long time ago...Tlyn, wasn't that her name?  The house would have
only been big enough for a faerie like her.
        For a moment Delia vanished from Naomi's sight.  Naomi called
after her, and she saw Delia's fluff of hair come towards her.
        "What want?"
        "Just stay in my sight," Naomi said.
        "Why?"
        "Because I don't want you getting hurt."
        "Its a holodeck.  Won't get hurt."  Before Naomi could protest
Delia had trotted off.  Naomi decided to follow her.  She was astounded.
        Delia had found some sort of mound, rising up out of the moor. 
On the mound was a tiny door, just as if it had always been there.  Delia
was opening that door.
        "This wasn't in the programming," Naomi muttered.  Quick as
lighting she ran up to Delia, and snatched her away from that door.  No
doubt it was the work of some new alien sentience that would lure them
away, causing an all-around pain in the butt to all members of Voyager's
crew.  She chanced a glimpse down the shadowy stairway, and saw too many
beautiful things than could be explained in a lifetime.  Being raised in
the times she had, Naomi had no knowledge of the glamourie, only that she
must see it, feel it, eat it.  Before she had been concerned of Delia's
safety, now she set the child on the ground and ventured in herself, awed
by the illusion of the glamorie.  She did not hear a tiny voice say,
        "Mercy!  I daresay *you* don't belong here..."
***
"Maybe you've heard of that mythical place
Called the Court of Miracles
Hello, you're there!
Where the lame can walk
And the blind can see
But the dead don't talk
So you won't be around
To reveal what you've found
We have a method for spies and intruders
Rather like hornets protecting their hive
Here in the Court of Miracles
Where it's a miracle if you get out alive!"
-"The Court of Miracles" by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, from
Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
***
        "Naomi?  Delia?"  Tom Paris stepped in the holo simulation. 
Naomi had left a note saying they'd gone to holodeck two and were running
the moor simulation.  He spotted his daughter's silver-blonde head, but
could not see Naomi.  Anywhere.
        "Computer, end simulation."  Tom Paris hoped he wasn't spoiling
their fun, but it was past Delia's supper time and he had no time for
games.  There Delia stood, hands in tiny fists her eyes a bright angry
green, and there was Naomi...laying on the floor, unconscious.  Tom hit
his comm badge.
        "Paris to sickbay, medical emergency."
***
"It was so frightening.  She was there and then she wasn't."
-Nora, "UFO Abductions:  True Stories of Alien Encounters" edit by Scott
Rogo
***
        Samantha Wildman was near hysterics.  Her own precious little
girl, Naomi...how could this have happened?  It was very lucky Joe Carey
was there to comfort her, or she might have lost her own will to live.
        Naomi had slipped into a coma.  The Doctor could find no reason
why or how, there was no sign of trauma or disease in the child's body. 
Inwardly Samantha blamed Delia, but she did not say so.  Perhaps it was
because of the child's inability to remember anything.
        "All she did was go inside a door.  It closed behind her so I
couldn't follow her.  Then Papa came.  And Cousin Naomi was sick."  Delia
kept repeating that.  That was all she knew, all she remembered.
        That didn't stop the crew from being suspicious.  Though her
parents loved her a great deal, even they wondered if she had something
to do with this.  Naomi's coma became the wall between Delia and the rest
of the crew, a wall that caused her a great deal of trouble when she
became a teenager.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Everything belongs to who it belongs to, don't sue me, I mean no harm.  I
think the audience knows what parts of this I made up and didn't, and if
they don't, that isn't my fault.


Roses and magick,
Deirdre