***
The stick moved swiftly through the sand on the floor, using long, elegant strokes and smaller, finer ones to create three figures, drawn from the memories etched in her mind. Ziyal crouched in her favourite hiding-place, stick in hand. She started at every small noise lest it meant the return of her Breen captors.
She filled in the detail of her portrait first, details gathered from staring at herself in the small bowls of water allowed to her and the other prisoners. Each little stroke added more detail, completing the picture to show the tired, scared young woman that the happy-go-lucky child had become.
The figure that she filled in next was one that Ziyal had seen every day of her life until the crash. She had drawn this face every day since then. Tora Naprem's eyes gazed up out of the sand as her daughter deftly added detail to her expression. Not her 'public' expression, presented to her lover's associates - a mixture of submission and hauteur. Not one of her 'family' expressions, presented to her lover and to her daughter - whether it was happy, contented, or playful, or sometimes annoyed, angry or upset. Nor was it the expression she had worn when the Breen had shot down the _Ravinok_, forcing it to crash - an expression of pain and terror, which she had tried to conceal behind a brave mask for the sake of fourteen-year-old Ziyal. The expression Ziyal now drew for Naprem was the expression she had worn when she thought no-one, not even her daughter, was watching. That heartbreaking mixture of wistfulness, of sorrow, and of wishing that *somehow* things could be different.
Finally Ziyal filled in the third figure. Her father, last seen when he had sent her and her mother 'on a holiday'. Some holiday. Ziyal clung to the belief that her father would be looking for her, that he would come and take her home. It was all that kept her sane in a place where not only did she still not belong, but where no-one at all accepted her. The Bajorans barely spoke to her - she was half-Cardassian and her mother had been a 'collaborator'. The Cardassians were civil - barely - because of who her father was, but they ridiculed her belief that he would rescue her. They told her that he would kill her because she was half-Bajoran and he couldn't risk the shame she would bring to him. Ziyal didn't believe them. //It's because they don't know him like I do,// she told herself, filling in her father's features. The picture smiled up lovingly, but it was a pale shadow compared to actually seeing her father smile at her. //He would never deliberately hurt me.// Ziyal reassured herself. //They're wrong.//
She contemplated the picture. Her, tired and scared. Her mother, wistful and sad. Her father, smiling, oblivious to the pain she and her mother were in. Ziyal shivered suddenly. Reaching out a hand, she erased the picture, then scrambled out of her hiding spot toward the bucket of water and the ladle as she heard heavy footsteps coming down the corridor.
FINIS