Beggars and Choosers

Beggar and Rosalie are bundled up stretched out on a blanket on top of Equinox. Beneath them on the flight deck Langiappe was still in pieces disassembled to be rebuilt after its last mission. Although Malmo was a medium sized city for the Border, you could still see stars in the cold winter night. Neither of them complained about the cold, as they huddled together for warmth, and human contact. Beggar's mind was still reeling, the discovery of an exotic signal from outside the 'Verse rekindled an old fire for academics, the body next to him lit another flame he had thought long since squelched. And the excitement of the weeks brush with danger fed another fire he never realized was burning.

Rosalie: "I never would have pictured you a swashbuckler Beglan, fighting Alliance opts, racing around the Verse righting wrongs, rescuing maidens. "

Beggar: "Even after that time I rescued you from the Rugby team?"

Rosalie: "Well for one thing, the hero is supposed to get the girl, didn't you know that?" She said snuggling up a little and bringing her cheek close to his.

Beggar: "I guess I did read that somewhere." He smiled lightly.

Rosalie: "Maybe I need to be more helpless to appeal to that man."

Beggar: "Please no. I am very proud of what you've become. You took your passion, and your ideals, and you made something of it. And what you've given up. You shouldn't change for no one."

Rosalie: "A few thousand readers across the 'Verse, and a lot of slammed doors. I wouldn't call it much of career success."

Beggar; "Better than that Hart fellar. I can understand working on different sides, but you'd think your working together would mean something."

Rosalie: "There is supposed to be a code among journalists. And it's weird. I still feel like he and I were closest among the team. Either he was a good actor, or maybe they held something over him. I don't know. It's getting hard to know anyone anymore."

Beggar: "I haven't made it easy for you."

Rosalie: "I think I understand. If someone asked me to give up my work, my vocation, I don't think I could. Maybe I believed love to be transformative. Something that would make you something that you weren't. I don't think anyone could do that to me now." She paused the added "As much as I might care for him."

Beggar: "And.. I've thought something of the reverse. I thought my commitment to the cloth was immutable. But you showed me it wasn't. Going to war, wasn't an escape, and it cost me dearly. Honestly, I am not sure I could go back to the path now. I keep looking for redemption, but I can't find it. I keep thinking one of these days, on this ship, I am going to have that moment. The stars will align, and the voice of God will call me back. But it hasn't happened."

Rosalie: "Maybe it isn't supposed to happen that way. Maybe you have to pick up and bring yourself to the church and ask forgiveness, atone and spend your whole live trying to find that feeling you lost. Maybe that is your path now. I can't say I'd want that for you. But maybe it is all that you will allow yourself."

Beggar: "It's funny, I expected a bigger sense of shock from my crew-mates when I told them I was studying to be a shepherd. But they all seemed unimpressed, or at least unsurprised. I guess I do a bit of shepherding here and where we go. I just don't call myself a shepherd."

Rosalie: "You were my shepherd too. Is that part of this? You feel responsible for me?"

Beggar: "Maybe. Back on Earth-there-was, in the late 21st century the church went through a great turmoil. It barely survived. It was accused, and rightly so, of failing to be good shepherds, of abusing that role with adults and children alike. It is something ingrained deeply in our training, that we much never go through that again. Of course, there has been backsliding. Histories lessons are rarely followed."

Rosalie: "I never did care much for that term shepherd. I don't like the idea of being a sheep, good for my wool or on someone's plate. The shepherd doesn't care about who the sheep are, just that they serve his needs."

Beggar: "It's a bleedin metaphor ain it? The idea is that left to their own devices, people, without a guide would stray, get lost. Be food for the wolves. Metaphorically speaking. And as for purpose, I'll give you that. It does get a bit strained. That said, there is something about being a servant to God, not trying to live life for oneself. At least that is how I interpret it."

Rosalie: "It seems odd that you would be in favor of independence, you want us all to be servants, well hell we already are!"

Beggar smiled. It was like old times, the debates were much the same as they had before. As though these thirteen plus years were an aside in a book, and now we are back to the main story. His fingers curled around hers under than blanket and she started laughing too, perhaps reading his mind.

Beggar: "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I didn't go back to seminary. Let's say I take a different path. Then what? You are a 'Verse traveling war correspondent. I am junior engineer on a blessed/cursed freighter that seems a danger magnet. Not exactly the best pair to try to start a life together."

Rosalie: "Start a life together? Why Beglan Shea are you asking me to marry you?"

Beggar: [Stammering and squirming] "No no. That is my point! I mean even if we wanted to, even if your could, we can't it wouldn't work would it? I mean what drop everything? Move back to Gonghe? Or out to Blue Sun, and hope that the war doesn't come for us?" He panics and tries to recover. Rosalie laughs out loud and tickles him under the blankets. The steam from the breaths mixing and rising about the ship like a cloud. Then she settled back a back with a wide grin.

Rosalie: "Silly. Nice to know you've thought of it though."

Beggar: "Of course I do. You fly back into my life like this. I think back to those first nights in Basic Training, the long first flight to Kalidasa. The whole war, and afterward of course."

Rosalie: "Then why didn't you ever wave, or write?"

Beggar: "I couldn't Rosy, I just couldn't. I was running away from you, running away from life, from everything. I can't imagine that you'd want anything to do with me after all that."

Rosalie: "Well maybe it is time to stop running."

Beggar: "That doesn't address all the impossible obstacles."

Rosalie: "Impossible?" She looks askance at him "Really?"

Beggar: "Well... maybe not impossible, but I haven't even decided... I was just talking about.. the possibilities.. by means of which to illustrate the..."

His awkward speech was interrupted by a kiss. It was an urgent kiss. The kind of kiss that doesn't take no for an answer, and doesn't ask permission. It was the kind of kiss that could melt the thickest ice. The kind of kiss that people read about and long for, but almost never get. The kind of kiss a boy might give sending his girl off to war, or the kind of kiss that can wipe one's mind of worry and doubt, at least so long as those lips were there. And it did. They held that kiss for a small eternity under the stars. And when they broke it, they lay there in each others arms until the cold ate through the blankets can forced them inside. But inside Beggar something had changed. It was a new year, and he felt something new, he felt new. And he knew one thing. He needed to see a Shepherd!

Mutineers