The duty list didn’t have any major repairs this day so M’Nalie had been doing routine system verifications and things off the non-priority list all morning. It meant dealing with people who had be waiting to get things that were more luxuries than requied. She had adjusted settings on six replicators, tuned four sonic showers to reduce headache inducing subharmonics and fixed another half dozen teaching stations that one of the children had explored the insides of out of curiosity. Taking things apart was easy putting them back together was not as easy. It was a lesson all children learned at some point. She had then been asked to speak to the children about growing up on Cait and how it was different. She had avoided talking about her own clan but had spoken of things her people and the Normal smaller Caitan’s had in common. It had gotten complicated when the children had become curious about the differences between living in a Matriarchy and living in a more polygot Federation society. She wasn’t sure her answers were understandable to children but she was honest. She had of course ended up with the younger kids climbing all over her and suspected that sticky hands had left her needing to clean and brush her fur. She was behind on her planned repair schedule but she would make that up after she cleaned up and ate. She loved children, once they knew you they were mostly fearless. But her times with them was causing her a hollow feeling once she left them. She was in space far from home. No others of her clan had ever left Cait. She had realised that she was giving up on having her own children when she had left. But not how she would come to feel about it later.
What is done is done, she thought It’s not like I can go back.

Ensign M’Nalie Eshenti. Engineer.