A Hard Way to Live "
By: Clarice, Stowaway Child, [RNPC]

Stardate: 58209.09 2330

Clarice carefully crawled though the Jefferey's tube. She stopped, cocked hear head, and listened. Her ears were an important tool that she had come to rely on in her days hiding aboard the Zion. She listened for the ever present noise that indicated that crew member was ahead in the tube. Humans she decided were terrible at keeping quiet. Hearing nothing unusual she continued past a junction and then dropped down two levels to her new home.

She had not been hiding much more than a week when her ears alerted her to two young engineers doing maintenance work. One had forgotten the security access code to enter a part of the ship that they needed to be. Clarice listened as the second engineer recited the code. She burned that bit of information to memory.

Now, more than a month later she tapped that exact same code into the access system and a a small tube access door door popped open. Quietly, Clarice pushed past the door into her stolen quarters, and then sealed the door. She had searched the ship for quite a while trying to find a empty place to stay. From the looks of the room no one had ever lived here and that suited Clarice just fine.

Clarice pulled a small bag from her belt and upended it on a nearby table. Several pilfered food items spilled out. She greedily stuffed the food into her mouth. She did not care what it was, only that it would stop the pain in her stomach. The magic code had gained her access to a place to stay but it did not show her how to make the replicator work. This is what her life had come to -- living day to day on stolen food scraps. She sighed as she crammed the last of the food into her mouth and then stowed the bag back into her belt. She was full now, and that was the important thing.

Clarice crossed the living area of the room and plopped herself down onto her bed. She wrapped herself in a blanket. She reminded herself that she had taken this trip to escape Bajor and with the hope that she might find a new father. She told herself that she just needed to hang on and her new father would work things out for her. Wrapping herself tighter in the blanket she wondered why she felt so cold. Soon, however, she forgot about it as she drifted off into dreamy sleep.