It was raining in the bayou that night.

Softly pelting the window pane, the droplets merged and ran together over the glass, weaving a veil of streaming silver, the rivulets becoming incandescent against occasional flashes of distant lightning. In those instances, fleeting glimpses of dense greenery outside the old house became possible, but then vanished just as quickly, leaving only the delayed echo of the lightning to fill the void beyond the rain.

Jake Sisko treasured such nights; the storm had come as a pleasant surprise. He hadn't expected it, although he should have. Such things were foreseeable, after all -- had been for centuries. But even now, in his advanced years, Jake found he still cherished his uncertainty of what the next day, the next hour, the next moment, would bring, especially when looking back over a life in which past, present, and future so often seemed to merge and run together.

Almost without thinking, Jake reached for the baseball on his desk, gnarled fingers brushing its old worn hide, tracing the path of its stitching before his hand closed around it. It felt good against his palm, as it always did; a simple pleasure in his old age. Playfully, he tossed it in the air, his hand staying open to catch it when gravity called it back.

As the ball reached the apex of its short flight, the door chimed.

Jake caught the baseball and half-turned toward the sound, wondering who would be calling at such a late hour, and on such a night. He returned the baseball to its pedestal, got up, and crossed the living room to the door.

There was a face framed in the diamond window -- a young woman, by the look of her, and soaked to the bone. Jake tsked to himself as he hit the touchpad on the wall, and the double doors parted.

"May I help you?" Jake asked.

The young woman stared fixedly at him, her big round eyes conveying both optimism and awkwardness. She'd draped a shawl of some kind over her head -- futile protection from the plump, heavy rain. "Sorry to bother you. It's just that... I've been..."

Jake noticed a nasty cut on her forehead. He ushered her inside and the doors closed. "You're hurt," he said, relieving her of the drenched shawl.

The young woman touched her forehead, saw the blood on her fingertips. "Yeah, I must have scraped myself on a branch."

"Ah, that's what happens when you go tromping around the bayou in the middle of the night," Jake said good-naturedly, guiding her toward the fireplace and laying the wet shawl over the back of the couch. "Come, warm yourself by the fire. I have a first aid kit around here somewhere. Now, where is it...?" Spotting the kit across the room on a high shelf, Jake went to retrieve it. "So what are you doing out here, anyway?"

His guest drew back some stray wet locks of blond hair behind her ears and tried to sound confident. "I'm a writer," she said. Then, reconsidering her statement, she admitted, "At least, I want to be. And the truth is... I was looking for you."

"Oh?"

"You are Jake Sisko... the writer?"

"Yes."

"I can't believe I'm really here. Talking to you. You're my favorite author of all time."

Jake smiled wryly as he took out the dermal regenerator and activated it over her wound. "You should read more."

"I mean it. Your books -- they're so insightful..."

"I'm glad you like them." Jake withdrew the device and returned it to the kit. "There. Good as new."

"Thank you."

Jake wondered if she had any idea how eager she sounded. Probably not. But it was flattering, nonetheless. "You certainly have gone to a lot of trouble to tell me what you think of my books."

She blushed. "A friend of mine recommended Anslem to me and I read it straight through, twice in one night."

Jake blinked. "Twice? In one night?" His first novel, written decades ago when he was still a teenager, under what he considered to be disturbing circumstances at best, had almost never seen the light of day. It was years before he'd come to terms with what had happened and accepted the idea that Anslem was, in fact, wholly his own, despite the taint of Onaya.

"It made me want to read everything you'd ever written," she went on. "And I did! Your novels, your short stories, your plays, your poetry, your essays..."

Jake brought over a blanket and draped it across her shoulders. "You don't look worse for the wear."

"You're joking, I know that. But I want you to know, you've given me so much joy. You've made me think. I don't know how else to explain it..."

Jake held up a hand. "That's all right. I appreciate the sentiment. There's no higher praise you could offer me. What's your name?"

She looked embarrassed. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. It's Melanie."

"Well, Melanie, I'm gonna get us some tea. Make yourself at home," he told her, and went into the kitchen.

Minutes later, he returned with the tea tray to find Melanie studying his bookshelf. "See anything you haven't read?" he asked as he set the tray down.

She turned to him and shook her head. "No, I own every one of these. Although," she added with a hint of wistfulness, her gaze returning to the gold-embossed spines, "just seeing the titles brings back memories of reading them for the first time."

"And there's only one first time for everything, isn't there? I hope you like Tarkalean," he said as he poured. "An old friend of mine was quite fond of it."

Melanie joined him on the couch. "Thank you," she said as she accepted the cup. She took a sip and smiled. "It's wonderful."

He lifted his cup and nodded. "Just what the doctor ordered." Jake sipped his tea and regarded her. She shifted nervously. So eager. Was I ever that young?

"I read a biography about you," she said at length. "It said you started writing when you were a boy."

"Is that what you came to find out?" Jake asked.

Melanie hesitated, then looked down and shook her head. "Not really." Silence settled between them. Jake waited. Then she said, "Can I ask you something?"

Jake nodded.

"In all your writings, you never talk about the station where you grew up. About Deep Space 9. Why not?"

"Oh, that," he chuckled, shrugging dismissively. "Well, really, what would be the point? There's so much out there already. The declassified logs of the crew alone..."

"That's the official record," Melanie said. "And you're right, everyone knows that stuff, it's well documented. I just thought you'd have something to add. I mean, you of all people..."

"Now, what could I possibly add to the official record?"

"Only everything it doesn't have!" She laughed, sounding incredulous. "All the writing you did during your years there and since -- I'm just amazed that none of it was about those people, those times.... It seems like it must have been a formative chapter of your life, and yet you never write about it."

Jake sighed and set down his cup, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. "Every chapter of our lives is formative. You realize that when you get to be my age. You look back on your life with the idea of trying to pin down the single most crucial moment, the one that set your life on its path, and brought you to where you are... and you suddenly realize that they were all crucial. Each moment affects every one that follows it, like a drop of water hitting a window, or a baseball thrown at a batter...." Jake drifted off, lost in memory.

Melanie was watching him carefully. "There's more to it, isn't there?" she asked. "There's so much more to those days than is generally known."

Jake looked back at her and shrugged. "Maybe a little."

"Tell me," she said. "Please?"

Jake leaned back, considering the unexpected request, and the stranger who was making it. "So you came for a story," he said, nodding in approval. "And here I am, thinking after all these years that maybe it's time I shared with someone those things that only a few people know about, the stories that happened between the stories, and those that came after."

Jake reached for the kettle and refilled her cup. Then he settled back into the couch, and with his visitor listening, he began his tales.