This Year V

Posted on 20 May 2013 @ 11:40am by Lieutenant JG Kestra Orexil

2,445 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Sickbay
Timeline: MD7 0700

ON:

Good. Appreciation folded around her words like an embrace. Do you remember what you just did? Good. Now. Natural Art. She sighed. I do believe I may have to learn Vulcan now, thanks to you.

Why do you believe so? Liyar asked, and he looked down. Health. Kinship. He tied them together.

Because I find myself hearing a great deal of it in your head. Yours and Neo's and the new girl... Jaeih. You all think in these other languages. Before, it wouldn't have troubled me because I would simply... not listen. But that doesn't appear to be as much of an option now. Even when I'm not listening, it's only- she searched for a way to explain it. -turning down the volume. Not turning it off. So if I must listen to your language, I might as well understand it.

Liyar tipped his head to the side. My brother and I use a psi-native language, Miri'ahm Gotavlu is the Golic name for it. We call it Miredara. I am uncertain how to teach it to you, but you may fare better in understanding it than a psi-null, Liyar theorized with a small frown. Crewman Athlen has made some interesting notes on the brains of those who use it. They resemble the Cairn. Right now I am communicating in a subset, vré'csya. It is Intent. That is how you understand the words I think, in Standard. He sent over a long stream of words, speaking in mind. That is my spoken language. The universal translator cannot translate the most simple of statements. But you can feel it here. Formality, language-not-people-yours. Real as speaking. Vibrating light, connections, lanterns in the sky, out into stars, millions, billions. Like listening to music for the first time, excitement, adrenaline.

Those are the elements of it that I do grasp. Only the words - certain phrases and turns of internal thought - elude me. She tapped his hands. Try bending upwards then around for Art. It is as a tree, a natural formation, following the inherent curvature of the rope.

Art. Liyar's expression remained clear, but his mind scoffed. Art. Liyar didn't think he could recognize art if it impaled him with a D'Alik'tal staff. He regarded the rope in his hands which had formed into a bland ball of nothing. He began removing and adding pieces, strands, unsure as to what he was doing or where he was going. At long last, he saw the shape form, fractal, geometric. He snatched it up before it could disappear. What is Betazoid language like? Liyar asked, curiosity pricking his thoughts like a stray cat.

She smiled: water rippling over the surface of rocks, storm clouds moving through an otherwise open sky, the peace and solitude of an empty house, laughter echoing across a green plain full of red and purple flowers, a warm embrace in the cool rain, glowing red ropes pulsing in the dark, empathy like a swollen honey sack. She reached out across the ship and gently brushed Trija's mind with all these feelings and images, melded together as if in a revolving five dimensional painting of scents, sights, emotions, physical sensations. Like that, she added with a soft flick of her brows. Though most of us learn Standard as well. For the sake of the aliens, she added with a quick grin.

He allowed the impressions of Betazoid, from Trija and Kestra both, to pass over him and carry him along. Where MAG was fingertips reaching up into the sky, branching out and up like the roots of a tree, Betazoid filled the mind; the soul, creating currents of dark, comforting water to remind one of Home. It was a unique experience. Liyar tried to follow it. Of course, Liyar returned wryly. They do not teach Standard where I am from. It is incompatible with our way of communicating. I have found Standard itself to be an exercise in patience.

Where did you learn it, then?

At the Vulcan Embassy, on Terra. His discomfort with Terra saturated his memories in fuzzy, misted dampness. He had been much less experienced, then. People were disembodied, clownish expressions, freakish, loud noises, screaming, pointing, laughing. Eating with one another, prying into one another's lives. It had been utterly and disturbingly alien. The Galileo long smoothed away the rough edges of sandpaper, Liyar had learned to handle Terrans, at least as enough not to be bothered by them. They, however, were often bothered by him. He shrugged idly and wound the last bit of rope around into a small mandala, setting it just below his knee. From a mind-meld, with one of the aides. He transferred his knowledge to me, and I was tutored by a Terran professor from my clan who had accompanied me. I imagine they must have taught it in your school? he asked, and his curiosity about Betazoid education was as unsubtle as everything else about him.

They can be rather noisy, Kestra laughed, bells and rainsong. Mine was not a traditional education, she admitted, amused, and gave him her history. Bounding from star base to ship to starbase, she'd had little choice but to learn the common tongue. Her father's love of all languages had not been lost on her and - though she'd never learned the wide range that he did, she'd always appreciated his interest in the subject. Her sister, Ilana, too, had had a similar fascination with spoken languages and endeavored to use a great many when building her holonovels for others to enjoy. Nevertheless, even as she'd worked on learning the strange, spoken tongue, she'd found it duplicitous. She never ended up saying exactly what she meant to, or if she happened upon it, she found that those who heard her reacted with shock and dismay. Language, as far as she could tell, was a means by which people hid truths from each other and truth had always been what she'd lived for. Lilou, when they'd first met as children, had been all about tactless revelations, but over time, she also had been drawn into a web of misdirections and deceptions. Hiding. Sharing was better. Opening, revealing, being as one was and not as one wished others might see them. So it was that she found herself more at home with the warlike Klingons and their direct natures than she had with any of the humans she'd known. Truth conquering all. A welcome relief, not to mention their language was so remarkably delicious. Cathartic. Spitting and grinding. She winked at Liyar and pointed to the winding knot he'd created. And you say you don't know art.

Liyar followed along at her heels, eager as a mental puppy to explore and learn what he was shown. Different experiences, different perspectives, it fascinated him. Freedom, in so many ways. Freedom to be, freedom to act, freedom to speak. Choice, Maenad had said. Everyone should choose and exist for themselves. As Kestra had clearly spent her life learning to do, where he had spent his life learning to be what was expected of him. Some of it, he knew, was part of him, as the words he spoke and the thoughts in his head. He let it come in return, sharing, she said. His education had not been very traditional, either. Ke-ta-yatar, training the mind, honing the body, steps back-forward-side. Disarm, redirect, affect, function, ceremony. The painstaking lines of t'kahr vesht-var forged in fire and sand, rivalry, competition, rising. To lead, to handle it. Hunkered down in courses, phasers, ammunition, vehicles, straight lines and edges. War. He had learned in many ways to be a weapon, to be a force of effect, to one day take his place as it was deigned from the Time of the Beginning. Perhaps he'd have been better off learning Klingon, too. The corner of his lips formed a small, semi-amused moue as he was taken along her journey, slipping back into her mind, her memories, feeling the rain and recycled air and grass. You know Lilou, Liyar discerned with interest. Strange, jangled, bizarre scapes in muted darkness. Knifebladed edges, fear, pressure. He'd been unintentionally thrown into Lilou's mindswamp several days ago. Been reduced to crawling through corridors and dodging invisible projectiles, shoved into pastspaces and fear. And then he'd relieved it, unintentionally, influenced it, changed it. Regret. An oddly contradictory regret. Relieving suffering and soothing pain was not alien to him, but at the detriment of one learning to relieve their own suffering, to rely on the fractured psionic snowglobe of a failed experiment. She is troubled.

I know, Kestra sighed. She wouldn't tell me. Hiding. Repeating numbers and imagining Warp Reactors... It feels worse than I suspected. She'd been debating reaching out to her long-absent friend, but Lilou disliked mental contact as much as Liyar seemed to think Maenad did. More, perhaps, because it hadn't been distaste she'd felt from Lilou - it had been fear. She'd actively feared Kestra's ability to touch her mind, to feel her senses. And that had been before. What her little half-Trill friend might think now that Kestra's senses had fairly exploded... I am afraid to tell her. To reach for her. And she doesn't even know I'm awake. She shook her head. You, my brother, are far more than wars and weapons. You are a healer, a spirit-guide, and good. You've only to choose for yourself who you wish to be, and you will be just that. Nobility. She gave him an image of the next knot.

Liyar hesitated, not because of fear, rather his mind stuttered as he tried to think of how to word the concepts that were vague and blotted out. She seemed to be receptive, to me. I was unable to stop myself from initiating mental contact with her. It, her mind, forced mine to react. Not in any malignant way, I could not handle the assault, it seemed. And since then, it has happened a few more times. Once in the mess hall, the other in the laboratory. All unintentional. It actually seemed to calm her down. Perhaps it is not mental contact that frightens her, but being Known? Liyar couldn't think of another reason. Surely it couldn't be because he was Liyar and Kestra was Kestra. Lilou hardly knew him. He found it difficult to understand how anyone could be frightened of Kestra at all. It was fact in his mind, rather than bias. He Knew Kestra, she Knew him. He could not help but be fond of her, cherish her in the same way that he did his own brother. It was the price of closeness, of mental tapestries. Not such a bad price. Universe knew, they could all use it. Lilou, perhaps, more than most. His hands worked quickly against the intricate cords, geometry, structure. Rescue-knots, pillars, columns, guiding, nurturing, borders, protect, stakes in ground, dirt, soil.

The idea of Lilou, of all people, reaching out for mental contact was... impossible. Yet there it was. Perhaps you are right. And perhaps it is because you know her as she is and I know her as she was. Perhaps she is trying to preserve the child in my mind, not understanding. I do not know. And cannot ask. We knew each other in a time when she was at peace and I could not pry with anything but words. It is possible we simply have grown apart despite my wishes. She mirrored his hands with her own, ropeless. Have you had words with your brother?

My brother and I were never close, Liyar let out a small sigh at the reminder. Neo. Here. For a reason he could not quite tell, but obviously not of Neo's own accord. We do not know one another very well. We never have.

Perhaps you should see if getting to know one another brings you closer. It may not, but you won't know until you try.

That would involve communication, Liyar replied dryly. I will. Try. I must. But he has demonstrated he is rather uninterested in doing so. Until three months ago, I had barely heard from him in over twenty years. He tied off the last piece of the rope and looked down, unsure of where the shape had even come from, or if it was even correct. It had felt right, in motion, but was that enough?

Yes, she answered his unasked question. He is here, whether he wishes to be or not. And his presence will likely be more palliative to you and he both if you settle your differences one way or another. She formed a cup with her hands, Next comes the Chalice and this is a part of our sacred history so I'm forced to tell you a tale if you'll be patient. There are three icons that have repeated themselves through art and tales since as far back as anyone remembers: the Chalice, the Scepter, and the Weal. The Chalice is the symbolic representation of the psionic, hidden part of life from which all our power and life springs; it is an offering to the spirits, angels, and Deities, and also a reminder of the source of life - the womb. The Scepter, as you might guess, is a means by which we hone our focus, charge our paths, and attempt direct communication with the spirits that guide us. I've always been miserably terrible at such things, but some have the gift. It also represents the guidance and wisdom of the Queens of Lore. And the Weal is the darkness within us all; the needs and selfish desires that prod us into action that is not in the best interest of all, but only ourselves. It is what we battle - not daily, but - minute by minute and second by second. These three form a complex knot. I'll show you again, one by one.

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Kestra Orexil
Patient/Former CTSO, SFS
USS Galileo

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