Echos of the past

Posted on 20 Sep 2023 @ 4:26am by Lieutenant JG Montgomery Vala
Edited on 20 Sep 2023 @ 7:59am

1,443 words; about a 7 minute read

It had been a long journey to Regula I. Even longer than the already extensive six month journey from Earth to the Pleiades Cluster.

Vala's last commission had ended on the wrong end of a bat'leth.

Klingon pirates had sprung a trap as the USS Asgard was carefully picking its way through an asteroid field in a particularly thick gas cloud. Sensors were working overtime and someone hadn't noticed the bird of prey stalking them, waiting for the asteroids to bring shields to their weakest.

One torn hull, boarding party and attempt at hand to hand combat with a cyclopean klingon later and Vala found himself sliced open and broken on the floor of his lab.

He was one of the lucky ones.

Ensign Kalupa had dragged him to Medbay and the EMH had patched him up as best as was possible in the circumstances. A third of the crew hadn't made it, including the captain and half of the senior officers. Damage was extensive. It had taken two months to drag the corpse of the Asgard back to the nearest starbase, where it was effectively decommissioned. Vala was promptly put on the next ship to Earth for specialist care. Physical recovery had taken almost a year. It had taken three more for Vala to feel like he could return to Starfleet.

Vala rubbed his forehead, then stood up. He was in temporary quarters on Regula, impersonal and sterile, but comfortable as most Starfleet quarters were. The Galileo was due to return later that day, and with it came his new assignment - a post on an actual research vessel. Vala almost smiled at the thought. He'd spent a lot of time in the Daystrom Institute's vast laboratory complexes, but not since his time aboard the USS Antares had he been on a ship with an explicitly research based mission. He had, of course, been fond of his tiny lab on the Asgard, but it was little more than an afterthought on a ship equipped for escort duties. The Galileo promised another chapter - means to succeed and flourish, and perhaps another opportunity to forget what once was.

A small case of his personal effects sat in the corner. Vala gave it a lingering glance. The only thing that was truly his in the universe. Within were the few items he'd managed to take as he'd fled the Star Empire, and mementos from times since.

He walked over and placed the case on the desk, slowly unclipping it. His past, compartmentalsed, was revealed as the lid swung open.

His mothers Khariat board, notched and scratched from countless matches with peers and mentors, lay neatly packed with its pieces to one side.

His medals and commendations from research work in two rival galactic powers, pinned to cushions.

Burnished pips from his time aboard the Antares and Asgard.

A crumbling piece of archaic parchment. Scrawled over in smudged ink. Covered completely. The last fragment of his work from a different lifetime, and on it the only vestige of Celia that remained. A poem written in her plain, no nonsense scrawl:

"Light of my stars, whisperer of my soul,
Are you there, beyond the river, where lost spirits stroll?
Know that your memory paints my nights, colors my day,
And if love can breach the heavens, I’ll find a way."

The ancient poem was barely a whisper of a memory, but every Romulan had heard the Lament of Tal'Verik and Valaia. Vala could faintly recall his mother telling him the tale when he was a child, as he sat under the stars of Dhaelthra IV.

How little he had known back then. Even once he'd grown up, he had been naive and arrogant in equal measure - assuming that knowing the myths, the protocols, the etiquette, walking the walk, talking the talk made him a true Romulan. Little good it had done him.

He'd drawn too much attention. Now Celia and his mother were gone. If the Tal Shiar didn't kill them, the supernova probably had.

In the end, Vala was not quite Tal'Verik, the mythical warrior, but he certainly knew how he had felt. When Celia had written that poem, only stars would sometimes separate them. Now… all of it felt so distant, but at the same time a bleeding wound.

He closed the case with a crisp snap. The past had its place, but it was time to focus. Vala had a lot to prove in the coming days.

It is sometimes said that time waits for no man, and the Galileo was on its way.

-------------------------------

:: The Lament of Tal'Verik and Valaia as told by T'Nael i'Varul, many years ago ::

Long before the Romulan Star Empire stood as a beacon of might and cunning, in a time when the Vulcan ancestors of the Romulans still lived under the same skies, there was a village named Rul'Varik. It was a quiet settlement far from the council halls and academies, a place where the churning emotions of its inhabitants were as natural as the wind and the rain.

In Rul'Varik, lived Tal'Verik and Valaia—two young souls entwined in the labyrinth of love and passion. Tal'Verik was an aspiring warrior, his mind a bastion of strategic thought, his hands skilled in the arts of Teral'n, a form of Romulan martial arts. Valaia was a weaver of both cloth and tales, capturing the beauty of the world with her loom and words. Each evening, she would recount stories, creating tapestries of narrative that hung in the hearts of those who listened, as vividly as they did on the walls of their homes.

The two were inseparable, and the village spoke of their bond as if it were the most natural of celestial events—like the passing of the twin moons over the emerald skies. It was said that when Tal'Verik and Valaia looked into each other's eyes, even the volatile elements within them found peace.

But as the ancient saying goes, "Fate is the cruellest of Romulan weapons, unseen even by the sharpest of eyes." One fateful night, while Tal'Verik was away in neighboring lands for a mission of diplomacy and martial demonstration, Valaia vanished. No trace of struggle, no hint of flight. Her loom sat empty, her stories left unfinished. The town was scoured, the surrounding lands searched, but Valaia was nowhere to be found.

Tal'Verik returned to an empty home and a shattered life. Despite his composed demeanor, his eyes betrayed a relentless storm of emotions. He sought to turn every stone, to traverse every path he had known and many he did not, in search of his lost love. But all he found was a cloak—Valaia’s favorite—beside the Verelan River, a waterway said to be cursed by ancient spirits.

Eventually, Tal'Verik was left with no choice but to consider the unimaginable: that Valaia had been claimed by the river itself, taken to the otherworldly realm of Verelan'Sora, a place of spirits and lost souls from which no one returned. Yet, there was no ritual, no rite, and no incantation known to him or the wise elders that could breach the barrier between the realms of the living and the departed.

With a heavy heart, Tal'Verik took to wearing a pendant with a shard of Valaia’s loom, binding himself in eternal remembrance. He withdrew into his strategic duties, his persona becoming a fortress impenetrable to emotion, a mask that could not be cracked. But each year, on the day of her disappearance, he would return to the bank of the Verelan River, reciting an old poem that Valaia loved, hoping that his words might pierce the veil and reach her:

"Valaia, light of my stars, whisperer of my soul,
Are you there, beyond the river, where lost spirits stroll?
Know that your memory paints my nights, colors my day,
And if love can breach the heavens, I’ll find a way."

So the tale of Tal'Verik and Valaia became another somber story woven into the cultural tapestry of the Romulan people—a tale of love, loss, and a yearning that transcended the boundaries of life and death. Even as starships replaced swords and as cloaking devices concealed Romulan resolve, the tale was passed on, a solemn reminder that love was both a vulnerability and a strength, a force to be honored, feared, and never, ever forgotten.

And thus, in quiet moments, Romulan commanders at the helm of grand Warbirds or elders teaching young warriors would share this tale, staring into the cosmic abyss, pondering what unknown fates befell those who loved deeply in a universe so vast and mysterious.

RSS Feed

Comments (1)