See You Again

Posted on 26 Mar 2016 @ 10:03pm by Commander Andreus Kohl

809 words; about a 4 minute read

Timeline: Circa Episode 10 Symposium


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Andreus Kohl’s Personal Log, supplemental.

I didn’t grow up with Hamidah Romar, my biological mother. I never lived with her. I don’t think I’ve spent an entire solar day with her. I can’t say I know her body language, nor her moods. But watching her pace, on this day, watching her pacing spirals around the antechamber, I could guess that she was in a problematic mood.

Mere heartbeats after I finished my Kobayashi Maru at the Academy’s command school, I caught the next transport to Argelius Two. I won’t have much time until I need to return to Galileo, which means it wasn’t long before I found my way to Revith’s lone Temple of Whereness. I came back for her. I went to see my family of course. I went to see my brother and mother, and my father’s sepulchre, but I came back for Hamidah. The air was thick in the antechamber where she met with me. Thick with the scent of incense and with other substances.

“I brought you something sweet,” I said, as I dug through my messenger bag. It wasn’t until I found the box, wrapped in pretty paper, that I recognized just how dented and crumpled it had become in its long, long journey to Argelius Two. I explained, “They're a bit like cham cham, but they’re made on Cardassia. I traded for them on Lyshan Three.” When I looked up at her, I could see Hamidah was demonstrating no interest in the box. She hardly seemed to know I was in the same room as her. I put the box down on a table and I began to follow her in her pacing. “How are you mother? How do you feel?” I asked.

She spun on me. “You have been shorn from the thread of this life,” Hamidah said. “You were scattered to the warm winds of the Rubal desert, but you have returned to me. I will tie your roots.”

“No, I…” Shaking my head, I said, “Hamidah, I’m asking you how you are. I want- -” but then I decided to abandon my question. Persistence is futile, once she’s decided what she wants to talk about. Considering the recent changes in my life, considering command school, I told her, “I’ve been promoted, mother. I’ve moved on from the sciences into starship command. I have the privilege of watching over the crew of Galileo …through the night. I get to lead, in my own way.”

Hamidah continued to pace around the perimeter of the room. She raised a hand, when she said, “I am not a proud woman. When I must ask for help, I ask for help plainly.”

Feeling dizzy from following her blindly, I stopped and I sat. I dropped myself into an overly plump armchair. “You tried to contact me through subspace communications,” I said. “Some weeks back, you used the computer to contact me… You’ve never done that before. You always said it was too impersonal. Too hollow.”

Then Hamidah stopped. She stopped and she looked at me. Looked right at me. “You are more like your mother than you know,” she said. “You deny this. You care only for genetics, for learned behaviour.” —Coming from her mouth, those words sounded like Andorian surnames rather than familiar concepts— “But there are other characteristics, other shades to you.”

“Is there a message you want to share with me?” I asked. Rising to my feet, I approached her with the caution I might exert towards approaching an animal in the wild. “A warning? Some lesson?”

Hamidah shrugged and she scoffed at me. Like it was no skin off her back, she said, “If you must leave, you must leave… but you never leave my house without a gift.”

“You’re right, I can’t remain here long,” I told her. “My starship will be shipping out soon. If there’s something you need to tell me, I need to hear it now.”

Her eyes no longer focused on me, even though she was still looking in my direction. Sounding frustrated, but unafraid, she said, “The music of the spheres is discordant. The veil thickens…”

“That’s… Well, that’s great,” I said, perhaps a little too snippy. “I know you’ve always wanted a thicker veil.” And, by this point, I’d had enough. “Be well, mother,” I told her. “I’m staying in the city. I’ll tell one of your students where to find me, if you have need of me.”

And I left the temple. And it was, somehow, one of the least confusing visits I’ve had with her.

End Log


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