Night Birds II

Posted on 27 May 2013 @ 11:30am by

2,439 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: LTjg Maenad Panne's quarters
Timeline: MD9 2000

ON:

Liyar picked up the chopsticks beside the dish and rose them toward her in acknowledgment. He listened to the ping of her thoughts against his skull while he ate, but he decided not to rush her.

She sunk further back now than before, and curiously watched him. The room was dark from the illumination of only one lamp, behind her, which cast half of her face in shadow, and her mind swelled with questions. Questions that could not just be asked. He said that he liked her, and he understood the question perfectly. He also knew that she felt the same way. What did that mean for them? What were they? Were they anything? What kind of boundaries did they have now, if any? Had their relationship changed, for better or worse? She played with her hair by one of her ears, which she reached back and untied. The elastic found its way into a bracelet on her wrist while her fingers curled, twirled, and wrapped strands of hair around them. "Is it good?" she asked after several minutes of silence. She was rolling the ankle of the raised foot of her crossed leg carelessly.

"It is acceptable, for a replicated dish," he replied with a small nod. He studied the bowl intently as he eliminated several pieces of vishrat root, as her thoughts solidified and swirled through the air. He set the chopsticks aside and sat forward, studying her thoughtfully. "I do not know- what it means," he finally said quietly. "For us, or what to do about it. I am not a Terran, and so I do not know how this is done. I do not desire to make you uncomfortable. I know only that I am drawn to you, that I- as you say, like you, and do not wish to ignore it." Contrary to everything he'd ever been told, taught, or advised, the tiny voice in his brain reminded him like clockwork. He put that on the backburner. "The way that I learned how relationships work, has been completely dissimilar to this in every way. It is alien to me, and so I would ask that you forgive me if I appear ignorant or awkward. But I would like to learn."

Maenad smiled, still playing with hair. "I'm glad you like it," she said quietly. She looked at her bare feet for a moment, then to her shins and knees. "You don't make me uncomfortable, Liyar," she said, raising her eyes to his. She felt like she'd been saying that a lot lately. "I don't want you to ignore it, either," she went on. "It is as alien to me as it is to you," Maenad reminded him gently, "but I don't think that that's a reason for it to be difficult. You don't need to be forgiven for anything." Maenad uncrossed her legs and leaned forward with her elbows on her thighs. Her hair fell over her ears and cheeks, her eyes remained on his. "I think that," she paused, frowning at how to explain it. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "We should just do what is right for us. Not worry about whatever conventions our cultures have." She licked her lips, then breathed out a single laugh at herself. "I wrote to my parents about you, Liyar. They told me to stay away from you because Vulcans cannot love the way that humans do. They said that you would only hurt me. I know that they are wrong, because you make me feel... good. About myself. And..." Maenad tilted her head, finding words surprisingly easily. In the darkness, it was difficult to see the colour rise in her cheeks. "And, well, I know that Vulcan-Human relations are stigmatised on Vulcan too. Probably more than on Earth; but I think that you should do what you think is right for you, and nobody else." She smiled up at him. "And always know that it's why I like you. It's what makes you special to me. I don't judge you, Liyar. For anything."

Only two days ago he had told Neo that he had no intention of doing this, of being here, but he was now faced with the reality that quite simply, Neo had seen as he'd always seen, far beyond the scope. But his mind was made up. He was tired of being told how to live, and what was best for him. Things didn't always happen in a straight line, health wasn't an objective concept of action-reaction, sometimes people had to find their own way. "That sounds extremely logical to me," Liyar said, and he settled his hand over her wrist, transmitting a sense of calm and affection that otherwise might've been lost. "Your parents-" he started, squeezing her wrist lightly and letting go, "-I will never harm you. I hope you know that. And I will do my best to bridge the gap between us, as I know you will do. Any Vulcan would tell me, that this is illogical. But their definitions are binary," he said softly. "They presuppose the idea that one can only be healthy a certain way, exist a certain way. That existence has never worked for me. My life as I knew it is gone. The only guiding post I have left, is what affects me positively. And that has led me here, to you."

Something fluttered in Maenad's chest, up her spine and into the back of her head. Her eyes, darkened in the dusky light, sparkled. She looked down at his hand on her hers, knowing he was telling the truth. She had always felt safe with him. The doubt that she had had before was doubt in herself, doubt in her parents - never in him. Somehow, she had always known. It was admitting that was the problem. "So," she whispered, pulling him a little closer, "where do we go from here?"

"I do not know," Liyar answered honestly. He reached over and fixed a few strands of her hair which had fallen down across her jaw, and then leaned back against the couch beside her. "But I would like to find out. And we will."

Maenad sighed. "We will," she smiled back.

Liyar grabbed the tray with the bowl of shirai from the table and held it in his lap, picking up Maenad's PADD as he did. He handed it out to her, eying the frozen Ferengi captured on the screen. "What is it you were watching?" he asked, picking up his chopsticks again.

"Oh," she laughed, embarrassed. "It's just a skit comedy show. Improv and stuff; it's not very smart," she explained. "Well, it is, because improvisation takes a certain talent, but it's not very... smart smart, if that makes any sense. But, I like it."

He pushed the button on the pad to start the playback. "-the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter. That's right the points are just like tasteful shoes to Evran zh'Raza. I'm sorry, was that applause? I couldn't hear it under Evran's shoes!" blurted the Lessepian host from his desk out of the speakers at the side, and Liyar tilted his head curiously. "-Bad Causes to Raise Latinum for! -Give Drak Car a third show? Anyone? -Bathe the whales!"

Maenad laughed. "Mind if I turn off the light?" she asked.

"-welcome back to the show, I'm Drak Car. Or as Hannibal Lecter likes to call me, a meal for two!" blared Maenad's PADD while Liyar fixed the contraption with a very puzzled look. He turned his attention from the PADD and settled back into the couch, holding it between them after the lights dimmed. Only the illumination from the stars outside the window reflected through her quarters, creating strips of white through the room at random angles. While he found the entire skit highly confusing and mildly disconcerting, Maenad appeared to be enjoying it, so he wasn't too alarmed. "Who is Hannibal Lecter?" Liyar mumbled under his breath, shaking his head. He did not understand this comedy at all.

Maenad pushed him backwards gently by putting her hand against his chest. "Lie down," she instructed him. "On your side." She moved what remained of his meal to the table and then laid down in front of him, draping the quilt over both of them. She tucked her head into his left elbow and passed him back the PADD. "Hannibal Lecter," she started to answer, "is a fictional character, a cannibal, who drugged his victims, cut them up, and ate them. Sometimes he did it slowly and fed parts of victims to themselves, or to his next victims under the guise of feeding them something else." After a long pause of watching more of the show, she asked if such a thing existed on Vulcan. "Are there ever any cases of cannibalism on Vulcan?"

Liyar shifted down and dangled his long legs over the edge of the couch, draping his arm over Maenad's side and listening to her describe the rather gruesome character. "There have not been any cases of cannibalism on Vulcan for millennia," Liyar answered. "The," he looked up out the starry window and gestured with his hand behind her head before settling it in her hair, "mental exertion that would be required of such an act, if the victim were to live, would be tremendous. There are, however, cases of splinter Vulcanoids, who are considered without Control, and they are mad, engaging in mass murder and deviant acts including cannibalism. They are called the Fri'slen. They are feral and savage, infected by prion diseases throughout their entire settlement. They are known to kidnap stragglers in their territory and consume them in a frenzy. The disease which infects them is transmitted by intimate relations. Victims were usually kept alive underground in order to be eaten in stages. It is said that these Vulcanoids were the result of failed genetic mutations and experiments, but there is little information regarding their origin beyond this."

Maenad turned her head to look at him behind her, but she couldn't fully. "Wow," she breathed. "It's fascinating, isn't it? Even kind of morbidly exciting." She turned back around, snuggling the back of her head against him. "Where do the Fri'slen live?"

"They live on a Vulcan colony called Trilan. The case was required reading during my V'Shar training. Two teams from the V'Shar were dispatched to attempt and deal with the threat, both were lost. The Fri'slen were declared afterwards to be unsalvageable and extremely hostile, to be avoided at all costs," Liyar explained. "Such a degree of mental illness is staggeringly difficult to comprehend, yes. In that way, I suppose it is fascinating."

"That's sad," Maenad said, imagining a team of stoic Vulcans trying extend a hand to dialogue, only to be torn to bits and eaten. Liyar easily could have been among them. "I'm glad you weren't sent," she said. Then she held out one of her hands and looked at it in the white/blue glow of the screen and milky white of the stars, wondering what parts of it could be eaten. "It's hard to believe that this is food to some people. That you and I could be reduced to nothing more than a meal, and forgotten about by dessert." There was still a bizarre intrigue about it, though, she thought. She took one of his hands and placed his fingertips in her mouth and bit them, gently of course, as a joke.

"It is, what you would call a dissociative, dehumanizing process. An individual that practices cannibalism in modern settings without practical necessity-" Liyar instantly blinked and his hand twitched as Maenad unceremoniously bit his fingertips, washing him in her mental state. A rise of noise and radio signals. He spread his hand out and stared at it, perplexed. He realized he'd stopped talking and shook his head. "-Practical, necessity-" he started again, settling back down and replacing his hand over her side, "-is incapable of recognizing the value of sentience, nor of life," he regained himself. "All of your hopes, dreams, accomplishments, beliefs, your future, your potential, it means nothing to a person like that. And on Vulcan, where as a race of telepaths we feel acutely the consequences of our actions, that type of deviancy is doubly distressing."

"What if that sort of thing gives the person doing it renewal? What if they cherish hopes and dreams of other people, and it becomes part of the process?" she asked, playing devil's advocate. "What if they are fully aware of what they're doing; what if it's almost ritualised? Maybe they eat people because they're smarter, or better, than animals?"

"Then you think that these individuals consume other sentient beings under the belief that this will cause them to absorb their experiences," Liyar determined, arching an eyebrow. "That is possible. In the instance of the Fri'slen, I do not believe they were intelligent enough to evolve such practices. If they were, then those practices ultimately condemned that society to insanity. A mixture of telepathic resonance and prion diseases have long eroded their cohesive awareness." Curiously, he added, "I imagine criminology on Terra and Vulcan are very different."

"Stone," she said with almost a shrug. "He was a criminal with authority. I imagine there is little crime or abuse on Vulcan," she thought. "Especially from those with any sort of power." She bit her lip. "I doubt Vulcans abuse each other like humans do. The admiralty is made of criminals. Humans are very self-interested," she lamented. "They are everywhere." Maenad watched the screen without paying attention, thinking instead. "Our mission is criminal," Maenad pointedly added. "Very much so, in fact." One of her hands came out from under the blanket and rested on his arm that hugged her against his chest. "I'm having a hard time with it."

"You take issue with the idea that we are accumulating resources from the Rojar system," Liyar summarized succinctly.

"Yes," Maenad turned her head again. They they were laying, she couldn't see him, but her attention went his direction. "I told you that already."

"Indeed you did," Liyar agreed simply.

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer, SSC
USS Galileo

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

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