After The Snap

Posted on 12 Dec 2012 @ 9:50am by Crewman Athlen

6,382 words; about a 32 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo: Corridors
Timeline: MD13 1030 Hours

ON:

Bloodied and miserable, Athlen looked a sight for sore eyes as he walked back to his quarters, intent on changing up and then going to meet Panne as they'd originally planned on. It was cut short, however, when he stopped into her in the hallway. He blinked, and stepped back before he collided into her. "I am sorry," he offered, brushing her arm in a gesture of apology. "I was not watching where I was going." He stepped away, and wiped his hand on his white meditation pants which left behind a smear of green blood. "I was changing, before I came to meet you," he offered with a small smile. "If you still wish to meet, that is." He was unsettled, shallow, anger igniting through him still, but he calmed it down, gentled it. Meditations.

(Step one: truth is the cement of foundation. The foundation encompasses Control. You are standing on the cement of Truth. You are surrounded in Control.) He was just standing in the middle of the hallway now, with his eyes closed, breathing more calmly as time went on. (The shields will prevent you from the bombardment above. The Rage is a field of stones, your Will rises from the Foundation of Control and the shield repels them.) Amusingly (but perhaps unsurprisingly) the kya'shin voice in his head sounded just like Liyar.

"I was just in the holodeck," he finished lamely, eyes opening. A cut on his forehead was bleeding onto his cheek, trickling over his jaw unassumingly. "I'm sorry," he started again, sincerely. At least he was looking her in the eye, now. "I'm sorry for putting you guys in that position."

Asked to double check the reconfiguration of the environmental systems of the ship's arboretum on deck four, Maenad left her quarters after changing into her uniform. She walked with her head down and her hands swaying at her sides toward the turbolift when Athlen's shaky voice caught her off-guard. She hadn't been paying attention, clearly - she didn't even see him coming until she felt his hand on her arm.

"No," she held up a skeletal hand to reassure him. "No, that's quite all right; I wasn't paying attention to..." her eyes went from the floor, up his legs, chest, and then to his battered face. "Oh my god," she gasped. She had never in her life seen green blood actually bleeding. Not just bleeding, though. Draining from someone's face. From Athlen's face. Her eyes darted to his bloodied pants, to his sleeves and hands, to the dripping from his cheek and jaw, then to the smeared gash somewhere on his forehead. She felt an arrhythmia in her chest and a sudden shortness of breath came to her. Her eyelids fluttered. Then, her balance started to fail. She instinctively touched her cheek with the tip of her thumb and her temple with the tips of her fore- and middle fingers. The other arm extended somewhat by her waist, her other hand acting as a kind of stabiliser. "Athlen," she whispered as she managed to step back toward the wall. Within seconds she had almost fainted for the first time in years; that was what blood did to her, especially when it was somebody's she cared about. The arm that acted to keep her from falling gripped the meagre rail against the wall, and she put all of her weight into that one wrist, keeping her eyes closed until the lightheadedness started receding.

Athlen watched her, and instantly he prepared to catch her should she fall. She was able to get ahold of himself though and he only then realized that he must have looked a state, and winced. No one ever saw him like this. He was too distracted to clean himself up even a little on the way out, and he cursed in his mind for being still stuck in the state it was to have him walking out like this, to be met by his boss of all people, who looked ready to have a heart attack at the sight of it.

"I'm okay," she whispered, more telling herself than Athlen. "No, I'm fine," still trying to convince herself, she reopened her eyes and readjusted herself, still touching the side of her face. "I'm sorry," She saw Athlen standing there still as wounded as ever. "What-- what happened to you?" she exclaimed, sniffing. The whole ordeal lasted no more than thirty seconds; although she had passed out a number of times in her life, it was something that scared her enough that she never got used to it. Maenad wiped her eyes and carefully brought two fingers to Athlen's forehead with the touch of a mother.

Athlen's eyes closed for a second at the touch, before he swallowed. "I..." don't think you will understand started to form. This was the first real time he'd ever had to face for himself being the alien. He'd expected it, anticipated it, talked to counselors about it at Starfleet, but this was really it. Usually people just accepted him as that cheerful, pleasant guy. He got along well with most people, or they were annoyed by his persisting cheer and nosiness. The alien frightened people. Made them realize that the mind underneath Athlen's relatively humanoid skull was not familiar, and did not easily accustom itself to Athlen's outward behaviors. Nevertheless, he thought better of it. She did, after all, vouch for him extensively during the Brig Incident. And she was somewhat aware for the need of t'an krila, which must have given her some idea of Eri'tan'vri. It probably did not prepare her for the reality of Vor-ken-itarr.

They were in fact going to meet on her writings of pre-Surak Vulcans. Which included his own people. "I was very angry," he decided on, voice soft. "I used the holodeck, to help. Vor-ken-itarr." He looked at her, pale, lightheaded, and concern furrowed his brow. "You look very upset. I did not mean to upset you." It was redundant and he knew it (step two...). "I'm - still, I'm sorry," Athlen said, the previous aggressive energy draining further as he talked to a familiar, friendly presence. "For all that happened. I never meant to cause you all such trouble."

Upset? Maenad thought. She was more than upset, now. She knew that t'an krila was important, an apparently necessary part of Rigelian culture, but now she was reconsidering that idea. "Mister Athlen..." she whispered somewhere between frustration and subdued rage. Her head still felt a little tingly, but she was thinking clearly again. Stone may have been wrong to jail Athlen, but his intolerable rant about this particular cultural practice might have not been wholly out of line. She removed her fingers from his forehead, trying to find the wound, and grabbed his forearm, pulling him back in the direction to her quarters. "You're getting cleaned up; forget our meeting. We're going to have a talk," she pulled him along, now, unaware that her grip might have been hurting him.

Athlen stared up at her, but nodded. "I wasn't hurting anyone else -" Athlen finally said as they walked. "- Just the holodeck. T'an krila is not about hurting eachother -" It didn't take a telepath to put two and two together, though it helped that he had a little of it. He kept walking along with her fast pace. "- It's about falling into step - with eachother physically - it's resolution and understanding -" he kept walking, Maenad's grip not tight enough to truly force a Rigelian anywhere, but he followed along. He sighed, as they skidded to a halt in front of her quarters. He let himself be guided in. "And, vor-ken-itarr is not," he admitted quietly as the doors closed.

He was shaking now, but not from anger. He slowed his breathing and kept his hands together to avoid shaking them. He let himself be led into her small bathroom.

"You probably don't know that much, about me personally. I've -" he sighed, and held his hands out for her to examine. The knuckles and fingers and tops were scratched and bloody from the efforts of his holographic opponents. "I've worked hard, to control, in ways that don't hurt anyone else. Harder than the average Rigelian," he admitted in almost a whisper, and shook his head. "I'm sure you - aren't interested. I'm sorry. I just want you to know, I'm not dangerous. Neither is t'an krila. Vor-ken-itarr is different. Catharsis is healthy for Rigelians... it is not so for humans." He inhaled a shaky breath. "The, heran is also, taking some time to readjust. You are seeing a far greater loss of control. I never - I've never, you're the only non-Vulcanoid to ever, see me like this." He was speaking quietly, with a look of dismay on his face. This was it. He was going to be sent home. He knew it. Everything he'd worked for...

"I'm thrilled," she said dryly back to him. She turned on the water in her sink, holding one hand beneath the tap until she found the right temperature. She then put Athlen's hands under the water, feeling that tingle starting in the back of her head again as the basin turned a dark green. Ignoring it, she pulled a hand towel from a ring beside the sink and wrapped the Rigelian's hands to dry them. She unraveled them after applying more pressure than was probably necessary, saw that her towel was stained, and examined them. The bleeding had stopped, but they were scratched and chafed a lot less than it had first looked. She looked at his eyes, then to the rest of his bloody face. "Oh, Athlen," she mumbled, sadly. She looked away and told him to sit on the toilet after putting the lid down.

The Rigelian sat down, his melancholic aura permeated with something a little less gloomy, at the realization that she wasn't berating him, or even afraid of him. He hoped. He shored his shields up fully. The qui'lara in the hands were as sensitive as a Vulcan's, the pressure from the towel and her own touch was easier with shields fully up. He let her work in silence, contemplating her reactions while she did. You've really done it this time, swilak, whispers through his head. Don't worry, Athlen... Athlen didn't respond visibly, but the musical laugh in his mind helped ease the ache of the entire situation.

As Athlen moved around her to sit, Maenad dampened the towel under the stream of warm water and then wrung out the excess. Her anger had dissipated into a genuine concern for his well-being, and she was more gentle with him now. She got really close to him as she held back the long hair off his forehead with the flat of her left hand. She tilted his head so that it was almost touching her breast as she delicately padded the blood away with the towel in the other hand. Not after long, she found the gash that he had said was from a kick to his head. She sighed as she cleaned it out as carefully as she could, rinsing the towel of the blood it had soaked up. She went back to what she was doing, then wiped down his cheek and the rest of his face and, with the towel's dry corner, dried him off. She set the greened towel on the edge of her sink and vigorously washed her hands with soap with an obsessive-compulsive tenacity. Finally, she dried them after careful inspection and then leaned against the wall, looking down at him.

"This is me reminding you to be cautious about where, when, and how you observe your cultural practices," she said quietly to him, just above a whisper. Her face was still sad. "How does that feel?" she asked about her patching him up.

Athlen let himself be moved about, and winced when the giant seeping gash on his head was cleansed. Admittedly, it felt much better after her ministrations. Clean, without the blood dripping clouded thread of dark-alien-twisting-thing, he resembled the Athlen that Maenad was familiar with. If a little quieter, less sure of himself. "Maybe Aylin was right," Athlen admitted, blinking large blue eyes up at her. He had more composure than he did when she first saw him. "Maybe, I wasn't ready. I should -" he shrugged. "- It took me a long time to fit in with Rigelian society. I don't know why Rhias chose me. They said that my progress embodied the spirit of Eri'tan'vri." He rolled his eyes, as if to silently say, look how well that turned out. He placed his vision back on her. "I should know all of these things..." he sighed. "Thank you very much for the first aid," he said, with a ghost of a smile.

Maenad didn't say anything for many seconds. She just closed her eyes and breathed through her nostrils, trying to clear her mind. When she opened them again, she looked back down at Athlen. "Shall we go sit in the living room?" The question was rhetorical. Maenad led the way out of the bathroom, gesturing to the couch for Athlen to sit on. She went to her kitchen replicator and ordered an Earl Grey tea. "Tea?" she asked him.

He nodded, only because he was slightly scared of her and he had a feeling she was about to get angry at him. (Which, in all of its irony, is truly remarkable, since he is certain he can break her in half. Yet, still, she towers over him and is generally a scary, if nice human being.)

"Mister Athlen, I am a very tolerant person," she turned toward him from where she stood. "I think I am probably one of the most liberal people you'll ever meet. But, I can't help but think that what you're doing is somehow wrong. There must be another way to get over your problems than to have yourself beat up like that!" Her tone pleaded with him.

He took the tea as it was offered and sat down, wrapping his hands around it and cooling off the top. He took a tentative sip, feeling himself begin to slow and calm even while she was talking. He tapped the edge of the mug, uncertain how to voice his thoughts, unwilling to argue with someone he'd come to view as a friend (sort of). It wasn't an argument, really. It was just, he knew this wasn't something other people easily understood. "Have you ever felt, so angry... that you could hurt someone? Throw something, scream as loud as you could?" he asked her, very quietly.

"Sure I have," she said. She didn't sit on the couch with him, though; she moved toward the comfy living room chair beside it and half-sat half-leaned on its arm.

Athlen tapped his fingers carefully. He wasn't sure how to bridge his understanding to meet hers. He could do this. It was his job. He decided to split the extra tangent for later. He knew she was a teacher, she would appreciate something linear. (Unfortunately, Athlen is not a teacher, and his prose is rather awkward.) "And, when you felt this way, sometimes you may have given in to this urge, yes?" he asked, looking over toward her. He crossed his legs, sitting up straight but not rigid. "Yelled, thrown something?" (He doesn't expect she's actually really hurt anyone, because her scariness is authoritative in its aura rather than intimidating, it's an essence of protectorate... fear my wrath, or be embraced under it.)

"Yes, yes," she nodded, wanting him to move on. She recounted all the poor men she'd slapped whether they had deserved it or not, her own terrible writing she'd thrown against the wall, the many desktops she'd slammed with her fists.

"Okay," Athlen said, with a nod. "And then other times," he started, tap-tapping at his mug, "When you wanted to hurt - maybe - or lash out, you were able to stop it. Because, you were able to get to the point, where you recognized it was bad, so you stopped it?"

For some reason her rather violent holonovels came to mind. Then her fiction and horror writing that she did. Apart from hitting people, like she had wanted to do to Stone only an hour ago, she never really succumbed to her violent impulses. "I suppose, but I don't see where this is going," she said, taking a thoughtful sip of her tea.

"Right," Athlen continued. He let out a long breath, frowned, and tried to get to the point. "As a Rigelian - as Athlen, as well, I don't have that ability." He shrugged, the admission quiet, anti-climactic. "When I am happy, I laugh. When I am sad, I cry. I cannot... control, this response. For positive emotions, that is all right. But when I am angry... I am enraged. Beyond the point, of reason." He was staring at the floor now. "For Vulcans ... they have, the control. The mental discipline, to stop it. For Romulans, it is sublimated through militant discipline. Rigelians use Eri'tan'vri. Catharsis. We express everything. In our culture. We simply... let it go. Vor-ken-itarr... is for rage. I do not have the ability to step back, and handle it. So it must be ... kept," he tried to translate, but the translation was awkward, "Until it can be exerted through Catharsis. That is the only way Rigelians know how to control the inner Rage." He smiled a little ruefully. "I was found, at a time after I should have learned the proper Keeping. Children learn it, but... I did not. The Keeping came very late. Since then, I have been able to learn control, in the proper way. But it is, a struggle, that I must balance continually. I am learning some techniques in kya'shin, to help me with this. But it is ongoing. As I said, I am not dangerous. I just ... must be allowed to gain control. The holodeck is that tool for me." (And maybe now, he thinks, with several notes of sadness, is when I am sent home...)

Maenad was staring at him, right into his eyes. After some time she 'snapped' out of it, and looked at the floor, letting out a long sigh through her nose. "I don't think you're dangerous to me," she said quietly. "I don't think you're a danger to Mister Liyar, or to the department, or anybody else," she raised her eyes back to his. "I'm worried that you're dangerous to yourself." She let the weight of that hang for a second, then dropped the titles and called him by name. "Athlen, I don't know what exactly you were talking about when you explained to me what you were doing when we first ran into each other, but my god. It was you who was hurt. Let's pretend for a minute that I couldn't control my emotions, either, and I got as angry as you," she submitted. "And, by the way, I can't always control my emotions. In fact, some would say that I'm quite poor at it. But, I wouldn't run a holodeck simulation with the safeties off, getting myself shredded up like that!" She was yelling now, but it wasn't mean. It was concern making her sound like that; she was oblivious to what she sounded like, but later she would hope that he knew the difference. "I would kick the snot out of something else."

Athlen blinked at the yelling, and flinched slightly, but forced himself to hear her words instead of her tone. He knew he'd been guilty of the same thing in the past. It sounded... as if she were not concerned about vor-ken-itarr, he mused to himself, but about him. "That's - what I was doing," he said weakly. He decided not to mention all of the holographic people he'd killed, not just fought, because he didn't need her to distance him further in her mind from what she knew. "It - wasn't," he tried again, shaking his head. "It isn't, about self harm. Though, I am able to see, why someone could think it was so." He looked up, straight in her eyes. "You were studying pre-Surak Vulcans. Do you know about the pon farr?"

"Of course," she nodded. Until her research started to include Vulcans as extensively as it did, she had only heard of it. Vulcans were illogically conservative over sex and discussing it, and there was little a human could do to learn about it in such an unreceptive climate.

Athlen was hoping, beyond all hopes, that she understood the Vulcan way, the reasons for their ceremonies and bondings. He tried to explain as best as he could. "I do not know about Romulans, but Rigelians have it too. We call it vrian mas. Rigelians are able to control it." Athlen kept looking at her. "Rigelians can handle being stripped of all logic and reason because it happens to us on a daily basis. In those moments before the Keeping. All baser feelings are at the highest of levels. For Rigelians, vrian mas is an extended version of this which happens for no emotional reason. For Vulcans, it is the most feared time of their lives," Athlen said. He was trying to pull his points together, trying to come across as familiar. Vulcans were nice. Vulcans were peaceful. Vulcans were not scary. (To most people.) "The chemical hormones involved are called yamareen and in us we call it kivan-vrian. Vulcans only ever experience a surge in yamareen when they enter pon farr. Rigelians experience a surge of kivan-vrian whenever they feel a strong emotion. The reason why mating and combat are the only solutions to end pon farr is because mating and fighting are the only things that release the correct brain chemicals to kill the yamareen levels." He hoped it was beginning to come around and make sense now. "I handle the anger, by vor-ken-itarr. I turn the safeties off, because the brain chemicals have to..." he frowned, gesturing slightly. "It has to be a fight. There is also the other option," he said bluntly, "Which is sex. On Rigel V, that is very acceptable. In fact, it is one of our best medical treatments." Despite himself, Athlen smiled weakly, as if trying to make a joke. He gave an apologetic look and continued. "In Starfleet, it is not so. Rigelians have to take an oath not to endanger their working relationships and their command dynamics this way. It is extremely frowned upon in your society. The holographic solution is not viable, because for Rigelians, sex is only sex because of mental contact."

As Athlen explained everything, it became clearer to her. From her understanding, Rigelians were no different from other Vulcanoids: sexually repressed to the extreme. It was a shame, really, she had always thought. When Athlen started saying that his choices were either to fight in the holodeck or have real sex, she took an anxious sip of tea. The psycho in her thought to avail herself if that's what it took to stop him from nearly killing himself every time he got angry, while every other part of her mind shouted the madwoman down. She hid her reddened cheeks behind her cup, remembering that Athlen was an empath. She took a long sip of tea as she transitioned to sitting properly in the chair, tightly crossing her legs, wishing that she had never even had the thought or spent any time thinking about having the thought.

The Rigelian blinked, watching her blush, and took a very long drink of his tea, almost draining the whole thing. He had picked up the image, and she was so thoroughly embarrassed about it that he decided to continue on. "I don't want you to think lesser of me," he said again. "All of this, stuff is - it's very normal, for us. And we do not go around fighting in the streets, or ... you know." He slumped again, curling inward over his knees as if to protect himself. "That is the first time I have engaged in vor-ken-itarr since I have been in Starfleet," Athlen confessed. "It is not the, preferred method for me. I try to meditate, or mediate, before it turns into Rage. I spent a lot of my youth enraged with no purpose, mindlessly angry, no better than an animal. I don't - I'm not like that." He breathed in hard, and gave another weak smile, trying to reassure himself more than her that he was all right.

He had by now convinced her, even though she maintained her disapproval. She was now more intrigued by what he had said about sex or violence. She lowered her cup to her lap, rolling her dangling foot from her ankle. She tilted her head to one side, looking him in the eyes. "Are you telling me that you are bound from having intimate relations?" she asked with an inquisitive frown.

Athlen shook his head. "No, not in the same way a Deltan would be," he acknowledged. "But, the wording of the oath I have taken is somewhat similar. The oath I signed was a promise not to endanger the command dynamics or interpersonal dynamics of a ship and its crew by excessive intimate relationships." Athlen arched an eyebrow at that. "Essentially, a politically correct way of saying that it is inappropriate for me to have sex with everybody." He smiled, now with genuine warmth rather than the shaky, uncertain aura of before. "On Rigel V, it is very common to be intimate with others. We believe that intimacy is conducive to harmony, and it does not harm our working dynamics like it seems to harm yours. It helps keep us connected. I am bonded, to a woman named Marivael, but in our society, sexual monogamy is very foreign. Even bonded monogamy is foreign. I have four bonded adopted parents," he explained. "The bond is what matters." He had an almost wistful look on his face now. "We do not believe that it is wise to consider that you may only love and care about one person," he explained simply with a shrug. "Or even, as some do, consider only one person to be sexually attractive." At that, the look on his face was positively baffled.

"Not that I am judging those who do," he maintained. "But it is very foreign indeed. The other Rigelians in Starfleet have also taken similar oaths. I imagine that Captain Saalm has also taken an oath of that degree, or at least maintains a medicinal regimen. From the sessions I received prior to enlisting, it is my understanding that many species in Starfleet have emotional connections to sex which can lead to unhealthy sex, and unhealthy relationships," he explained. "So, I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to be very, very careful about how I chose to go about that. They also insinuated that it is considered somewhat negative, to have open sexual attitudes, for some species, and that I may be viewed in a negative light." His features were now perplexed.

"Well," Maenad smirked, "If it's any consolation and doesn't damage your opinion of me, I encourage it," she wasn't sure if she was being sarcastic or not. "I would much rather you find somebody to be intimate with." A passing shuttle caught her attention over Athlen's shoulder. She watched it fly by as she took another sip of tea. Yes, she would have preferred that very much, and she didn't care if it wasn't any of her business. It had become her business when he, a member of her department, had severely injured himself. Who was to say that next time that gash missed his forehead and went into his eye? Or his neck? What if he were killed next time?

"I have engaged in these processes many times over my life," Athlen said as if he could hear her inner thoughts. He couldn't, but he could sense their direction. "Since I was very, very small." His tone was one of reassurance, though he was not able to understand that Maenad might find the idea of children engaging in the practice of fighting any more palatable. "It is a part of every Rigelian's existence. We learn the superior, inferior and equal complex-spars. T'an krila, t'an dera, t'an keta. We then learn the vor-ken-itarr. That is personal, and there are two versions. The Catharsis: solo, or against another opponent: Challenge. The version I practice is Catharsis. Against another, it would be what Lieutenant Stone would call a duel. Vor-ken-itarr against another being on this ship would be a violation of Starfleet law. On Rigel V, the Challenge is permitted. I've engaged the Challenge once in my life... to my mentor Antriya. I was seven, and promptly defeated." He grinned at the memory, but then schooled his features into a more neutral expression. "T'an krila, t'an dera and t'an keta are not violations of the law as they are meditative," he explained. "These are the ways our species copes with our daily lives. Just as your own coping behaviors, and techniques that you are familiar with, are part of your daily life. There are healthy and unhealthy spectrums for both of our species. I am on the healthy end of mine. I was not always," he granted with a nod, and another drink of his tea, "But I have worked hard to get there."

Maenad opened her mouth as if she were about to protest further. Since he was very small? Instead, she sighed and her posture sunk as she exhaled. It was about as concessionary as she could have gotten. "I don't approve of it, Mister Athlen. Not one bit," she said hushedly. "But, I respect your devotion to it, I promise you that." She looked down into her cup for a moment, despairingly realising that she would have to numb herself to this terrible side of her friend. That she had thought of him that way surprised her; she didn't call, much less consider, many people friends. She looked up at him again. "Is there anything I can do, to make it easier? To make it less dangerous? I just don't want you getting hurt, even if I never have to see or really know about it," her voice had quieted again, but it was no less sincere.

Athlen leaned forward and rested one of his hands against her arm. It was unconscious, a movement instinctive in his body perhaps as breathing, but looked up at her calmly. "Thank you," he said, his own voice sincere. "I know - it is not an easy thing. Being Rigelian is very hard, as I have come to learn. Perhaps being sentient itself is just hard." He shrugged, and squeezed her arm a little. "But your offer is very kind. If it - if it is any consolation, I honestly doubt that this will occur again on the Galileo. This was a very unique convergence of events. I don't fly off the handle at the smallest provocation." He sat back a little suddenly. "Liyar was there during the worst part of it," he said, as if that had just dawned on him, with a blink. He let go of her arm and sheepishly put his hands back in his lap. "Yes... When I was really into it. He was observing," he admitted honestly. "I remember. He realized where I was going and I suppose surmised for himself the purpose. After I burned it all out, we spoke for some time... I forgot he was there during the vor-ken-itarr itself. I was very engaged in the process," he explained. "I don't think he would have let me come to harm. But as I say, I am quite proficient. If need occurs in the future," Athlen started, hoping it might help her a bit, but expecting that it likely would not happen, "If it will help your acceptance of this part of me," he worded it, mostly because he could feel the way this affected her, and was scared it had damaged their rapport, "I will perhaps ask for his presence if next the Rage occurs."

The touch of Athlen's hand on her arm actually helped Maenad to feel more at ease. Not at ease, but maybe more comfortable, more reassured. She blinked once, holding her eyelids closed for a beat longer than normal, then smiled at him probably for the first time that day. She somehow felt a little foolish, like she had overreacted. In her heart, however, she knew that she hadn't - it was just what happened to her when somebody she liked bridged a gap like Athlen had. "Oh, Athlen," she beamed. "I am sorry, sometimes I..." she looked into her teacup again, then back to him, still brightly smiling. For some inexplicable reason her eyes watered, which embarrassed her. She made a silent laugh at herself, shaking her head. Over the past few days she had been succumbing to strange emotions that normally kept her visibly unaffected; ever since what had happened to Kiri, she hadn't been quite herself. She rubbed her eyes and then wiped the would-be tears on her skirt.

The Rigelian's eyes widened, concern visible on his face, and he moved to sit on the opposite arm of the chair she occupied, rather than across from her. She was crying, but also laughing. He could sense, if only a little, the strange threads of feeling through their very close proximity. It wasn't enough for him to tell if she was all right or not. It was nice to see her smile again, it was a very rare sight these days. "It is all right," he offered, just sitting next to her companionably without intruding into her space. "Thank you," he repeated again, because there were thousands of ways this could have gone, and in Athlen's view, the fact that Maenad had smiled at him at the end of it was probably the best possible outcome.

She finished the rest of her tea and looked up at Athlen beside her. "Don't tell Mister Liyar about..." she pressed her hand against the flat of her chest. "About this," she was jokingly referencing her near-episode and emotional roller-coaster. She went from nearly passing out to nurturing to irate lecturing to understanding to joy and then almost to tears. What a wreck, she thought of herself. What an absolute wreck.

Athlen blinked. He had absolutely no idea what she was referring to. Something told him though that it was related to her emotional display. He didn't seem at all phased. Of course, these types of displays were natural where he came from, but he recognized that Terrans differed in their approach to handling feelings. Maenad, he'd learned, appreciated discretion, so he simply nodded. "Of course not."

Her eyes found the writings that she had placed on her table earlier that morning, the ones that she had dug out for the meeting that Stone had ruined. Not feeling like that meeting was going to take place, she was still curious about what of hers Athlen had read. "Can you tell me what it was that you read? I was looking forward to it - it was all I could think about last night."

"Oh, yes, it was Suppressed Vulcan Emotion and Mythology," Athlen started eagerly as she walked over to the table and sat down. He took the seat opposite to her and folded his hands over the table, resting his chin in his hand. He took the referenced book and flipped it open to a page depicting Shariel and Kin'she, the war gods of life and death. "So, what you're saying here - it sounds like these guys were essentially t'hy'la... I can't believe you managed to bring back a concept that's been outdated for centuries," he was blabbing, "And it's so fascinating how they were connected, like one needed the other, that death forwent his Touch of destruction on all living things upon meeting the beautiful personification of Life..." He shifted a bit and switched the page, continuing, "The legends say that their katra are still together today, in the Hall of Ancient Thought..."

They trailed off, as the morning sun reached its peak over the horizon of the colony outside Maenad's window.

[OFF]

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Crewman Athlen
Sociologist, SCC
USS Galileo

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