Ashenau

Posted on 01 Feb 2013 @ 3:15am by
Edited on on 01 Feb 2013 @ 3:21am

6,825 words; about a 34 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: LTjg Maenad Panne's Quarters
Timeline: MD 2 2210 Hours

ON:

It was a mixture of things, really, that prompted Liyar to return back to the deck that housed his quarters. He wasn't headed to his own. It was too early. Or too late. The proposal was finished. Finalized. He couldn't argue it any better. They had an obligation, a duty, to assist those people and Liyar made it as clear as he could that he was going to continue to belabor the point until someone listened. Proposal done. Meditation failed. Sparring session (with the safeties unfortunately on) completed. Lexorin taken.

Maybe it was the failed meditation. It wasn't a usual failure. He didn't just sit there and zone as he often did. He had tried, this time. Tried to think. Tried to go within and find the secret alcove built in his head. They were two bowls on steep, high columns. White, white, white. Crystalline, clear water. He tried to catch it in his hands but it wouldn't stay. It was a sieve, draining. If he thought about it at all he would tarnish it. The water would turn dark. The memories would fade. Better they gather dust. Stay stagnant. Then a rising frustration again more water, why is it water? A tidal wave, a tsunami, a flood, a hurricane. They're foreign, terrifying experiences. For a Vulcan.

Crashing the columns, smashing the bowls, watching everything spill out and touch the farthest parts of him, leaving toxic stains behind. So he'd spent those lovely hours hunched over in a corner, staring into space until he had half a mind to jolt himself out of it. (Overdramatic. Emotional. Emotions are to be purged. Acknowledged, understood, and then dissipated. The analects are all too clear on that subject. Life is as life. The bird does not mourn and lament when her egg is shattered. The bird creates anew. Flies away. Builds her nest, watches it die, lets it go.) No person could live when they were so focused on death. No person could really live when death lived within them, either.

So like every night before, Liyar acted out of pure self-preservation and aborted the rest of the meditative level. Coleman's empathy 'trick' had helped once, but this was his pain. He'd done it to Lilou Peers, too. And it was not healthy. It wasn't. Death had to dissolve itself, had to gradually disappear or at least mute and mold, turn into something reasonable. Had to stop clinging to every molecule all by itself. Or, maybe, he was just insane. If every other Vulcan was fully capable of surviving such losses, and he was not, then that was truly the only rational alternative. (Liyar is Vulcan. He strives to be rational.)

In any case, Maenad had left her chip on the table. It could have been that. The offer of company still rung in his ears. A more interactive approach. Distraction, running away, running to, jogging in place, dancing a jig. (Probably not that one.) No, he just walked. None of his thoughts on his face, like normal. Walked and walked. One end of the ship to the other. To the mess hall and around the corner. And now, down to Deck 2, and to quarters much preferred to his own. Liyar hit the chime, fingering the small data chip buried in his pockets with his free hand.

Maenad had developed a bad habit of falling asleep whenever people needed her. It seemed like every time somebody wanted something from her, she was sleeping. She opened her eyes, seeing the stars streaking past through the tops of her sloped living room windows. She'd fallen asleep on the couch again, she realised. A book was cover-up and opened flat on her chest. She moaned quietly to herself, rubbing her eye with the top her wrist. There was a glass of wine, still untouched, on the coffee table.

She sat herself up after removing the book, a science fiction horror set in 2091 in which everyone basically dies by killing each other off one by one while orbiting Neptune - they were infected by an alien neural parasite. What made it interesting to her was that they were all scientists; they had to be creative in their gruesome killings. The protagonist was a junior scientist who, she guessed, was somehow immune to the infection. She set the book down on the table and traded it for the wine. She drank the whole thing in one go, it was only a half glass.

She stood up and walked to counter that separated the kitchenette from the living room, where she set her glass. Realising her guest was probably starting to get impatient, Maenad began a frantic look for her skirt, only to find it embarrassingly by her feet. She lifted it up and clipped it on, fixed the form-fitting white training t-shirt she had on so it that wasn't wrinkled up her sides, and opened the door.

Maenad's posture shrunk noticeably at the sight of the Vulcan standing in front of her. "Mister Liyar," she said with a surprise that she shouldn't have had. It seemed like he was the only one that ever called on her, she was beginning to think. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you waiting, come inside," she stepped aside for him to enter. "Can I get you something? Tea?"

Liyar stalked past the door abruptly, as though permission had been extended on a continual basis. He then stopped in place, a few feet in front of her with his back turned to her, an odd look on his face as if he suddenly just realized where he was and lost as to how he got there, what to say or explain. Even for Liyar, it was a little ill mannered, but he reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out the data chip, holding it out to her as if it were completely rational for all of this to have occurred, right up to waking her from her apparently restful nap. He stood with his hand half-extended awkwardly, looking around and taking in the disarray that suggested she had been sleeping. He pushed the datachip toward her fully and blinked, saying quite calmly, "You had forgotten this. On the table. You were asleep."

Before Maenad could head to the replicator, she realised that Liyar was not himself. She suddenly became aware of the messiness of her quarters; the half of the uniform she wasn't wearing was on the arm of a chair, the clothes that she had worn the night before were on the floor near the coffee table, and yesterday's underwear was on the floor in front of the couch. Her empty wineglass and a dirty plate from earlier stood on the counter. But when he raised his hand and showed her the chip that he had put so much effort into making for her, the chip for her the psionic music player he'd built, her cheeks went red.

How could she have been so careless? She took it carefully in her hand, and looked as sad as she felt. "Thank you," she said, looking at it, then set it on the counter. "I'm sorry. You know that I appreciate it," She hoped that he could pick up on her emotions. It was an admitted and highly regretted slip of her mind to have left it. "Yes, I was sleeping," she nodded, "I must have dozed off while reading," she nodded toward the couch. "Can I get you anything?"

Liyar shook his head and then, changing his mind, he tapped his fingers against the edge of themselves, turning around fully. "Tea," he said, plainly, whatever kind, he didn't care. He could feel the regret and sadness pouring off of her in small waves, buffeting his consciousness along in the stream. Was it weird that it was comforting? He didn't enjoy her sadness. In fact, "There is no need to apologize. Now it is here." He sounded stilted, but it wasn't a dishonest kind. It wasn't the sadness that comforted him, but the mental presence itself. It was as to him in the mind as they were in reality, a presence, another blip of light in the void. He knelt down and began collecting some of her things unconsciously, plates and books and wineglasses and clothes (he tactfully avoids the underwear) and odds and ends. Arranged them on the tables. On their shelves. In the kitchenette. Under the cupboards and in the drawers. Then he sat, resting his chin in his hands. "I should not have interrupted your rest. Resting is logical."

Maenad walked around the island counter and into the living area with two cups of Earl Grey on china saucers. She smiled at him for having straightened up while she readied the tea, but then noticed he had avoided the underwear still by his feet in front of the couch. She passed him his drink and set hers on the table, then picked up the undergarments and brought them to her room. She didn't say anything about it, nor was she embarrassed. She sat down on her side of the couch and lifted her saucer. "I was only napping," she said, though she probably could have slept right through the night. "If you hadn't come by, I might have woken up in the morning with a stiff neck."

Removing his hand from underneath his chin, Liyar took the cup and studied it as though it held the answers he needed. He stayed quiet for enough time that the possibility of conversation just wasn't going to happen, a faraway sort of look on his face. He came back, only a blink in perception, and shifted his gaze over to her. He took a drink and nodded. He thought it would be logical to leave now. He had come and given her the item, and now it was time to go. Mental feet dragged and dug in, trapping him on the couch. No, he wasn't going anywhere. But neither could he sit and take up Maenad's time. Even if she had offered it. He glanced upward toward the ceiling. Maybe an answer was buried there, and then looked at the Steinway perched in its corner. He met her eyes. "Play something." Like most of his requests, it sounded like a demand, but the way his eyebrows were knitted together suggested the look of a man who wasn't altogether there, so perhaps manners were one of those things he was too Away to remember. "Please." There it was. Nice word. People usually yelled at him less when he used it.

Sitting there beside him for that long while, Maenad didn't need to read his mind to know that something wasn't quite right. Remaining quiet, however, she decided to give him the silence that he so obviously needed. If Liyar wanted to be alone, he never would have accepted the tea and he would have long-since gone. Sometimes, she knew, that silence in company could do more than words could ever hope to do.

When Liyar said to play something, she turned her head to study him. Her posture straightened, her spine arched and her shoulder blades stuck out but nobody noticed. She was like a regal crane staring at him, her face long and blank. Maenad blinked once very slowly and when she had opened her eyes, she gracefully set down the cup and saucer on the coffee table. Somehow, she felt a sadness in the air, like she could see black clouds of rain rolling in from the ocean.

She stood, pushing herself up off her knees to patiently glide her way to the piano. She slid herself into a seated position, professionally, and stretched her fingers. She didn't look to see what Liyar was doing. The Vulcan stood with her and followed her over, as if standing guard behind her. Without thinking, Maenad knew exactly what she was going to play. "Computer," she said only loud enough to be heard, "Reduce lights to one third." Her fingers settled on her knees as she perched herself over the keys. Through her nose she inhaled a single deep breath, silently, and raised her hands to begin Bach's BWV 998, Aria from his Goldberg Variations.

The first opening chords as always were chaotic and stilted to his brain, but Liyar had asked, so he listened contemplatively for a while before looking down and settling two fingertips against her shoulder. It was a deliberate movement. He only stood there, silently. With the added touch the music gained more focus. He could feel the meaning through her, if not by himself alone. The melody was haunting, strands of notes weaving in and through his consciousness. Unfamiliar, but he found it easier to find the peace inside as she played. Whether that was a direct result of the music or the fact that he was being given time to reorient himself, a natural settling back into place, he didn't know, or care. It was easiest not to think, not to analyze, for once.

Maenad seemed to become part of the music as she hovered over the keys. Her fingers and hands moved fluidly yet with purpose and distinction. A few times she closed her eyes, but she mostly watched herself as she played. It was one of her favourite pieces, one she always played when feeling down. It had been some time since she had played it last, but it was by no means obvious. She hardly noticed that Liyar had put his fingers on her shoulder as she trickled out the notes. Several minutes later, she finished and set her hands in her lap, looking down toward her knees which she had drawn together. She hoped that whatever the reason was for Liyar's request that she had satisfied him.

The music played out for a few more minutes, leaving Liyar in an almost lull. He could feel the resonant features of the music from within her, and her affinity for it bled through in a way that was as satisfying as the music itself. Maybe that was the missing element. The impressions of the artist, the individual interpretation of the notes. His thoughts were a little hazy at this point, and he didn't register she'd finished until a few moments later. He shifted his hand slightly until the warm weight of his palm bled through her clothing, offering a fleeting psionic pulse of gratitude, a better expression than words could convey. Then the hand was gone. He sat down next to her on the bench, still, pensive. "What was the piece?" he asked after a drawn out silence.

"It is the aria from Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations," she said, half turning to him, looking at his knees now instead of her own. "He is one of Earth's most celebrated musicians," she paused. "It is at least six hundred fifty years old." Her tone was a little uplifted from how she had been acting since she noticed Liyar's body language, and was in no way reflective of how sorrowful she had just played. When he had expressed his gratitude to her through, she imagined, touching her shoulder, it made her feel proud of herself for being able to help him with something that was clearly deeply affecting him.

"You do not prefer modern music," Liyar noted in a minutely wry voice that sounded more familiar, more himself. It seemed like every time she played, it was always of musicians centuries past. Unsurprising, he supposed, since she was an archaeologist. History had to be a selling point with her. But amusing, that so many Terrans were similar.

Allowing a smile, Maenad looked up at Liyar next to her. They were so close that they were almost touching. She made single laugh through her nose, thinking that what he said was true. "I..." she paused, realising that she had never been so close to him before. She had, but not like this; the other times she'd been making sure that he was okay or she'd needed a shoulder to cry on. And the defense training, too - this was different. She could smell him now. Alien in her otherwise little piece of Earth. It was almost like some kind of wood... sandalwood? She looked at his shoulder and jaw, then back up at his eyes, renewing her smile. "I, do, yes," she finished. "I do prefer older music. The best classicists lived in Earth's past, I am afraid. There are some good composers alive today, certainly, but all my favourites are from the past."

She looked back at the piano keys, pressed her lips together after licking them with the tip of her tongue. "Liyar, can you tell me what was wrong?" she turned her head to look at him again.

Liyar pressed the tips of his fingers together. Wrong, she'd asked. He was Vulcan. There could be nothing wrong. But there was, and it was visible, at least to her. He wondered if he was this transparent to anyone else, if it was a quirk of hers that she could read it so easily, or if he just cared a little less about maintaining decorum with her. But that was dangerous. As in all Vulcans, the path of emotion was a slippery slope into chaos. He had that tell-tale half-frown on his face, only the barest of tensions, eyes focused on someplace near where their knees almost touched. "I do not know if it is possible," he said finally, a bridging between both acceptable forms of expression. He was stoic as ever while he mulled it over. "As a Vulcan, it is expected that these things be purged." He didn't know if he was going to tell her or not, still thinking aloud. Liyar knew, as he had since he was small, that he was plain and simple not a very good Vulcan. Finally he relented a little, shrugging an eyebrow upward and tilting his head down in his own version of a shrug. "The meditative cycle is often elusive to me." It was more of an admission than an answer.

Maenad wasn't sure what she was supposed to say or do. She had told him that she was there for him, but what did that even mean? She had never had to be there for anyone. She clenched her jaw, trying to find the right things to say to him, but nothing came. She just turned her head and looked at the piano keys again. A Vulcan who couldn't meditate was in serious trouble, she knew. Meditation was one of the most important parts of being a Vulcan, and here was Liyar telling her that it eluded him. Vulcans could descend into madness, even death, without proper meditation. Maybe that's why she could have sworn he was more emotional than he liked to admit. Maybe, she thought, it was because Liyar liked who he was. Maybe he didn't want to be the stone-faced Vulcan of lore. The idea excited her, but she didn't show it.

"Why?" she whispered, looking back at him.

It was tough to lie to a telepath. Especially one who was unencumbered by medication or monitors. Liyar blinked downward, still straight-backed beside Maenad. As most Vulcans were prone to doing, his posture was reflexively impeccable, even if he felt a little like putting his head in his hands like Raek used to do. He could read her thoughts. They were surface, and more surface still as she was focused on trying to 'do' the right thing. "There is a reason I am not in a meditative cell," Liyar said. As much as she was uncertain how to be 'there', he did not know how to be 'here'. "I am told that my situation is complicated. Regardless of your exposure to Vulcan society or ancient Vulcan history, it is unlikely you know much about our bonds. This is not a reflection of your intellect, but rather something we as a species are highly protective about. That any outworlder knows even the barest essentials is considered a breach of our privacy. However, as you know, there is necessity." To speak of it, he didn't need to add on. Pon farr, tel-tor, the parts of Being, the tenets of Identity. So engrained in the Vulcan people they were, that it was part of the Greater Consciousness, the whole. Every Vulcan knew it, and so knew one another.

Still, he hadn't answered the question. Maenad didn't want to prod him, though. These sort of things were very personal to Vulcans. She nodded for him to go on.

"The bond that I shared with my family was very strong. From what I understand, outworlders tend to frown upon our tradition of the Telan t'Kanlar as they feel it," he gestured a bit, "Prohibits us, in some capacity. From making the choice ourselves. The truth is that most of the time, the Bonding is quite successful. Choice is not an element many Vulcans are concerned with. We Know one another, reflect one another. Every decision made is one made in both trust and confidence of trust." There were many arguments there, but Liyar knew he was getting off track, and so didn't elaborate further. Maenad was intelligent enough to deduce that there were exceptions, as with anything. "As such, compatibility of mind is something we can measure, especially since children are very malleable." He trailed off.

Maenad couldn't tell where he was going with all of this. She sat there beside him, hardly moving, and still looking at the piano keys. She could feel that he was trying to get at something while seemingly not really wanting to. "It's all right," she said quietly. "I only thought that it might help for you to talk," she didn't look at him, but she was understanding.

"What I intend, to say, is that my own telsu was well-chosen. As thousands of Vulcans before me, my kal-i-farr was successful. You do know of the katra, the Living Spirit. For most telsu-tor, they are well matched and suited. They may even be fond of one another, attached, affectionate. But only rarely does it occur that the bond extends to the katra itself. Mine was such a bond. The severance was expected to kill me." Throughout his entire, well, monologue, really, he had delivered the information in as dry a textbook tone as ever. The last bit was stated more quietly. "As far as stability goes, I am considered, as a Terran might say, lucky, to be alive. I can speak, I am not a vegetable. I am as sane as I ever was." Whatever that meant, whatever it was worth.

Maenad shrugged. "You seem fine to me," she said. "You are stronger than most Vulcans, I think. You have beaten the odds. That is something of which you should be proud." She tried to sound encouraging.

"To any Healer, I am functional. But my mind is crippled. You could relate my state against another Vulcan to that of a brain-damaged Terran in comparison to his colleagues. This results in a more fragile state of Control. As for, liking myself, I suppose to a degree you are correct in that as well. Most of the time I am presented with a choice in my meditation. To continue and devolve into uncertainty and chaos, or to retreat. Back to the state I am in now. Where most Vulcans would seek counsel, remand themselves to a meditation cell, die, go insane..." He offered another semi-shrug.

Veren's. Romulus. The Dominion. He could name countless examples, all of them, he'd come out on his own. He had to. In his own way. His own time. Without being told what to think, how to think it. What to feel, how to feel it. She was, as he'd said, in a way very correct. He didn't want to do what people told him. Because what they told him to do just didn't work. His mind did not operate the normal way. And so he was not a normal Vulcan. He kept looking down at his feet, and only then rose his eyes to meet hers. "I prefer the element of choice." And unspoken, though obviously relevant, was the fact that he had not allowed himself to be bonded again. He wanted that choice for himself, too.

Maenad raised her head a bit, finally looking away from the keys. She slowly brought her eyes to his, wanting to set her hand on his knee but didn't. "Choice," she almost whispered. "Without choice we are nothing. The freedom to choose," she paused, "is logical. Personal happiness is all we have that matters. You may or may not experience pleasure the same way that I do, Liyar, but wanting to choose your pleasure in a culture that chooses it for you is a very noble thing." She gave him a reassuring smile. "I think it is something of which you should be proud."

Liyar didn't know if it was true or not. He did know that there was a questionable slide from choice to insanity. The v'tosh ka'tur chose. They chose madness and psychosis and death. He knew there was a reason why he was the way he was, that he had never been good at following protocols, that he'd never needed to be. In his own way he had moderated himself, even if it didn't look like it to other Vulcans. There was still his duties, which he would have to complete. Personal choice did not enter into that equation either, but in this small way, he was clearly making a statement that as far as he could, he would choose. An alien concept. Vulcans did not have choice. It was illogical, even as Maenad had proclaimed otherwise. The cycle ensured that. They could only live up to their duty. How were Terrans so different? He blinked over at her, hands clasped together awkwardly. "Terrans value the concept of choice very highly. And your society thrives because of it. How do you stay sane?" he asked, legitimately curious of the phenomenon as though he couldn't imagine a way of living other than emotional control. Even if his wasn't very proper comparatively.

"Without choice, Liyar, there is no purpose to life. We become robotic without it. Monotonous. Automatons. Without choice, we go insane," Maenad told him. She frowned, her pedantic side wanting to correct herself. "In the past, some people were born without choice because of religion or conservative ideologies. They didn't go insane because it was all they'd ever known, but they were measurably less happy than those who had freedom of mind and choice. But when a person who is free loses their ability to choose, they invariably lose themselves in some way or another. Fortunately all humans are now free to choose whatever kind of life they wish." She shrugged tilted her head somewhat. "Maybe that is what is happening to you; you are realising what it is like to be free of mind. Perhaps your exposure to human culture has revealed certain flaws in the logic of Vulcan society. You should be able to choose your friends and what to do with your life, Liyar, no matter what kind of blood runs through your veins."

Liyar gave her a sort of blank look. "Some choices, they are logical," he agreed. "Others, are considered very improper." He wasn't trying to argue, but he did not sound very convinced. But that was in essence true, wasn't it? "I could not choose to do other than my duty." And whether or not he chose a mate, in seven years, it would be done regardless. He was only here now because T'Maile had said so. "I suppose that I could," he granted. "But it would not be honorable."

"What about your duty to yourself?" she asked him gently. That was the most important thing to her.

That made him pause for a minute. "It could be said that as far as my own honor goes, that I am responsible to ensure my own conduct and to maintain an equitable reputation." Which he obviously had not done. "As a reflection of my competence and position. It would be unsatisfactory to fail." He looked over at her. "What does that mean, to Terrans?" He shook his head. "To you," he corrected. He imagined the answer differed with each of them. It was so unlike Vulcan.

"It means," she started, "that you value more what others think of you than what you think of yourself." Maenad's posture shrunk a little as she looked past him, out the window. Her eyes followed streaking stars until they disappeared behind Liyar's head. "You can be a Vulcan and be unique. You should be. Otherwise, what would make Liyar different from any other Vulcan?" Her eyes met with his.

Of course he could, he thought to himself. Wasn't that what he believed? But Terrans... "You do not - there is no comparison, in your culture? To A'Tha?" Every Vulcan was an individual, certainly, but they were a unique part of a whole system. A unit. A reflection. Every decision reverberated. He could not imagine life without it. It was the center.

Maenad opened her mouth to speak, but she hesitated a moment. "Maybe for some, Liyar, but most humans believe in the betterment of themselves and society as a whole. Through learning to knowledge, respecting each other's wishes. We expect nothing of each other, so long as we are happy and not harming anyone else. I am not judged by others for living the way I do, there is no archetype human persona that I should strive toward. We are free to be the person we choose and suffer no consequences." She frowned, unsure why this should be confusing to him.

"That is the difference," Liyar said as though something dawned on him. "For Vulcans, this cannot be so." Could it? But he knew this. "Were we to choose without any regard, for A'Tha, for our clan, our family. Our friends, acquaintances. Colleagues. Strangers. To disregard the k'war'ma'khon, in pursuit of one's personal goals, it would be highly dishonorable. It would be harmful," he posited. What if he just did not go back? he wondered a little fancifully. What if he stayed on Galileo and did not properly ascend? He could imagine how that would affect... everything. The connections started popping up in his mind, probabilities, statistics. Would it be harmful? Or just different?

Maenad thought he was wrong. It could be so for Vulcans, if they allowed it to be. It was not logical for them to suppress each other's wants and needs. It was not logical to force a person to do something they didn't want to do, to prevent a person from choosing their own path. She wasn't going to argue this with him. She thought that he knew this anyway and was having trouble reconciling it. It was up to him what to do with that knowledge, and it wasn't her place to tell him. She smiled, knowingly, and looked down at her hands in her lap. "Should we go sit down again?" she asked finally; the bench was a little cramped for the two of them.

He studied her for a long moment, as he was prone to doing, before nodding and rising. Unlike the haphazard, jerky movements of earlier's irritation, he was much more at ease this time around. He realized a little belatedly that he essentially had barged in on her and inserted himself without actually pausing to consider her. The irony of that, however, flew over his head. He offered a small telepathic projection of consolation. Not in words, but an odd sense nonetheless of something. Alien, thoughtful. Easier than words. Probably more clear than he could have said it outloud. Whatever it was. He relocated to the couch with her. "You should not sleep on a couch," he mumbled to himself. He picked at the corner of the blanket he'd folded over the couch arm and straightened it.

"No, I shouldn't, but I often do," she admitted with a sigh. Her elbow was on the arm of the couch and her hand was supporting the side of her head, messing her hair. She'd wondered why she rarely fell asleep in her own bed. She always migrated to her bed at some point in the night, but most of the time she always fell asleep on the couch first. It probably had something to do with the fact that in a bed a person could feel very lonely. And despite the attention that Maenad had been getting since coming aboard, she still felt very much alone. "I like to lay out here and read," she told him. "And listen to music watching the stars go by. I can do it in my bed, but the view isn't as whole because only my head looks through the window. Out here I can lay parallel and get a better view."

Liyar stared at his hands. He could feel it again. Aloneness. He kept staring at his hands, but something strange lit up in his eyes while he thought about... his thoughts. Often elusive to even himself, and more strange than ever to anyone else. It bothered him. That she felt this feeling, more than any other one. He did not know why, and he did not ruminate on the motivation. It had bothered him eleven days ago, too. "What is it you read?" he asked, eyes falling on the book which he'd set aside after cleaning up. He stuck the bookmark in the page, at least that was what he thought it was used for.

"Oh," she said, dropping her hand and raising her head. "Fiction. That one is about early space exploration. An expedition to Neptune, the crew is infected with some kind of neural parasite and they kill each other off one by one." Maenad grinned a little, staring at the book on the table. "It's quite disturbing, actually. It scares me a bit."

He picked up the book, flipping it over and glancing at the campy front page with the strange drawings and bold-letter font. Yellow splashed on black, faces twisted into odd contortions against a backdrop of blue. Not for the first time, he thought to himself how strange Terrans were indeed. "Crewman Athlen has attempted to encourage the reading of fiction. I am led to understand that it is a representation, a metaphor. This deals with the subject of fear?"

"Sort of," she said. "Fiction is just imagination. I always think of it as a way for adults to play. As children we play with toys, but we grow out of them as we mature. Our imagination doesn't go away, so we read and write." Maenad looked at him. "There are many genres, yes. That one could be many, though; I would say it's a drama, horror, mystery, and suspense all in one. It plays to the fears of early human space exploration. I like it." She laughed a little for some reason.

"Imagination," Liyar repeated dully, arching an eyebrow. Standing there with the book in his hands giving it a quintessentially Vulcan expression just spoke to how peculiar he found that concept.

Maenad rolled her eyes, watching him stand. "Yes, don't Vulcans imagine?" She pressed on her eyes with the fingers of her resting arm.

"Not as such," Liyar answered predictably. "We are discouraged from engaging in individual subjective analysis."

"I don't believe you," Maenad said flatly. "Everyone has imagination."

"Nevertheless, it is the truth," Liyar looked up curiously. "We do have a subjective analysis. We are trained to suppress it in favor of C'Thia. This imagination that you speak of, it would be a hindrance to the acquisition of total truth." He sounded a little bit like a textbook reciting the tenets of logic rather than someone arguing a point. He knew all too well how discouraged it was. He ran his hand over the cover of the book unconsciously. "There is a benefit to subjective analysis that cannot be quantified by the discussion of total logic. Meditation, for example, is often irrational and free-associative. This fiction is somewhat reminiscent of that process. You indulge in a free-form process in an attempt to dissect and analyze complex emotional and philosophical subjects. But as with any emotional or subjective analysis, on Vulcan, expressing that to others would be considered a taboo."

"Liyar, everyone imagines," Maenad insisted. "You haven't once thought of what it will look like on those moons we're going to explore? Or wondered about some attractive lady in the hallway?" she smirked. "What it would be like if I were to disappear?" She referenced when she asked him how he'd have felt if she left. He had to use his imagination to answer that. "To some degree, you do have an imagination."

"I believe I said that," Liyar replied with a small nod. "However, the type of thinking you are referencing - that is not something natural to Vulcans beyond a certain age. At least, it is not natural to discuss," he amended. "Terrans have a very different way of perceiving such analysis," he determined by her response thus far.

"Fine," Maenad ceded, waving him away with her hands. She wasn't going to fight over imagination. She was imaginative, and no matter what Liyar said she thought that he was too. All intelligent things were. She set her head against the back cushion, looking up through the sloped windows, feeling tired again.

Liyar arched his eyebrows anew. "You think I am intelligent." He didn't smile, shift in expression much or even sound pleased, but somehow, some way, it was evident nonetheless.

Maenad frowned at him. "I don't think you're unintelligent, if that's what you're asking." She didn't understand why he had said that.

Liyar nodded as if that was a good enough answer for him. He handed back the book and folded his hands behind him as he stood. "I see," he said in his odd little way before bowing his head in farewell. "As you appear to once again be fatigued, I shall take my leave. Have a good night, Lieutenant Panne."

Now what had she done? "You're leaving?" she asked, sitting upright, suddenly half-frenzied.

Liyar stilled. He had gotten the distinct impression that she had wanted him to leave. "You do not wish for me to leave?" he asked, turning around and facing her fully.

It was almost 2300 hours, Maenad realised. And she was tired. "Stay as long as you would like, but I am going to go to bed very soon, I think. You are welcome to stay," was the best answer she could come up with, standing. Their conversation from the mess hall had revealed that he sometimes just needed company and that the death of his wife and child were was grating him down, she remembered.

Liyar nodded slowly, standing awkwardly by the door for a few more seconds before returning to the piano bench and sitting down. He ran his hands over the keys in front of him before silently settling into a random tune. It had an odd sense of imperfection about it, like he was still confused as to how to 'hear' it properly, and he fiddled about with it while she sat and read and eventually fell asleep once again, pulling the quilt over herself and turning out the light. A few hours passed before he decided to leave. Although he could have right away, for some reason he stayed and devolved into random tinkering before finally he quietly stood and slipped out shortly after, making sure not to wake her up as he did so.

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

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

RSS Feed