On the drabble fest again

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

What better way to celebrate our adventurous women than with a selection of quotations about travel? These are all the quotes I wrote for inspiration on the inside covers of my very first travel journal, and I hope they are equally inspiring for you. As always, take them in whatever way interests you - not every story you write has to be about travel.

The rules are probably quite familiar by now, but here they are anyway:

1) Prompts are not exclusive. There is no limit on the number of people who may write about a prompt, and there is no need to claim prompts.

2) Post responses in the comments and include the lead character and your prompt in the subject line. If you choose a long prompt, you may use just the first few words.

3) Responses may be any length from a proper 100-word drabble to a multi-chapter epic. If the story is too long for comments, you may post it elsewhere and comment with the link.

4) There is no time limit for this challenge. I will return to index the responses in a week or so.

5) Please leave feedback, respond to feedback, and pimp this post around.

6) If your response is rated NC-17 or would require a content warning (for rape, graphic violence, etc.), you may post it in the comments here but you must include the relevant rating or warning in the subject line.

ETA: Responses indexed as of 10/18/09

1. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon, our ears don't hear the sounds around us...we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.
--Kent Nerburn
Yeoman Rand by venomlaced
Winona by agirlnamedskip

2. Strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
--Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

3. Of course world travel isn't as good as it seems, it's only after you've come back from all the heat and horror that you forget to get bugged and remember all the weird scenes you saw.
--Jack Kerouac
Number One by helividia_p

4. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
--Douglas Adams
Gaila by rubynye

5. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
--Mark Twain
Winona by yeomanrand
Valeris (ST VI: The Undiscovered Country) by merisunshine36


6. There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay

7. It's a dangerous business Frodo, going out your door. You step out onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
--J.R.R. Tolkien

8. Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip? Once you're off, that's all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock.
--Charles Lindbergh

9. I saved every cent and then suddenly I blew it all on a big glorious trip to Europe or anywhere...
--Jack Kerouac

10. For myself, indeed, I know now that I have traveled so much because travel has enabled me to arrive at new, unknown places within my own clouded self.
--Lauren Van Der Post

11. You lose sight of things....and when you travel, everything balances out.
--Daranna Gidel

12. Eat dessert first, Life is uncertain
--Anonymous

13. The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
--Samuel Johnson
Ziyal, DS9 by riviyan_questa

14. Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
--Aldous Huxley

15. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust

16. I am going away...to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.
--Sidonie Gabrielle
Romulan Commander from TOS by helvidia_p
Gaila by possibly_thrice
Winona by ninhursag

17. I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
--Mark Twain

18. . . .the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.
--Paul Theroux

19. I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.
--Caskie Stinnett

20. We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
--Hilaire Belloc

21. Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
--Jack Kerouac

22. A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
--John Steinbeck

23. All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
--Martin Buber

24. It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
--Paul Theroux
Number One by boosette

25. The Germans have a word to describe the chronic affliction many of us suffer from, that insistent urge to be somewhere out there and not here: "Fernweh". It's the opposite of being homesick; instead, it's a pining to be not-home, to be away, way away, because that's where you feel at home.
--Joe Robinson
Winona by framlingem

26. I realized I had a choice: I could stay...and gorge myself on all that lay piled on my plate, or I could leave hungry with the desire to return.
--Victoria Abbot Ricardi

27. When you see someone putting their big boots on, you know it's time for an adventure.
--Winnie the Pooh

28. All those shining stars in the firmament you have touched with the intention of holding, you now find your grasp releasing and they are gone, existing only in your memory -- and theirs.
--Jan Haag

29. Many of the most terrifying moments of my life never happened.
--Jan Haag
Ezri Dax (DS9) by jncar
Saavik in the Reboot-verse by saavikam77

30. Go alone. Go alone. Go alone.
--Jan Haag

(All the Jan Haag ones are from this article about traveling alone if anyone is curious)

Comments

25. Fernweh (Winona)

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

Her mother always said she had itchy feet, when she came home late and covered in mud, soaked to the skin and grinning like a wild thing. Itchy feet, and not enough sense to come in out of the rain. That's not right, always thought Winona, It's not just my feet. My feet are fine.

The next day, there would be another tree, another stream, another street.

When Winona finally learned to drive and got her license, she spent the money she'd been saving since she was twelve on a car. It was old and the repulsor field didn't always work right, back left corner jouncing constantly, but it was hers and the discomfort was all worth it, to go tearing down back roads, to be able to get up and go further than she'd gone before, all the trees and streams and town streets well-travelled, well-explored, mapped forever like invisible wires on her skin, squeezing. She didn't need to ask her mother anymore when she needed to go. It was glorious.

When she was eighteen, she stood in a geography classroom and gazed at the wall-map of the Earth in modified Mercator projection she'd been staring at all year. It's so big, she thought. Then she turned to the other wall, covered in a centuries-old photograph of the Earth taken from near where Serenity Colony would be, taken by an astronaut whose name escaped her. It's so small, she thought, and the next day she shook off her mother's hand and walked into the Starfleet recruitment office, and told them she was going places.

The day she set foot aboard her first berth, and into the Stellar Cartography lab with its giant window on the stars, she knew she was home. Except when she was on leave, she never had to wake up in the same place twice again. The wires on her skin loosened a little, and the itch beneath it lessened. The ship itself was old, and didn't gleam, but she loved it with every cell of her.

George always understood. He loved their home, and loved his roots, but he loved her and understood that to love a wild thing is to never quite be able to keep it.

Winona loved the open spaceways. She loved her son, and wanted to share them with him when he was old enough; but she'd come home, and he'd misbehaved again, and how could she reward that? Every time before the shuttle landed in Iowa, she'd close her eyes and think, Please, Jimmy, please give me a reason to reward you, but then he'd have failed in school, not showing up for an entire month, or stolen a car, and her heart broke a little, and when leave was over she'd kiss him and get back on the shuttle alone.

[yeomanrand.livejournal.com]

Oh, I liked this. And I love the implication that Winona knows Jim has the same wanderlust.

Re: 25. Fernweh (Winona)

[boosette.livejournal.com]

I really feel like this oughtn't break my heart so much, but it does and in the best possible way.

I love your Winona, and I also love your Winona's Mom, because we see her cast in an antagonistic role and here she's, well, she's A Mom, flawed not particularly great at understanding her kid, but not horrible. ♥

Re: 25. Fernweh (Winona)

[merisunshine36.livejournal.com]

I love this Winona; so feisty and hella fierce.

Mercator projection---I totally get off on that geography jargon. rawr.

Re: 25. Fernweh (Winona)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

This is what I was reaching for with my ficlet last drabble-post. Well and gorgeously done.

Re: 25. Fernweh (Winona)

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

Goddamn it, how do you always do this? *dissolves into extremely happy goo* Your Winona is so plain, and so fantastic.

Re: 25. Fernweh (Winona)

[alder-knight.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! I get that same itch. She reads very real in this drabble.

The bit at the end - Jim's always his own worst enemy, isn't he? Sad for them both.

Unlimited 1/2 (#1 and #5) ~955 words

[yeomanrand.livejournal.com]

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
--Mark Twain

She's lonely and wild, come to Starfleet Academy after nineteen years in the sticks with a half-cracked grandmother she loves as meat loves salt. The city surprises her, exhilarates her; the Academy a revelation because she's never seen so many people in one place at one time, not even in Iowa City when grandma had taken her there to see her parents' grave. She's never been in school before but she'd passed her yearly educational exams with flying colors, top percentages every time, especially in mathematics. She'd torn down and rebuilt her grandma's old truck once a year from the time she was twelve; each time the old beast ran a little smoother.

When she was fifteen, gran had come in to the barn to find Winona standing in front of the plans she'd drawn on the walls, lips twisted, considering the diagram of the changes she wanted to make to the compression engine of the thresher and the calculations she'd made to be sure the energy expenditure would be sufficiently improved. She'd half-expected a scolding, but she'd also been careful to use charcoal on the whitewashed surface so the plans could be easily washed off when she was done; she'd just needed a bigger canvas to think on than the screen of her padd. But grandma'd stood there, studying Winona's design, and then stepped forward to swipe away one of Winona's careful lines. After that, they'd worked together, and Winona'd been given her grandmother's design books and old programs.

They never really talked about Winona going to the Academy, but then a week could pass without the two of them saying more than "pass the spanner" or "pass the peas." And when Winona'd received notification of her acceptance, her grandma just smiled and patted her hand.

Two weeks into classes, and Winona knows this is where she's meant to be. She loves being around her fellow classmates, and while she's a little surprised how many of them flirt with her, she's neither offended nor interested. She's respectful to the instructors, and quickly grasps the workings of and her place within the academic and military hierarchy. She's gregarious when she wants to be, and withdrawn when she's working. She's not sure if she has friends, but there are people she likes to be around, and people who like her company, and as far as she's concerned that's the way things should work. Grandma taught her how naming changes a thing, gives hard edges and bright lines and colors people's perceptions, and Winona doesn't want to limit her relationships with other people. Machines can't be freeform or they don't work, but people, she knows, need to be flexible.

This is how they meet.

She's on her knees, smudges of oil and grease on her face and her reds, trying to help an older group of cadets figure out why one of the simulators has stopped working. She glances up when her hands brush another's; her eyes meet the bluest eyes she's ever seen. Cobalt blue, she thinks, or perhaps blueprint blue; and she realizes they've both got their hands on the same gear.

"Ladies first," he says, releasing the metal with a quick grin, and she sighs.

"No ladies here," she says, "just mechanics and engineers." But she still pulls the gear loose, and sure enough finds a loose flange and a slipped belt hidden beneath.

Winona forgets to ask his name, which she doesn't realize until later, when she's telling her grandmother about him.

Re: Unlimited 2/2 (#1 and #5) ~955 words

[yeomanrand.livejournal.com]

She doesn't see him again until after final exams, when they end up on the same shuttle. This time, she asks his name up front, and he laughs.

"George Kirk."

She resolves to make him laugh often. "Winona Emerson."

He's already calling her "Wy" by the time they land. They exchange comm codes and addresses before he's swept away by well-meaning relatives. She turns and smiles at her grandmother, who is waiting patiently and holds out her hands for an embrace.

Christmas Eve, George surprises Winona with a visit, and she takes him on his first sleigh ride. Her grandmother gives the two of them a sharp look and a sharper nod before Winona snaps the reins, and George looks back for a long moment.

"I don't think she likes me," he says, settling back down much closer to Winona's side. She shifts over a bit as well, drawn to his warmth.

"Are you kidding?" She laughs. "That was tantamount to permission to propose."

"Huh. Do you want to?"

She turns to look at him. His cheeks and the tip of his nose are rosy with the chill, and his blue eyes sparkle with unspoken challenge. Family, she realizes, can be unlimited, and sudden as this is she knows every human connection requires a leap of faith.

"George Kirk, do you want to marry me?"

He laughs again; she pulls the mare to a halt and he reaches up to curl his mitten-clad hand around the back of her neck.

"Winona Emerson," he says, and despite the laughter lingering in his eyes she knows he's just as serious about this as she is. "I would be honored."

24. Paul Theroux (Number One) 1/2

[boosette.livejournal.com]

ad astra
It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.

"Mother and Father only ever fight about you," her sister Tetra, who is only seven and can be forgiven for her narrow childish understanding of the world, says, "I wish you would disappear."

One sits quietly in the atrium of her family's home, on a bench far enough from her parents' bedroom that she does not call attention to herself, yet close enough for her to hear nearly every hushed, angry word to pass between them. She scrapes her feet against the mosaic tile floor, the stylized images of her home system and her people's deities pebbly-rough beneath her sandaled feet and her skirt catching around her ankles.

A small bag sits packed at her feet, weight three point five one Federation Standard kilograms. She will need to remove an item or two to place the carryall back under weight, save that she has already pared down her belongings ten times over.

Her teachers at the educational facilities for young women say that she is a sneak and a handful, but her quick deft hands move over harpstrings and traditional, artisanal looms as easily as her stylus scans ancient lines of poetry, as her taps and clicks pick out lines of coding in the back of her personal data storage device. As effortlessly as her neck stretches upward so that she may bathe her face in starlight when she knows no one is watching.

She is first among her peers, would be first among all the individuals of her age and many some years older if she were given the chance to stand even against them.

Disappearing would be rather too simple a solution, she thinks, and it also lacks the sort of flair she prefers.

"Prima Marcae Oratae," her tutor tells her, after standard-day classes are finished and the evening draws in, "Your efforts today were satisfactory. You are dismissed to your play."

One nods her thanks, eyes down as is proper and she hates it; she ought to thank her teacher and her friend to his face. Instead she lingers outside the small ala where her she has studied since the beginning of her conscious memory, just far enough to one side that Father does not notice her there.

"Your daughter continues to surpass my expectations. She has a fine mind, " her tutor says, and One swells with pride at the compliment. It would have been unseemly to deliver such praise to her directly, yet that Father receives it in her stead is nearly as good. She does not hear the next words, her father's reply, but her tutor speaks in a strong clear voice when he says, "It is a shame to see such intellect wasted on a girl child."

The words feel worse than Secunda's fingernails digging into her arm when verbal sparring leads to a tumble , or how Qinta's idea of fun is leaving a frog in or a lizard in her bed, though her littlest sister still believes that all things slimy and scaly are amazing and can be forgiven for the hurts she causes with them. One thinks of her sisters as she shuffles to the peristylium and manages not to look too much like she is running away.

Her sisters would not chew a thumbnail down to the quick and dip their hands into the courtyard fountain when the blood trickles up. Her sisters' eyes would well at a bad fall and a scraped knee, not a few kind harsh words.

24. Paul Theroux (Number One) 2/2

[boosette.livejournal.com]

"She is not a son, Marcus," One's mother says, voice raspy; One strains to listen and scoots further toward her parents room on the bench. Mother continues, "Each day you indulge her fancies like this you head further up the stair and set up a longer fall."

"Tertia - " Father begins, but Mother will hear none of it. One imagines her, face drawn in the lines of hard life, one hand on her hip and the other clasped over her swollen belly like she means to keep the new baby inside through force of will alone. Fine strong nose and straight dark brows that make her look far more imposing than One knows she is.

"She is not a son, and she will not much longer be a child. What then? How will she fare in her husband's house, without your wing around her shoulders to protect her?"

Their voices lower then, and One is hard pressed to catch more than rustles and murmurs no matter how hard she listens or how good her ears. Moments later Father emerges from the chamber and she realizes she has been leaning; he casts her a glare of admonition and then shakes his head with a sad smile. One knows that Father is more indulgent than he ought to be.

"Prima," he says, "Are you coming? The shuttle won't wait long for us." He has a bag slung over his shoulder and an attache case in his free hand; One scrambles with the long strap of her own bag, tangling it around her body. She should have packed the datachip with her star charts, she thinks, but it's too late for that now.

"Yes, of course!" she says, falling into step beside Father as they leave.

Her feet feel heavy on the ground.


One is twelve years old the first time she breaks orbit, feels the rush and pull of her world as it tries to clutch her to its blue-brown-and-white breast; the first time she feels the rush of blood and flip of her stomach as atmosphere falls away and the vacuum of still space envelopes and welcomes their craft. She squeezes her father's hand tight and thinks that she never wants to leave.

Re: 24. Paul Theroux (Number One) 1/2

[yeomanrand.livejournal.com]

Ouch, and yet lovely.

I really liked this pair of lines: Her sisters would not chew a thumbnail down to the quick and dip their hands into the courtyard fountain when the blood trickles up. Her sisters' eyes would well at a bad fall and a scraped knee, not a few kind harsh words.

#5. Counterpoint (Valeris)

[merisunshine36.livejournal.com]

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did." -Mark Twain

Valeris does not belong in Starfleet, but instead on the russet-colored earth of the province of Khomi, where the wind sings high and fierce as it plays about the cliffs at night. Born into a small village noted for its skilled musicians, her earliest memories are of being lulled to sleep by the warm, sweet timbre of her father’s voice, safe within the walls of their subterranean dwelling.

At ten years, six months, and eighty-three days old, Valeris visits a spacedock for the first time to bid the able-bodied members of her village farewell, her mother and father among them. They are part of a delegation chosen to represent Vulcan on a tour of Federation space in a bid to promote interplanetary unity through cultural exchange. Valeris presses her hand to her mother’s calloused fingers before she boards the shuttle, politely requesting that she bring back one of the fabled water drums of North America. Her mother promises, despite the illogic inherent in bringing a water instrument to a desert planet.

When Valeris’ uncle calls her into his study not three weeks later, she knows the news cannot be good. The ship’s living cargo was too sweet a target for the Klingons to ignore, people whisper. It was over in a matter of minutes; there were no survivors.

Valeris goes quietly into her room and takes up her lyre, ignoring the pain in her hands as she breaks each of the strings one by one. She never plays again.

But now Valeris feels the rhythms of her childhood once more, her blood thrumming with the songs of revenge. At 132 years old, the Federation is still young and foolish enough to let Klingons into the fold. But not all is lost, there are others who will not stand aside and let soft-minded bureaucrats make a mockery of those who have been sacrificed. Together, they will put an end to this conference, and the deaths of her people will not have been in vain.

Valeris’ steps on the way to sickbay are silent and sure. She takes a deep breath, the muscles in her arm as taut as the strings on her beloved ka’athyra, and sets her phaser to kill.

Re: #5. Counterpoint (Valeris)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I love the viewpoints of villains, when they are well-drawn and presented with clarity and nuance. This is gorgeous.

I may not have gone where I intended to go...

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Gaila doesn't want to return to an Orion Prime she never knew.

Until she runs away, she actually never knows that her people still had a planet; she thought they were all pirates and slaves, clans and alliances loosely organized by the Syndicate which preys on the spaceways. When the Starfleet officers bring her to a starbase for primary orientation, they tell her all about her ancient homeland, now a civilized partner of the Federation (since all its renegades headed for the stars, or so they say), and they encourage her subtly, then not so subtly, to repatriate. They tell her she'll be at home there among other Orions like her.

Gaila thinks about the establishment where she worked, about the rainbow of sentients pouring endlessly through its doors, bringing stories and accents and trinkets and treats from all over the galaxy. She doesn't miss the work or watching her friends there wilt under it, the people they never chose, the ones who hurt them. She doesn't miss living in a cage, even one the size of a space station. But she thinks she'll miss the galaxy if she turns her back on it now.

So she smiles as prettily as she remembers how, and asks the Starfleet officers to send her to Earth so she can apply for Federation citizenship. They blink, and their eyes glaze a little, and then they smile back and Gaila knows she's on her way.

Re: I may not have gone where I intended to go...

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

I LOVE YOUR GAILA SO MUCH OMG.

Sorry. I just. This is perfect.

16. I am going away...to an unknown country (Romulan Commander)

[helvidia-p.livejournal.com]

Link at my journal: Being Again (http://helvidia-p.livejournal.com/589.html#cutid1)

16. I am going away...to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name... (Gaila) (1/2)

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, at night, the Mother comes to her chamber and gathers information or expresses expectations directly. On these nights Gaila lies flat on the mattress, face buried in a cushion that has poetry written in the pattern of the threads, raw on her cheek, while the Mother's ludicrous, sprawling weight crushes artificial straw, and the Mother runs soft fingers down the ridged length of Gaila's spine.

Body language. Oblique suggestions encoded in her chemical signature and in the rhythm of her polished nails scraping through tender skin to bone.

And while it is a rare evening that Gaila has not spent entertaining a client (and herself), the Mother never seems perturbed by the pheromone waves that inevitably permeate the cloying, sweet, heat-hazy air after such transactions, like blood soaking through a woman's skirts. On occasion, Gaila does detect a subtle tremor in the Mother's strong, dangerous hands, near the end of their longest conversations, the ones wherein the fewest spoken words are exchanged, the ones that leave her shoulders bruised purplish green.

Waiting for that slight tremor distracts her from the conversations themselves, though, and that is reason enough to do it.

Oh, spirits above, the conversations.

Gaila knows she is famous, and extraordinary, and desired. She knows her DNA is being sold for the making of beautiful children who will serve the Syndicate. (At sixteen years of age, she has a hundred daughters. Sisters? Clones. There are more to come.) She knows her long-eyed pirate owners only bring her to world after world because of this; because connoisseurs of flesh want to glut feast on her heady scent, the muscle-ringed curve of her bared throat, and that she might explore them, and return to Orion, brimming with secrets.

She knows she used to be content trading knowledge, happy, even, that the price for crossing the length and breadth of the galaxy was so cheap: that all it took was learning to control men very willing to be controlled, and having a great deal of sex, the one thing she enjoyed almost as much as visiting other planets. That was why she let her biological mother sell her, after all, when she was six and on the cusp of everything that mattered, instead of going into the jungle and not coming back, as her still-immature friends advised her. The strange, perverted science of manipulating her own pheromones for a purpose other than open communication didn't terrify her when she was five. It didn't terrify her all through the years of learning it.

But it terrifies her now, now that she is good at it, perhaps the best at it of her age; now, feeling the Mother's advice sink into her latissimus dorsi.

16. I am going away...to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name... (Gaila) (2/2)

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

She knows, she thinks, too much. It was never supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be a beautiful vessel, washed clean of sordid details at every debrief, and free to luxuriate in her memories of alien skies and alien hands without a thought for the shady deals wrapped like plastic webbing around the neutral zone, or for what, in fact, she is. She did not expect self-awareness. But her skull aches long after the Mother leaves and the more useful she is, the more important, the more the Mother says, and the clearer and crueler Gaila's understanding.

And she begins to pay attention to that tremor in Mother's hands for other reasons. She may not like control, but she does have a talent for it. And.

And.

Old dreams unfolding. The midnight conferences become frequent. The possibilities become impossible to ignore. Gaila wants out. She wants to be what she was promised: a pure thing, all joy. Something new. Something glorious. And if there's a way to not want but have? For she is an expert, they've given her the tools, and although she does not know it, Gaila is brilliant, too. In the moments between, so slowly that the thinking burns her insides, she conceives of algorithms constructed entirely of endorphins and gustatory perceptions and broken skin; the right reactions, the right compounds, put together, ready to pry open the universe like an oyster. The Mother's hands shake every night she comes, almost upon entering the room, and the Mother's mouth is curled over pain so gradually instilled she never notices its presence. Gaila doesn't breathe much any more, but that doesn't matter, not when she is finally forgetting, lost in her desperate scheme.

And:

"Something has changed," the Mother says, aloud, hands several inches away from Gaila's slick poisonous skin, and she crumples to her knees, dazed, hopelessly drunk on echoes of hatred she's been absorbing for months.

Everything is about to, Gaila replies, silently, an exhalation on the Mother's too-close, monstrous face, which has twisted into a flower, an abstraction. She raises herself up on her elbows from the mattress while the Mother stares, and she takes the Mother's soft jaw in her hands, and she pinches the double chin, translating as best she can. She says, I am going, by breaking the Mother's neck.

She kneels. She stands.

*

A/N: In which I try to figure out my position on ENT canon, basically. *sigh*

29. Haag, Ezri Dax (DS9)

[jncar.livejournal.com]

Many of the most terrifying moments of my life never happened.
--Jan Haag

Ezri Dax sees Worf on her way back to her quarters and smiles. He turns his eyes away and walks past like she doesn't exist. It's hard for her not to cry.

That night she is flying a shuttle when everything goes horribly wrong. She's losing power, going down. She can see the hills and trees rushing toward her from below. She tries to straighten up, tries to slow down, but the landscape comes ever closer. The shuttle shakes and rattles so hard she can feel it in her bones. The trees are so close she can count the leaves.

Then pain, and blood, and fire.

She wakes sweating, and goes to her bathroom to splash cold water on her face. "It was Torias. Not me. I don't fly shuttles. I'm Ezri. It was Torias." Despite her words, she expects to see his face when she looks in the mirror.

A few nights later after making a fool of herself in front of Julian and the Chief she finds herself stalking a neighborhood in the black of night. She wears a hooded cloak and a mask. A knife is clutched in her gloved hand. The door to her prey's home isn't even locked. It's easy to slide into the closet in his office and wait. Soon he comes to work at his desk, sitting with his back to her. She feels rage and excitement welling. This is the moment she's been waiting for.

She steps from the shadows. He barely has time to react before she's sliding the knife between his ribs. The knife is sharp, but she is still surprised at how easy it is. No harder than slicing a steak.

Ezri pulls herself out of slumber. Her hands shake as she walks to the replicator to get a drink. "Joran," she murmurs. "I am not Joran." But she still remembers how much force it takes to push a blade through humanoid flesh.

In spite of Benjamin's encouragement she still feels out of place here. A few days later she walks by the Bajoran Temple, and, again, lingers to stare.

That night she stands before the Orb inside the temple uttering a half-believing prayer to ask for blessings in conceiving a child with her husband. She is interrupted by Gul Dukat, possessed by the pah-wraith entities. He blasts her with alien energy, convulsing every muscle in her body, sapping her life force.

Later, she hears Julian's voice over her, despairing. She finds the strength to ask him to save the symbiont. If the symbiont lives on, so will she.

This time Ezri is shaking with anger when she wakes. "No," she insists. "No. I don't die like that. I am a warrior--a member of the House of Martok. Enemies don't catch me by surprise. I don't die without a fight. No!"

She pulls on her clothes and makes her way to Quark's. Though it's early, the bar is already open for the breakfast crowd. She ignores the way Quark leers at her when he hands her the holosuite program she requested, and makes her way upstairs.

Soon she holds a bat'leth in her hands, and stalks through dark caves. An opponent springs out at her, and she swings her blade. His weapon meets hers, and her arms nearly crumple under the blow. He throws her back against the jagged wall, knocking her sword from her hands. She screams as he raises his blade for a killing blow. "Computer, end program!"

Her opponent and the caves vanish. She sinks to her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"I am not Jadzia," she pants. "I'm just Ezri. Plain little Ezri."

Later that day she stands on the upper deck of the promenade, looking out at the stars. The symbiosis commission keeps urging her to get their help. To come home.

But she feels like she's traveled five billion light years from Trill. It's not home anymore. Yet she believes that home is out there, somewhere.

She wonders how far she'll have to travel to find it. Or if she'll even have to travel at all. Maybe home is right here under her feet, but she just hasn't found it yet.

Re: 29. Haag, Ezri Dax (DS9)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

This makes my heart bleed for her.

9. I saved every cent... (Number One)

[helvidia-p.livejournal.com]

On top of the world

"You are of appropriate age," says the First Instructor, "and you have not failed to fulfill your genetic promise. 2227 I recognize you, One."

One looks at him out of the corner of his eye, as he passes to the next adolescent, and the next. As the most perfect production of that year's breeding, she has always known what Illyria expects of her, and she has never failed it. The designations of other children have shifted over the years, as experience revised the predictions of genetics, but she has never not been One. Now that preliminary training has finished, she will never lose that name.

Being the best has its rewards, she thinks, as the brief ceremony concludes and she accepts the congratulations of her parentals and her friends. Nothing is barred to her on Illyria. Any university will welcome her, she will excel in any discipline and rise in any career, any appropriately-aged male will desire her if she deigns to pick him for a companion. It is not only that she is One -- she has won. And now, all she has to do is choose.

In the evening, in her room after the party, she sits at her desk, twirling a stylus instead of making a list. There are logical ways to decide her future: she can parse her options to maximize her economic value, to rise highest in rank, to achieve the most renown, or to fulfill the wishes that her parentals think are a secret from her. She might achieve two of these things, if she settled for a slight decrease from perfection in each. Choices spin and pour like data scrolling on a computer screen, but although those numbers never disobey her, these will not settle. Some command eludes her, some variable that she still must program, some...desire yet unaccounted for.

"Endings and new beginnings are always hard," 2183, Four says to her when she tries to explain her quandary. "But we're all so proud of you, One. You can do anything you want, and we know you'll succeed!"

The problem that she cannot explain, One thinks to herself, is that she does not want to do anything. But she thanks her parental, kisses her good-night, and goes up to the roof. At her back Illyria's two moons are just glimmering through the clouds, but the stars are gone, and One can imagine to herself that the blackness goes on without a limit in space or time, and that she is standing on the only moment in the universe that exists. It is not sensible and not helpful; it is not even true: she can have anything, and she is here dreaming of nothingness? But what would happen, if she stepped out into the void?

One sits down and crosses her legs, then leans back on her elbows, and soon she is supine, staring up the darkness. She has been off-planet half a dozen times, for school trips and an occasional vacation. But Ilyrians do not leave their planet for long: it is too messy out there, too disordered and subjective and unamenable to categorization. One is the most superior being of her age on Illyria; no one has ever tried to sort all the beings in the Federation in such a way, let alone all the beings in the galaxy, but she suspects that if they did, she would not rank at the top anymore. If she leaves Illyria, her future of superlativity is gone; her infinite choices are gone; her limitless opportunity to be the best as whatever she chooses to be is gone. Ridiculous even to think of it. Why have to struggle to prove yourself somewhere else when you already hold proven superiority here?

But One continues to lie there in the warm night, until the clouds disperse and the moons have gone down, and the black is all over with stars.

Re: 9. I saved every cent... (Number One)

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

I really love the back story you've created here. It reminds me a little of The Giver and 1984. What I really admire is the subtly of the characterization -- even though no overt reason for her desires is stated, I can picture her staring longingly up at the stars.

1. We Wake Up Someday (Rand)

[venomlaced.livejournal.com]

She adjusted her hair in the mirror for the millionth time this shift. Then again, her shift was over. What was the point now? It’s not like he would see. He never looked anyway. She scoffed at herself, “You’re a sick pup Janice Rand. A love fool for a Star Fleet Captain.” She murmured all of this to her frowning reflection. The more her mind followed her usual thought patterns, the more her frown deepened. It wasn’t long before she was scowling. She had heard the whispers. “Why is basket head even here?” That’s what they all called her. Reflexively, her fingers jabbed into the intricately weaved hair. Trying to rip out the style only caused her physical distress to worsen her mental state. She slid to the floor and continued picking at the strands and chunks, tears streaming down her face. Enterprise was filled to the nacelles with geniuses. Some of the best minds of the era had relegated her to the position of a secretary. While they twiddled or toiled in their little clusters calculating and processing, her and the rest of the yeomen acted as the go betweens. They made sure that the information was properly managed and implemented. All of this was performed efficiently and above standard. She was the Captains personal Yeoman. The one who made sure they got their leave and their meals…the one who made their lives on board run smoothly. She was the skirt behind the curtain, quoting the regulations verbatim that Kirk had failed to remember. She was the one that had to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ the Captain forgot. Hell, half her job was the Captains job. Despite all of this the crew only saw a nice ass and a hairstyle that collected the Captain’s signature. “To hell with them”, she sniffed. “I do my job admirably.” Her normal heart rate was returning. “Pull yourself together Janice.” She chided herself further. As she stood she smoothed out her tunic and hair. She turned once again to the mirror. The blonde nest on top of her head was an even bigger wreck than before. The sigh and twitch of her lips was the only response she could muster for the image. She settled at her desk after taking a cool cloth to her face. The PADD held new documents she would have to handle. As the hours wore on she grew weary of the endless feed of information. The bed was looking more welcoming by the minute. She finally gave in and slid onto the soft surface. Her body wasn’t quite ready for sleep so her hands sought out her personal PADD. Sulu had recently sent her some literature. Hikaru was one of the better friends she had on the Enterprise. They conversed often and were known to randomly share media files. They usually became the driving force of their next encounters. The file opened and she read the title. “Letters to my Son” By Kent Nerburn. She scrolled through the passage of the text that Sulu had specifically highlighted. As she read her eyes settled on one portion in particular.

“If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon, our ears don't hear the sounds around us...we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.”

Re: 1. We Wake Up Someday (Rand)

[venomlaced.livejournal.com]

She read them aloud, letting them resonate in the atmosphere. The words spoke to her. Living on a Star Ship she intimately experienced the unknown, and yet her senses were dulled. She had always been vivacious, full of spunk and attitude, ready for adventure. That was why she had joined Star Fleet to begin with. That had all faded. The core concepts of her life had been converted to mechanical management. The only thing she felt even the smallest iota of passion for nowadays was a man who couldn’t return her love. All of her vision was tunneled straight to a ship and it’s Captain. She could see nothing past them, heard nothing but them, and had confined herself to a life she didn’t fully enjoy for people who would never appreciate her. The thoughts were like a slap in the face. Deep down she knew that she had become comfortable in those limitations. She had been so wrapped up in loyalty to her career, and a man, that she had let her dreams smother under a metaphorical pile of documents. That was the slap that hurt her the most. It had happened because she let it. “Not anymore.” She said loudly to herself. Pure joy slowly seeped into her system. Janice Rand wasn’t going to wake up someday. This day was hers to see beyond. Her blue eyes were open and seeking release. They found closure in a transfer slip. Tomorrow was hers to experience with senses fully fledged. This was her knew path, and she would go boldly.

After all, she did have dreams of being a first officer to achieve.

13. The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality. (DS9, Ziyal, G)

[riviyan-questa.livejournal.com]

For six years Tora Ziyal dreamt of the day her father would find her and take her home. Home was a variable. She had no home at Terok Nor anymore, but mostly she did, in her dreams. Sometimes her father would take her to Cardassia; she had never been there, and her only knowledge came from the stories she'd been told. There were no limits to her dreams, because it was her dreams that kept her going, from day to day. She retreated into her imaginary life, different every day but real every day.

One day, her father found her and took her home. He took her to Cardassia, which was nothing like she had imagined it would be. The sky was dull and the streets were quiet-- or maybe just when she was there. At best she was ignored by the people crowded into the city around her. She didn't dream, she just slept, and tried to be happy.

Cardassia once had a great culture of art, and the architecture of Cardassia City quietly reminded those willing to notice that there was a time when such things were celebrated and valued. Ziyal noticed, and her days brightened, little by little. She saw the dull colours around her, the buildings and people and sky the same, blending into each other, and her imagination soared.

She left her home again, and found her back to her first home at Terok Nor. Her first home, but nothing like it. She was alone, but not as she was before. She had become who she was; she imagined and created and had travelled so far to travel so little.

Re: 13. The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality. (DS9, Ziyal, G)

[jncar.livejournal.com]

I like this full-circle picture of Ziyal's development. Nice way to pick up on her artistic tendencies.

16 I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart (Winona)

[ninhursag.livejournal.com]

Winona Jessop's family wasn't one that had held much with the Federation. That's all she ever had to say about it when she turned up in San Fransisco, thirteen years old and unregistered on the Citizen Rolls. There were still people like that, in the nooks and crannies and the quiet places in the hills. They kept to themselves and it was IDIC, wasn't it? Nobody's business until someone complained.

Winona didn't exactly complain. “I'm tired of god and gravity,” she told her social worker after her emancipation hearing was closed. “I want to see the stars.”

He was a harried looking man with bad skin and a PADD full of paperwork he kept clicking through. Forms to file, always forms to file. He smiled at her, like he didn't know why she was still there. “Maybe one of the agricultural colonies? You could do domestic work, I suppose, I don't think you have the math to—”

“I'm not interested in getting stuck in some other gravity well, I've had enough of this one. I want to see all of the stars,” she said. “What about Starfleet? The Academy?”

His smile stretched out, like a self-parody, “Young lady,” he said. “It would be one thing if you were planning to be a yeoman, but do you know how many people apply to Academy? They turn away valedictorians. Your education-- what is your education anyway?”

She didn't smile back at him, she didn't smile at all. Her face was too thin but that just made her eyes bigger and bluer and a shade more serious. “Tell me what I need to know and I'll learn it.”

He patted her on the head and gave her a creaky old textbook on a second hand PADD. “It's nice to have ambitions, I suppose,” he muttered. “Best of luck to you, young lady.” She didn't wince when he touched her.

A semester later, one Winona Jessop, armed with an indifferent education and a head full of equations to make up for it, crossed the gates into Starfleet Academy. She didn't smile, but she felt a burst of satisfaction every time her newly issued uniform boots clacked against the pavement under her feet. They felt like boots that could kick through anything.

Once she got to the stars, she knew she was never coming back. Not for god or anyone.

Re: 16 I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart (Winona)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Oh, this made me cheer. Kick through anything and everything, Winona!

29. Haag (Saavik - reboot!!)

[saavikam77.livejournal.com]

29. Many of the most terrifying moments of my life never happened. --Jan Haag

As sure as she is that Vulcan--true Vulcan--is long-dead, Saavik is certain there are horrific moments she has experienced, and yet has not and will likely never experience. It is the ultimate paradox to her, but she knows--she knows that these things have both happened and not happened.

It isn't any sort of mysticism or trick of the mind, nor any deceit or mental disability. It is simply the result of living much of her life with a man who should not be, and yet is. The man she knows as her 'grandfather', for lack of a better term, Ambassador Selek to many, Spock to a few, has seen and lived through so many things that have not come to pass, and through nothing more than simple casual contact, a hug, a pat on her shoulder, she has come to see them, too.

Saavik knows.

She has seen the anguish of growing up on lonely, long-deserted colony planet, with no mother or family, living as an animal, unclothed, underfed, wild and angry. And yet even now her mother is a doctor, serving aboard the Excelsior, and Saavik has no memory of the harsh world she was born into, having lived on New Vulcan as long as she can remember until her enlistment.

She has seen the frustration of knowing no control over her own mind and heart, torn into pieces by her contradictory nature. But she has never felt such enraged strength of the opposing forces within herself, never to that degree, as she's known logic and the Vulcan way since she was a tiny child.

She has seen the destruction of a verdant world that her Romulan blood has often sung for on cool desert nights, a world ripped apart by its own sun. But Romulus is intact and green and living, and will continue to be until ages pass.

She has seen atrocities committed in the name of revenge by a madman. A madman who is now sealed away in stasis, and will never be free to either desire or exact such revenge.

She has seen her grandfather die, a life sacrificed for the good of the many. But he is at this moment a man of advanced age, living out his life in the service of his kind, teaching young Vulcans the treasures of their heritage.

And she has seen a young man--a vibrant, troubled young man--give his life to the blade of a Klingon in exchange for hers, crimson pooling below him on the fertile earth of a planet that was moments from tearing itself apart.

Making her way across the main Academy quad, Saavik finds the young man sitting alone on a bench, scrolling through a document on a PADD, alive and well, and definitely not troubled. She's known for a long time that he was the man she'd seen, the son of a scientist and a Starfleet Captain, destined in another lifetime to meet an early end, and she's... glad that that destiny doesn't belong to this man. Whatever might have happened in that other lifetime, what Saavik knows of the here and now is that this is right.

His head raises from his work as she approaches, and a grin moves over his face. "Saavik! I'm just finishing up with this. You ready?" he asks, standing and stashing the PADD in a pocket of his red uniform pants. "I understand Dad's on the simulation team today."

"I'm ready," she nods to him, accepting his outstretched hand as they turn to walk toward the Command-training facilities together, Saavik's first attempt at the Kobayashi Maru test just a half-hour hence. "And Admiral Kirk, Captain Spock, Commander Uhura, and Doctor McCoy are all on the simulation team today. You would know that if you'd read the briefing packet," she finishes with a good-natured rib, one up-swept eyebrow raised.

Allowing the corner of her mouth to lift in a tiny quirk of a smile, only for David to see as he chuckles at her teasing and reaches up to tuck an errant curl of hair behind her left ear, Saavik is grateful that so much of what she knows will never come to pass. Of all the possible realities to live in, this is the one she prefers.

* * * * *


A/N: Part of my "Daughters and Sons" 'verse, of which this is the first actual posted piece! :p

Re: 29. Haag (Saavik - reboot!!)

[helvidia-p.livejournal.com]

Oh I like this a lot! I think you captured Saavik's voice perfectly, in the dialogue at the end, and I'm glad she and David get to become friends (and maybe more?) in this universe.

...We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. (Winona)

[skipping]

For the first year after the Kelvin, Winona can't even stand to look at the stars. What they gave her in exchange for what they took is too little. Too little to make her think it is fine that George died. She loves Jim and wouldn't trade him for anything but she just wants the stars, the unknown reaches of space to her back George. Give her back the one bit that she's missing the most. She tells Starfleet she isn't coming back a month after they get back and stays with Jim and Sam. She stops looking up at the stars at night. She won't let them take anything else away from her.

It's been one year and two months since the Kelvin, since she came home with Jim held tightly to her chest and a slightly haunted look in her eyes. She won't look at the stars, look at the unknown, because she's scared. She's settled into a routine. It's simple, but she likes it. It's normal. It keeps her from looking at the stars. It keeps her from leaving to go up there. Keeps her from giving herself back up, offer herself up to those stars. It's safe down in Iowa with her parents and her sons. She's alive and she wants to stay that way.

It's been two years and it's Jim's birthday. It's the anniversary of his father's death, and it's the anniversary of the Kelvin destruction. It's the sign that Winona has lasted another year alive. After the party she puts Sam and Jim to bed, kissing them goodnight and finds that she can't help but look out at the stars. She eyes one and suddenly feels out of place. She almost can't remember this feeling. She hadn't had it since-she stops and blinks realizing it. She hasn't had this feeling since she was a teenager that wanted to get out of Bumfuck, Iowa. She feels trapped in Iowa, in the house, the town. Her dreams of showing the universe that she is the best engineer it has ever seen have fallen by the wayside, put aside so Winona can be protected from ending up like George and leaving Jim and Sam without any sense of a parent. Sure they'd have her parents, but they aren't the same. The stars blink at her, asking her why she's abandoned them, why she won't come back. She frowns and turns to go back inside before she hears her mother.

"You should go back, Winnie. You don't belong down here all the time."

Winona stares at her mother before answering, her voice cracking a little. "I don't wanna die. I'm one of the only things they have left."

Her mother arches an eyebrow. "And your father and I are chopped liver? Winnie-"

"Mom." She glares.

"No, you're going to listen to me. You're dying down here just as much as you'd die up there. It's worse, in fact, you aren't acting like my daughter. My daughter wouldn't be sitting on planet just withering away."

"Mom, I'm not withering away-"

"Don't even. What happened to the Winnie, my little Winnie who told me that she'd fix all those ships up in the sky? Hm? What I see right now is a woman who is too scared of the possibility that she'll die to do what she wants to do. That's not my daughter."

"I-" Winona stops, taking a moment to collect her thoughts. "I don't know. They need me- I need them, they're all I have left of him."

Her mother wraps her arms around Winona and strokes her hair. "They'll be fine. You can still talk to the through comms, Winnie, you need to get back up there. Be my daughter. Be the strong girl I raised and show everyone that no one can put you down."

Winona's voice comes out quiet, almost like a little girl's when she speaks. "Okay."

The next day comes and Winona Kirk decides it's time to show put a Kirk back up in the stars. It wouldn't do to have them think a thing like death is going to bring them down. They're strong. She's strong. She's going to grab her dream again and she won't let it go this time, not for all the universe.