LtJG Jocelyn Marshall - Ceres Violaeque

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Jo Marshall

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Feb 14, 2018, 5:26:35 PM2/14/18
to UFOP: StarBase 118: USS Gorkon
(( Personal Quarters, Deck 13, USS Gorkon ))

:: Lights flickered outside her window, casting sprays and streams of colour into the darkened room. Jo sat on her sofa, legs comfortably tucked up on the cushions, as her fingers flicked through the PADD in her hands. Reports always needing to be written, work never quite being finished, needing something to dwell on other than her experience of being a living snowperson. The journal in her hands, she was trying to articulate exactly what she had experienced in the fissure, and not quite finding the right words. She reached over to the table and picked up the steaming mug of coffee the Doctor has prescribed.

:: Hardly able to concentrate, mind somewhere else entirely, her head dropped back onto the arm of the sofa behind her. The PADD flopped against her chest. Her thoughts had been invaded, focus a prisoner, being pulled into someone else’s gravitational spin. Her eyes drifted to the pot of flora growing on her desk, a reminder of whom her mind revolved around. She took a drink of coffee, set it down, and found herself in front of the plant.

:: She touched the green leaves gently. It was the first living organism she’d ever grown, with a helping hand from the Hydroponics lab and the seed vault. It wasn’t a common flower to be cultivated on a starship; it didn’t have any healing or nutritious benefit in modern medicine, but it was beautiful to look at. It couldn’t be replicated; the preparation and replication of matter couldn’t bring something to life, so she’d had to do this the old fashioned way. The flowers had bloomed a few days before, while she was trapped in an icicle no doubt, and she stroked the heart-shaped petals with the pad of her thumb.

:: This was so unlike her; she was calm, she was (so she believed) charming, she was usually collected, and she didn’t lose her mind or her sleep over someone’s smile that made her blood pressure rocket. But, there it was. Words uttered “I’d like that”, spoken between towering redwoods, turning into something else.

:: Exasperatedly, she huffed, hands on her hips, and walked between the sofa and the desk a few times, before running her hands through her hair and chewing on a thumbnail. She was being ridiculous; it was a plant! It was stupid, and silly, and a million other words that wouldn’t come to her mind because a pair of hazel eyes and a freckled nose threw them all out to make room for midnight subspace messages and long drives up through mountain ranges.

:: Jo sat down on the sofa again, her hand on the nape of her neck, watching the organism as though it would blow up in a fraction of a second. At war with a plant. It had to go.

:: Decision made, she tapped a command into her PADD and in mere moments a blue haze had gripped the flowering potted violet petaled planet, vanishing it into thin air, contained in a quarantined forcefield. The feeling that remained was a mixture of relief and anxiety. She’d miss the blooming flora, miss the scent following her around her quarters.::

Marshall: Computer, compose and send message to Doctor Erin Reynolds.

:: She bit her bottom lip and smiled to herself, at the thought of the surprised expression on the Doctor’s face at receiving hydroponically grown living wild violets instead of a bunch of replicated dead stems. There were worse things to give to someone, especially an emerging botanist. Jo suppressed the nagging thought that Erin wouldn't like it, and vocalised the sentiment the gift was intended for.::

Marshall: “Happy Birthday, Erin. Have a lovely day.”



TBC

Lieutenant (JG) Jocelyn Marshall
Operations Officer
USS Gorkon
G239304JM0
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