[JP] Lieutenants Amelia Semara & Ras El’Heem - The Biggest and Most Perfect Apology Dinner, Part 4
Max
(( Amelia’s Quarters, Room 145, Deck 14, USS Khitomer ))
Amelia stared at him. Once, as a third-year cadet, part of her training cruise involved executing a mock deep-space rescue of an abandoned starship. She remembered the way the lonely ship looked hanging in a dusty nebula, with all the escape pods already jettisoned. The hull had so many pockets and grooves and missing pieces from where there had been smooth, graceful, unbroken plating. It looked like someone had chiseled something out of it, leaving the damaged and vulnerable inside exposed to space to eat away at the insides.
Finally, she understood the change. Ras felt like that. Like he’d jettisoned something to stay alive. Like there were little pockmarks of missing substance on the surface of his emotions. And not just anything. He’d jettisoned her. Or at least some of how he felt for her. How could he not?
Her eyes held him there a long moment, lips moving soundlessly as if they’d gained a mind of their own seeing as the large mass of neurons inside her skull had abandoned them.
Semara: Oh.
And the worst part was that he wasn’t even wrong. She wished she could say he was, that it hadn’t sent her spinning, but it did.
It smacked her in the face that he’d managed to say something once again and here she was completely wordless once again. Some Lady she was. Some friend. Some Betazoid. Some allegedly cogent intelligent being.
She set the knife and food and everything else down before the frustration of it took over.
El’Heem: I just-
She cut him off before he could continue. All the better for it because he didn’t even know what he was going to say. To make this right.
Even if she was too late to say her other feelings, she had to salvage something from that derelict. There was something he needed to know.
Semara: :: Promptly pointing her finger. :: No.
Her lips twisted strangely, begging for patience this time. After all it was not him she was annoyed or angry with. It was her two year old vocabulary he seemed to be able to reduce her to.
His forehead wrinkled and one eyebrow raised. Was she not going to accept his apology then? Was it all useless and they’d drift apart? He just looked at her, mouth slightly agape.
Semara: No, my turn.
Her hip popped to one side as she looked at him, and then she realized she wasn’t sure if she could look at him and talk at the same time. So she took a sharp breath, turned and started pacing the length of her own room, possessed by all the building weeks of mania.
Semara: Okay. :: Shaking her tingling hands out. :: Ever have a thing where the thing seems like one thing, but somethin’ else makes the thing another thing, but you kinda gotta know what the thing is, and then know there’s like another thing that makes the thing the sorta thing you understand, but then you ain’t sure if the thing is that thing or really just the old thing and the new thing in a way that isn’t yet another thing and if you try putting the third thing in there it becomes nothin’?
The words were all one great breathless blob, but she turned to Ras, eyes wide like she’d just managed to solve the galaxy’s oldest cold case. That made sense, right? It had to.
From his spot behind the counter, his eyes swayed back and forth watching her pace until she finally settled again and looked at him. It seemed she was out of breath, and wasn’t going to elaborate. Ras looked at her, then away. Furrowed his eyebrows. Looked at her again. Quickly looked away once more. His lower lip quivered and his eyes settled into a pale purple. There was no deciphering the encrypted language Amelia was speaking. Maybe it was a quirk of Intelligence, speaking in code. Subterfuge or something. But he had no idea how to parse what each thing was.
oO So thing-1 seems like thing-2, but thing-3 makes thing-2 into thing-2.5? Or was it thing-1 into thing 1.5? How many things were there again? And carry the 4…That might be. Wait. Thing-X could be solved by…no no that’s not it. Oo
He cocked his head and his eyes finally landed back on the frazzled woman who looked far too well dressed to be making that face.
El’Heem: I…what?
That was all he could manage.
Amelia practically mrowled annoyance.
Semara: Okay. So. :: Painfully slowly, motioning along :: There’s a thing…
She stared for a moment. On some level, she registered the total analytical blank drawing up in Ras, and knew that she was the source of it, but she was stuck twenty layers deep in her own brain - a stress-compacted membrane of everything between pretend Vulcan steam to yellow chili sauce shielded her mouth from her brain.
Then she snapped, as if hit with a revelation.
Semara: I need a prop.
She paced again, searching for something. She couldn’t have explained why she didn’t use the food when it was right there, but the thing she ended up diving for was her fiddle. The case needed to be dug out from the couch, so she had to get all the way down to the floor to scootch it out from underneath. Did Ras like the violin? Did he like music at all? Who even knew? She was already opening the case, apparently about to engage in charades.
He watched her bend over and tried to guess what was under the couch, but his eyes wandered…and then they snapped away before she stood.
Semara: Okay, so. :: Bring the fiddle up to her chin. :: The thing. The thing is. :: Plucking the strings. :: Heavens that’s outta tune!
Her face bunched up as she twisted the pegs until the strings tightened up and sang the right pitches at least relative to each other. She certainly couldn’t be sounding sour in front of the man she was trying to impress this very important idea upon.
Ras’ forehead was still scrunched but he was doing his best to follow along.
El’Heem: Amelia. Are you okay?
Semara: I swear there’s a point to this!
She took a breath again, every nerve in her flighty and fidgety.
Semara: Okay. What do you call this thing I’m holdin’?
El’Heem: Uhhh
He glanced between the instrument and her.
El’Heem: Rethal.
She wouldn’t know what that was, but it didn’t matter. He had no clue what was happening. The fish was getting cold and he had no idea what his apology had done to her.
Semara: No. What’s that? :: A strange grin. :: This thing is a chin guitar. Get it?
She started plucking her way through a tune on what was definitely a violin, picking and strumming out a little ancient lullaby she learned as a little kid. It was just the first thing that came to mind, and the melody had always soothed her nerves.
El’Heem: ::slightly under his breath:: A Kressari instru- nevermind. Okay chin guitar. Go on.
Her hair was slightly disheveled, and the look on her face was becoming increasingly unpredictable. Wait. Was she having a stroke?
Semara: Okay… :: Taking a breath :: So I need you to pretend you call the thing a chin guitar. That’s the thing for you. For meeeeee… :: Pausing to take out her bow. :: There’s another thing. :: Waving it about in the air. :: Got it?
Was he having a stroke? Ras exhaled and lifted his eyebrows. He was trying to follow along.
El’Heem: For you it’s kinda likeeee a Rethal bow?
Semara: No. You ain’t gotta clue what the other thing is. Only I do. You. Chin guitar and weird wavy thing. Me. I know what the thing is. So far so good?
His hand came to the back of his head and he rubbed it, incredulously.
El’Heem: Ok. I see a chin guitar, and weird wavy thing. So far so…good? Sure. Keep going.
Amelia nodded with absurd confidence. She was definitely on a roll now. No way this analogy she’d plucked out of thin air was ever going to be misunderstood.
Semara: Okay. Now. You don’t know what the wavy thing is, but I do, and I know how to use it…
She took a breath, and finally, instead of the simple little plucks, a warm, full throated singing voice came out of the instrument when the bow met the strings, her shaking fingers giving the tone a natural vibrato. The tune briefly took off, swelling with the natural rise and fall of the legato melody.
Semara: And so, one thing plus another thing is a third thing, but only if you know the things are supposed to go together, right?
For a moment, she willed him to get it: the violin = brain, plucking = talking, bowing = telepathy. Sort of. At least she was pretty sure that’s where she was going with the tortured analogy.
El’Heem: Alright. Dialectics? Trial and error? I’m not…okay what’s next?
She signed.
Semara: Okay, but here’s the other thing. Now I know what this thing is. :: Waving the bow. :: Did you know they used to make bows with horse hair? Not anymore, but if I tell you it’s a bow, you might assume I went out and personally killed a horse, right? Suddenly, the thing ain’t the first thing, and it’s another thing entirely.
El’Heem: I wouldn’t assume that, because I know how manufacturing works. But okay I will play along. You killed a horse. Or I thought you killed a horse. Why?
Ras was still in the kitchen and now he was leaning over the half assembled meal, more curious of the thought experiment than he should be. Because what he should actually be concerned with is how it applied to them.
TBC
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Lieutenant Amelia Magnolia Semara
Intelligence Officer
USS Khitomer - NCC-62400
A239710MA0
&
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Lieutenant Ras El’Heem
Chief Science Officer
USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)
K240106RE3