Ensign Amelia Semara - All the Colors of the Wind

[Max]

(( USS Khitomer, En Route to Sector 001 - Deck 6, Sickbay ))

Semara: I s'pose I am a little sorry for myself. :: A chuckle. :: But I meant more I'm sad for the Captain.  I don't know what it's like for you, but I've always found the empathic and telepathic experience to be a beautiful one.  Even in moments like these.  :: Beat :: Especially in moments like these.  There's somethin' comforting knowin' I can be there for folks, let them know I care.

Honestly?  She didn't hold any grudge against the Captain.  In her eyes, he was still a good man - as the doctor had said.  She just wished there wasn't this gulf between her and her commanding officer... She wished she could understand what she felt the way she understood it.  Knowing her, she would certainly try.

Ohnari: What we find beautiful, they find mildly terrifying...I guess. There isn't a way to describe it that doesn't sound like a violation to someone who can't experience the same as us.

Amelia harrumphed.  There was a certain irony to the idea that the telepathic experience needed to be experienced to be trusted, but couldn't be trusted until it was experienced.  But she knew what Ohnari was driving at, though.  It was odd: to be treated as "special" because of something she was born with, and yet had never once considered herself unusual because most of the people she lived and worked with had shared that specialness - until joining the fleet.

Semara: It was kinda like that with Junior.  I don't know how long we were tryin' to guess at what to do before I made contact, and then poof!  I knew exactly what it needed.  Sometimes I forget how lonely non-empaths can be.  :: A smile :: You ever had a telepathic experience like that?  Where you just know something the moment you sense it?

The doctor wiggled her hand to say, "kinda".  It was clear Amelia knew little about the Halliian felt things, and now she wanted to know more.

Ohnari: Haliian's are capable of telepathic communications, but it requires a ritual, and a strong emotional connection to the person. But, I grew up with Betazoids and Haliian's alike, being the youngest, I usually gave myself away during hide and seek by projecting my euphoria just a ::pinching her fingers, barely touching:: smidge.

Amelia let loose with a full, lyric laugh, straightening back up with the wholesome teddy-bear glee of the youthful memory squishing against her.  If the woman radiated emotion like that now as an adult, well...

Semara: :: Still laughing :: I can only imagine...  If it makes you feel any better, I was never that good at keepin' my emotions to myself, either.

Ohnari: Well, despite the unpleasantness of the circumstances, you have a clean bill of health and knocked out your required exam, all in one day! ::nudging the woman's shoulder with her own:: You should feel very accomplished.

Semara: :: A happy harumph. :: That's a good way to look at it.  And who knows?  At this rate, maybe I'll find a way to change the cap's mind about empaths before the month is out!  :: A small, conspiratorial grin. ::

Who knows?  She had a sense the man was the kind that could be lured to consider all kinds of things with the right baked goods offered as recompense.  The month might be an aggressive target for generations of misconceptions, but she had to believe she could win him over eventually.

Ohnari: Well, outside from accidentally xenophobic experiences from the Captain, I hope you'll feel at home here on the Khitomer. You've already impressed several, including myself with what you were able to accomplish with the entity...uh...Junior, was it?

Amelia smiled graciously, and tilted her chin to one side.  This was an awful lot of praise for not a lot of work, and she was not having a tough time accepting it the way a lady ought to.  And you know what?  She was feeling at home.  Surprisingly so, especially with the doctor.

Semara: Oh, please!  I wasn't tryin' to impress anyone.  I just did what I felt was right.  :: A sneaky, proud smile ::  Okay, maybe it was a touch fiddly at first, tryin' to sort out the right blend of classic telepathic projection with the lightest touch of deeper communion, but once I got it, it wasn't too bad.

In theory, nothing another full telepath couldn't do.  Perhaps not with her particular aplomb, but completely possible.

Ohnari: Response

Amelia sucked in a breath and held it a second before releasing a long exhale.  She should have been more careful than to use that word: "communion."  Any person who'd spent any time studying telepathic practices would rightfully raise an eyebrow at the unusual terminology, and the doctor was nothing if not sharp.  After the doctor had shown so much care for her, Amelia had relaxed and opened up without even thinking.  She decided to trust herself, that her instincts were right... She'd thought about telling the captain about this, why not tell Ohnari instead?

Actually, this was better.  She wasn't Betazoid, so she probably wouldn't judge, but she had a grasp of what it felt like living with another sense of everyone and everything around you...  If the conversation they'd just had told Amelia anything, it was that Ohnari definitely could be trusted.  She could understand.

Semara: Telepathic communion... :: Choosing her words :: It's a very old practice that comes from the Muachi.  I don't suppose you've heard a' them?

She'd be surprised if the doctor had.  Betazoids did a good job of presenting a fairly unified culture to outside worlds.  Something to do with tourism, probably.  Then again, she suspected even many of her own species had never heard the proper noun.

Ohnari: Response

Semara: :: A nod :: They were probably some of the first Betazoids to leave the homeworld, and are the last to still live primarily as hunter-gatherers, so they're a bit obscure.  My papa's an anthropologist.  He was studyin' a tribe that settled in Nantahala Valley - where I grew up - maybe as much as a millennia ago, when he met my momma.... But that's another story.  Point is, he gained their trust over the years. They taught him how to do it, and he taught me.

Betazoids, much like Vulcans, had developed spaceflight much earlier than humans, only to turn out much happier with their homeworld than anywhere else they found.  Thus, very few went hardly anywhere until a bunch of weirdly non-telepathic folks showed up and goosed the whole species out of its navel-gazing reveries.  It took an exceptional group of people or extraordinary need (or both) to endure the long-haul very-low-warp space flight of the bad old days and set up a risky colony on a planet with a habitability that was anyone's poorly educated guess.

Ohnari: Response

Semara: :: A slight wince :: Please, please... Before we go further, I need to ask you to keep all this between you and me...  If you thought the Cap was bad, well...  Near every Betazoid I've met is uncomfortable, to say the least, with the idea that it's possible for them to deeply read wild animals, so they all just block it out or keep their distance.  It's too... I dunno - weird?  No, that's not right...  For many it's demeanin', I s'pose, to think we might share such kinship.  :: She sucked in air. :: No, that's too harsh.  Let's just say it's an intense experience.  :: Beat :: What little history there is about the Muachi makes it pretty clear they left Betazed because some folks back then thought talkin' to animals made you as low as one.  :: A scoff ::

It was a strange thing for a people who prized empathy as much as hers to still have problems so bad that the best solution was for the group with less power to simply leave their ancestral homelands, no compromise.  (Then again, wasn't that what she had done?)  Betazed had almost none of the violence of similar Earth history, but that didn't make the story a whole lot more comfortable.  Curious that the problem came down to who - or rather what - a person was allowed to have empathy for.

Ohnari: Response

Semara: :: A light chuckle :: No, no I can't "talk" to animals, it's called communion for a reason...  :: She tossed up her hands :: I ain't sure how to do it justice.  It's more like... Immersing yourself.  Seeing the ebb and flow through the life of those who were shaped by the land itself.  Does that make sense?  Papa thinks it's an ancient telepathic reading technique developed to find the best places to forage and hunt, before Betazoids even started farming, but evidence is hard to come by.  If you ask the Muachi, it's something much, much more.  Something sacred, they might say.

She shook her head.  Like so many telepathic experiences, it was hard to put this one into words.  Even with some practice at the art of transcribing the ethereal, something deep like this transcended into another dimension of perception so utterly she was hard pressed to express herself.

Ohnari: Response

Tag/TBC...

Ensign Amelia Magnolia Semara

Science Officer

USS Khitomer - NCC-62400

A239710MA0