MSNPC Aleatoranna "Tori" Semara - The Girl With the Golden Hairpin
Max
(( Main Street, Nivatara, Nantahala Valley - Casperia Prime, Sometime in the Future))
There she sat, atop her mountain throne. Tavakiev: the high sun spirit of the valley, crowned in sapphire by the planet's rings above, wearing a majestic cloak of gold grasses and purple summer flowers and a scarf of pure white snow. Tori only spent three months of her life in Nantahala, but it was enough for the place to imprint itself on her mind indelibly. The valley was the one place in the universe she’d ever felt safe. The imposing, jagged mountains felt like an embrace. The many-colored high stone walls were impassable to all but a few who whispered their secrets, keeping danger out and life safely in.
The only grief here was what she brought with her. Quaint yet rich storefronts lined the main street, full of knick-knacks and ice cream shops and breweries and so on. The river district might hold the local favorites, but the street crowded with throngs of variegated visitors with every bauplan imaginable was what stayed in her mind’s eye. The soft valley wind mixed their many languages into a harmony.
Nowhere else could she imagine such veneration of nature. Such peace. The town crawled up the nearest hill with spectacular homes set onto the slopes all the way up to the top, view-facing windows glinting in the sun amidst the trees and rocks they peeked out of. She remembered staying in one of the comfortable apartments along the river district, and falling asleep to the sound of the Sasagar river prancing over polished rocks.
During those months, she walked down to the temple to the four deities every first light, where there was a park with wildflowers beside the banks. The sweeping, treelike architecture called to her: its delicate, curving forms plucked on some ancient lyric inside of her. The sect of nymphlike attendants spent the early hours sitting cross-legged in telepathically-heightened meditation, showered by the dappled, prismatic light streaming through the many stained windows. Their quiet somehow put her mind to silence, too.
After, Tori’s walks always came to stand beside the memorial fountain in the center of main street. Tall white stones stood around the water, the humongous, blooming Casperian cherry-aspen beside it a symbol of regrowth. She wondered if the tree still stood…
Her fingers ran across engravings of name after name on the standing stones. So many names. So many gone, never to be seen or felt again. More every day. Every minute. Space for more names had run out on the stones, and in her heart. There was nowhere left to put the memories of missing friends.
Her finger scanned across a familiar name.
The name wasn’t etched into the real-life stones, but it was etched into her dreams. Being only half-Betazoid hadn’t saved the man from the same fate that shortened the life-span of every Betazoid. It hadn’t saved him from the thing that was robbing her people of not just their lives, but their songs, their faith, and their way of life… Maybe that was why she still wore her blonde hair in valley-fashion and always kept the Golden Leaf of Semizad pinned in her locks. She’d carry all their legacies until her last breath.
She reached another name she knew, gone before she could even speak, but somehow it echoed through time and memory.
A corset of grief pulled tight around her as her fingers skimmed over it, pushing out all her breath and tears her body held. It was too much, there were too many! When would it stop? Yet the dream wound on, the list of all the people she’d once known and loved unspooling on the stone. There was nowhere else to keep the names. The waking world couldn’t hold them.
Her fingers kept going, searching for one name in particular. She knew it was here, even if the exact place she kept it changed from night to night. The longer it took to find the name, the more spiteful tears she choked down. She raced along the names now, at odds with her own mind’s whims. The dream only ended when she found that name...
Finally, she found it. She didn't even need to read it. It lived with her night and day, sleeping and waking.
Tori’s hand stopped and clenched and her body shuddered. The dream could end now, only waking wouldn’t change history. But Tori could. All it would take was one cruel act to stop a cruel fate for everyone. Why hadn’t she seen that?
Someone touched Tori’s shoulder. Not a dream someone, a real someone. A real touch, drenched with warm spring sun that could melt the snow and make flowers bloom.
Woman: :: Softly :: Hey, you okay?
Tori wheeled about at the sound of the most impossible, most familiar voice. She gasped before the face even came into view, knowing who it was just from her scent. Adrenaline threw her hurtling out of the dream, but she tried to hold on anyway, a silent cry in her throat as the dream winked out of existence.
(( USS Ouachita, adrift in the Lagoon Nebula ))
Her body convulsed, crumpling the blankets to the bottom of the tiny bunk bed. Tori sighed, coming to her senses in the runabout's dim light. She was in the same place she’d been for days now. It was just a dream. The same dream as always - at least right up to the end.
She rubbed around the radiation scrubber fixed on her aching thigh. That, and the implant in her glute, might keep her alive, but they didn’t keep the strange telepathic symptoms of a lifetime of repeated exposure to Sencha Radiation at bay. The trip here alone had involved enough Sencha to take another couple decades off her life, but if their plan succeeded that wouldn’t matter. Neither would the amount of blonde hair that was accumulating in her hairbrush matter, or the way her body seemed to refuse to put on weight anymore.
However exhausted she was, she knew better than to try sleeping again. Better to work. She stood with a groan, wrapped the blanket around her shoulders to guard against the frigid temperatures in the shuttle, and dragged herself into the cockpit where the others were.
Tori: Good morning, Admiral. :: A light smile. :: Good morning, love.
She bent down and gave her man a little peck. Naturally, he was trying to fix the aged, sickly runabout, half-wrecked as it may be. The old vessel had been through hell and back, and the power systems had developed a nasty cough even before the three of them had dragged the vessel kicking and screaming back in time.
Kael / Admiral: Response
Tori: Anything I can do to help?
Around the engineer-types, the answer was bound to be “no.” She could work out the numbers for time travel through a Sencha Manifold and understood the finer complexities of navigating the interior of an angry Hobart Hole to harness the singularity inside, but she was hopeless if someone asked her to get a cable hooked up to the right spot.
Kael / Admiral: Response
Tori: Right. :: Slumping into a chair. :: Well I predict our ride only needs to last another few hours at most. :: Beat :: They’ll be here soon. I can feel it.
The Admiral didn’t need to understand the more mystic air Tori’s telepathy had taken on with the cumulative Sencha radiation dose she’d taken, but they had all been through enough together now to know to trust each other’s instincts. The appearance of a presence long-gone in her mind could have only meant one thing.
They'd soon be seeing familiar faces.
Kael / Admiral: Response
Tag / TBC…