Lt. Haukea-Willow: Loops
Aly Drolet
Wicked: For Good The Soundtrack - No Place Like Home (Official Lyric Video)
((Freedom Beach - Little Risa - Starbase 118))
Tight numbness spread across her chest; rib cage squished tight in the anticipation nanoseconds before a sneeze. Yet, rather than sneezing in reaction to blinding light, or an irritation in the nasal passage, a bone aching loneliness settled. The desire for soul repairing connection. Though despite the inner healing received through individual relaxation, the chief of security in question thrived off energy produced in the presence of friends, family, and platonic individuals alike.
Here Haukea, rocking on her toes, heel - toes - heel - toes, back and forth, back and forth, plowed her feet contentedly into the sand. It was a mix of emotions oscillating between loneliness, calm comfort and the gripping tightness of each independent rib bone.
Yet, despite it, an invitation had been provided to Gogigobo Fairhug, regarding their previously arranged photography and nature excursion. A vulnerable moment in which station commander turned dear friend Gogigobo played witness to the eccentricities of Haukea-Willow.
Such quirks presented themselves in the slip of a shoe, red converse abandon among the shoreline, toes pressing through the sensations of soft, coarse, hard, wet sand oozing between bare feet, covering the length of bare leg, high-waisted shorts - red & white striped shirt little protection. The sway of the Risian’s body, in time with the ocean, hand flip-floping in a jerky motion, cherry holo-camera dangling from her wrist, back to her companion.
Willow: I have this terrible feeling, it might not work out, all this running. One day I’m going to explode, like an unchecked bomb.
With deliberate slowness Haukea and Gogigobo turned, shoes held in her hand, moving along the wet packed sand along the shoreline.
Fairhug: Why do you think that?
Willow: I get overwhelmed. I don’t know how to control - to enforce boundaries when individual safety is on the line.
Haukea’s hand flipped with increased vigor, an equally positive as well as negative reaction, exhibited in complete honesty, until now exhibited in caution, regulated after childhood.
Fairhug: It’s not easy. There’s no doubt about that.
Willow: Yet, how can I be angry at anyone when I’m most angry with myself?
The question was part rhetorical, half serious. The chief caught in a loop, forcefully packing the unnameable emotions into tiny imaginary cardboard boxes, replacing the mask with forced cheer.
Fairhug: Security Chiefs have to have short memories in some cases. If you dwell on your own mistakes and torture yourself about them, you’ll begin second-guessing yourself with every decision that you make. You have to learn from your experiences and accept that you can’t change what *has* happened, but you can control your actions in similar future scenarios.
Turning towards Gogigobo, Haukea plastered on a grin, lightening the atmosphere around the pair of off duty officers. A display of emotional whiplash - the boxes tight with tape. Not uncommon for the alexithymic Risian.
Willow: The beach though sure is lovely. ::Her voice pitched up in tone, grin visibly straining neck muscles::
The one small beautifully imperfect box she left open was clearly in black, bold capital typeface labeled CHILDHOOD. Scents, tactile textures, tastes, all flooding her nervous system. The calm, not masking the unnameable - never erasing it completely - however caught in the loop, burring in the photographic intensity of the light unfiltered.
Fairhug: It’s beautiful. ::eyes settling back on Haukea after looking around.:: What’s the plan for today?
Willow: I do know a hiking trail we could explore.
The hike was preplaned, a place for deliberate integration with the surrounding artificial nature - crude in their imitation. They too were boxed perfectly imperfect imperfections. Gogigobo’s smile likewise a box cutter to the intense waves of encroachment.
Fairhug: Sounds good to me. And you’re going to demonstrate some of your holophotography skills, right?
Haukea’s shoes hit the sand with a wet squelsh, feet stuffed into the folded fabric, hand rhythmically flying to her camera, a thrum of blurred red like a robin’s breast, pressing through various settings, delaying the digital print out of holophotos.
The film was stuck, a physical manifestation of her loop. Yet in deliberate breath she found her voice once more.
Willo: I didn’t bring my camera just for aesthetic reasons. I want to try for natural angles and lighting.
The fragments of her brain latched closed around her camera, the invisible reel slowing to the hand crank speed of a pure cinematic masterpiece.
Fairhug: I can’t wait.
Up the path Haukea turned, angling her body to navigate a narrow side corridor, a purpose built space for the artificial echoing of proper elevation changes. Underfoot lay sand, stone, root. Vegetation and flora lining the path.
Fairhug: Is this an accurate representation of Risa? I know there is a controlled weather system there, like there is here.
Risa and the station equally shared a controlled weather environment, yet, neither held neat little packages of uniformity. Starbase 118 was in an enclosed indoor environment, recognizable as artificial. Risa’s only covered the hostile reality of what lay beneath.
Willow: The environment of the station clearly remains indoors. On Risa you can clearly forget the weather is controlled. Have you ever visited?
Fairhug: I’ve never been. It’s quite strange considering how many places I *have* been to. It seems like my kind of place, judging by Little Risa, but I bet you can’t beat the real thing.
Willow: Risa is home and I know nothing else. I highly recommend a visit without acting like a tourist.
Imaginary lines of boxes first stacked horizontally, then vertically, shifting in a coordinated mathematical puzzle. Two children, boy, girl, raced through the wet slip of sand, water splashing. An image of tranquility. Her own ‘“siblings” sparking out a memory box in an ancient film reel loop. Protective sure, yet faded, soft edges fuzzy from time. The familiar love distant from time.
Haukea connected in the present with her crew, her team, family. Love igniting at every wrong angle of jarred frayed edges. Yet the emotional connection was lost through time; a rule of exception, hypothesis, speculation. The emotion was never lost, not entirely, merely dulled, unused.
Fairhug: It’s definitely near the top of my list. Though I do need to go home at some point soon, too. How about you? When was the last time you went home?
Willow: I’ve not been home since I left for the academy on Earth. I’ve called from time to time. I can’t say I miss them. I haven’t not wanted to go home. The connection is just sun-lightened.
Sun-lightened - a reaching metaphor towards the effect of distanced time.
Fairhug: Response
Willow: I have a connection to the people here, now.
Fairhug: Response
Willow: What I can’t see, I can’t feel.
Fairhug: Response
Willow: By should land have so much meaning? It’s only made of dirt and rock. A place that is familiar, that we call home.
Why should a land have so much meaning
When dark times befall it?
It's only land, made of dirt and rock and loam
It's just a place that's familiar
And "home"'s just what we call it
But there's no place like home
Don't we all know
There's no place like home?
Fairhug: Response
Lt. Haukea-Willow
Chief of Security - Crisis Response
Starbase 118 Ops
M239512BG0
Ad Astra Per Aspera/To The Stars With Difficulty - Una Chin-Riley
