Lt. JG Zhanyt Lafizatar - To know where you are, you need to know where you're going.

[Koihime Nakamura]

((Crew Lounge, USS Veritas))

Zhanyt was sitting in the lounge on her shift off. She was still mostly in uniform, as she never bothered to replicate many leisure outfits, although she had loosened her rainbow hair from the pony tail she kept it in duty. Really, she just wanted some time to unwind from the mission, and her hands were busy assembling a shrine. Her golden eyes were focused sightlessly on the starscape beyond, as the table she was working from was covered with materials, some tools, paints, and cleaning materials.

One of the few things she preferred to do with people around was build these shrines - it was a way of admitting your faults in public, for those who could understand it.

.oO That, and my roommate would probably not appreciate me taking all surface space up Oo. Zhanyt's lip twitched a bit before resuming her normal unyielding countenance.

One of the unique Diserk traditions was to build a shrine both towards the person you want to be, and the person you want to grow out of on your birthday. Around every year, Zhanyt would look at the shrines of the last year, spend a few days meditating on her progress, and then dissemble the shrines, and if she was back on any Mathenite planet, she'd throw the ingrediants of both into a white fire, representing the fire of Mathen. Sometimes, people would opt to keep a shrine of either their past or future, to express doubt that they have changed. And such an act would often move the Priests of the Light of the Night Sky to help that person to move forward, or realize what held them back.

Of course, on a starship, she just set a light to represent the Mathen sun, and put the materials in the replicator. Here in the Shoals, she was often using scrap material, or materials she had built in the engineering workshop.

.oO The light of the night sky beckons to move forward. Oo. The litany came unbidden to her as she refocused. She was wearing an odd bracer around her wrist and was staring thoughtfully at some metallic material - looking beat up, reforged, and reused with it's bronze and gray melding. To her, a symbol of the Veritas, the determination to continue come what may. But what to make with it, to represent her past...

Alentonis: Response

Lafizatar: ::jostled, looks at the newcomer:: Oh, hello Commander. Just.. a tradition.

Alentonis: Response

Zhanyt paused, thinking it over. She then nodded, a small twitch appearing around her lips as she looked at the assembled materials.

Lafizatar: I can explain it as I build the shrine. This one.. represents who I am. ::Zhanyt picked up a tool, a slim silver metallic pen with a single light emitted at the end, and the bracer around her wrist lit up.:: Both good and bad. ::She began to run the tool over the metal, the metal shaping in response to the violet-green light being emitted by the tool. The metal shaped into a peculiar tree - what looked like two disparate trunks melding into one, and a third vine multiplying into branches, producing odd trees, although it all looked like that peculiar bronze-gray look.:: This is a fagos adsidue unitatis aliena, according to the academy. It's only found on the colony world I'm from natively, although I understand replanting efforts went well on other worlds. To many Mathenites, it represents the Zeta Pavlonis system - where the Federation and Mathenite colonies exist in the same star system. And to me, it is the base of who I am today. ::As she was speaking, the light changed colors, and pink and blue ran through the leaves and vines, with the trunks turning a more violet-red.::

Zhanyt became dimly aware that more people were gathering as she explained the tree, but her attention was focused on the tool - it had to be, or it was likely to change the 'smart metal' to something that would make no sense. Still, she put the tool down, and using her finger, began to delicately paint the tree, adding accents here, and in some cases, painting a peculiar green pattern to match the tree itself.

Alentonis/Any: Response

Lafizatar: It is tradition for one to paint with no tools. ::a wry smile on her lips as she looked up with the painting done to the assembled crowd, a bit of an abstracted look in her eyes, her face loose in a pensive look from it's normal unyielding one:: If I wasn't an engineer, i'd be building this with traditional wood tools, but I feel that this kind of metal more represents who I am and where I am. But this is the first step. You add depictions of who you are to the base as you think about your life. ::She smiles, before stating something that she had clearly learnt before as she picked up the shaper tool and waved it over the tree:: Understand where you are and where you're going, which way you are facing, and you'll know your current position. Faced by the vastness of outer space, you may be disoriented by how small you are. But overcoming that feeling is your first step in outer space. ::As she spoke the tree branches shaped themselves to become a bowl of leaves - the paint becoming fragmented and silver near where it expanded and shaped, the form of a galaxy-class starship appearing.::

Alentonis/Any: Response

TAG/TBC

Lt. JG Zhanyt Lafizatar

Science Officer

USS Veritas

C239112CA0