[Cavan] Death in the Margins

[Lynzie Austin]

“What makes you say that?” Reynie raised an eyebrow.

“The letters kept coming after she died.” Woraht’s face turned sickly gray. All the blue palling as he hung his head. “For four years they kept coming. We just had them returned.”

“For every month for four years you received letters and you didn’t keep a single one?” Reynie eyed him curiously. He was not giving Woraht a single inch of rope. 

“Why would we? She was gone and I didn’t think it was something worth keeping at the time,” Woraht tutted, the color returning to his face rapidly. Louise, the receptionist stood in the doorway with her arms barely crossed over her heavy bosom.  “Now, I’ve given you access to everything.”

“You have no idea who this person was?” Ellie asked as gently as possible, keeping her tone neutral.

“No ma’am, if I did—” Woraht sucked in a breath. 

“We appreciate your time,” Reynie concluded. They stepped out of the clinic into the dim corridor, the door clicking shut behind them with a finality that felt heavier than it should have.

“I couldn’t tell if that was a dead end or not,” Reynie whispered as soon as they were long out of ear shot. “You got us clearance, then?”

Ellie nodded. “Yes, they were far too eager to give us access to medical files. On one hand is fantastic, on the other hand is—-” She looked at Reynie’s dark eyes and stopped in her tracks. “Aralim, there is giving over Ylena’s files and Cassia’s, but they handed over the entire compound's worth without us having jurisdiction or really even asking.”

“That is overly helpful or an admission of guilt, yes,” Reynie put an arm around her shoulder and continued walking.

“Correction, you would have jurisdiction for the compound’s security files, but not their medical data,” Ellie leaned into him. “If you started using it.” 

“Want me to start waving a badge around? Here? In broad daylight? Raven, you exhibitionist…” he made a purring noise. “All work and no play—-”

“Aralim.”

“I’m not going to start using credentials like that and you see, it worked out just fine,” Reynie shrugged his shoulders. “Who do you think was writing letters after she died though? Four years is a long time to hold the torch without a response back.”

“Well, I was wondering why no one from the staff sent word that she had passed,” Ellie chewed her lip. They made their way into the busier of the corridors with the oddest of vendors. A half lit sign for the fortune teller sat in a dusty shop window. “What the hell is going on on this space station?”

“There is always a hustle sweetheart,” Reynie leaned into her ear. 

“I know that, but this seems rather archaic,” she muttered as the light blinked dimly as if responding to her. 

“The cards are timeless young Vulcan who isn’t Vulcan,” a musical voice came from the doorway. “Fortunes are for the bold and for the wise. For those who are in a time of need.”

Reynie lifted an eyebrow as the curtains drew back to grant them entry. “Come in, wandering strangers,” the voice continued. “Perhaps, I can provide clarity in your stars.” 

The interior of the fortune teller’s shop was a cluttered fever dream. Every surface was covered. Shelves overflowing with dusty jars and strange artifacts, walls plastered with faded star charts and occult symbols, strings of beads and wind chimes hanging from the ceiling like a forest of forgotten dreams. The air was thick with incense, the scent of sage and something sweeter, something almost cloying. A single, dim lamp sat on a round table in the center of the room, casting long, dancing shadows across the chaos.

 The fortune teller herself was seated behind it, her hands resting on a crystal ball that glowed with an inner light. Whether it was battery operated or from beyond dimension X—only she knew. Ellie fought the urge to roll her eyes. The woman, herself, was older than her voice had sounded. Her face, a weathered roadmap of a life lived, each fold was incredibly heavy for how thin the woman was giving her the appearance of an ancient turtle. Her jade eyes were smudged excessively with kohl, just as her lipstick had a shade of plum that had started to bleed into the lip lines around her mouth. Her mop of white curls laid under a red shawl and she had an aura of a woman that was once eye turning. 

“Please sit,” the woman gestured with a withered hand. “I have been waiting for a raven and a fox.”

“Have you now?” Reynie smiled at her, pulling a chair out for Ellie and helping himself to one as well. 

“The raven I know well—she carries the dead in her pockets and speaks their language. But the fox…” She tilted her head, studying him. “The fox is a trickster. A survivor. A creature who has worn many skins.”

Reynie’s smile did not waver, but Ellie caught a slight tense in his right hand. “I’ve been called worse.”

“Oh, I’m sure you have,” The fortune teller leaned forward, her wrinkled hands hovering over the crystal ball. “But you’re not just any fox, are you? You’re Reynard. The name itself carries weight. In the old stories, Reynard the Fox was a cunning creature—always outsmarting the wolf, the bear, the lion. Alas, he was also lonely. Always running. Always hiding.”

She paused, her eyes narrowing. “You ran from something once. A long time ago. A life that was chosen for you. A war that wasn’t yours. And you’ve been running ever since.”

The air in the room chilled and Reynie cleared his throat. “Well that’s rather specific, now isn’t it?” 

The fortune teller smiled, revealing teeth stained with age. “I don’t tell fortunes…. You, the Reynard, are a man who has been running from his own shadow for years. But the shadow always catches up.” She turned her gaze to Ellie. “You, the Raven, carry more than the dead with you. You hunt for the rabbit and cannot get your beak on it. 

Ellie felt a cold chill creep along the back of her neck as the woman continued. “Toeing the line between lives,” the woman put her fingernails across the crystal ball. “Not quite one, not quite another. Never feathered. Never footed.”

“That is quite the prognostication,” Ellie’s lips flattened, leaning forward.

“The woman dead, whom you seek,” the woman’s milky eyes met Ellie’s with a jolt. “The lascivious author drinks of luxurious libations in the heavens.”

Reynie locked eyes with Ellie for a split second. “Salacious platitudes whispered in the dark,” the woman continued. “Oh yes, most libidinous she presented.”

“Was she not?” Ellie’s curiosity finally peaked.

“Words on a parchment conveyed her isolation,” the fortune teller nodded. “Nothing more, nothing less, Raven, harbinger of death.” 

“Anything in the stars about whodunnit?” Reynie asked, putting his hands in his pockets. 

“Reynard the fox already knows the answers, yet insists he knows nothing,” the woman’s brow furrowed. “Ask questions for purpose. Not for show.”

Ellie let out a small laugh, to Reynie’s chagrin. “Well, you do. She has your number Aralim.”

“My track record speaks for itself, doll face,” Reynie stuck out his tongue. 

The fortune teller shook her head at them both like a disappointed mother. Ellie was half expecting her to break character and bust out a thick New Jersey accent, what you two goons going off track again—maybe youse twos need to be separated. Ellie held her stomach from roaring with laughter at her own thoughts. 

“I do not know where this place your mind wanders is, Raven, but the purple tracksuit looks comfortable,” the woman said with a slight nod of her head. “Nevertheless, a laughing Vulcan needs to mind herself.” 

Ellie nodded solemnly. The woman sounded nearly identical to her grandmother at that moment. She had heard that phrase a thousand times in her life. “Right you are.”

The crystal on the table dimmed to a dull amber and the scent of mothballs began to steep the air. “That is all,” the woman held her hand out for payment. 

Reynie handed her a strip of latinum. “We appreciate your–words,” he looked over at Ellie with his brow raised for approval. She sucked back more laughter. 

The fortune teller pocketed the latinum with surprising speed for someone so frail. “The fox laughs now, but the hunter’s hounds are close,”  She fixed Reynie with a look that could have put Medusa out of work. “You cannot outrun a shadow that lives in your own bones.”

“We will take your words with us,” Ellie said solemnly, choking back her urge to laugh down to her toes. “Thank you for your time.”

They walked back towards the runner with a cloud over their heads. “Rave, remember when Brennan sent us out to that one ship and all that was there was a big pile of nothing and a bunch of scared Starfleet Marines that were all jumpy?”

“Which time?” She sighed. “They send us chasing more ghosts than I care to count.”

“This one,” Reynie pulled her in closer with the crook of his elbow as they made their way through the hatch of the Runner. “Is so straight forward, no ghosts, no monsters, just a person obsessed—” 

“You wanted Dracula?”

“I didn’t say I wanted Dracula.”

“Kind of implies you were hoping it was Dracula,” she teased, picking up Cathulu and heading up to the cockpit. 

“I’m trying to have a serious moment with you Elinor Fa Cavan,” Reynie huffed.

“My word, I got full named,” Ellie feigned being aghast. “Please enlighten me, Reynard the Fox.”

He let out a slow breath and pinched the bridge of his nose in the reversal of roles. “We seldom get sent out to investigate something normal, there’s always a catch,” he ran back to his pile of books sprawled across the table, returning with a particularly dog-eared one. Ellie noted the title In the Arms of the Laughing Vulcan. 

“That seems hyper specific,” Ellie said with a snort.

“I’ve had this longer than I’ve known you,” he retorted with a smirk. 

“I can tell.”

Reynie flipped open the book to a marked page, his eyes scanning the text. He cleared his throat, his voice dropping into a theatrical, storytelling cadence. “‘The letters arrived every month. Always on the same day. Always in the same small, precise handwriting. At first, she didn’t reply. She was a Vulcan, after all, and Vulcans did not engage in frivolous correspondence with strangers. But the letters persisted.’”

“‘You have a soul,’ the first one read. ‘I can see it in the way you look at the stars.’”

“‘You have a heart,’ the second one read. ‘'I can hear it in the way you speak of logic.’”

“‘You have love,’ the third one read. ‘I can feel it in the way you hesitate before you speak.’”

“‘She burned the letters. She told herself it was the logical thing to do. But she didn't stop reading them. Not until the one that changed everything: 'I have all these things and I have been waiting my whole life to find someone who would look at it and not look away.’” Reynie paused, looking up at Ellie. His voice softened, losing its theatrical edge. “She wrote back. Just once and then she waited.”

“You think you would have mentioned the novel with the letter writing, Aralim,” Ellie pressed her lips into a thin line.

“This one was never my favorite,” he shrugged. “It doesn’t have a happy ending.”

“No?”

“She ends up alone,” he tossed the book back into the pile. “Chooses logic.”

“Damned Vulcans,” Ellie scratched the cat behind her ears making the cabin fill with the rumbling sound of purrs. 

“Damned Vulcans.”

“So, we can ascertain that she wrote back and never received a response,” Ellie looked up at him. “Anything else from that book?”

“Besides horny Vulcans?”

“Focus.”

“Between this and the story the Doc told, it checks out,” Reynie gave a small shrug. “I wasn’t believing what the lunkhead said about the letters and if I’m being honest, I didn’t buy what anyone has been selling about them.”

“It is a bit odd to have that level of stalking or fandom in this day of age,” Ellie nodded. “Especially to an unknown sick woman.”

“It doesn’t add up Rave,” Reynie slumped into the pilot’s chair. “She was dying. Why keep writing? That doesn’t make any damned sense.”

“They did not know she had died.”

“My spidey senses tell me that isn’t true,” he raked his hands through his hair, catching a stray gray on a ring and yanking it along for the ride. 

“You think it is for cover then, all subterfuge?”

“I do,” he tapped coordinates out on the Runner’s panels. “I think someone wanted Ylena to feel seen and made a performance out of it.”

“So, a writer,” Ellie put the cat down, with much protest from the cat. 

“Perhaps,” Reynie furrowed his brow. “​​Or at least, someone who could fake being one." He turned back to the console, pulling up the personnel files from Maryaim Clinic. "Nurses. Orderlies. Dr. Woraht himself. Anyone could have been writing those letters."

Ellie paused, her mind wandered to the fortune teller’s words—ask a question for purpose. “Or access to manuscripts.”

Reynie sat silent for a moment. His hands twitched, making his rings clink against each other. Without a second thought, they flew across the console inputting coordinates so fast Ellie could barely see them. 

“So you know?” She said hopefully. The cat jumped into her lap as the Runner lept into warp away from the dock. 

“Oh yea.”

“And you did not before?”

Reynie looked over at her. “This may come to be a surprise to you, but sometimes, I have to investigate.”