Ensign Sariel Rager (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
visible_sariel) wrote2007-05-30 03:38 am
visible_sariel) wrote2007-05-30 03:38 am
Entry tags:
Rascals missing scene
The door hasn't turned up for her in two weeks.
Other doors have, obviously; Ten Forward, the bridge, turbolifts and corridor junctions and the old familiar set leading to her quarters, never mind her bathroom and closet and her friends' places. And sickbay. And Troi's office. But not that door.
That one's eluded her.
The fifteenth day is proving an unusual one; more than unusual. Try downright bizarre. Very few things trip Sariel's internal bizarre-o-meter, between the Starfleet training and the Federation's veritable patchwork of worlds and her own miniature United Nations of a group of friends, never mind the ruddy bar and the people she knows the best there. But this day has put trigger to hammer, no doubt about it.
Captain Picard is a child. Captain Picard is a tenor-voiced adolescent with a full head of hair, and beside him Ro Laren is sullen at half her size while a chirpy Keiko O'Brien looks a little like Sariel imagines Lian must have at eight years old. And Guinan... that one just bloody tops it all.
They've been working with extra care and real, spark-tangible desperation, with the captain and one of the pilots out of commission. The engineers are scrambling; Sonya and Emily Tyler and Geordi and all the rest, and Alyssa and Selar are running themselves ragged-nerved and blurry-eyed (though Selar would never admit to the former, certainly) working on a reversal, any reversal. Sariel herself stays on the bridge for what would have been Ro's early shift, pulling the second directly after her own gamma duty the better not to make anyone else scramble at the start of early watch. The starfield doesn't change, and doesn't change, and her sensors are dead silent and dark as minutes roll to hours and there's no news, no news. By the time the chronometer's clicked round to 15:00, she's long past the last of her mental midnight oil reserves and can only blink overtired, too-bright eyes up at Tess Allenby as her fellow ensign appears to relieve her for a wavering second, then two, before finally murmuring a genuine, exhausted thank you and making a wobble-legged exit through the turbolift doors.
She almost forgets to raise a hand to her door panel, and comes within an inch of plowing nose-first into unforgiving metal before catching herself, staggering with rebound, and flinging a sleep-clumsy arm up the better to be scanned at the palm. After that it's all she can do to lurch inside without hitting either side of the entrance, and she skips the lights entirely as she stumbles toward her bed and drops bonelessly onto it's foot.
On a normal day, there might be cinnamon incense to light. On a normal day there would certainly be tea, probably be vegetable soup or at the very least one variety of fruit or another, possibly be music played at low volume. But today has not been normal so far. Today has tripped wires and alarms unlike any other she's so far encountered, and it's all Sariel can do to unknot otherwise-neat laces and tug her boots off. They hit the floor, one after the other--thump, thump, but she's too drowsy and worried and sore in certain places from the half day and more of bridge duty to think coherently about picking them up. She breathes in lingering traces of cinnamon as she sinks back against her pillow and closes too-dry, dazzled eyes.
It isn't a minute before she breathes out salt air, fragrant tropical foliage and lavender and the scent of powdery, newly-disturbed white sand.
It isn't a minute before she's dreamed herself straight back to the island that raised her. And if there's the heavy trace of stronger-than-normal smoke laced in with what's familiar in the air - who's to say? She'll assume it's a bonfire. That's not unfamiliar either, after all. Never mind what's rustily present underneath it; bonfires happen all the time, at home. She's built them herself, and thrown coconut husks into their flames and leapt over their embers. This is home, and smoke is breathed in, breathed out. Cinnamon, lavender, strong tea "Sariel, come in out of the rain, Sariel--" mango and chutney and what has to be a bonfire.
Has to be.
Because this is home, seashells and calypso and 2369, with attitudes and views intact. Never mind that rust-tinged coppery scent twining with the smoke in the air.
Isn't it?
Other doors have, obviously; Ten Forward, the bridge, turbolifts and corridor junctions and the old familiar set leading to her quarters, never mind her bathroom and closet and her friends' places. And sickbay. And Troi's office. But not that door.
That one's eluded her.
The fifteenth day is proving an unusual one; more than unusual. Try downright bizarre. Very few things trip Sariel's internal bizarre-o-meter, between the Starfleet training and the Federation's veritable patchwork of worlds and her own miniature United Nations of a group of friends, never mind the ruddy bar and the people she knows the best there. But this day has put trigger to hammer, no doubt about it.
Captain Picard is a child. Captain Picard is a tenor-voiced adolescent with a full head of hair, and beside him Ro Laren is sullen at half her size while a chirpy Keiko O'Brien looks a little like Sariel imagines Lian must have at eight years old. And Guinan... that one just bloody tops it all.
They've been working with extra care and real, spark-tangible desperation, with the captain and one of the pilots out of commission. The engineers are scrambling; Sonya and Emily Tyler and Geordi and all the rest, and Alyssa and Selar are running themselves ragged-nerved and blurry-eyed (though Selar would never admit to the former, certainly) working on a reversal, any reversal. Sariel herself stays on the bridge for what would have been Ro's early shift, pulling the second directly after her own gamma duty the better not to make anyone else scramble at the start of early watch. The starfield doesn't change, and doesn't change, and her sensors are dead silent and dark as minutes roll to hours and there's no news, no news. By the time the chronometer's clicked round to 15:00, she's long past the last of her mental midnight oil reserves and can only blink overtired, too-bright eyes up at Tess Allenby as her fellow ensign appears to relieve her for a wavering second, then two, before finally murmuring a genuine, exhausted thank you and making a wobble-legged exit through the turbolift doors.
She almost forgets to raise a hand to her door panel, and comes within an inch of plowing nose-first into unforgiving metal before catching herself, staggering with rebound, and flinging a sleep-clumsy arm up the better to be scanned at the palm. After that it's all she can do to lurch inside without hitting either side of the entrance, and she skips the lights entirely as she stumbles toward her bed and drops bonelessly onto it's foot.
On a normal day, there might be cinnamon incense to light. On a normal day there would certainly be tea, probably be vegetable soup or at the very least one variety of fruit or another, possibly be music played at low volume. But today has not been normal so far. Today has tripped wires and alarms unlike any other she's so far encountered, and it's all Sariel can do to unknot otherwise-neat laces and tug her boots off. They hit the floor, one after the other--thump, thump, but she's too drowsy and worried and sore in certain places from the half day and more of bridge duty to think coherently about picking them up. She breathes in lingering traces of cinnamon as she sinks back against her pillow and closes too-dry, dazzled eyes.
It isn't a minute before she breathes out salt air, fragrant tropical foliage and lavender and the scent of powdery, newly-disturbed white sand.
It isn't a minute before she's dreamed herself straight back to the island that raised her. And if there's the heavy trace of stronger-than-normal smoke laced in with what's familiar in the air - who's to say? She'll assume it's a bonfire. That's not unfamiliar either, after all. Never mind what's rustily present underneath it; bonfires happen all the time, at home. She's built them herself, and thrown coconut husks into their flames and leapt over their embers. This is home, and smoke is breathed in, breathed out. Cinnamon, lavender, strong tea "Sariel, come in out of the rain, Sariel--" mango and chutney and what has to be a bonfire.
Has to be.
Because this is home, seashells and calypso and 2369, with attitudes and views intact. Never mind that rust-tinged coppery scent twining with the smoke in the air.
Isn't it?