Only Flowers

Posted on Fri Jan 22, 2021 @ 2:32am by Lieutenant Endri Dahl
Edited on on Fri Jan 22, 2021 @ 5:58am

670 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Si vis pacem, para bellum
Location: En Route to DS5
Timeline: MD2 1030

[ON]

The flowers were Terran.

Repeat that and breathe. Just breathe.

Flowers. She sat on the floor, her back to the corner, shoulders touching the walls, with a PADD balanced on the top of her thigh and her carry-on next to her, tight against her leg. Her attention was on the flowers though. Daisies, she thought. Old Earth. Celtic legend. Whenever an infant died, God sprinkled daisies over the earth to cheer the parents up. Symbolic of innocence and purity.

Not relevant.

The girl, no more than six or seven, wore a necklace made of daisies and as she skipped around the perimeter of the lounge where they all waited for the overdue transport vessel to arrive, her ponytail bounced up and down in rhythm with the chain. Just daisies. A petal drifted slowly to the floor near her knee as the girl passed.

She didn't touch it. Flowers weren’t good things anymore.

Her watchful green gaze searched the room for other signs as she shoved the mass of her blonde hair back, tucked behind her ears. A flower worn by a child was neither a message nor a sign but it took a while to convince herself because there had been many signs. Messages delivered in the language of flowers. A cultural thing she hadn't known about until it all started and she was forced to do the research.

Now, she knew them all.

There was the bouquet of blue and red salvia (thinking of you and forever mine) with sprigs of lavender (devotion) that someone had handed her on the promenade. She smiled about that bouquet for days but then, the red tulip, indicating a message sent, was left on her pillow on the day that everything in her quarters had been moved slightly. Or the crushed yellow carnation she found outside her door, indicating disdain, the morning after her date. Or the wild rose petals, the promise of pleasure and pain, in her desk drawer a day or two later.

Yes, flowers were ugly things to her now.

Just breathe. Because all of that was years in the past. No longer relevant. All she had to do was convince her heart, pounding against her rib-cage, that she was safe. That nothing had changed simply because she’d been transferred off the safety of a ship in space, the Odin. Home and sanctuary with the kind of challenge she thrived on.

Just breathe.

The transport vessel was late in arriving and that left her sitting here, waiting, for the past three hours. Part of the adjustment she would have to make because, once again, she’d be on a station. Different one though. Not in the home system and really, space was so vast. Hard to believe that he’d find her in all of this; of course, he could query Starfleet, check her records. Understanding how to sneak into the system was not beyond his capabilities … No. Don’t go down that path, she thought. Just don’t. He’s moved on. Probably torturing some other unfortunate soul with his flowers and creepy games. I’m safe.

She turned her attention to things she could control. Preliminary data on her new assignment as Chief Engineer of a deep space station. Tried to turn at any rate but her mind was stubborn when it came to ‘him.’ Like a well-worn rut in her mind, she reviewed what she knew, working the problem the way you tested a sore tooth, over and over, but no new direction presented itself.

The moment passed because she had learned how to manage these momentary fears. She returned her attention to the PADD she carried and settled in to read. As an engineer, she understood that some things could not be hurried. As a person, she understood that it was necessary to do more than survive. It was necessary to thrive. No one would take that from her.

[OFF]

A Post by:

Lieutenant Endri Dahl
(Soon to be) Chief Engineer
Deep Space 5

 

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