Respite and Nepenthe
Posted on Sat Dec 17, 2011 @ 9:01pm by
Edited on Sat Dec 17, 2011 @ 9:02pm
694 words; about a 3 minute read
(( This is a backpost, essentially concurrent with "Farewell to Andraste," inserting Qualia's presence in established events through the magic of retcon. (Hey, if Tuvok can be on The Excelsior...) ))
It is written, 'In the Kingdom of The Blind, the one-eyed man is King.'
But I have also heard it said, 'In the Kingdom of The Blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.'
She sat on the floor of her quarters, a black dressing-gown bound loosely around her, her legs curled in an approximation of the Lotus position. Her hands were steepled in her lap, and she gazed away forever.
It's a paradox.
Shaking her head, she rose to her feet, adjusted the robe around her, and moved to the window. Her reflection in the transparent aluminum pane made her seem ever more the ghostly.
Where there is vision, there are those who would venerate that vision. And there are those who would resent it.
I'm not pretending, of course, that I have any scrap of wisdom that these people lack. That I am... special somehow, to be made king or be driven out.
It's just a paradox. The nature of Humanity. Bangs and whimpers.
Occumbo had been an 'okay guy,' as I understand the term. We picked corn out of our teeth and chatted at that holographic hoedown and he didn't seem the remotest bit unnerved by me. Most of Starfleet's pretty well-adjusted to the notion of death, these are brave explorers after all, but mortality and the awareness thereof can still rattle the brainbox even in the most stalwart of souls.
Occumbo, on the other hand, seemed to greet me with friendliness as though he had lived with impending doom all his life and still intended to live forever.
And then today I watched him die, standing there beside Captain Janeway, ostensibly her protection against such a death as his. Later in Sickbay I held his cooling hand and felt the residue of life start to seep out of him. I prayed over him what Latin prayers I'd learned for the dying... not the same, of course, as a priest or even a chaplain, but I was all he had. An apology of a psychopomp, and not even a Master.
'All he got was a lifetime,' to paraphrase Pallid teachings. 'It's all anyone gets.'
...don't even get me started on that mass grave. I'm supposed to be Zen about Death, that's the gig, that's the whole Pallid signature piece. But such... careless sacrilege... the scattering of the dead...
Then again, for all I know, that could just be how they do things out here.
They fly ships that seem alive and when they crash they scrub the meat from the bones of the crew and one by one dump them into a communal space. One-stop-shopping for the local equivalent of The Angel of Death...
I didn't know how to lay them to rest. At least with Occumbo, he had the chance to tell me that unlike the vast majority of Humans these days, he actually had a faith tradition that wasn't secular humanism. (Apparently the COO has one of those, too, I'll have to ask him about it. Human death rituals are some of the more interesting I've read about.) ...but with them? All I could do was spare them a nondenominational prayer, like I offered all those Voyager crewmembers and Maquis after The Caretaker ripped us here untimely.
At least in The Alpha Quadrant I had some insight into the races I met. Few things tell you more about a people than their perspective on the disposition of the deceased. But here...
...here I'm as blind as anyone else in The Kingdom.
She moved towards the bathroom, shrugging out of her robe as she did so, letting it fall to the floor away from arctic-pale skin.
"End recording," she murmured, and soon the whine of the sonic shower replaced the sound of her voice.
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