Fellowship & Fairydust

40 Eridani was hot today. Outside, sand scudded over the ground in a light wind, scouring rocks into ever more exquisite sculptures millimetre by millimetre and grain by grain.

It was a long time, it seemed, since Amanda had spent Valentine’s Day in the damp and chill climate of a North American February. She remembered brief glimpses of Valentines past – of opening her school bag at the age of fourteen and finding an anonymous and slightly crumpled card in there, and just knowing it was from Robert Silcox. Of Andy trying to steal a kiss from her, and of Darin doing the same a year later, and getting far more than he expected.

A smile stole into the corners of her mouth. A long time ago, those. In reality she had only been here on Vulcan for six months – but it was long enough in a desert climate to make all memories of damp air and cold and human spontaneity seem like a mirage that would dissolve if she reached out to grasp it.
Her rose garden, still young and carefully nurtured under heat shields and with constant irrigation, was the only piece of Earth-like green for a hundred miles. When she stood in it, as she did now, with the open doors to the house at her back and the desert lapping at the heat shields, it was like standing on a tiny island of Earth in an alien sea. The house on Vulcan did have a garden, true, but the colours and textures of Vulcan plants were far from the fresh green depths of Earth vegetation.

‘Ah well,’ she said, barely breathing the words aloud.

Sarek was meditating, and the whole house was so silent that even her own half-spoken sigh was a surprise to her ears.

‘Ah well,’ she said a little louder, reclaiming her surroundings with her very human voice. ‘I made my choice. Some things I left behind, some things I gained…’

‘And what did you gain?’

She displayed a level of surprise that would be distasteful to most Vulcans. Sarek was standing behind her, and she spun to see him, standing erect and calm with his hands clasped behind his back. She smiled at the sight of him, then – his dark hair set off perfectly by the neat, dark lines of his clothes. He had dignity in every part of him.

‘What did you gain, my wife?’ Sarek asked, and like a sheet of glass relaxing and melting into the furnace she suddenly felt his presence as his mind reached out for hers, flexing away from the artificial isolation that his meditation had induced.

‘I gained you, Sarek,’ she said, smiling with all of the warmth and grace that he sparked in her. ‘That’s all I wanted.’

‘And you brought these,’ he said, bringing his hands from behind his back to reveal – not a bunch of roses, cut and waiting to die – but an entire plant, two feet high and with its root ball wrapped in fabric, with red roses blooming amongst dark, almost black, leaves.

‘Oh, Sarek,’ she exclaimed.

She had brought roses with her from Earth – but she had not brought these ones, of that she was sure. At the enquiring thought in her mind Sarek said, ‘No, my wife. You did not bring this one. This one, I cultured for you from the genetic code of some of your favourite varieties, and from a certain Vulcan root stock. This one should, with care, survive outside of the heat shields. It is a hybrid.’

‘Oh,’ she said again, almost speechless with her delight and gratitude.

She took the plant and stroked her fingertips across its leaves, feeling a harder, more resilient texture than Earth ones, that would perhaps inhibit evaporation and conserve precious water.

A hybrid, she thought. Just like our marriage…

Just like our marriage, Sarek returned, brushing his fingertips over her temples.

Her mind fell into his with giddy delight and the ever present surprise at his ability to sense her thoughts. Mind melding was like drunkenness – like a pure, perfect drunkenness that eclipsed her soul and then made it one with his. The heat of his love and his passion, so rigidly restrained behind shields and disciplines, spread into her mind like water seeping into dry soil. She lost herself, and was just conscious of her fingers loosening, and of Sarek, always more in control than her, taking the plant from her and setting it down.

Just like our marriage, Sarek’s thoughts resounded through hers, and she caught thoughts of blending the stock of different worlds to make a perfect rose, and then, over layering it, the thought of intense and focused Vulcans talking, and the discussion of human and Vulcan genetic stock, and of the possibility of blending it and creating –

Oh, Sarek, it’s possible!

The surprise and joy tumbled through her mind, infectious and intoxicating. Inside his thoughts, Sarek laughed too, the image of a squalling and anonymous baby with jet black hair somewhere in his mind – a baby with her eyes and his ears and a mouth square with crying.

Oh, Sarek, it’s… 

His mind silenced her, and her clothes were falling like the petals of the roses that she loved so much. The stone-flagged path was warm under her back as Sarek lowered her to the floor, the thoughts of heat and fire and love and the face of that anonymous baby swirling and then evaporating into nothing but a pit of desire that was deeper than any human man would ever feel.

His body was warm and strong, and his embrace seemed to bring so much exhilaration running through her. Making love to a Vulcan was like falling from a precipice, like having so much exhilaration running through her body that it was almost unbearable. The ancients of Earth had called it a little death. Here it was death and reincarnation rolled into one.

They lay afterwards, their breath coming fast and sharp, their eyes drifting on the orange sky above the heat shields. She rolled towards him, drawn to the heat of his body, and he gave her one of his rare and beautiful smiles.

T’hy’la, he sighed into her mind.

The leaves of the rose bushes fluttered in the artificial wind, and the heat of the sun stroked both of them. She gingerly moved her finger along his arm, feeling the subtle curve of his muscles, and she loved him with all of her heart and soul. If a child could be created from love alone, they would be parents in no time.

Not love alone, Sarek thought to her, but love and science intermingled. We will have he who we will call son, in time. 

Or she who we will call daughter, she chided him gently. Or perhaps both… 

Perhaps both, Sarek agreed.

And she rested her head against his, the softness of her hair pillowing his, and she was content.