Written for the where_no_woman lj prompt:
The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me.
Revised as per polar-realm's review.
When Pindari (farmer) married Tahm-Rayiš (student; xenolinguistics major and geology minor), he gave her a set of knives. Beautifully sharpened, exquisitely balanced for carving and throwing; they were her knives, and hers alone. She gave him her father's farm, in name, law, and spirit. Only child, she was, with a wanderer's feet and eyes on the stars; Pindari had the patience and courage to tend to the land, while she only loved it. They gave each other children, who grew up in fields that he worked and ate food that she sliced.
Tahm-Rayiš was not a farmer, something that her husband never held against her. He raised the children while she flew and mined amongst the stars, and he made sure no one used those knives but her. Five children in total, the latter two born when she was on leave, but on that leave she made sure they knew what kitchens meant. Kitchens meant food and warmth; kitchens meant laughter and stories; kitchens were the heart of clan and family, even if one had to mind burns and cuts.
It wasn't until she started working on the Narada that she found a captain who let her take her knives on-board.
It wasn't until after Romulus was consumed that she actually used them. Not even the Narada could run on vengeance alone, not even Romulans could keep going on nothing but dreams of justice and murdered family. They had all taken turns at kitchen-duty anyway (they were not a large or formal crew, and she enjoyed the break; it was still a kitchen, still said something of home), and at her next shift, the communications officer took control.
Good food, she cooked, hearty food, peasant food. The kind of food most of them had eaten with their families, and now never would.
In her more calculating moments, Tahm-Rayiš was sure that it had a better effect than the harsh mourning rations. Remember, the food said, remember. There was a pleasure to be had in cooking, of course, a pleasure in feeding people who were now her brothers, now her sons. But as her knives flashed down, they also flashed remember. Remember Pindari, who never would have left the land and who loved her with a quiet, enduring loyalty. Remember their children, born with tears and blood and love. Children whom she had taught to walk and talk and fight, children who had flashes of her, flashes of Pindari, children mostly made up of themselves. Her sons and her daughters, fierce and beautiful and dead, dead, dead.
With every flash of her knives in the kitchen, Tahm-Rayiš remembered, and Tahm-Rayiš lived and breathed vengeance as much as her captain. And sometimes when those knives flashed down, she imagined them slicing into the Vulcan responsible.