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Fires of Time
Time is the fire in which we burn.
And, admittedly, other fires. The fires of the borg for one, for example. The same fires that have decimated the el-alurian race, whether it be through incineration or even more horrifically, assimilation. He's grateful, in a way, that Leandra and their children fall into the first category. They at least met a more natural fate.
And yet it's all wrong. So very, very, wrong. And while the Nexus put it right momentarily, perhaps infinitely in its own sense, it's still all wrong.
He's burning...everything's burning...time is burning him...
And there's no regeneration. No rejuvenation. No cycle of rebirth. Nothing. These...humans, a species with the gall to label him a "humanoid" (as if the whole universe revolves around their distinctiveness...not unlike the borg really) tell him that it'll all be alright. That they've all experienced loss themselves, citing any number of threats from klingons to gorn, from romulans to some nut job named Khan. As if they had any idea what it was truly like. Time burns them slowly. El-aurians live in time far longer. And if they're not living, they're burning...
He feels like he's burning up inside. His people...his family...the Nexus...
What makes it worse, they could do something. He's heard rumours that they've encountered the borg before...some ship of theirs more than a century ago, the incident kept highly classified and not to be shared with a non-Federation species. They can even time travel apparently. But do they do so? No. Time travel can be used to save their world of course, such as bringing whales to answer some genocidal probe, but to save his? No. Of course not. They don't understand that the borg aren't the kind of species that would be touched by whale songs.
They don't understand. None of them do. Time can't be rewritten they maintain.
They don't know how it burns...
