Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.
Author's Note: This story is the coda to the 'Fur and Feathers' Trilogy, and will make no sense to anyone who hasn't read them first. It was co-written with my brother, who first came up with the idea that the story needed ... well, readers will decide for themselves if it's a happy ending.
This story has not been beta-read, so any mistakes in it are mine.
The view was still as marvelous as he remembered it.
It had been high summer back then, however, and now the unmistakable tinge of autumn was in the air. Jonathan Archer knew that if he turned around he would see the woods below him and the fields beyond splashed with gold. The year was drawing towards its ending.
The sea wasn't blue as it was back home; it was green, the darkest imaginable green, laced with frills of foam nearer the shore. A few seagulls sailed along the cliffs below him, their voices melancholy. It matched his mood, although this place had happy memories for him. Hoshi had retired to the 'place in the country' she had so briefly shared with Malcolm, doubtless to contemplate the doings of Agnes and her two grandchildren. He might see if he could make time to visit, before he flew home.
It was hard, sometimes, not to be envious. Although she'd never married again, Hoshi had found a measure of contentment, and she had Agnes as an enduring memorial to the love she had found; he had had no such good fortune. Erika had disappeared, along with Columbia and her entire crew, sometime during the Romulan War, and somehow none of the tentative attempts at romance afterwards had ever quite worked out for him. Women gravitated to him because he was a 'hero', and sooner or later any of them who got close to him made the inevitable discovery that the hero was no more than a flawed human being after all, still bearing the scars of his years in command. Disillusionment was inevitably followed by desertion, and he'd finally accepted that this was to be his lot.
He didn't know exactly why he'd decided to come back here. He had no friends or family in Ireland, and for sure Travis had better things to do during his brief shore leave than fly an old CO thousands of miles on a whim. Bless him, though, the weight of captaincy hadn't dampened his old friend's spirits. He was still up for taking a jaunt at the drop of a hat, and the prospect of a day's fishing to follow in one of the trout streams hereabouts had been ample consolation. He was taking his ease now down in the shuttlepod, tactful enough to know when his presence was superfluous for just a little while.
So why had he come back?
He stared out to sea. The breeze lifted his thinning, iron-gray hair and made the bottoms of his pants legs flap idly. Fortunately it was a gentle one, though he could guess that on many days up here the wind would be almost enough to lift you off your feet, especially when you weren't as young as you used to be anymore.
As for why he'd come back? He had no idea. Except that lately he'd started to dream, vivid dreams of someone calling his name. They were always associated with the sounds he associated with sailing: the slap of wavelets against the hull of a boat, and the rustle and snap of a sail overhead. Sometimes when he awoke his nostrils would be full of the smell that was filling them now – that of salt water.
The voice was not one he recognized – not consciously, anyhow, though he was plagued by the feeling that he should know it. Over the course of his long life he'd spoken with thousands of people, and many of them had been women. But not a one of them that he could remember had spoken in that particular, distinctive way: so low and throaty it was almost guttural, and calling him with a longing so clear that some mornings he woke up with a pain in his chest because he was never able to answer her.
He sighed. Old age wasn't much fun. Too much time to remember; though he supposed he should be thankful that he still could remember, there were times when he'd have given a lot to be able to forget. But one of the worst things was knowing the adventures were over. The galaxies were still out there, but exploring them was a young man's job. And today – with a keenness that hurt – he felt the old wanderlust again, the old urge for adventure.
With difficulty he sat down on an outcrop of rock that was topped by turf. Nearby clumps of heather were covered in wrinkled brown seed-pods where the amethyst flowers had been, and whenever the breeze stirred them the air filled with the sound of infinitely tiny rustle of the seeds within. There was a moral there, if you were looking for one.
"It is – beautiful."
The voice startled him; he had believed that he was on his own. Glancing around he saw a woman with long flowing blonde hair, strands of which lifted and fell as they were teased by the breeze. She was not tall, but she gave the impression of being powerfully built. Her clothing struck him as being less than ideal for hill-climbing on a decidedly brisk day: faux-fur leggings of a leonine gold color, topped by a simple white blouse that was discreetly open at the neck. The oddness extended to her footwear: she hadn't any. Perhaps she was a member of one of those back-to-nature cults that advanced societies threw up from time to time. Her bare feet would explain how she had managed to walk up to him without making a sound. He hoped for her sake that the soles of her feet were tough – he himself would not have cared to go barefoot on a surface like this. It might be that she had been brought up in one of those cults and had always gone without shoes: he had heard reports of some practices, carried out in the name of 'returning to Nature', that made not wearing shoes seem relatively sane. He stifled a sigh. It was just his luck to run into a hippie. Oh well, perhaps she wouldn't stay around for too long.
"Yes. Yes, it is," he replied with an effortful politeness.
"May I sit beside you?"
"Be my guest." There was no warmth in the words, and they were spoken after a slight but noticeable hesitation.
The woman sat down gracefully, and gazed with appreciative eyes at the strand far below, watching the waves roll in to meet the shore. He braced himself for an exchange of the usual observations that tourists make, but to his relief she said nothing. Apparently she was content just to sit silently and let the view communicate with her. He could live with that.
In silence man and woman sat side by side, keeping their own counsel. At first he resented her presence. He had been enjoying the solitude, and, even saying nothing, she was intruding upon it. It soon became plain to him, however, that she had no intention of pestering him with small talk, and his resentment ebbed. Indeed, knowing that somebody else was enjoying the view and the quietness was almost comforting.
"A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled," he murmured to himself.
"There is wisdom in that." She'd heard the murmur, quiet though it was.
"It was a saying of my mother's," he explained defensively.
"Ah."
To his relief, the explanation did not lead to a conversation about mothers and their merits or demerits. The silence fell again, as velvet soft as before.
Several families with young children had been making the most of the autumn sunshine on the beach he'd seen as the shuttle flew in above the promenade. They were building sandcastles, and digging moats around them for the incoming tide to fill. It was reassuring to see the age-old tradition being kept up. He vaguely remembered holidays on the beach with his own parents, though the details had faded with time. What awaited those children during the course of their five-score years? He contemplated the question idly. And what awaited him in the years that remained to him, however many or few they might be? He needed a purpose, but he was tired of having purposes. He needed… meaning. And somehow nothing ever quite satisfied that need. Forgetful of the woman's presence, he sighed.
"Of what are you thinking?" she asked gently.
"It was just some words from a song. 'I sometimes think, in all this world, the saddest thing to be, Old admirals who feel the wind and never put to sea'." The words were followed by a twisted smile.
"The hunt must be left to the young. Yes, there is sadness in that." She nodded slowly.
It seemed an odd phrase for a hippie to use, but he let it pass. "Are you from these parts?"
"No. I am from a long way away."
"Are you on holiday?"
"No. I have come here to meet somebody."
"On the top of a hill?"
She smiled. As she did so, the tip of her tongue protruded slightly. Somehow the sight seemed familiar to him, but he could not think why. Memories, indistinct and jumbled as distant echoes in a cave, teased him and fled.
"It seemed – appropriate," she said.
"Oh. A boyfriend?" The arrival of a boyfriend would doubtless shatter the air of peace, but it was an improvement upon other possible scenarios, such as the arrival of a band of druids.
She chuckled, and her tongue made another brief appearance. "I have never really considered acquiring a boyfriend. I do not believe that my sisters would have approved."
"You should tell them to go to hell."
"The temptation to tell them that has been there, occasionally."
"That said, I'm the last person in the world who should be offering advice about relationships." He picked up a pebble and hurled it downhill into a mass of ferns and gorse.
"It cannot be easy to find a heart for your heart."
"I've never managed it."
The silence fell again. She asked no intrusive questions, offered no empty words of consolation.
"I shouldn't burden you with my problems," he said at last, sighing. "I've had a good career, and I've traveled a lot, and I like to think that I've achieved a few things along the way. It's just that I don't know what to do next. All the other people I know have children, grandchildren even. They have families, they belong. And I don't."
"Have you had – girlfriends?" She spoke the word as though it was unfamiliar to her.
"Some. But nobody who stayed the course. I think they were more interested in my uniform than in the man who was wearing it. That was always the problem. I was always a function and never a person, whether it was with Starfleet, or with women. Everybody saw me as captain, admiral, commander. Jonathan got lost along the way, somehow." Erika, maybe, had been the exception, though war and the burdens of command had changed her too. But Erika was gone, and he'd long ago accepted that it was for good.
She tilted her head sideways a little in curiosity and concern. "Did your friends not seek out Jonathan?"
"They did, sometimes. They still do. But command isn't something that encourages you to make friends. 'Don't get personally involved' is one of the earliest lessons they teach you at the Academy. You ignore it every so often, of course; you'd hardly be human if you didn't. But it can be costly. Responsibility is a burden, but being responsible for the safety of your friends is ten times worse." He broke off, remembering the months when he'd carried on his shoulders the responsibility for the survival of every human being on Planet Earth. There were no words to describe how heavy that burden had been.
"I believe it."
"I keep in contact with some of the members of the crew. They've got their own lives to live, so I don't like to bother them too often. As long as I hear a familiar voice calling me 'Jon' every so often I can get by, it keeps me sane. But, God, sometimes I could quite cheerfully…" He left the sentence unfinished and shrugged his shoulders expressively.
"That is sad, Jonathan Arrrcher."
"I suppose it is. But it can't be helped. – Jonathan Archer. Whatever happened to him?" He scowled at the horizon, unseeing. Then a thought struck him. Her voice had sounded deeper than it had previously done. Hearing his name spoken in that way, and with the sea breeze and the distant sound of the waves far below – it all bore a strange resemblance to that recurring dream. He gave a sniff of amusement. "You've broken my dream," he told her, gruffly self-conscious.
"Dreams have a way of getting broken." She smiled ruefully.
"Tell me about it!"
Again, her voice had sounded deep. How was it that she knew his surname? He was sure – almost sure – that he hadn't mentioned it. Fame had left him very cautious in that regard, as indeed in many others. He abandoned his study of the horizon and studied her, curious. "I know it may sound silly, but have we met somewhere before?"
There was that smile again, with just the tip of her tongue protruding. It was puzzlingly, teasingly familiar, yet he could think of no reason why it should be.
"We have. But you would not remember."
"I've met so many people, down the years. I hope you won't be offended that I can't remember you."
"I did not expect you to remember me. In fact I knew that you would not. If the truth be told, it was my fault that you would not."
"You shouldn't blame yourself. As I said, I've met so many people it'd be a miracle if I could remember more than one in a thousand. It's very rare for anybody to make such an impression that they stand out from the rest. If you didn't, it's hardly your fault." Starfleet held numerous public relations events. On reflection, it was at one of those that their paths were most likely to have crossed. He had been invited to speak on literally hundreds of occasions, and, out of a sense of duty, had agreed to do so, with the best grace possible. People queued up to be photographed with him, or to get his signature on a picture or on one of Starfleet's custom-made cards. Sometimes he struggled to see why they were interested in him.
On a couple of occasions he had attended events in Ireland. It seemed reasonable to guess that she had been one of the throng that had lined up for a brief word and for a signed memento. "Were you at the Dublin presentation? Or the one in Cork, perhaps?"
"No."
"Oh." It must have been one of the ones back in the States, then, or possibly the London one. She didn't sound English – she certainly didn't have that precise, clipped accent which he would always associate with Malcolm Reed. There again, she didn't sound American either.
"Would you tell me a little of what you can remember about a world called Kerriel?"
"Kerriel?" His stare intensified. It had been an unimportant place, one of many, many planets that Enterprise had visited during the course of the mission. It must have been one of the dullest, too. He could hardly remember anything about it. They had made a stop there once, to pick up ore that contained hyrellanium for their damaged hydroponics shielding, and had returned so that Phlox could do some research into a mysterious illness that had afflicted T'Pol. Presumably the visits had been included in the suitably-edited versions of the ship's logs which had been published some years ago. Granted, neither call had been anything other than routine, and anyone who had stumbled across references to them in the log must have been going through it with meticulous care. That said, there were people out there who were obsessed with Starfleet and all its operational minutiae, people who regarded days spent in line-by-line perusal of its official documentation as time well spent. He hadn't received the impression that she was that type of character, but there again, he might be mistaken.
He shrugged his shoulders. "There's not much to tell. We called there once to pick up supplies, and we had to retrace our steps because one of our officers picked up a mystery illness there and our doctor needed to have a look at the place. The people were nowhere near ready for space flight, so Starfleet won't be going back there any time soon."
"Do you remember what they were like?"
"Not really." He wrinkled his nose, and sighed. "We went to so many places, you see. They were all new, and they all had their different people with their different ways, but looking back I sometimes struggle to think who came from where, and what they were like. The people on Kerriel… I have an idea that they had feathers somewhere, and that they kept cats – big ones. I think they cultivated trees, too. But it was a long time ago, and a hell of a lot has happened since then."
"A lot of hell has happened since then."
"You could say that. Yes."
Silence fell again. Sitting side by side they watched the wind sending ripples through the ferns and heather. In a farm halfway down the hill a girl walked across to the stables. After a slight delay she led a pony out of them and took it over some simple fences. They followed her progress with mild interest.
"Why are you interested in Kerriel, of all places?" he asked at last.
"It is a place that has always been close to my heart," she replied, with a faint smile.
"I can't imagine why. It's just an ordinary world, from what I recall. It was pleasant enough, I suppose, but hardly special. You haven't any ambitions to go and visit it, have you?"
"No." Her smile broadened. "I have no ambitions to visit it."
"It's just as well. It's a hell of a long way off, if by some remote chance you could find a ship to take you there. And I seem to remember that the natives weren't all that welcoming to strangers anyway. So, what's the big deal?"
"I want to right a wrong."
"On Kerriel?" It seemed highly unlikely.
"I hope to restore something that was taken away."
He frowned. Inevitably there were some fantasists around, people who insisted upon seeing every call made by Starfleet as a violation or an attempted colonization. If she was one of them, the conversation was going to end very soon. "We didn't take anything from them," he told her, brusquely. "Nothing that wasn't traded for, fairly and squarely. As I said, we got some ore, and the doc picked up some things to help him in his research. That was the lot. I can't imagine why they would want any of those things back, even if you were in a position to return them, which you're not."
"No. It was not something that you took. It was something that was taken from you, on your third visit."
"Our third visit?" He glanced at her, warily, and looked away. The third visit, the one during which Trip and T'Pol had somehow managed to conceive a child, had not been made in Enterprise, and had been strictly off the record – even the report of it that had been given to Starfleet had been deliberately vague. How had this woman had come to hear of it? Perhaps she was an investigative journalist of some sort – he had always had the deepest suspicions of them, as a species – and had managed to worm something out of one of the other members of the crew. "There was no third visit. Enterprise only went there twice, I'm sure of that. I was captain, after all. It was part of my job to know where we were going. If we'd made another call I would probably have remembered something about it," he finished, with a hint of sarcasm.
"The third visit was not made by your ship. You were not its captain, to direct its course. And your access to your memories was the thing that was taken from you."
Jon frowned. Evidently her information had come from a reliable source; but as for memories being taken from him, that was nonsense. She must be delusional. Like so many other conspiracy theorists she had cobbled together imaginary scenarios, and had come to believe in them. And yet… Something in the timbre of her voice spoke to him in the depths of his being. And the way she rolled her 'R's – someone, someone he knew had a habit of doing that, but for the life of him he couldn't think who it was. The breeze pushed at him, as if urging him not to dismiss her claim out of hand, and a seagull soaring overhead cried out as though to warn him not to say the dismissive words that had sprung to his lips. He left them unsaid.
"I don't see how that's possible. Or how you could know about it if it happened," he said with as much patience as he could summon up.
"I know." She nodded calmly. "I could try to explain, but it would be easier for us both if I was simply to restore what has been taken. If I do, you will understand."
"It sounds like a lot of nonsense."
"I know. But it is not."
There was silence again. Down in the paddock the pony mistimed its jump. A wooden pole fell to the ground. Moments later they heard the far-off thump of it, followed by what was presumably an Irish swear word, hooted by the disgusted rider. The expression on the face of the woman sitting beside him suggested that she found the hoot amusing.
"I've lost some memories, you say." He broached the subject anew as the rider, having put the pole back into position, circled the horse around in preparation for another attempt.
"Yes."
"Any idea how it happened? Or why?"
"The 'how' is one of those things which is simple to do but complicated to explain – a little like breathing, perhaps. As for the 'why': it was done because you needed it to be done."
"And how did you find out about all this?"
"I was there. I was the one who did the taking. And now I wish to restore that which I took." She met his incredulous stare calmly.
"That's impossible. Nobody could get here from there without Starfleet knowing. And they'd never seen a human being before."
"That is – mostly true."
"Mostly?"
Far off in the blue sky above Dublin the silver body of one of the Birmingham / Dublin shuttles glinted, reflecting the sunlight momentarily. She regarded the airplane with undisguised and – in his view – unwarranted interest.
"You Star People are capable of great wonders," she said admiringly. "Perhaps it is not surprising that you are reluctant to admit that some aspects of reality are beyond your grasp."
"There was nothing on Kerriel that we couldn't have grasped."
"Oh yes, there was. There still is. And it is by Her agency that I am here."
Once more there was silence. He was uneasy, and unconvinced, but something told him that this was important. The seagull cried out again.
"So. What do you want me to do?" he asked.
"I ask you to trust me."
"What would that involve, exactly? – If you're from one of those weird 'healing-through-sex' cults you can forget it!" he added hastily. Not that he couldn't, or anything, but…
"I am not from one of those weird 'healing-through-sex' cults, Jonathan Arrrcher." A glimmer in her eyes suggested that she found the idea amusing. "All that you have to do is let me touch you, there." She pointed towards his forehead, right between his eyebrows.
He sighed. The whole idea was ludicrous. Still, it wouldn't hurt to let her get on with it. If nothing happened, which was all too likely, it would be embarrassing, but she might be embarrassed enough to go away and leave him to his thoughts. "Fair enough."
"You will permit it?"
"Yes. It still seems daft to me; but why not? What have I got to lose?"
"Little to lose and much to gain."
"I'll take your word for it. Go on, then."
"It will make matters easier if I kneel in front of you." Eager now, she changed positions, moving with a feline grace. When she was settled again she regarded him gravely, yet there was a sparkle of something in her eyes that might well have been joyful anticipation. "Now. If you just will just incline your head a little… That is good. So…"
Slowly, as if worried that he might change his mind and forbid her if she moved too sharply, she reached out a hand; once again those intangible memories stirred, as impossible to grasp as wisps of fog. Her fingertips made contact with his forehead and rested upon it.
He could see the tips of her other fingers, curled loosely. For some reason it seemed wrong that they had nails.
"You should try to think as little as possible. You may find it easier if you close your eyes," she told him.
"Okay. But if that other hand goes anywhere near my pants I'll scream. I'm warning you." Self-conscious, he attempted a joke.
"My other hand will stay where it is, I can assure you of that. Be calm, now, if you may."
"Okay." He closed his eyes and let his mind focus on the shifting patterns of color that the darkness brought with it.
For several moments nothing happened. Then a swirl of memories began to broil in his consciousness, as water outside a lock gate churns when a boat inside is descending to the lower level. Images swam to the surface, only to sink again – yet this time, not so deep. They were within his reach now…
Simple stone buildings in a valley. A peace so real that it was almost tangible. A community of nuns… No, not nuns. Not women at all. Half-women, half-lionesses; creatures at once fascinating and potentially frightening. And one of them…
His eyes flew open. He stared, slack-jawed. How could he possibly have mistaken those leonine forelegs for furry pants? How had he managed not to see the powerful hind legs that accompanied them? And that face, so inhuman but yet so familiar and so dear?
"Shiránnor!" he husked. He'd forgotten that she was beautiful, and that her smile – it came moments later – lit up her whole face with joy. Hell, he'd all but forgotten her name, though it sprang to his lips now as though not one second of the intervening years had mattered.
"My dearest Jonathan Arrrcher." She lowered her hand and smiled at him.
"But – but this is just plain impossible!" He remembered, now, that she had a cute little nose, and that when she smiled her pink tongue protruded from her mouth and curled up just a little at the end. And that she was the one person in his entire life who knew him and accepted him and loved him utterly for who he was.
"It is worse than impossible, it is ridiculous. And yet it is real. Is that not a wonder, and a source of mirth?"
"But I – I –" He desperately wanted to believe. "It can't be happening. But I don't want it to not happen."
"It is happening."
"But I – I'm afraid I'm going to wake up, and I'll be in some godforsaken apartment in some godforsaken city, on my own again!"
"You are not going to wake up, my heart. If I look like a dream, let your other senses test me and bear their own witness."
She opened her arms wide, in invitation. With a sob of longing he more or less collapsed into them.
Her being here was impossible, utterly so. Yet, to believe that the warmth, the softness, the solidity of her was not real? That was even more impossible.
A dam of emotion was breached inside him, and broke. Clinging to her he wept and rocked and howled and rocked and wept again, as the hurts of decades poured out of him. Solemn of face, she held him and rocked with him, rumbling little growls of consolation as she had probably done to her cub. Now and again she licked his hair caressingly.
After what seemed an eternity the storms abated. His sobbing faded and became merely an occasional sigh. With an unsteady hand he took a handkerchief from his pocket, blew his nose and cleaned his face up, and then laid his head down again. Staring out across the Wicklow Mountains, but paying not the slightest heed to what he was seeing, he rested his head upon her shoulder.
"Shiránnor," he repeated, as though to reassure himself that it truly was her. "It's just plain impossible for you to be here. But you're here."
"I am here," she confirmed, patting his backside affectionately with one of those big forepaws.
"How did I ever forget you?"
"I gave you no choice but to forget. Your people needed you. If you had remembered me you would not have been able to take your place among them again. So I locked away in your mind your memories of me, and of Kerriel. And I took away the key."
"That last morning? I remember you looking – sadder than I'd anticipated." He looked into her eyes.
"Yes. The path of duty is an important one, but it is not always a pleasant one."
"Tell me about it!"
"What I did was necessary." She leaned forward to rub noses with him. "You could not stay, and I could not go. We both had our lives to lead. It was as simple as that – and as difficult."
He searched her face. "You could have told me."
A twinkle rewarded this departure from the ways of logic (which T'Pol would have deplored). "Would that have been before or after I made you forget?"
"You know what I mean!"
"I know perfectly well what you mean. But if I had told you before I made you forget, you would have forgotten that along with all else; and if I had told you afterwards, the knowledge that I had interfered with your memories would have poisoned those I left you. You would have come to hate me, and that I could not bear. I acted for the best. If it was not, I ask your pardon."
She still had that lovely dignity, that royal simplicity. How could he refuse to forgive her?
Another embrace was necessary to demonstrate this; a calmer, deeper one than the previous one had been. Enfolded in her arms, he felt the years fall away.
Down in the paddock the pony jumped the fence faultlessly, but its success went unmarked by the pair at the top of the hill.
"You didn't forget me, anyhow." He pulled back at last and looked at her again. Close to, her eyes were like jewels, their amber lit with little shifting fires of laughter.
"Not for a moment." She gave one of those roguish grins that he remembered so well. "When the time came for me to bear my cub, the hands and the voice in my Awakening dreams were yours."
"I'm honored." The words were only partly spoken in jest.
"So you should be!"
"And you have a child now?"
Shiránnor beamed. "I have a fully-grown daughter, who has a cub of her own," she proclaimed proudly.
"That's great!" He was pleased for her. "And I was kind of there at her conception?"
"Kind of." Her tongue popped out, in that familiar gesture.
"I suppose she doesn't look like me, at all?"
She eyed him with pretended sternness. "You remember my sisters in the Temple now, do you not?"
"Yes. Yes, I do. Some of them had a few issues with you, as I recall."
"Indeed they did. Imagine what they would have said if I had put before them a daughter who looked like you! Skairesse would never have recovered from the scandal!"
"I suppose it might have caused something of a stir."
"Hnh! 'A stir' does not begin to describe it adequately!" Her tail, twitching vigorously, bore eloquent witness to her word. "Though now that I think on it, perhaps they would not have made the connection. We have a way of filtering out inconvenient truths; impossible ones, even more so. Be it or no, she looks a little like me and a lot like herself, as the Good Goddess decreed should be the case for our cubs."
"And you have a grand-daughter now."
"Yes."
"I–. Er. I may be remembering wrong, but I thought your people didn't live quite as long as we do."
"That is so."
"It's decades since we went to Kerriel. If I hadn't forgotten about you I would have thought that you were dead before now."
"Hah! It is from there that the tail hangs!" Another beaming grin, but she forbore to explain.
"It's wonderful to see you again. Just – wonderful."
"And my heart is full, to meet you again. I have often thought of you, wondering how you were faring."
"There've been good times and bad times. What it would have been like if you and the other women at the Temple hadn't come to my rescue, I can't imagine. Losing so many of my crew in that final battle, Malcolm among them. And then Hoshi retreating into herself like that when I told her what had happened to him. I couldn't face it any longer. And when I stopped resisting the pressure it shattered me."
"Your gods asked far more of you than anyone could be expected to bear."
"You could put it like that. You still believe in your Goddess, then?"
For some reason she obviously found this funny. "More fervently than ever!" she assured him, with a chortle. "I would have some explaining to do, if I stopped!"
"Each to their own, I suppose." It was one area on which they were never going to be able to reach agreement. Still, as superstitions went, her religion seemed harmless enough, and with her being a priestess she could hardly be blamed for clinging to it. Not wishing to introduce a note of disharmony to the occasion, he steered clear of that subject and turned to a safer one. "I remember now what you and Grenyal and Jathior and the others did for me. You worked miracles, between you. Are they still around?"
"Grenyal crossed the Endless Ocean some seventeen years ago. Jathior followed her five years later. Most of the faces in the Temple now, you would not recognize."
"Oh." Given the shorter lifespan of the Skaira it was perhaps not surprising. "I'm sorry. You must miss them."
"Perhaps less than you might imagine."
Her answer surprised him, especially as it was followed by one of her tongue-tip smiles. There again, he told himself, his knowledge of the way in which Skair society worked was scanty. In addition, he supposed that their religious beliefs must be a comfort to them in times of bereavement. There had been times when he would have been relieved to have some kind of a god to hope in.
"I never really found out how relationships between you work," he said apologetically. "Whether you have special friendships or not, that sort of thing. In my defense, I had other things to worry about."
"Indeed."
"I'm glad that you're still around, anyway." A worrying possibility struck him. Jathior had been around Shiránnor's age, as far as he could tell. If Jathior had died, presumably Shiránnor's death might not be long delayed. Having regained her, so unexpectedly and so wonderfully, he did not want to lose her again. "You – you aren't getting near to dying yourself, are you?" he ventured cautiously, afraid that the answer might be in the affirmative.
"I am not approaching death, Jonathan Arrrcher," she assured him, a twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
"Good!" His relief was heartfelt. "You still seem full of life, like you always did. It's just that with them having died, I thought – I was afraid – that you might perhaps be going in the same direction."
"It is a logical conclusion, as I am sure T'Pol would agree. But in this case it is misguided. – How is she, now?"
"Great, great. She and Trip had another child, and nobody can work out how they managed it. They've got the comparative biologists baffled. The best theory that anybody has been able to come up with is a random physiological mutation on the part of one or the other of them which makes them able to breed successfully every so often. She refused to undergo any tests, and Trip did too, which didn't exactly make them popular."
"The Goddess gives with a generous hand." Shiránnor waved her tail sunnily. The arrival of another child plainly did not surprise her in the least, whatever conundrums it may have posed for the scientific community.
Politely Jon let the observation pass. "The Vulcans don't want to believe that it's even remotely possible for humans to interbreed with them, but the children take after Trip, and as the saying has it, 'If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.' – Hoshi settled down in England, in Malcolm's family home. She's a granny now. They were a couple of other lives that you saved: hers and her daughter's."
"They needed help. By the grace of the Goddess we were able to provide it."
"Was there any comeback about your taking Trip into that holy place? I remember him saying that a lot of your people were against it, at the time."
"It was not the most widely acclaimed of my actions as First Priestess," she admitted with a wry smile. "The ripples from it died down eventually, though, as ripples do. And I am given to understand that my actions met with approval where it matters most."
"Oh. That's good." Presumably she'd managed to get the most important members of their government on her side. He turned to another subject. "I'd like us to spend some time together, if you can manage it. If they won't miss you in the Temple."
"They will not miss me in the Temple. And I shall be delighted to spend some time with you. As much time as you wish!"
His face cracked into a smile; a genuine one, not the polite mask that he had forced himself to adopt so many times over recent decades. "You may be in for a long haul!" he warned her.
"I trust so!"
He heaved a sigh of relief and contentment. "That's wonderful. It's the best news I've heard in years! – Mind you, I don't know how I'm going to explain you to Starfleet."
"Best to fret upon skinning the deer only after you have slain it. Otherwise you may find that you have worried for nothing."
"People are bound to notice you; even if they think you're human, like I did just now. – Was that another of your–?" He paused, searching for the right word. Trip Tucker, he now remembered, had caused a considerable amount of feigned outrage on the part of Shiránnor and her close friends by calling their mysterious abilities 'magic tricks'.
"Another of my magic tricks?" She too remembered, as a broad grin testified.
"I wouldn't have put it quite like that. But… Well. Yes."
"It was. But as you were expecting to see another human being, it was a very easy one to perform."
"If you could make everybody see you like that, it might simplify matters."
"I could. But I was hoping that perhaps we could go somewhere else. A place where I could be myself, and you could be yourself, and there would be no need for trickery, magical or otherwise."
A sudden hope seized him. "Can you take me back to Kerriel with you?" he enquired eagerly.
Shiránnor smiled. "For me to take you back to Kerriel would be – problematical. But there are other realms. If you wish, we may explore one of them together."
"I – I'd like that. Very much. But I haven't got a ship any more, and I can't imagine Starfleet lending me one."
"I have the loan of a craft." She pointed down towards the bay.
He followed her finger. There, heading for the shoreline in a slow but stately manner, was a boat: a small vessel, with a single triangular sail of dark blue. It must have been plainly visible to everybody along the strand, but there was none of the interest that the arrival of such a foreign-looking vessel should have generated. In fact, nobody seemed to have noticed it at all. Probably that was another 'magic trick'. The incongruity of the scene made him chuckle.
"It's a nice boat," he said diplomatically, "but I'm no sailor. I don't suppose you are, either. I can't see us going very far in that."
"You would not believe where it can go." The words were spoken straight-faced, but her amber eyes were alive with humor.
"Really?"
"Really."
He considered, but not for long. He was old, he was tired, he was frustrated, he was trapped on a treadmill; and here she was, the person who was dearest to him, offering a change. The spirit of adventure, long stifled in him, stirred. He had no idea where she wanted to take him, or how she proposed to get there, but he longed to discover. Wherever they went, they would be together, and that was all that mattered. He grinned again; a boyish grin, this time. The sort of grin that had belonged to the years of the NX test program, and even to the early years aboard Enterprise before too much bitter experience had banished it – he'd thought, for good. "You're on!"
"You will come with me?"
"Yes."
"That is excellent!" She hugged him. Chuckling, he responded to her embrace.
"I'd forgotten how tickly your whiskers are," he jested.
"Hah!" A pretended snarl revealed that her teeth had grown no less fearsome with what was presumably her advanced age, but it carried no threat whatsoever.
"So. What do we have to do?"
"We go down to the boat." She stood up, still with the old feline grace that he now remembered so well. Reaching down she grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet.
"Ouch!" He winced, and stretched his arms. "That was an effort! You'll have to make allowances for my old bones during this trip. I'm not as young as I used to be. – The path down to the promenade starts over there. It's a bit steep here and there, but somehow I can't imagine that bothering you!"
"It will not!" She chuckled. "Yet it would be quicker and easier for us if we jumped down."
"If we jumped down?" Incredulous, he glanced at her. Then he craned his neck to survey the hillside in front of them. It was rocky at the top, and the various outcrops of granite would have challenged the skills of a mountain goat, let alone an elderly Starfleet officer. "I don't want to put a damper on things right at the start, but Starfleet tends to frown on its senior personnel committing suicide. It doesn't make for good publicity."
"I dare say that that is the case. But it would not be Starfleet's Commander Arrrcher who was making the jump." She looked past him, at something that was lying on the ground.
He turned, and looked down. Somebody was stretched out on the grass, gazing serenely skywards, the faintest of smiles upon their face. Somebody with graying hair, careworn features, and a trim but aged body. For a moment he eyed the newcomer blankly, wondering how he had got there. Then recognition jolted him, like a mild electric shock.
"That's – that's me," he said, scarcely able to believe it.
"No. This is you." Reaching out she took his hand in hers and squeezed it.
"I'm – dead?" He stared down at his body incredulously.
"Yes."
"But – I'm still around, to know that I'm dead?"
"Yes. You have cast off your shell. Your essence remains. When I pulled you up, I took you out of yourself. In a manner of speaking."
"But that's–."
"Impossible?"
"Well. Yes." He looked down at his hands, the hands of what was presumably his 'essence'. They appeared much as they had always done, though the wrinkles and a few age-spots had mysteriously vanished.
"It will take you a while to become used to yourself. But it will happen," she told him gently.
"And – you?"
An impish grin. "You said just now that I still seemed full of life. That is proof that things are not always as they seem! I crossed the Endless Ocean a year before Jathior."
"You're dead?"
"Yes."
"But – you're here."
"Yes."
"And you're still you."
"I am still me. And you are still you."
He paused, and gazed around him. The mountains and the sea were still there, as were the houses and the harbor, but they seemed a little softer, somehow, as though they were paintings of a reality rather than the reality itself. When his gaze returned to Shiránnor, however, she gave the impression of being realer than ever.
"Well, I'm damned," he breathed to himself.
"I trust not!" Her tongue peeped out again.
"I would have betted against this happening."
"I do not doubt it."
"And you've come to take me–?"
"Onwards."
"In that boat?"
"Yes. The Mother of Stars does not generally allow her boat to act as a ferry. Trips aboard it are intended to be in one direction only. Upon this occasion, however…"
"She let you come for me?"
"Yes."
"That was – obliging of her. And she's – real?"
"More than real! In the fullness of time I would like you to meet Her. But only when you tell me that you are ready for it."
"Do I – have to get judged, or anything?" He was conscious of anxiety. He'd made no secret of his lack of belief in her Goddess – or indeed in anybody else's. It dawned upon him now that in the circumstances this had hardly been tactful.
"Do you want to be judged?" She put her head on one side, and her tongue lolled out. The idea seemed to be amusing, but then she could afford to be relaxed about it, having been on the right side all along.
"Not – not really. But there have been rumors about it happening after you die. I was just wondering."
"Better to embark with me, and leave matter of judgings with the gods, if they have nothing better to do. Yes?"
"I can do that?"
"Yes."
Jon smiled. "It seems like the better option," he said candidly. As if to remind himself of what was going on, he looked again at the body that was lying on the hillside. "I–" he began, only to stop short.
"Hnh?"
"I was going to say 'I still think I'm dreaming'. But I kind of – don't. I don't want to wake up, and I kind of get the feeling that I'm not going to."
"You are not going to wake up. Not in the way that you mean. Aspects of you that have lain dormant may well begin to stir, but that is something to rejoice in, not to fear."
"I can't imagine it. But then, I could never have imagined being here with you, and here we are."
"Indeed."
"It's – strange," he mused. "The – the other Jon, there. He's always been a part of me. We've been through a lot together. I kind of – regret leaving him here, even though time has taken its toll of him."
"That is understandable. – When we are young we usually go to a school with other cubs. Was it so with you?"
"Yes. Yes, it was. Why do you ask?"
"We enjoy learning and we enjoy playing, and we are sorry when the day comes for us to move on. Yet if we do not move on we will eventually run out of things to learn, and will grow bored with cubs' games. Sometimes a thing which is good in itself is outgrown, and must be left behind for the sake of fulfillment."
"And my old body's one of them?"
"It is." Shirannor nodded gravely.
"I'm prepared to take your word for it."
"Wisdom!" Her tongue peeped out once again.
"Does the new me look like the old me, to you?"
"Does the new me look like the old me, to you?" She returned the question to him, solemnly but with a faint overtone of amusement.
"Yes. Yes, you do. Only more so, somehow."
"So?" An expressive lift of her eyebrows involved him to form his own conclusion. He did so.
"I'm – kind of glad about that. In some way."
"Your essence is your essence. How should it not resemble you? – Worry not; Grenyal and Jathior will not fail to recognize you when we meet them. Nor shall Malcolm Reed."
"Malcolm's there with them?"
Shirannor chuckled. "Yes and no. You will have to learn it for yourself, but for us now many words have a changed or diminished meaning; 'there' and 'here' among them."
"Oh." On reflection, it was probably to be expected that he had a lot to learn. In this new Academy he was a rookie. "If we're going sailing in your boat we've got to get from here to there, anyway. Shall we do it now?"
"Yes. If you feel ready to go."
"I kind of do." He took a deep breath, and wondered if he actually needed to breathe any longer. That was just one of the many, many things which remained for him to discover. He sighed, of wonderment. "I still can't get my head around this – that I'm dead, and I'm still me. I would never have believed it was possible. I always thought life after death was just a fairy story. But I'm here, and the old me is there, and it's starting to feel realer, somehow."
"It will continue to do so." She nodded. "Reality, like a banquet, is best dealt with in small portions."
"And there are other new worlds to explore?"
"Yes. In a manner of speaking."
He smiled, a little self-consciously. "I feel just like I did before I set off on my first voyage aboard Enterprise: that same mixture of anticipation, exhilaration and worry. Your craft doesn't look quite the same as the old Enterprise did, mind you."
"You may look upon her as a Mother-of-Stars-ship, if it helps you to do so." The suggestion was plainly tongue-in-cheek.
"That'll help a lot, I'm sure," he replied with heavy, if playful, irony. "– And there's an easy way down to her, you say?"
"Yes."
"Sometimes it seems like I've been taking the difficult way all my life. I reckon I might take the easy way, just for once."
"So."
"What do we have to do?"
"We should look at the boat, and jump towards it."
"As simple as that?"
"Yes."
"Fair enough." It still seemed a long way down. However, a glance behind him provided reassurance that the part of him which would have been hurt by a fall would not be taking part in the jump. The possibility of broken bones was something that he didn't have to worry about.
"Would you like to practice, first?" She had noticed him looking downwards.
"Practice?"
"Jump up, not to."
"I suppose it might be an idea. What do I have to do?"
"Just jump. Flex your knees, and push."
"Oh."
Feeling rather foolish, Jon took a standing jump. It carried him higher than he would have expected. Even more unexpectedly he failed to return to the ground, and found himself hovering some three meters above it. Cautiously he sat on the air. It bore him up.
"You see?" The Skair beamed up at him.
"Gravity's become one of those 'here' and there' words that you were talking about," he deduced.
"Yes. It is optional."
With a little more assurance he stretched out and adopted a lying down posture. Gravity failed to reassert itself. He rolled over a couple of times, like a dolphin rolling in the sea. Then he chuckled. "This is ridiculous!"
"Yes. That is the glory of it, is it not?"
Shiránnor gathered her haunches and performed a powerful but graceful leap upwards. Gravity had no greater effect on her than it had had on him. She rolled over once, for the fun of it, and sat, grinning at him broadly.
He chuckled again, at the absurdity of it all. The chuckle grew into a chortle, the chortle into a laugh, and the laugh into peals of mirth.
"This is the – the most ludicrous thing I've ever done!" he gasped, when at last he calmed down sufficiently to speak.
"Doubtless. Yet it is wine to my heart to see you do it."
"I–. Er. – I think I'm ready to go down to the boat now. How do I get back to the ground?"
"As I said, gravity is optional." She allowed herself to descend to the rocky surface of the Head.
He watched as she did so, and then attempted to exercise the option himself. To his relief it worked. He floated down, admittedly with less poise than she had demonstrated.
"So. We just look at the boat and jump towards it," he reiterated.
"Yes. Best if we hold hands and jump together, perhaps."
"Okay."
Her hand reached out and found his. "A big jump, now. – I used to say that to my cub, every so often," she recalled, with a grin. "So. On 'pounce'."
"On 'pounce'?"
"Hide, gather, pounce. It is what we do when we are hunting. – Hide." She lowered herself a little. "Gather." An anticipatory wriggle of her haunches. "And then pounce." This latter action was severely truncated, as it had to be with them holding hands.
"Oh. It's a kind of countdown."
"A countdown?"
"We tend to say 'three, two, one, go'."
"We may do that, if you prefer."
"No. I kind of like 'hide, gather, pounce'. You'd better say it, though. I reckon it'd sound better coming from you than it would from me."
"So. You are ready? It is well. – Hide… Gather… Pounce!" At the last word the Skair leapt upwards and forwards.
Game, but uncertain, Jonathan leapt with her. What followed resembled a ski-jump, but over a long distance and without skis. Hand in hand with her he glided through the air, performing a graceful arc. As they flew the ridiculousness of what they were doing struck him and he laughed again, out of sheer wonder and a sense of fun.
"I suppose I should have asked before we jumped, but how do we land?" he wanted to know.
"Slow down a little more, and flex your knees," was her instruction, cheerily delivered. "Want to do it, and you will do it."
"Right."
The process turned out to be as easy as she had indicated. They landed on the foreshore, the pebbles under their feet making a slight scrunching sound.
"That was – fun," he said, in the voice of one for whom fun has been less than frequent.
"Was it not?" Shiránnor beamed.
"The air still pushed at us a bit. And the pebbles made a noise when we landed on them. Are we still able to interact with the old world, then?"
"It is another of those 'here and there' things. Anyone listening nearby would not have heard the pebbles in that way. As for the old world, it is less solid than we are. We can let it guide us, as we have just done. But it need not limit us, as it always used to do. You will understand later."
"Fair enough. – And we get on the boat now?"
"Yes. A little jump will suffice, this time." By now the boat had come as far inshore as it was possible for it to do, and its keel was a mere three meters or so from where the wavelets were breaking.
"Do you think we could wade out to it? – It's just that now and again I used to go on fishing trips with my father when I was a teenager. When we were setting out he'd sit in the boat and I'd push it out of the shallows and then haul myself into it. It'd be kind of like a reminder of those days."
"For sure. We will wade." She waved a regal forepaw, inviting him to precede her.
"Will we get wet?"
"Yes. And no."
"That's another of those 'here and there things', I take it?"
"It is, yes."
"Right. Here goes, then."
With the Skair at his flank, Jon waded out to where the boat was riding the gentle waves. He could feel the pressure of the sea water, and its wetness and its chill, but somehow they impinged upon him less than they should have done. Getting into the boat was surprisingly easy: a slight upwards motion, and he rose like a dolphin. Moments later Shiránnor made an equally accomplished boarding. In response to a word from her the vessel revolved slowly but gracefully, until its prow pointed out to sea.
"So. Welcome aboard, Captain Jonathan Arrrcher." His companion made what was presumably a Skair gesture of honoring. Her expression suggested that while the gesture was a tongue-in-cheek one it was not entirely so. She smiled at him, openly delighted by his presence.
"I'm pleased to be here." His words carried the same shades of meaning as her expression. "And you remembered what my uniform looked like, too." Without his noticing, his new form had been dressed in the uniform of a Starfleet captain, complete with its four rank pips. Doubtless that was her doing. Presumably she hadn't heard about his promotion since then, but he was hardly going to complain about anything so trivial now.
"How should I have forgotten?"
"And you're wearing your own traditional garb too, I see." That was by way of a jest. As he remembered, her people generally didn't bother with clothes. The white blouse had disappeared at some point between the shore and the boat.
"Of course." As the blouse had served its function and was no longer necessary she had dismissed it without a thought. "I had no need of clothing when I was alive. I have even less need of it now that I am dead!" She chuckled.
"Fair enough. – What do we have to do now?"
"Nothing except sit together and renew our acquaintance. We have much news to share, have we not? The boat will bear us where we need to go. When we get there, the adventure proper will begin."
"Boldly going where no man has gone before… I like the idea of that. I wish I'd thought of it when I made my speech as captain before Enterprise set out. Oh well. Perhaps someone else will think of it, at the start of another expedition."
"Perhaps."
There was a padded leather seat at the rear of the boat, amply large enough to accommodate them both. She sat on it, and patted the space beside her. Nothing loath, he sat beside her; and smiled to feel her arm curving around his waist. Unselfconsciously he copied the movement.
"So. As captain, it is yours to give the command to set sail, is it not?"
"Definitely." He mirrored her grin. "Right, then, helmswoman. Take us out of dock. Impulse power."
"Aye, Captain." She raised her head a little and huffed a gentle breath at the sail. It shivered and swelled out, and the yards creaked softly against their spars.
Slowly the craft eased away from the shore. It shivered a little as it gained way, almost as though it were alive and full of excitement. The water slapped against the hull, soft reassuring pats as against the shoulder of a horse returning to its stable.
"To infinity and beyond," Jon murmured to himself, with a faint grin.
"I prefer that to your 'boldly going where no man has gone before'," was Shiránnor's candid opinion.
"It's not original, I'm afraid."
"Oh. That said, it is truer."
"I suppose it is."
A glance to the right showed that the mass of Bray Head was rearing above them. It was undeniably there, but somehow its presence was optional. To the left, Dalkey Island and Killiney Bay, shimmering in cloud-dappled sunlight, were a similarly in-between state. Ahead, however, the vista had changed. The sea was no longer green, but darkest blue, reflecting an unimaginable sky. Inevitably it put him in mind of the sights that he had seen on the view screen of the Enterprise, but they were to this as water is to the best wine. On the horizon, the dawn light beckoned. He sighed, of sheer joy.
"Helmswoman, take us to warp."
"Aye, Captain." Shiránnor huffed at the sail again and the boat responded, gathering speed.
They were going where they belonged. They were going home. Together.
Far behind, Captain Travis Mayweather sorrowfully paged Starfleet Command. He'd feared that this last trip might be an ask too many for his old CO. The long bundle of bones he'd lifted into the back of the shuttlepod and composed with dignity there had weighed hardly anything.
It was strange, though, that death had removed many of the lines that age and sorrow had put on the admiral's face. Now he looked merely asleep, and as though he was dreaming. A pleasant dream too, because the last hint of a smile lingered.
So passed the Age of Heroes.
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