Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

-Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man"


It starts with a black triangle, a patch of geometric darkness over cadet red.

Uhura has always loved red. It's the color of home, of warm clay under her feet and a bright sun setting over the Indian Ocean. The black is a reminder, dark to show the absence of red against her uniform.

When she was sixteen, her cousin Azize drove her to Nairobi for Pride. He was a broke college student with an old, unreliable flitter that didn't have air conditioning. They couldn't afford motels, so they slept in the flitter, and when the heat got too bad Azize would open all the doors and braid rainbow beads into Uhura's hair.

Uhura got her first kiss that weekend, surrounded by flowers and rainbows, a tall, thin girl with short hair that tangled in Uhura's fingers. Azize winked and promised not to tell her mother.

Her second pride march came when she was eighteen and about to leave for Starfleet. Uhura walked proudly through the streets of Mombasa, exhilarated. For the first time, her hometown felt like home.

The black triangle pin was a souvenir, a reminder. A symbol, in the way of the earliest languages.

Gaila never placed much worth on such things. She liked to feel, she would say, running her hands through Uhura's hair, resting them on Uhura's hips, caressing high cheekbones. To experience. Not to hold on to vestiges of the past.

Uhura twirls the small, black pin in her fingers, watching the sun set over the Bay. Her red uniform skirt barely moves in the breeze, the stiff, coarse fabric standing at attention. She's worn it to Pride the past three years, a testament to who she is. She's a student, a linguist, a strong woman, a lesbian, a daughter, a soldier. It's all part of her.

Uhura likes words. They're her passion, her job. No one knows words like Uhura.

Gaila doesn't do well with words. Gaila is music and engines and shifting kaleidoscopes of emotion. She communicates with everything she is; words are an afterthought, a concession.

Gaila dances. Speaking is an amalgamation: the way her expression and tone change, the way she holds herself, the way her hands move, and finally, if necessary, the actual words she speaks.

She doesn't see the need for definition and categorization the way Uhura does. She doesn't come to Pride because she doesn't feel that desire to be a part of a whole. She just is. Maybe it's because Gaila doesn't know where to put herself, not yet. But Uhura envies her, a little.

It's in the way Gaila moved, when they first met, in some club Kirk had dragged her out to. In the way the lights alighted on green skin like evanescent birds, anything to be close to her, this bright, luminous creature.

Uhura wanted to write her poetry. She told her this, after a few drinks when she wasn't thinking about the actual words she would use. When all that mattered was impulse.

Gaila laughed, head thrown back and sweat trickling down her neck. "Nevermind, baby," she'd said. "Dance with me."

Uhura danced.