Author's note: The ideas are mine, the characters are not

"First Officer's log, stardate 2258.5

Discovery has encountered the red angel. While Captain Pike is attempting to verify her story in a nearby system, Commander Spock and myself have beamed down to the surface of Galen VI, two and a half light years away. Beneath the layers of ice that cover this small world there is a rich fungal ecosystem. Our mission is to collect samples and take them back to the ship. Lt. Stamets believes we can use some of the rare species indigenous to this planet to enhance the capabilities of the spore drive."

Saru was standing several meters away from Spock while the Vulcan checked on the fungi collecting systems the two of them had set up a few minutes earlier. The filtering system was slow and there was still one standard hour to go at least before they could beam up to the ship again. In any case, Discovery was no longer in orbit. Captain Pike would come back for them around the time they were done collecting samples. And hopefully, not a minute later, Saru thought, with a sense of unease. The thought of being forgotten and trapped in that frozen planet sent a shiver down his spine.

Galen VI was a desolate world. There was ice and snow as far as his eyes could reach. Had they beamed down somewhere closer to the Equator they might have stumbled upon one of the many nomadic tribes of humanoids that populated the planet, but Spock had calculated their landing coordinates carefully as to avoid that possibility. Now, standing alone on that mountainside, merely a few steps away from a frozen cliff, Saru wished the Vulcan had been less careful. Not that he intended to contact any of the natives… They were, after all, in a stage of development comparable to Earth's Bronze Age, and the Prime Directed applied. Still, Saru would have liked to see one of those tribes, making their way through the ice in the valley below. He would have liked to see someone. Even from a distance. Ahead of him, the snow stretched for miles, as far as his eyes could see. The vastness of those barren lands was… unsettling. It made him feel dreadfully small. And lonely. He wished Michael could have beamed down with him, or Tilly, or even Lt. Stamets. But the Captain had decided on Spock, whose coldness and detachment did not do anything to mitigate Saru's feelings.

In many ways, Spock reminded Saru of Michael when they first met. The distant attitude. The silent awareness of their surroundings. The straightforward replies and short sentences. The things that one first notices when interacting with a Vulcan… Because that's what she was when they first met. A Vulcan, by upbringing and by choice, if not by blood. In many ways, she was still a Vulcan, except perhaps that she was easier with a smile…

As he watched Spock adjusting the settings of the filtering system, however, he realized that there was more to it than that. The way he stood, with his hands behind his back, the way he raised a single eyebrow when he was puzzled, even the inflections his voice adopted when he spoke… All of those small things were just like Michael. Saru doubted either of them was even aware of it. To the Kelpian's eyes, however, it was clear that they were siblings.

A waft of wind blew from the east, and he took his hands to the place where his ganglia used to be, in the back of his head. It was almost a reflex, touching the smooth surface of his occipital bone. Old habits die hard, he thought, whenever his fingers failed to meet his ganglia at that point. Then he looked away again, and there, only a few metres away from where they were, he realized the wind had uncovered something. He couldn't tell exactly what it was at first, but there was definitely something sticking up from the snow covered ground.

Those were flowers.

They were beautiful. The petals had a beautiful colour, a nearly transparent shade of blue. They almost looked like crystals at first, but they were soft to the touch, as Saru realized after conducting his initial scans with a tricorder and reaching out to feel the petals in his hand. They moved, even before he touched them, in a sort of delicate and beautiful dance that helped to brush away the snow that covered them, and expose the flowers to the sun. The kelpian kneeled down to examine the crystalline green of the stem of the flower, but as soon as he leaned in he felt the petals of one of the flowers on his face, with a warm soft touch that might have been the touch of a friend. He couldn't help but close his eyes and smile.

When he opened his eyes, he noticed Spock was watching him.

Saru felt incredibly self-conscious for a moment.

"I understand you take an interest in botany," Spock mentioned, looking away from the flowers.

Saru took a second to get himself back together.

"Indeed. I grow several species of flowers in my quarters. But those are Kelpian flowers, mostly… I have nothing quite like these," he said, touching the flowers and watching the way the light went through it's crystalline petals. He seemed rather mesmerized by it. "My flowers remind me of home…. The best parts of it."

" My mother told me something similar once. She took several species of Earth plants with her when she moved to Vulcan. There was a greenhouse in our backyard."

"Was it difficult?"

Spock raised an eyebrow, as if he didn't understand the question.

"For your mother,"Saru added, "growing Earth flowers on Vulcan?"

"Yes," Spock answered. "She had samples of Earth soil sent to Vulcan, and she was careful to maintain proper levels of humidity, aeration and electrolyte concentrations"

"I have similar difficulties. Fredalias don't grow quite so well on a Starship as they do on the wild in Kaminar. It's the way of things, I think… The only creatures that flourish on a starship are the ones that suffocate and shrivel on the wild…"

It had been that way with him, after all, and Michael, and a handful of others he had met in his brief life. Perhaps it was so with Spock, he thought. But if the Vulcan noticed the implications of Saru's musings, he chose to ignore them.

"Perhaps you could take some of these flowers back, to study on board discovery. However, I do not know whether you could grow them on the ship. I never took an interest in gardening. I suspect it would have pleased my mother if I did, though."

Saru nodded.

"I wish Michael could see them. They are her favourite, after all."

"It is unlikely that Lt. Burnham has ever encountered this particular species of plant before."

"Not these ones precisely," Saru waved, dismissing the statement, "but they are blue… She likes blue flowers."

Spock looked Saru for a moment, and something seemed to shift in his expression, whatever it was, though, it only lasted a moment.

"I am sure you know her better than I do," Spock said simply, but even as he turned his back on the kelpian, his mind was flooded with memories…

He remember a time when he was very small, shortly after Michael first moved to Vulcan. They were spending time in Amanda's greenhouse. Neither Spock not Michael had asked permission to be there, so they had to be very quiet. They were playing, pretending they were scientists in an expedition, taking notes on the exotic species of plants of many faraway planets. It was Michael who taught Spock to make-believe like that. Vulcan children didn't do that. They didn't know about it. He enjoyed it enormously.

At some point, when they were standing in front of Amanda's roses, Michael stopped.

"I have never seen roses like these," she said, reaching out to touch the petals of the flower, before she added, "blue roses."

"They are my favourite kind," Spock said.

"Why?"

"Blue roses don't exist in nature," the little boy said, reaching out to one of the boxes and picking up one of the petals that had fallen down on the soil. He took the petal close to his nose and closed his eyes for a moment, so he could appreciate the scent of the flower, "it's a mutation. So they are of Earth, and not of Earth at the same time."

Michael didn't anything for a while. But she understood.

"They are beautiful," she said, finally.

He took her hand and placed the petal on her open palm.

"They can be your favourite too, if you want."

She closed her hand, the blue petal still inside it, and just like that, they resumed their game.

They had never spoken of it again. The window of time during which Spock and Michael behaved like brother and sister had been so brief… Her hardly ever thought about it anymore. He didn't even know he still had those memories, prior to Saru bringing up the topic of blue flowers. That Michael liked them or not however, Spock thought firmly, meant nothing at all. Twenty years is a long time. And a childhood memory is, after all, only a memory.

Saru opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, both he and Spock felt the earth tremble under their feet

"What was that?" Saru asked, while both of them punched data into their tricorders, scanning the mountainside.

"A magmatic quake?" Spock ventured

"I have been around a lot of volcanoes," Saru added, "that didn't feel magmatic to me."

"What do you suggest?"

The earth trembled once more.

"Get the gear, commander; we have to leave this place right now."

Just as Spock closed the briefcase with the filtering system and the samples they had already collected, they felt another shake, but this time it was much stronger, and above them a column of smoke and fire was ejected into the air, from the mouth of the volcano.

A/N: This is going to be a short multichapter fic (only about three or four chapters, I think)... It's the first thing I have written with Discovery characters, and I would appreciate some feedback. It has not been beta read as I have not been able to find a beta yet.

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