In the dream, she is ten years old (but she would make sure that anyone who asked knew that she would be eleven in less than two months). She knows that even though this is not her house, she is home nonetheless, and this is what tells her she's dreaming. Because she is ten and she has only been coming to the home of her mother's colleague to be tutored by her husband in Modern Vulcan for the past eight weeks, she has not yet begun to consider Torval's well-ordered teaching space as home. That day is still more than a year off.
She has taken this new study seriously, sensing that this is a privilege that would not have been offered if it had not been felt that she would show appropriate respect for the subject and Torval's time. She feels very grown up working here while Torval's two sons work independently on individual monitors. But not today, and Nyota knows, as you somehow know in the way of dreams, that today she will run home in a desperate rush to beat the tears that she can't control and threaten to break like a storm. She also knows that this will happen later because now, it is vitally important that she understand today's lesson more clearly than any other so far.
She is reading out loud from a text of ancient Vulcan history. The story describes the rampage of a warrior during the time of the Fury of Vulcan and how he killed nearly 100 people in his own village before dying himself. Nyota thinks the story is sad and horrible and tries her best to portray that in her reading, not realizing that this is her mistake. She is not even halfway through the passage before Torval interrupts her.
"That is not correct."
He looks evenly at her under sharply angled brows, his sandy brown hair worn long and tied neatly at the back of his neck with only the gracefully pointed tips of his ears visible, a break in Vulcan tradition that Nyota never noticed as a child. He recites the passage from memory, and Nyota, surprised at his correction, gives him her full attention.
"Begin again."
Nyota is careful with her second reading to try and match Torval's pronunciation as closely as she is able given her brief exposure to the language, but he interrupts her again.
"You are distorting the meaning of the passage." His voice is not unkind, but neither is it encouraging.
"But T'Kahr, I recited the passage the same way you did."
"While you may have pronounced the words acceptably, given the limitations of the human vocal apparatus, the meaning of the passage is distorted by your improper emotional interpretation," Torval explains. "It is not enough to merely understand the words and pronounce them within satisfactory limits. You must also understand how a society uses its language to achieve the most effective communication."
Nyota feels her face heat and her heart beat faster. She steals a glance at Torval's sons, Tamor and Stivan, as they work on the other side of the room. She is relieved that they have not noticed their father's criticism. And for the first time she sees a third boy, working a series of complex equations on the wall display across from her seat at the work table. He is a few years older than she, and she does not recognize him. The stylus he holds is temporarily still, and Nyota knows that he has heard and absorbed every word of Torval's censure.
She understands that her teacher is telling her the truth. Not a child's truth. An adult's truth because in this one thing, she is not a child.
In her memory, she begins the passage again. Her frustration colors every word she utters. Torval stops her and ends their lesson early, which prompts a desperate rush home in an attempt to reach the privacy of her bedroom before the tears that have been hovering around the edges of her mood all afternoon fall.
But in the dream, she never reads the passage a third time because the boy on the other side of the table turns away from the wall display and speaks the words in a soft voice full of a neutral gravity she has never heard before, not even when Torval demonstrates proper intonation. And the story of the man who laid waste to a village with a single-minded rage becomes more real and wrenching to her spoken in this unaffected manner than any of the theatrics she was so convinced were needed to express the full tragedy of the tale.
Nyota looks up and sees that the Vulcan boy has completed the lengthy equation he has been working on. He is looking at her with cool detachment, waiting for her reaction. But it is not the boy's icy demeanor that affects her. Nyota is used to this from Tamor and Stivan. It is his eyes, soft brown and unexpectedly human, that discomfit her the most. It is under this fixed and measured gaze that her tears fall, her frustration with her own failings coursing down her cheeks. The boy's face softens at her distress.
"Are you injured?" he asks, and she thinks she can make out subtle tones marking his disquiet.
With a half swallowed sob, Nyota bolts from the workroom, escaping the scrutiny of the boy and the desperate fear that she has been tested and found inadequate. She runs as fast as she can, trying to put as much distance between herself and the boy as possible.
She doesn't know how or when it happens, but she is suddenly 19, her current age, and running over the sand and rock of an unfamiliar desert. The sky is orange like it is at home at sunset, but the sun is high in the sky. It is oppressively hot and her breath is coming in quick gasps, as if she cannot draw in enough oxygen. She finds it increasingly difficult to move her limbs against a gravity far greater than what she is used to.
Nyota comes to a stop, physically drained but still churning inside. Looking around, she sees that she is in front of a smooth patch of sand surrounded by twiggy scrub. She breaks off a dried branch and drops to her knees, the heated ground burning the skin on her bare legs. And she begins to write, scribbling a proof of Samel's theorem of propositional logic in vertical lines of Vulcan script far more perfect in her dream than anything she has managed awake.
She is halfway through the proof when the ground beneath her rolls, knocking her forward to sprawl in the sand, obscuring her work. She hears a high-pitched, sharp keening and raises her head from the ground, looking for the source of the noise, as the quaking of the earth becomes more and more violent. She drops back to the ground, covering her head and closing her eyes against the shifting sand, and she fears that the ground beneath her will open up and swallow her.
And she is suddenly awake.
-oOo-
Nyota opened her eyes in the cool darkness of her bedroom, memories of her dream already fading, the only remnant a vague recollection of mathematical proofs, running, and…oddly…a simplistic discussion of sociolinguistics. Given her anxiety the night before, she wasn't surprised she dreamed of running and math. They were the only two things that calmed her when she felt like she was crawling out of her skin. She had once tried using words to ease emotional disquiet but discovered early on that language was so integrated into her mental process, that exercises like the conjugation of complex verb forms or semantic analysis didn't provide a large enough departure from her usual thoughts to be soothing.
The shrill beeping that had woken her and was continuing to sound was her regular alarm, and Nyota considered rolling over and going back to sleep. But the anxiety carried over from her dream was a hard knot in her stomach and the muscles in her legs twitched with the memory of running in soft, hot sand.
"Shut off that damn noise!" Sophie's muffled voice drifted through the wall, chased by the dull thud of her hand. "Some people are trying to sleep."
Nyota groaned, squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her blankets over her head.
"Alarm off," she said. And after a short pause, "Lights."
She peeled back the blankets, sat up, and swung her feet to the floor. If her legs wanted to run, she'd gladly oblige them. She pulled clothes out of her dresser and did a quick survey of her wardrobe for her running shoes. When she didn't find them in their usual place, she looked around her room.
"Okay," she whispered, mostly to herself but also just in case her shoes had recently grown ears. "Where could you be?"
And that's when it hit her. The words were back. Her words. The knot in her stomach perceptibly loosened, although it didn't dissolve. Nyota resumed the search for her shoes and found them uncharacteristically under her bed where she vaguely remembered kicking them the day before.
As she pulled on her running clothes, she caught her reflection in the mirror over her chest of drawers and groaned. She'd slept with her hair down.
Her hair was long, falling to the middle of her back, and by not taking the extra minute to twist it into a braid before she fell asleep, she had ensured she would wake up to a knotted mess. Nyota piled her hair on the top of her head and secured it. Running would only make it worse but she didn't care. She grabbed her hat and gloves and made a quick stop in the kitchen for a hydration pack which she clipped it to her waistband at the small of her back. She trotted out the door and jogged down the stairs to the building's front door and out onto the street.
The rain that had started the night before continued to drench the city, and the weather was near freezing. Street traffic was light with only the occasional personal transport vehicle cruising past. Nyota took her favorite route towards the city center, past the shops on Cornmarket and off down High Street. Her route took her down residential lanes, over unpaved road, and past parks, churches, pubs, and private homes with their stone fences and foreboding hedges. Using a series of footpaths and bridges, she crossed the Thames and then skirted the river up to the bridge at Abingdon Road, where she picked up The High and retraced her path home.
On any other day, Nyota would have blasted music, but today, she ran in silence and let the cadence of her feet, first on wet pavement, then on muddy paths, set the rhythm for her thoughts. After losing her words the night before, she wanted only them in her head, and she spent the hour out in the rain conjugating Yrevish verbs with their subject agreement markers, tense indicators, and forms noting indicative versus subjunctive mood.
By the time she ran into the square where she and Sophie lived, Nyota was half frozen, wet to the skin, and covered in mud. She let herself into her building, took off her shoes, and carried them up to the flat. She was breathless, and water dripped off her onto the floor and steamed from her shoulders and head in the sudden heat of the stairwell. She keyed the sensor to the door and let herself inside the flat, immediately shedding her shell and depositing her shoes in the boot tray under the row of coat hooks. The time alone with the words in her head had softened the ache in her chest, and she felt, if not at ease, then at least not ready to crawl out of her skin.
"Looks like it's still torrential out there."
Nyota spun towards the unfamiliar voice coming from the dining table. A young man in Starfleet Academy red lounged in a chair, drinking what smelled like the coffee her mother had sent in her last package from home. He was straight off a recruiting poster. His hair was blond, his eyes were the color of green grass, and he had just the right amount of sarcastic smart ass in his smile. He reminded Nyota of Charlie on his worst, most puffed up days, and she instantly disliked him.
"Just a bit," she replied. "I'm sorry, but who are you?"
"I'm Martin." He got to his feet and held out his hand. "Sophie may have mentioned me? She was supposed to comm you."
"Oh." So this was the guy Sophie picked up at the comp last year. Nyota ignored Martin's hand, her new calm slowly dissolving. "That does so much good after I've already gone to sleep."
She dripped her way towards her flatmate's bedroom. "Sophie!"
The other girl came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, fluffing her hair with her fingers. A cloud of steam billowed out the door behind her and drifted down the hall.
"Good morning, Sunshine," she said as she breezed past Nyota and took the cup of coffee Martin held out. "See? I told you she was out trotting through the mud somewhere. Don't let this put you off. She cleans up really well."
Martin laughed. "I thought my roommate was the only person crazy enough to run in a monsoon."
Sensing that she had been dismissed, Nyota padded towards her bedroom, trailing water and mud across the floor.
"It was nice to meet you," Martin called as she closed her door.
Nyota stripped off her wet clothes and traded them for her robe. As she gathered her things from the floor, she heard the front door close and let out an annoyed huff.
"You can come out now," Sophie shouted. "The coast is clear."
Nyota peeked out of her room before she deposited her clothes in the fresher in the hallway and went into the kitchen. "I thought you were going to give me some advanced warning when we had overnight guests."
"I sent you a text. Martin's only in town for a week, and it seemed like a good idea to use our time as efficiently as possible. Tomorrow's our only other free night, and you saw him. His stomach's so flat, you can eat off it, and you can bounce pebbles off that ass."
Nyota closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against her forehead. "Well, I suppose it's nice to know you have some standards," she said and then groaned. "I just said that out loud, didn't I?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't get that." Sophie sipped her coffee and peered at her flatmate over the rim of her cup. "It was hard to hear you over all that self-righteousness.
"Sophie –"
"Shower first, then clean this up," she ordered, gesturing to the trail of water and dirt leading from the front door to Nyota's room. "We have to meet Charlie and the boys for breakfast in 90 minutes, and it's going to take you most of that to straighten out the nest that's masquerading as your hair. After I have another coffee, I'm heading over to the café to reserve a table. We'll try this again at breakfast, shall we?"
Sophie refilled her coffee cup from the cafetiere on the counter and carried it over to the sofa to watch the morning news feed on the vid screen, and this time, Nyota knew she'd been dismissed.
She took a deep breath and retreated to the bathroom to take a long, hot shower. By the time she scrubbed the mud out of the pores of her shins and finally got her hair untangled, Sophie was gone.
-oOo-
Pret was a bright, automated-service café located in the city center, and the Oxford team met there regularly, mostly because of the prime location. It certainly wasn't because of the food, which was replicated and served by machine. Nyota hurried passed the large front windows to the entrance, closed her umbrella, and ducked inside.
Charlie stood at the head of their usual table, playing king of the castle. He always argued that leadership came naturally to him given his birth, but Nyota thought it was more likely that people just let him be in charge of things because he became a childish ass if he didn't get his way, whether he'd earned it or not.
Charles Spencer was the oldest son of the Earl of Northbury, and he embodied every bad cliché that had ever existed about the British peerage: superior, entitled, arrogant. The real problem with Charlie was that he hid this all behind sleepy blue eyes, dark hair that he constantly fell over his forehead, and a shy but brilliant smile. He was a charmer, and Nyota had dated him for almost four months before she realized that what lay beneath Charlie's appealing surface not only didn't interest her, it repulsed her.
She'd wanted to end things right then, but Sophie had cautioned her about wounding Charlie's ego because he could make it difficult for her to keep having anything to do with the linguistics society. Luckily, it had only taken two weeks of being the worst girlfriend imaginable and a disastrous dinner with his parents to get him to break it off instead. She'd been surprised how easily they'd transitioned to being teammates, so it turned out Sophie had been right.
Sophie, who was putting all of her energy into ignoring her.
"Sorry," she mumbled, glancing around the table. "My morning didn't go as planned." Nyota took the empty seat at the end of the table next to Charlie and shrugged off her coat. She gave him a weak smile as she pulled her ponytail out from her collar.
"I'd take you to task for being late, but you're a vision." Charlie turned and sketched a shallow bow in her direction. Sophie, just out of Charlie's sightline, rolled her eyes to the ceiling, and Pete pantomimed choking himself, his tongue lolling down his chin, and his eyes bulging. Nyota unsuccessfully stifled her answering snort of laughter.
"What?" Charlie spun towards Sophie and Pete, and they rushed to compose themselves, affecting identical guileless, wide-eyed expressions .
"Is it my hair?" Charlie asked. "Am I too well groomed?" His tone was deceptively innocent. "Or is it my trousers? Are they too stylish? Am I so dashingly attractive that no one at this table takes me seriously?" There was no way to take him seriously, the way he was preening and strutting, and Nyota, Sophie and Pete burst out laughing.
Charlie abruptly ended his display and turned to Naresh, who was engrossed in watching something on his PADD. "Pardon me, but I'm being brilliantly funny, and you're missing it."
"Is this the bit about how devilishly handsome you are that it's hard to believe you're so brilliant or the bit about how you're so brilliant, it's unfair to the rest of world that you're so attractive?" Naresh's attention remained fixed on the screen. "Seriously mate, I think it's time you came up with new material."
"Because you and Peter haven't been trotting out the same tired Welsh Jabberwocky routine for the past year." He ran his hand through his hair and glared down at the other man.
"Boys, boys," Sophie broke in. "You're both pretty!"
Naresh had the good grace to look remorseful and removed his earpiece. "Sorry, Soph."
But Charlie wasn't done. His mouth was pulled into a thin line, and he looked just like a spoiled little boy on the verge of throwing a tantrum. Nyota reached out and touched his hand. "Charlie?"
He stood, frozen for a second, and flicked his eyes around the table and nodded. "Well, now that's all sorted, let's get down to the business at hand. I don't think that I need to remind you all that the name of today's game is speed."
AN: In the rush of getting the first chapter up, I forgot so many things. First, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who read chapter 1, whether you liked it or not and whether it was your thing or not. I really appreciate it and am excited to get the rest of the story out into the world.
Next, a disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek, so render unto Star Trek that which is Star Trek's, but everything else here belongs to me and is the invention of my mad brain.
Third, as you may have guessed, this story is set in Oxford, England. I've only been there twice, and one time it was after dark and for the sole purpose of having my picture taken on the grand staircase outside the Great Hall of Christchurch College. Harry Potter fans will understand. So please take anything here about the city, the university, and Britain in general with a very large grain of salt. Also, there are several things here that I just made up or am very aware are wrong (like how Sophie and Nyota live in a block of buildings currently owned by the University). The story's set in the future. It could happen. That being said, if I've gotten anything glaringly wrong, I'd love to hear from someone who knows because I've got quite a chunk to post, and I still have time to fix stuff.
Lastly, I realized when I was formatting this chapter that I placed the wrong rating on chapter 1. I've changed it to properly reflect the M rating this should have. For anyone who only reads T or lower, I'm so sorry. The M rating is due to two things. First, there will be some sexual content. That happens in the middle, and if anyone wants to take the risk, I'll start putting warnings int he author's notes a couple of chapters before it all starts with a road of what to avoid if you prefer not to read that sort of content. There are also some more mature themes here subject-wise, becoming more obvious as the story progresses.
