Tiren would not think too closely on the matter until much later. But that evening, after having Tila enter his home, he cooked for her. She ate more than enough and then showered in his bathroom. After the nice hot shower and food, her eyes were quite heavy and he had the sudden vision of what she must have looked like as a child when sleepiness overtook her. She was sitting on his couch trying to play a game of 3-D chess with him. He moved the board aside, refusing to begin his next move.

"Tila, you must rest now," he said, thoroughly expecting her to disagree with him and state she still had some matter to attend to. He expected to have to stand, pick her up and deposit her into bed. He realized he wanted to assist her into bed, though he did not understand why.

But to his surprise, she, without protest, stood and stumbled sleepily into his guest bedroom. He followed behind her though he did not understand why he did so. She was more than capable of placing herself into bed and she did so quickly. It amazed him how rapidly she fell asleep once she lay down. "You were quite tired, indeed," he commented from the doorway though he knew she could not hear him.

Her face was peaceful, relaxed. It was the first time he had seen her so completely unguarded. He found it difficult to look away from her more than aesthetically pleasing face. He forced himself to stop staring at her as she slept and retired to his own bedroom. Once there, he found himself incapable of entering his meditative state that night.

Tiren opened his eyes, finally and simply frowned. It had been many years since he had had trouble entering meditation. Standing to pace his room, Tiren tried to order his thoughts. What was the source of this sudden non-ability to meditate?

Without thinking, his head turned in the general direction of his guest bedroom. He was not at all displeased to have her in his home. It was strange of him to realize this. In the past whenever he had had any guest, invited or otherwise, it had unsettled him in an unpleasant way and taken him some time to enter meditation. But this time, he was having trouble not because he was unsettled by some form of dissatisfaction. No, he was quite pleased, perhaps a little too pleased, that one whom now considered him a friend had trusted him enough to accept his hospitality. He had done well by making certain she did not injure herself with excessive work. It was the reason he was overly satisfied, at least that is what he told himself. But it did not make sense as to why he had trouble entering meditation.

He knew one night without meditation was not catastrophic. But he knew he would have to guard his thoughts and actions that much closer the next day. Perhaps at work he would be able to meditate later in the day before he attempted to create again.

##

That was the first of many times the two accepted one another's hospitality.

The very next day, Tiren was able to meditate once Tila left the office for the day. He amazingly was able to return to creating in the specialty room of the crafter's shop. Something about having her in his home, sleeping in his guest bedroom, stoked the fires of creativity for him. And he poured all of the excess energy into his work.

Whenever he stayed much too late at the shop, he would stop by Tila's place and sleep on her couch since her apartment, though tiny, was much closer to the shop than his.

It began a pattern of Tila coming out of her room in the middle of the night to get water to find the Vulcan on her couch deep in sleep or on the floor seated atop a mat he traveled with for such occasions, tucked in a corner, back to the wall, eyes closed, deep in the middle of his meditations. When this happened, some mornings she would come out and find him already gone. There were those days she would find he'd put together breakfast for her before leaving or that he had remained behind and prepared food for them both.

Weeks spanned into months and the two proceeded on their very symbiotic friendship. Everyone in the Shi'Kahr branch of Tiren's family already knew or knew of Tila since she was a child and so did not object to him forming such a close attachment. They knew she was as logical as it was possible for a non-Vulcan to be and she was industrious.

Tila's parents also couldn't really find fault with him. She conveniently, however, never voiced to her parents that she'd ascertained his true parentage. That was a secret she decided she would never discuss with anyone else except maybe her grandfather.

She happened upon a holo-photo of his parents sitting in his workroom at his home one day. She stood and stared at them. Yes, it was confirmed in her mind, it was his father that was the Romulan, even though she didn't understand how it was she knew. It was the Giseth in her bloodline asserting itself with this information. She wondered how his father wound up there, on Vulcan. She speculated that he'd defected at some point in his life and then settled on the world of his ancient ancestors determined to bring the bloodlines back together.

Or maybe, she thought, it wasn't so complicated after all. Maybe he moved there on some kind of working visa and happened to meet a Vulcan woman and was floored by her beauty. Tiren's mother was remarkably beautiful, one of the rare almost blond-haired Vulcans who obviously took after a parent from another part of Vulcan not ordinarily seen by out-worlders.

She found herself standing there, staring at the holo-photo even longer. She smiled as she looked at it. Tiren took after his father almost completely in looks. Tall, broad shouldered and heavily dense in body, his hair was dark and appeared to be soft. He had a proud nose and his eyes were piercing, though not quite dark. But his mother had added something to his looks. The striking handsomeness he possessed had been added to the starkness of his father's features via her beauty. They had blended well to produce him.

Tiren's eyes were a strange shade of dark grey she had never seen before. The sight of him gave the impression that he was looking down on everyone he saw; the proud shape of his nose, the upward jut of his chin when he walked about, the way his eyes surveyed whatever crossed his path. But that could not have been further from his true personality. To say he had a proud face would have certainly been a human estimation. But he was the truest friend she had ever had, to that date. Even Samuel, who was supposed to be her boyfriend, had never been this constant, this true, this there for her in the simplest of things.

"What are you staring at with such deep thought?" he asked as he came up behind her.

She startled a little, and then laughed. "No, I was just looking at this picture. These are your parents, right?"

He looked as if he were guarding some secret. "You were able to ascertain they are my parents?"

She knew what it was he wanted to guard. But how was she going to tell him she didn't care without bring the subject out into the open. She decided not to. "Of course I can tell! You look just like them."

"Truly?" he asked, curious.

"I mean, you're the spitting image of your father but…I see your mother in there. She's so beautiful," she said as she looked back at the photograph.

He wanted to say that it was not logical to notice such things. So why was he staring at her himself, thinking such an illogical thing about his friend? "Thank you," he simply answered he compliment about his mother. "And he who is my father?" he asked, wondering what she thought since she had commented that he resembled him strongly.

"He's very handsome," she nodded.

He found himself with a very rare streak of humor exiting his mouth. "If I resemble he who is my father so strongly and you find him quite handsome-"

She looked up at him with a sharp intake of breath and laughed. "Oh, you shut up!" she said. If he would have been human, she would have smacked his arm or something, but she held herself back from touching him. There were still some things she knew she shouldn't engage in with him. "You've been hanging around me too much!" she pointed up at him accusingly. But she said no more.

He felt a slight moment of regret since he sensed there was something else she wished to do or say, but he couldn't tell what it was. "Come. We must meet Valen for the evening meal. He has summoned us to his home."

The day after she'd seen the photograph at his house, she sat at work and realized that as her friendship with Tiren deepened, her contact with Samuel lessened. He was, in fact, 'seeing other people' so didn't quite notice his girlfriend (ex-girlfriend?) was moving away from him. She theorized that if she just stopped calling he might not even notice at all.

##

Tila received an almost cryptic subspace call from her grandfather late one night, all the way from Earth. "Grandpa, isn't it like 4 a.m. over in California now? You should be in bed!" she chided him.

He smiled. "I just got in from a date," he proclaimed with a mischievous smile.

She groaned. "Grandpa," she said as she listened to his rich laughter. "I sure have missed you."

"I've missed you, too, little lamb." He got down to business. "But listen, I've just gotten a call from Clan Mother T'Kaletul. She's very pleased with how well the shop is doing, you know?"

She waved that off. "That's due to Tiren's creations. His stuff is amazing!"

"I remember that young man," he said. "She told me you've become his muse? Not those exact words, but there you have it."

She laughed. "I guess you could say that. He needs a different point of view, you see, to create his works. And how different can you get than me compared to whoever else he might know?"

"So you two have become great friends? At least that's what your father says."

"What, are you spying on me or something?" she joked. They laughed about that for a few seconds .

"Has he told you anything?" asked her grandfather almost delicately.

For once she wished he was sitting right there with her so she could reach out, touch him, find out all his surface thoughts. But he wasn't there and words would have to do. "Anything?" Then she thought of what she'd ascertained a few months back. "If you mean the Romulan blood from one of his parents, no, he hasn't said anything, but I've figured it out for myself, you know?"

Her grandfather seemed to be taken aback. "So he didn't tell you?"

"No, grandpa, I figured it out on my own."

He tried to smile as if that were it. "Then my grandchild is not shallow in the least and does not care about so trivial a thing. How Giseth of you. It fills me with pride." But as he signed off he looked just a little bit sad.

##

Tila was terribly troubled the rest of that night and into the next day. That conversation with grandpa had not settled right in the region of her stomach. Something was wrong. No. Something was worse than wrong. She didn't get nearly enough sleep trying not to think about whatever it was, but it sat there through the night and nagged at her subconscious mind, prevented her from dropping off to sleep over and over again.

It wasn't like grandpa to directly keep things from her, at least not things that were important. And she got the feeling that he was keeping something from her that was more than important in some way. Not only that, she felt like she was directly involved with whatever it was he wouldn't tell her. But what was it about?

By the time she got to work her mind was hammering away at the problem with what felt like sledgehammers and she was in the beginning stages of a serious headache. She tried to concentrate on her data entry but it was simply a no-go. She put her head down on the desk and tried to decide if she was going to go get a hypo for her headache. She forced her mind back to work and pressed on.

Tiren was pulling up a chair next to her after less than an hour. "Something is troubling you," he stated as he entered the outer sphere of her personal space. This time, he hadn't waited for her to turn and acknowledge his presence. He was there, demanding her attention.

She didn't even bother asking 'how did you know?' The two could read one another like open books at that point. "My grandfather called me last night and- I still can't put my finger on it but he was trying to find something out and trying to tell me something at the same time." She shook her head, eyes clouded with concern. It clicked then as her eyes met his. "And I think it was about you."

He almost moved away from her but forced himself to stay where he sat. "So he knows."

"Well I already knew, but I don't think that's what it was that concerned him."

Tiren was now confused. "What is it you both know about me that I have yet to tell?"

She looked at him and her hand gestured at him in an offhand way. "Well, you know," she said. "I don't even know why I should have to say it out loud. I mean that's private, isn't it?"

"Did clan mother tell you?" he said, the tips of his ears turning a deep dark shade of green.

"No!" she said. "But anyone -well not anyone, but anyone who knows anything about Vulcans can tell."

He almost inhaled sharply, but stopped himself. "You have somehow ascertained my Time is almost upon me?" he asked in an almost whisper.

She was now more than confused. "Time? What time?"

And now he was in a conundrum. "We must speak plainly with one another. Something, some misunderstanding has occurred and we speak of two separate things."

"You're right about that," she said, still confused. "What are you talking about?"

"I believe I asked you first," he said, refusing to budge.

She sighed almost tiredly and rolled her eyes. It wasn't the first time she'd had the 'I asked you first' argument with him. She lowered her voice so much, he strained to hear her words, "Well I thought grandpa was calling to tell me about, you know, your mixed parentage. Well, not exactly 'mixed' since you guys do come from the same gene pool, so that's not really 'mixed' at all," she rambled. "I guess you could call it a cross-cultural-"

That came from nowhere, to him, and he was shocked. "How did you ascertain my father was born Rihannsu— what you call 'Romulan'?" The shock was almost open on his face.

She shrugged. "I just looked at you one day and I knew." She thought about it a little as she admitted, "It has something to do with the Giseth blood in me and the way they're able to tell whose who, but I don't know exactly how I knew."

"You are a touch telepath," he remembered, regaining control of his renegade emotions.

"I've barely ever touched you directly."

"But yet you simply knew."

She shrugged again. "Yes."

Something in him changed, some thought process went into overdrive. "Yet I sense you do not care. Did your grandfather?"

"Actually, no, not at all. The Giseth have no problems with anyone. I guess it helps that no one can catch them to conquer them! He actually made a point of telling me how proud he was that I didn't care. But I know my grandpa and that's not at all what he called to find out." She was sitting there, wracking her mind, still trying to figure it all out.

He sensed she spoke the truth. "You say there was something there, unspoken, that he was attempting to tell you about myself?"

She sighed. "Yes. And I feel like it's important but..." She stopped speaking and simply looked over at him. He was sitting so close to her. At that moment she knew he knew what it was but was feigning ignorance and not owning up to it. What was that thing he had said about being close to his 'time'? What did that have to do with anything? What did he mean by that?

She seized on the one thing she knew would eventually make him spill his guts. It wasn't fair, she supposed, but he'd used it on her many times in the past to get her to tell him things, accept his help, whatever it was that was needed by her from him. "But since we're friends I know you would have told me anything that important, so grandpa just couldn't be right. Maybe he's just mistaken or maybe I am." Was that a quick flicker of guilt she saw in his eyes? Whatever it was, she'd already dismissed his presence and returned to work. She was doing her best to act as if she trusted in his being her friend to let her know if he were in any trouble. Let that little time bomb go off in his head later she thought.

Tiren stood and returned to his work, but a part of him was hung up on what Tila had just spoken with such confidence, that and the fact that she did not care about his dual heritage.

Ordinarily he would not feel the need to tell anyone his decisions since such things were personal. But if she had become such a close friend in such a short time his decision might deeply affect her for a long time afterward. She would need to be prepared. He would have to say something to her and soon.

His mind intervened, went down a path it should not have. Things being as they were between the two, why did his decision from so long ago have to be final now? Could he not perhaps change his mind?

He shook the thoughts away. He knew their friendship ran deep, but he could not presume upon it in that way. No. Perhaps it would be better if he kept it to himself after all. His decision had been so much simpler before he met her! And now, things had become more than complicated.