36. Corrections
His bare feet shushed against the mat, a wisp of sound, no more than 11 decibels in volume.
The first time he had come to practice in this gym, on this mat, Spock had felt a stab of familiarity and recognized the auditory similarity to feet moving in sand. He had become accustomed to sensing the hot morning sun and the feel of his bare toes sifting through the surface dust of Vulcan. Had incorporated these sensations into his meditative workout. He described semi-circles in the imagined surface, felt the warm granules cleanse and soften his soles. He descended into the sleepiness, and yet precision and alertness, of ritual movement.
This morning, images came to mind, his father showing him the forms of suss mahn, making the fluid shapes with his own, much larger, body. Spock recalled Sarek's shadow, covering a large volume of ground in the slanted, early light. A vivid moment rose out of memory, his father touching him to correct the positioning of his forearm. It was a single brush of hand out of weeks and months of training. And through that brief connection, he felt his father blocking emotions of worry and pride. Feelings Spock sensed as though they were behind a thick door, or, more so, as though they emanated from a subterranean room, down a winding corridor in a dampened cave.
Perhaps six decibels. No more.
He had not thought of emotion as having auditory volume, and he catalogued this moment of insight as one more change wrought by living among Humans. As he slowly turned his core and positioned his arms, he recognized fluidity of thought and relation among like, and yet unlike, subjects.
The part of his mind that considered this pairing of sound and feeling struggled to take precedence, but was overcome by the advance of guilt and pain, of anger also, at the thought of his father's large presence, the presence of a man who had once been his concerned and loving guide.
Spock was suddenly through. His gaze rose to the blank gym wall, and abruptly he turned and reached the door.
A woman was there, dark and sweating. Her skin glistened, and her long eyelashes were damp, and in a spare moment under the glare of interior light, Spock did not recognize her. But one twentieth of a second later he did, and then in a similarly brief flash envisioned himself touching her forearm, guiding her in the first form. He imagined giving the softest nudge of correction, four decibels, no more. Imagined her tipping her head back toward his chest, her movements balletic and strong.
He shook his head in sharp dismissal of his own inappropriate thoughts and moved past her.