Spock set a cup of strong black coffee on the bedside table and then sat down on the floor beside the low mattress where their daughter slept peacefully in his wife's arms. He had long abandoned the futile effort to suppress the swell of affection that Christine and their children drew so effortlessly from his logical Vulcan heart.

His attempt at meditation had proved fruitless, and he had spent the remainder of the night replaying in his mind T'Kirk's tearful account of the events that had brought her to Keldeen. His early morning vidcomm to the Director of the Vulcan Science Academy had done little to stem his growing sense of disquiet.

"It is a private matter." It was a Vulcan convention that said nothing and told everything, the closest tradition would allow to speaking of that which was never to be spoken.

As he had expected, his wife, tempted by the aroma of fresh coffee, opened a sleepy eye.

"We must talk, aduna," he whispered. "It is as we feared."

Christine nodded her assent, then gently disentangled herself from their sleeping child. She picked up the steaming mug and noiselessly followed him down the stone steps to the first floor.

"You called the Academy?" she asked, settling on one of the dining chairs.

"Yes. I believe that this young man, Stovan, is entering the Pon Farr."

Christine set the misshapen blue green mug, one of their younger daughter T'Manda's kindergarten craft works, on the table before her and wrapped her arms tightly around herself as if suddenly chilled.

"But why send T'Kirk away?" Her eyes narrowed. "What aren't you telling me, Spock?"

"Stovan is unbonded."

"I don't understand. T'Kirk said he is traditional Vulcan. Surely his parents would have chosen a bondmate for him after his kahs-wan?"

"The Director shared only that he was unbonded, and that in light of the affinity they believed had developed between Stovan and T'Kirk, it was decided, for her safety, to separate them until…"

"Until-"Christine frowned at his hesitation, and then she swallowed hard. "Until he dies?"

"That was, of course, not how the Director phrased it, but essentially accurate."

"This, 'affinity', what does it mean for T'Kirk?"

He reached across the table and took her hand and squeezed it tightly. "It is a somewhat rare phenomenon that occurs with two unbonded adults, a unique connection of two minds that lays a foundation that can lead to a bonding."

"Like we…"

"Yes, as it was with us, aduna."

"But-she's a child, Spock."

"She is our child, my wife, but she is no longer a child." He released her hand and sighed. "This is why I was opposed to her coming here. We tried to give our children the best of each of our cultures and traditions, but we did not prepare T'Kirk for this possibility."

"Then we must do so now, my husband."

.…..

T'Kirk watched impatiently as her mother scurried about the tiny kitchen in the guest house preparing breakfast. She would have preferred to walk up to the main house where her grandmother would be preparing one of her famous morning feasts of Vulcan and Terran delicacies. But her mother had been intractable in her desire to cook breakfast for them here. Then, her father had left them here alone with an excuse as weak as the tea in the Academy break room. No doubt, he was up at the big house feasting on fresh kreyla and her grandmother's warm pineapple scones.

She could not shake the feeling that there was something vaguely familiar about this scene. It was hovering just on the edge of her consciousness, her father's uncharacteristically hasty retreat, her mother, annoyingly perky, fixing breakfast for just the two of them.

"T'Kirk"-her mother said as she placed a plate of fruit and eggs on the table-"when I was your age-"

"Ohmigod—you have got to be kidding me? Seriously-'the birds and the bees' again?"

"Excuse me?"

"If this is another sex talk, mother, I can assure you that with the eyeful I got last night, any possible 'wedding night' mystery has been revealed."

"T'Kirk," her mother said more firmly as she sat down in the chair next to her. "Your father and I made….certain choices about how we would raise our children. We wanted you to appreciate each of our diverse cultures and backgrounds, but it was important to us to allow you each the freedom to choose your own path, to live the life of your own choosing.

"When I met your father"-she shook her head and chuckled-"when I met your father he was the most enormous pain in the ass I'd ever encountered. So of course, I fell madly in love with him. I honestly think there's a genetic streak of masochism in the Chapel women. Anyway, when we first met, I was engaged to someone else, another man, a man named Roger Korby."

T'Kirk knew well the story of how her mother's search for her first love had brought her to the Enterprise where her parents met, but this was the first mention that her relationship with the famed scientist and her proper Vulcan father had overlapped.

"I didn't know it at the time, but your father was already married to a Vulcan woman."

"Father had another wife?"

"Not exactly, they weren't married like your father and I are. They were joined in a traditional Vulcan ritual called bonding."

"Father was bonded?"

"Yes."

"But they didn't marry? Why? What happened?"

"It's difficult to explain. Remember that summer when we went to Uncle Jim's fishing cabin and and we saw the massive schools of salmon swimming upstream to mate?"

"Yes."

"Well, Vulcan males have a similar cycle."

"They swim upstream?"

"No, T'Kirk, they do not 'swim upstream.' When was the last time you saw a stream on Vulcan—or a Vulcan swimming for that matter?" Her mother gave an exasperated sigh followed by a disapproving glare before soldiering on. "If I may continue. Every seven years of an adult Vulcan male's life he enters into a mating cycle called the Pon Farr. The man experiences an undeniable biological imperative to mate. It's a burning need so powerful that if the need is denied, madness and death follow. When the male enters the earliest stage of the Pon Farr, he becomes irritable, disoriented, confused, and and as it progresses he can even become violent. The link that is created by the bonding draws the male to his bondmate at the male's first Pon Farr and they are joined together at the koon-ut-kal-if-fee, the Vulcan marriage rite."

"But father did not marry her, his bondmate?"

"No, your father's bondmate refused to consummate the bonding. She wished to be joined with another. She invoked the ancient challenge to the bonding. She wished to marry another."

"She chose someone else over father?"

"Yes, I've never been able to see the logic of her decision but I admit to being glad she chose as she did."

"Seven years… so that is why Vulcan families have children that are seven years apart, instead of the ashu kan'nav"

Her mother's eyes narrowed. "Where did you hear that term?"

"Stovan said it to me."

"Yes," her mother said and shook her head. "Despite the principle of IDIC there remains, among some, an intolerance toward children conceived outside of the Pon Farr."

"Then you and father…."

"Your older brother was not delivered in a basket by a sehlat."

T'Kirk's eyes widened. "Stovan…"

"From what you told us last night it is likely that he is entering into the middle phase of Pon Farr."

"But, how can that be, mother. He has no bondmate?"

Her mother rose from the table and walked to the garden window.

"Are you certain of that, T'Kirk?"

"What do you mean, mother?"

"You have spent a great deal of time with him, daughter."

"Not in that way," she said. But she recalled the part of her trip to Stovan's quarters that she'd been too embarrassed to share with her parents. His touch, hot and needful, had moved through her like a bright ribbon of energy. A feeling she'd never known before, but had identified later as sexual desire. If he had not stopped himself she was uncertain if she would have stopped him.

"The flashes you have described passing between you and Stovan, I'm not sure what they were but your father believes that you may have somehow developed a link between the two of you. A link that would facilitate"-she turned away from T'Kirk and stared out the window—"a mating."

T'Kirk stared at the uneaten meal set out on the table as though she'd never seen food before. Her mind was racing, her heart pounding with the implications of what her mother had said.

"What will happen to Stovan if he is not able to…mate?"

"It is said that some have survived using forms of meditation."

"Some?" she asked, rising from the chair. "How many?"

"Vulcans are so tightlipped, there is no actual data-it's hard to really know."

"Surely there must be some other way?"

"I'm told that...there are women—priestesses"—her mother sighed—"there are sometimes…arrangements that can be made, although among the more orthodox Vulcans, those who still hold to the ancient traditions, it not seen as an acceptable measure"

"But it is acceptable to let a man die? Where is the logic in that?"

T'Kirk picked up the antique pottery dish from the table and threw it against the quarried tile backsplash. It exploded, showering the counter with a colorful cascade of eggs, fruit, and ceramic shards.

T'Kirk stormed out of the kitchen and back upstairs to her bedroom.