Author's Note: Okay, spring break in Michigan officially REALLY sucks. It is snowing. Or actually, it was snowing and now it refuses to act like a proper spring and get warm. There is ice on all of the trees. Argh...
TRADING SPACES
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Tobin sucked in a deep breath of air, let it out again slowly; the damp tickled his tongue. "This is not right," he said, disappointed, and wiped the rain from his forehead.
"Well, it's been a long time," said Trip, blinking water away from his eyelashes. "It's a little farfetched to expect that everything's gonna be the same you left it." He stamped his feet and puffed out his cheeks, sending a huff of mist into the air.
"Are you cold?" asked Ensign Mayweather, running up behind them. He grinned at Tobin, apparently enjoying the rain.
"You know, for someone raised on a cargo ship, I'd think you'd hardly be used to the weather," retorted Trip. He jammed his blue baseball cap down onto his forehead and tied the hood over it until all that poked out was his nose. "Much less like it."
"Nah," said Travis. "Healthy appreciation, Commander."
Tobin chuckled and shook his head, walking away from them. He had thought
he knew Sief Talber like the back of his hand. But nothing remained of the
forests and fields he had once known; he could see some of the same types
of plants, and above him the same sun beat down, but it was not his home.
What had happened in two thousand years that caused his people to leave
this place? Trip had told him that there was no life at all on the entire planet.
Three days ago he would never have believed that there was life anywhere
except the entire planet.
He stumbled on a rock, and then realized it was a stone block, grown over in moss and weeds. Carefully he dug into the earth and found the tops of a few more. Walking on, he discovered the outline of an ancient building, and several hollows in the ground that could have once been something from his home.
They had been gone a long time, then. Long enough for the planet to eradicate nearly every trace of their civilization. Tobin felt moisture at the corner of his eyes, and wondered at it. This body was so different from his own; he missed it, and he missed his family and friends; he missed his beloved Mayla.
Today I would have married her, he thought, and sank down onto one of the ancient walls. If I had passed the test, I would have been a full priest. I could have taken a wife and been a lowly initiate no longer. Oh, Albion Doveheart, he lamented silently, I could have done without this trial. I am not strong enough to know that in two thousand circles of the sun my people will be gone forever, leaving nothing but the wind and the rain to be their testament.
He wiped at his eyes, and knew suddenly that this was how humans expressed grief. How open, he thought. There is no way to hide it.
"Tobin?" said a voice behind him. "You okay?"
He glanced up, found Trip standing over him and hurriedly wiped his eyes. Oh, what he would give for dry idun'yll eyes, never showing his weakness.
"I'm coming," said Tobin, sniffling and silently cursing.
Trip, tactfully, said nothing about it. "We thought that we could take you to your caves. The Sad-whatsit, you know, where the electric room is."
"Electric?"
"Never mind. The sparkly room. You know, with the crystals."
"Oh, yes. Of course. The temples of the Sadhraf."
"Yep." He put out a hand and helped Tobin up, and they trudged off through the darkening gloom to where Travis stood waiting with the shuttlepod. Again Tobin marveled at the wondrous machines of these humans. Without them it would have taken an entire day to get to the sacred temples. Now all they had to do was fly up (he gripped his seat tightly during the ride, not entirely trusting the machine) and land in only a few minutes.
He felt his eyes begin to sting once more as he saw the temples. At least here the memory of his people was better preserved, but only a little. He remembered the majesty and splendour as one rode to the golden gate, inlaid with precious stones and gems. The outbuildings, carved with the figures of the gods and their signs. The great statue of the Patrons, and their blessed emissaries, Rafiziel Ravenswing and Albion Doveheart, the most powerful of all, second only to the Patrons themselves. He saw the face of the Raven, half buried, with lichen growing over the ears and nose. Only the left eye, piercing even after more than two millennia of weathering and decay, stared out at him with any familiarity.
"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,'" murmured Travis. "'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. /Nothing beside remains. Round the decay /Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.'"
Tobin shuddered. "What sort of poetry is that?"
"Shelley," said Travis. He gazed about the ruins of the temple yard, mouth half agape. "I had to learn it when I was a kid for something. Sort of fits, doesn't it?"
"I don't like it," said Tobin, and they fell silent, looking at the remnants of his world.
"Come on, you two," called Trip from the doorway. "It's getting dark and we're due back on Enterprise in an hour." He tapped the flashlight warningly against the palm of his hand.
Inside was worse; Tobin's stomach clenched and he could not seem to stop his limbs from trembling at the sight of the rooms that only three days ago he had thought so beautiful. He had traveled from Sief Talber to undergo his initiation into the Sadhraf Mysteries; only one trial remained: the Room of Truth. In the crystal, it was rumored, one could see the future and the past without the bias of another's reporting. One might see their own true self, revealed in all its beauty and weakness. Sometimes the gods spoke to the most favored ones.
Perhaps he had been arrogant, Tobin thought, because he had hoped to hear the voice of his most beloved of gods, Albion Doveheart herself, and this was her punishment.
The crystal in the Room shimmered in the glow of Trip's flashlight. Tobin, still aghast at the age of the other rooms, found it comforting that this looked exactly the same. Trip refused to go past the threshold with anything 'electric,' and so Tobin went in alone, the two humans watching him from the door.
He expected to feel something, anything, in the room. His shoulders slumped back as he examined the crystal spire and the patterns on the wall, carved right out of the natural rock.
When he had entered it for the initiation three days ago his skin had begun to crawl as soon as he stepped onto the crystal path. Carefully Tobin retraced his steps. Slow, careful, until he reached the crystal, where the energy vibrated even more... not now, but it had in his own body... then the vision began and he remembered only a haze of faces and voices, what he had thought were demons at the time, and shock, at finding himself completely different than before.
"It is dead here," said Tobin. "It hardly surprises me that the gods have deserted this place, since there are no worshippers left to honor them."
"Something's still here," said Trip. "I looked at the scans that T'Pol did. There's some kind of weird radiation in this room that isn't in the Vulcan database. She thinks it's coming from the crystal but we couldn't get a sample without using tools to cut it, and of course that'd give us a shock."
"Deservedly so," said Tobin, "if you dare to profane a holy place. It is a place of visions. When I walked into it in my proper body I could feel the power in here."
"Maybe your species is more susceptible to the radiation," said Travis. "They can feel it outright, and humans can't unless something sparks it off like the scanners."
"So you are saying my entire faith is based on nothing more than radiation giving us seizures?" cried Tobin. He bounded across the room and snatched the flashlight from Trip's grasp before the man could react. Flickers of lightning danced across the room. Tobin gritted his teeth as he felt the energy run through his human body. He was an acolyte of the Dove, though, and he did not give in to pain.
Malcolm's body refused to cooperate, though, and stumbled towards the doorway on its own accord, flashlight dropping from numbed hands and sparking on the floor. It illuminated in short bursts the terrified faces of Trip and Travis, shouting at him from the door. For an instant his sight dimmed and he saw the head priest of the Sadhraf and his beloved Mayla standing at the door, chanting the spells of vision and truth. He felt a strange presence touch his mind, and saw the face of his strange new body staring at him.
"Trip," cried Malcolm soundlessly. "Travis."
"Mayla!" screamed Tobin.
For a moment they simply gazed at each other, wondering how to right this, how to get the other out of their body, and then the pull grew too strong for either of them to resist.
"Go away, Trip, you're not real," whispered Malcolm as he faded. "I only imagined you..." He spoke in the language of the humans, but Tobin understood even without the translating machine.
"Give me my life back!" screamed Tobin. Furious, he struggled at the darkness, finally giving up when Malcolm's eyes faded into pinpoints of nothingness. He opened his own and found Travis shaking him none too gently, bathed in the light
"What the hell did you do that for?" cried the young man.
"You're right," spat Tobin weakly. He didn't even bother trying to suppress the pain; he was too weary to do anything but let it wash over him.
"Right?"
"There is no god here," said Tobin. "No god could be so cruel as to give my life to another."
"What?" said Travis. "Commander! I think he's hallucinating!"
"He does not believe that you were ever real," moaned Tobin. "He believes he is me."
Thankfully, darkness swept over him, and he could think no more.
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Translated from the Sadhraf script, written by the newly appointed priest of
Sief Talber:
I, Tobin Marat, son of the Goddess, have put the demons of the past behind
me. I must think no longer on the strange pink beings who walk the sky.
Though I remember nothing of my former life except the ramblings of my
own mind, I have resolved to pick up the pieces and continue where I left off.
I have lost count of the days of my new life; so many have gone by, months
and months and months, that it seems pointless to continue counting when it
only serves to remind me of what I have lost. I do not know my friends'
faces; I do not remember the first days of the courtship between Mayla and
myself. I remember only this strange person whose name I cannot even spell
in my own language and I dream of his life rather than my own.
Perhaps these dreams are a gift from the gods. Perhaps they are what we can become in time. We shall walk among the stars and traverse the realms of the cosmos like the great Patrons themselves. I must reflect on them and learn how I can show my people the way.
I, Tobin Marat, will touch the very stars themselves, and no one will doubt that I hear the words of the gods.
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Okay, spring break isn't all bad. I get lots of time to write, which is good. Please tell me what you think!