Library Pass
By
Pat Foley
Chapter 10
Picnic time for teddy bears
The little teddy bears are having a lovely time today
Watch them, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday.
Pillowed on towel covered cushions stolen from the library chairs and surrounded by a few choice books from which T'Jar had been reading, the lovers paused in their labors, listening to their own cries bounce off the stone walls. And flying as if on wings, out the wide open windows. In a wing of the house where only family should be in residence. T'Jar removed her hand where it had flown to cover her mouth. She was panting. "Do you think anyone heard? Sascek?"
"I do not care," Sascek said, flush from the triumph of this new and very personal conquest.
"Sascek!"
He settled down next to her. "Does it matter? They will know us to be bondmates soon enough."
At that assumption, T'Jar drew up. "You have not even asked me," she pointed out, unaccountably miffed. "How can you simply assume that I will say yes?"
Sascek was astonished. "Need I ask in words what we have said in our hearts? And with our souls? And with our bodies? After this, do you think I could ever wish for another?"
"Yes, of course you must ask. The proposal is always a high point of the story!" she reached out to one of the books surrounding them. "See, in here--
Sascek took the book from her hand, tossed it aside, and took her face in his. "T'Jar, I am not speaking of fiction!"
"Nor am I." She tore her eyes from her discarded book to look into his. "Not entirely, anyway. I wish for more than kisses from you."
"I have given you more," Sascek said, looking down at their still flushed bodies, wondering how she could be in any doubt of it.
T'Jar leaned back luxuriously on their makeshift bed. "I wish for more even than that."
Sascek drew back uncertainly. "What more can I give you this night? We must arrange for a healer to properly bond us, but that will have to --"
"I wish for words."
"Words? Are we not speaking now?"
She looked up at the tiered stacks of books above her, around her, in rows all about and around them and raised her arms as if to encompass them. "Words of love. Just think, Sascek. This whole room is…is full of words of love. I am inspired. They have inspired me. You have inspired me. Do you not feel it all around us?"
Sascek looked around him almost uneasily, as if the stacks of books were exhaling a dangerous miasma of emotions. "They are not all love books, T'Jar. Not even most of them are love books. Even my lady would not--"
"Even books of human history, of fact, contain love stories. It is an integral part of human relations."
"T'Jar, we are Vulcan!" Sascek insisted, almost desperately.
"Engaging in such intimate acts before bonding is very unVulcan," she pointed out.
Sascek flinched. "It was you who said you would not bond with me until I could prove to you that I could give you…what you wished."
"And why should I not?" she asked, miffed again. "I have read so much of love now, I would know of it for myself. Sarek has proven that even a Vulcan can know of love. Why can I not have it for myself, even as a Vulcan bonded to a Vulcan? I will have it."
"But we will be bonded. We will have…Vulcan methods. What need have we for human kisses? And human words?"
"Did you not enjoy the human kisses?"
For a moment Sascek hesitated, obviously torn, and then he admitted. "Yes. Very much."
"Is any touch, in private, not proper between bondmates?"
"Yes."
"Then the words can not be forbidden either. Think how much more we have to learn, Sascek!" T'Jar raised her arms above her head again as if to encompass the whole library.
Sascek blanched, looking from the few books at their side to the huge library. "Surely we don't have to…to read them all?"
"Spoken like a true palace guard." T'Jar said, with a trace of amused scorn. "You can deal with a sword or a lance, a lirpa or an ahn woon. Even a phaser, in these modern times, but put a book in your hand--"
"I am no scribe or scholar, to sit pouring over fine print. Certainly not of human books."
"Yet I thought you appreciated…the results of my studies." T'Jar asked innocently. She leaned against him and kissed the tip of his ear. "And could wish for more."
Sascek closed his eyes, his logic fleeing at that touch. "Yes. Oh, yes. T'Jar--"
"I will read the books," T'Jar asserted. "And you will reap the rewards."
"Yes."
"But you must first ask." T'Jar picked up a book, "As in here--"
"Very well, I ask for it," Sascek quickly capitulated. "Read to me, T'Jar," he said. "Read for me."
"Sascek!" Frustrated, T'Jar swatted him with the volume in her hands. Sascek looked at her with wide, wounded eyes, and captured her hands in his.
"You …struck me."
"You were supposed to ask for me! For my …my hand in marriage." T'Jar tried to pull her hands from his. "Not for me to— Not for me to read!"
"For …your hand? T'Jar, I want all of you." Sascek clutched her hands tighter.
"Oh, you are hopeless, Sascek. You are so…so unromantic. You know nothing of the words of love that I would hear you say." She pulled away from him, cross and disappointed, took up her book anew, and looked down at the volume in her hands. "I wonder if the Lady Amanda has had such troubles."
For a moment, Sascek regarded her non-plussed. Then he hesitantly drew near her again. "T'Jar."
She finally raised her eyes to his.
He took her face in his hands. "I do not understand. But neither could Sarek, Vulcan as we are, have known these things."
"Perhaps he studied, as I have done," T'Jar suggested.
"I think not," Sascek said, unaccountably offended on his clan leader's behalf. "Sarek, read such works as these? Certainly not. Have you ever seen him read the Lady Amanda's books?"
"No," T'Jar admitted.
"Then it must have been the Lady Amanda who taught him. She is after all, a teacher. T'Jar, I don't understand your interest in these Terran ways. But…if this is what you wish…Then you will teach me what you wish me to say. As you have taught me before as to what you wish to do. I am after all, a Vulcan warrior. Though bred to peace for 5000 years, my Vulcan blood is strong. Anything a human can say in these books," he spared them a brief, disparaging glance, "'I would say more eloquently and in our own language. Anything they do, I can exceed." He punctuated that assertion with a kiss. "And in the meantime, I will practice…what I have already learned. Are you sure, you are so interested…now…in these books? Rather than my actions?"
T'Jar's books were abruptly forgotten. "You would speak the same words to me?"
"If I must. When I learn them. Must that learning be now? Surely we have much more to …practice…in deeds alone."
"I suppose… tomorrow is soon enough for words," T'Jar murmured, as the book dropped from her suddenly nerveless hands. "Oh, Sascek. Do it again. Please? Only this time…we must be…quieter."
Sascek covered her mouth with his. To ensure it. It was one advantage of the Terran kiss.
To be continued…
5