Myths

(Soji, Elnor, Picard)

Elnor had gone to the holodeck for fencing practice, but he found it already active. Their newest shipmate was inside and she had turned it into a greenhouse, blooming riotously with flowers of every color. Sunlight shone through the glass walls, making the beads of condensation glitter. The smell should have been dizzying. All he could smell was recycled air and metal, however, reminding him that this was only an illusion.

Dr. Asha knelt on the ground, her gray coverall streaked with earth. At the sound of his soft leather boots, she looked up. Her face was smeared with dirt and tears. Suspicion flashed across her face at the sight of him, but then she shrugged.

"Forgive me, Dr. Asha. Am I inbutting?"

"I really couldn't care," she said. "The whole ship knows about my issues anyway, so what's the difference?"

"Your … issues … involve flowers?"

"Orchis dahj and Orchis soji. Dad bred them and named them after us. Look."

She held up a handful of crushed petals, some peach-colored, some scarlet. At a second glance, Elnor saw that she was sitting in the middle of a ruined flowerbed; some were crushed, others torn out by the roots.

"Computer, end program," said Elnor, disturbed by this wanton destruction in ways he couldn't define.

The greenhouse vanished. The floor beneath Dr. Asha turned back into a bare hologrid. Elnor held out a hand to help her up, but she ignored him, scrambling to her feet with a sad, bitter laugh. "See? It's fake. The flowers are in the database, but the breeder's name is Maddox, not Asha. None of it was real – not my dad, not my memories … not even my sister anymore."

The dirt on her had disappeared, but the tears were still there. She wiped her face roughly with the sleeve of her coverall.

"I grieve with you."

"I'm not grieving," she snapped. "How can I? I didn't even know her. Everything I thought I knew is a lie."

Elnor's mind raced, trying to think of anything he could possibly say that would be both true and reassuring. None of the scriptural quotations he could think of were helpful in the least. He wished Picard were here.

Thinking of his mentor recalled a fragment of memory, one he hadn't thought about in years.

"Are the Musketeers real, sir?"

"No, my boy. The setting was real and so were some of the characters, but the story itself is fiction."

"What?" Eight-year-old Elnor slammed the paper book shut. "Then why bother reading about them if it's not even true?"

Picard smiled and stroked the cover, golden letters gleaming beneath his wrinkled hands. "Because the myths people create can teach us something facts alone cannot."

"But what's the difference, then? Between a myth and a lie?"

"A lie obscures," said the old man. "A myth illuminates."

"Maybe … your past doesn't have to be a lie," Elnor said hesitantly, "Maybe it's more of a myth."

"A myth?" Dr. Asha frowned, but more in thought than in anger, like a scholar presented with a new idea. "What do you mean?"

"Whoever created those memories … " He gestured awkwardly at the empty holodeck where the greenhouse had been. "Put a lot of thought into making them joyful."

"They did." She sniffed. "That's why I hate to think that they weren't real."

"Did you ever consider, Dr. Asha, that you might be the orchid?" He blushed at the absurdity of the image and hurried to specify: "It's unique, it takes an expert to grow, it doesn't occur in nature any more than you do, and … " He took a deep breath to gather his courage. "And it's beautiful."

Her blue eyes widened. For a moment, he could have sworn he saw her blush before she turned her back on him.

He was just beginning to fear that he had said something inappropriate – again – when her shoulders slumped in a quiet sigh and she turned back around.

"Computer, resume program," she said. "Starting at the last save point."

With a quiet beep, the greenhouse blossomed around them once again. The bed of Orchis dahj and Orchis soji was whole this time, not a petal out of place, and when their namesake crouched down to look at them, she was almost smiling.

"Can you guess which one is mine, Mr. Elnor?"

He knelt beside her for a closer look. His first guess would have been scarlet, but he was Romulan enough that his instinct was to reject the easy answer. He took a second look, right into the hearts of the flowers. The scarlet ones were white inside, but the light orange ones … ah. The deeper you looked into them, the more they flushed, in shades of pink and red as subtle as Dr. Asha's face.

"That one."

"You're right." Her almost-smile grew into a real one. "Thank you."

"For guessing?"

"For helping me to feel a little less … uprooted."

She stroked one of the holographic plants with one gentle fingertip. He did the same, deliberately, until their fingers met in the middle.

"I will do whatever I can," he said, "To help you find somewhere to bloom."