"Where do we start?" Dagmar asked softly, finding that the heat from earlier had settled fully into something calm and easy between herself and Shral.
They hadn't separated even as the heat between them had dropped, as Andorians would put it, and while their hands still wandered in ponderous paths the contact was more reassuring than reigniting. The warm-starburst in the back of her mind remained a soft warmth at the farthest edges of herself, and Dagmar found herself increasingly fascinated and comforted by it. Their heads were still bowed together intimately, not quite touching, their voices lowered and soft.
Shral took a breath and released it slowly, his antennae swaying in deep thought for a long moment. Eventually, he suggested, "Perhaps we should begin with any questions you might have?"
Dagmar thought about it. Truthfully, she felt like she had a thousand questions just a moment ago and now she couldn't remember a single one of them, but she managed to grasp a few before they slipped away entirely. After being as close as they had been for some time now, her senses were all fixed upon him - the scent of him, the heat, the texture of his clothes, the feeling of his skin against hers. It made it very hard to concentrate.
"Well, I suppose the responsible thing to do is ask how anything between us affects our respective jobs…" Dagmar began slowly, brushing her thumb against the corner of his jaw thoughtfully. "Humans have all kinds of policies for fraternisation in the workplace, but most of it is centred around military personnel - to prevent any abuse of rank or position, largely. How do Andorians treat things like this?"
"Our civilian and military sectors handle the problem in much the same way. Duty comes first, and both expect professionalism while on duty or in the workplace." Shral hummed, drawing the backs of his fingers along the curve of her waist. "Beyond that, there are no particular restrictions."
The Human woman processed this, thinking it over, turning it this way and that. It made sense; Andorians were very duty-driven and honour-bound, after all. There was a small part of her, excitable and alive in the wake of this newest of revelations, that almost resented the idea of putting anything before her relationship with Shral. Dagmar firmly set it aside; she had known before she'd even set foot on Andoria that she would need to approach life like an Andorian to survive - to thrive- on a strange new world. Besides, the more she thought about it the more she realised it really wasn't that unreasonable. Her job wasn't one filled with life-or-death scenarios, so it hardly applied to her at all, but Shral was the Ambassador's aide and responsible, alongside the rest of the security team, for Ambassador Thoris' safety and well-being. If Shral didn't do his job because he was more focused on her, the consequences could be horrible.
"That makes sense," Dagmar accepted Shral's explanation after pondering it for a moment longer. "How is social rank dealt with?"
"The highest ranking member is considered the leader, usually." Shral answered matter-of-factly, and he seemed pleased that she was asking questions that implied planning for the future. "On the surface, that would be you. In reality, it would be me. Bondmates are usually absorbed into the higher ranking Clan and become honorary members of all participants' Clans upon marriage into a quad."
"So, hypothetically," Dagmar began, feeling a little nervous at just postulating the idea. "I would become a member of the Clan… Hrisvalar? Am I saying that right?"
"Almost." Shral smiled, before coaching her carefully. "Hrisvalar - softer in the beginning, and then a strong finish."
Dagmar tried again, following his guidance carefully. She probably would have gotten it faster, if he hadn't started tracing his fingertips over the soft hollow at the base of her throat and caused her to trip over the syllables.
The word was a slippery, sibilant word, stemming from a much older Andorian word hrisal. Hrisal meant best killing weapon or the most effective weapon and it was a word that curled strangely around the hard consonant suffix. Hrisvalar was a compound word, though it was very old and tracing the etymology of Ancient Andorii was tricky at best for a native speaker, largely due to several linguistic shifts during the different warring eras and then again during the unification of Andoria. If she had to guess, she would probably attribute the other root words to vaal (meaning currency or money) or perhaps vaar (meaning flame), and aar (meaning lie). She wasn't quite sure about any of those, of course; she was a linguist, sure, but her studies focused on the modern Andorii and its variants, not the older dialects.
Focus, she told herself firmly. She was in the middle of a rather important discussion about Clans. She tried the word again, paying careful attention to the curling suffix.
"Very good," Shral praised quietly, pausing over her carotid to feel the jump in her pulse. He didn't need to feel her pulse to know, he could probably hear it clearly enough, so the touch must have been deliberate. The light at the edge of her mind brightened, warmed with interest and curled with something like possessiveness. His antennae began to ever-so-slightly writhe. "Yes, you would join my Clan."
"And you'd become an honorary member of my not-Clan. Not really a fair exchange, is it?" Dagmar continued, getting her thoughts back in line before they wandered away from her entirely. She couldn't quite keep the self-depreciation from her tone.
Shral hummed again, this time with a distinctly disapproving downward note. "Your position is unique, vinzhuukh, and many of our rules and customs do not apply to you because of it. You are not less for it, just as you are not less for being Human."
"Are you sure your family will see it that way?" Dagmar wanted to know, feeling that uncertainty rising again. It was a valid concern; she wasn't exactly a catch, politically.
"My mothers will dislike you on principle because they did not pick you, and because I have ignored all previous attempts at matchmaking. My fathers will be greatly concerned about the compatibility between Humans and Andorians and about my personal happiness." Shral's blunt response came, though he softened when he saw Dagmar's rising alarm. "But not one of them will forbid the match."
He waited a beat too long and added, very deliberately, "Hypothetically."
Despite herself, Dagmar found herself huffing a laugh as her eyes fell closed. "Very subtle, Shral. Very reassuring. Okay, so, putting the family questions aside for the time being… that's all the responsible questions I can think of right now."
Shral pressed his brow against hers in another Andorian kiss, his antennae sweeping over her hair in what was now becoming a familiar movement. In a low voice, he asked, "Do you have any irresponsible ones?"
Dagmar grinned as heat swept through her, and only some of it stemmed from the starburst at the edge of her mind. "A few."
"Go on." Shral encouraged, breaking away from her to scrape sharp teeth over a soft spot just beneath her jaw. The sensation was electric, skittering down her nerves and tingling down her spine; she sighed and tilted her head back, earning herself an appreciative hum against her throat. She wasn't entirely sure, but she thought she felt his antennae just barely disturbing her braid, mussed and frizzy as it was, with a slow writhing motion.
The Andorian man's hands moved to her waist again to slip his fingers just under the hem of her shirt where it had ridden up a little, brushing little circles against her skin. Dagmar inhaled sharply as her abdominal muscles contracted reflexively, but fortunately nothing further down tensed and no pain came. She relaxed again, not particularly surprised to find that she'd tensed in anticipation of pain, and offered a reassuring smile to Shral, who had pulled away to watch her expression very carefully. The heat from before ebbed somewhat, contained once more.
"Maybe not while I'm still recovering," Dagmar demurred, feeling a little sheepish. She consoled herself with the fact that she wouldn't be healing forever, but Dagmar would have been lying to herself if she said she wasn't a little frustrated.
"That may be wise." Shral didn't seem to mind, though his antennae still twisted and curled in a slow, swaying dance that belied his interest.
He shifted to cup the swell of her hips and urged her to rise up on her knees, the upholstery creaking as their combined weight shifted and he guided her to sit at his side, instead. She wasn't sure how long she'd been perched on his lap, but she ended up sitting much more heavily than she intended as pins and needles prickled from her knees down. It hadn't felt like very long, but clearly it must have been.
Dagmar valiantly refrained from letting her eyes drop below Shral's chin in defiance of her own powerfully strong curiosity. Whatever the Andorian was packing was something she was leaving to be discovered on another day, when any involuntary reactions on her part wouldn't cause her to flinch and swear and possibly give the man a very misleading impression of her receptiveness. Resolute, the red-haired woman redirected her focus away to tuck a leg under her so she could face Shral more comfortably, keeping her eyes firmly redirected while the aide took the opportunity to adjust himself. Her flushed face hid nothing, however, and when she glanced back up at Shral his antennae were bowed in open amusement.
"You'll almost touch my antennae but you won't look at me?" The Andorian was grinning as widely as he ever had, every sharp tooth on display in the narrow slash of his smile. "You are very strange."
Dagmar paused, caught wrong-footed for a moment. Very slowly, she asked, "...Is one a bigger deal than the other?"
If Shral's antennae bowed any more they'd curl in on themselves. Despite the clear amusement, there was something almost predatory in his gaze as he leaned close to her, following when she retreated into the back of the booth behind her, and said, "Oh yes."
Dagmar clapped her hands over her mouth, the hot flush of embarrassment travelling all the way down to her neck as she asked, in little more than a mortified whisper, "Did I do something horribly inappropriate?"
Shral hummed noncommittally, but he didn't answer her immediately, leaning back to prop an elbow on the table and rest his temple against his curled fist to regard her with mirth clear in his expression and antennae. Dagmar very belatedly remembered that they had been in the middle of drinking katheka together when all of this had started; it was probably cold by now.
"Andorian women have a centralised bundle of nerves above their sex which is linked to the pleasure centre of the brain," Shral began, apropos nothing as far as Dagmar and her increasingly flushed face could tell. "Do Humans?"
"I-that's- well- um-" Dagmar stammered, though she couldn't rightly say why - largely because something in her brain had short circuited. Her voice, when she finally forced the words out, was incredibly uncertain. "Yes? I think? It sounds like we have a similar, um, structure."
Shral seemed to take a long moment to observe her in her floundering embarrassment, his antennae fixing to tie themselves into knots they were curling so much. "Andorian antennae are similarly linked to the pleasure centre of the brain, particularly at the root, though to a much lesser degree."
Dagmar hid her face in her hands and made a miserable sound. "Oh no…"
Not even the sound of Shral's rasping laugh made her want to come out from behind her hands, her embarrassment was so complete.
"No harm was done," Shral reassured her, though the laughter wasn't quite gone from him yet. His fingers curled around her wrists to gently pry her hands away from where they were shuttering her eyes. "You can stop hiding, vinzhuukh. You're hardly the first to make such a mistake, and I'm sure you won't be the last."
Dagmar yielded to Shral's careful but inexorable grip, her face still burning bright red with shame as she muttered, "It's just so embarrassing..."
Shral released her wrists once he determined that she wasn't going to hide behind her hands again. Dagmar could appreciate that he was at least trying to curb his amusement at her expense as he pressed his thin lips together against a smile and straightened his antennae out through what she could only assume was sheer force of will. Her face still burned horribly, uncomfortably, but at least Shral wasn't angry; she might not have been quite so unruffled about it, had she been in his position.
Desperate to get back to some kind of normalcy, Dagmar cleared her throat awkwardly and opted to ask, "Is there anything else I should know about how Andorians conduct their relationships?"
As it turned out, there was quite a lot.
"There are rituals you'll want to make yourself familiar with," the aide told her, and like a lodestone drawing north he found himself reaching for her again, tangling their fingers together. "Nearly all are meant for much later into a courtship, but there are a few that are particularly important and I do not want you to be blindsided by them."
Dagmar nodded, squeezing his fingers between hers in an additional layer of acknowledgment. "Are there resources I can learn from - books or info packets- or will you need to teach me everything yourself?"
"Perhaps a little of both." Shral mused, drawing his thumb in slow circles over the back of her hand as he thought.
The Andorian man was quick to recommend several resources she might read up on in her own time, all of which Dagmar committed to memory before realising she didn't have to - she had a bunch of PADDs available just in the other room. She excused herself to retrieve them and was already downloading the information packets Shral had told her about when she returned a moment later. She left the stack of them on the table to finish downloading everything and resumed her seat at Shral's side. His antennae tracked her movements carefully the entire time, and now that Dagmar knew what they were trying to communicate she was immensely flattered.
"I'll read through them later today," Dagmar promised. She found herself reaching for Shral's hand now, as if she couldn't quite bear to sit so close to him and keep to herself. "What's typically expected during the courtship process? Humans call it dating, if it helps to have a comparison, and it usually involves talking, spending time together, going on outings, sharing meals, and such. Gift-giving can be part of it, too, depending on things like holidays or special occasions. At some point, it's usually expected to meet each other's friends and family."
Dagmar tried very hard not to think about how that last bit was… well, it wasn't really possible for her. She rallied herself quickly - it wasn't as though Shral didn't know about her family situation. He was the one who interviewed her, all those long months ago, and even if it hadn't come up on a cursory background search back then Earth's media outlets had certainly painted a vivid image of it. She hoped, in a small and sad part of her soul, that they might still find some way to honour her family and the part they should have been able to play in all of this; her heart panged sharply at the thought of her brother, Lars, and what he might have made of the strange twists and turns of her life.
"There is some overlap between your customs and mine in this," Shral commented after a moment, drawing Dagmar away from her melancholy thoughts. "But I notice you make no mention of ornamentation. Do Human courting couples not wear such indicators?"
Dagmar was grateful for the distraction and intrigued by the idea. "The official indicator worn is usually a ring on the left hand ring finger, this one" -here Dagmar indicated her own ring finger, tapping the underside of it against the pad of her thumb since she only had one free hand- "and that's usually to indicate engagement or marriage. Women often get two - one for the engagement and one for marriage- but I've noticed most seem to just wear one these days. Men from my time usually only wore one ring for marriage, but some cultures had men wearing a kind of engagement ring as well. It's very common to wear gifts from a suitor as an indicator of affection, but there aren't specific rules about it."
Shral hummed thoughtfully, considering. His eyes trailed up to her antennae-less brow as he considered. Dagmar made an inquiring sound, and Shral revealed, "Courting couples wear narrow rings called ruuphviik neek on their antennae to indicate courtship and another, vaangviik neek, to indicate a marriage. Some wear one for each member of the quad after the marriage is confirmed."
Dagmar's mind immediately switched over to work-mode, absorbing and dissecting the new words, breaking them down into their roots and translating them back and forth. Courting-rings and bonding-rings, respectively, from the root words ruuph and vaang respectively, and the word neek coming from a much older word that could be translated as ring but actually was something closer to a halo or circlet. Within moments, she was translating them into Vulcan, into Tellar, and back into Federation Standard, playing with the nuances and how they changed between languages.
Focus, Dagmar reminded herself once again. Courting rings were meant for antennae, and while she didn't have a pair herself she did have perfectly serviceable earlobes.
"Ah, I think I see the problem there." Dagmar found herself smiling despite the reminder of their differences, because this at least was an easy fix. "Well, that's not too hard to work around. My ears are pierced - I can wear something modified into an earring if you want, and then if we end up looking at a permanent bond later on I can get a new piercing that I wouldn't take out. Except to clean it, obviously."
Considering the idea, she reached up with her free hand to touch the outer shell of her ear, just about the two piercings on her earlobe. "This part of the ear - the upper earlobe and even into the cartilage a little for a low helix piercing- would work. I can probably fit a couple more on each ear, even."
Shrall appeared stunned, if his straightened antennae and raised brows were any indication. The starburst-bright-warmth had gone strangely mute, though Dagmar didn't feel like it was a bad reaction so much as it was just one of shock.
"...I haven't said something wrong, have I?" She asked, uncertain once more. "I know it's not the same, but I thought… No? I can wear something on my hand instead."
Shral appeared to need a moment to gather his thoughts, but his eyes were fixed upon the spot on her ear that she had indicated as if he'd never seen a Human ear before. When he did speak, he spoke slowly, carefully, "That would be a… profound statement. Andorians rarely modify their bodies in such a way."
"Profound-good, or profound-bad?" Dagmar frowned. "Humans often engage in body modifications, from piercings to tattoos and even cosmetic surgeries. I'm not sure what's done nowadays, of course, but in my time it was very common. My ears were pierced when I was… eight, I think. I got the second set done when I was sixteen, as a birthday gift from my mother."
Shral reached up to trace the pad of his finger over the discrete marks on her ear. She hadn't worn earrings for a while now, after noticing early on in her career that Andorians didn't seem to wear any at all, and neither did Vulcans. The Vulcans had never been so gauche as to comment on Dagmar's jewellery, though their eyes had occasionally flicked to whatever shiny, dangly things she'd decided to wear as if trying to decipher some sort of message from them. Some of the Andorians had stared outright in something that might have been puzzlement. Being the odd one out had made her feel self-conscious, so she'd stopped wearing jewellery to blend in. She occasionally put some studs in when she was home alone, but she hadn't actually worn any outside yet.
"You were only eight? They must have hurt." Shral murmured, not quite answering her question but, she sensed, not quite ignoring it either.
Dagmar hummed, feeling goosebumps break out over her skin at the feather-light contact. "They did, and they took seven-ish weeks to heal. The second set took a little longer and they definitely hurt more, but I think it was worth it. I wanted the second set almost as soon as I was done getting the first one."
Shral paused over the upper part of her earlobe and then again over where a low helix piercing would hypothetically go. His antennae were swaying slowly in deep thought, but Dagmar also detected a slow curling, writhing motion amidst the motion. "And here? How long would this take to heal?"
"Several months, I think, because of the cartilage - and it would probably be much more painful." Dagmar answered, belatedly adding, "Though I'm referencing old methods from my time, so maybe they wouldn't be so bad now."
Shral finally dragged his gaze away from her ear to lock gazes with her, and there was an intensity there that surprised her. It wasn't like before, though, where the intensity was inherently intimate. This time, he seemed to be searching for something, and that starburst-light was once more carefully controlled.
"You would do this?" Shral asked, and he seemed caught in a strange moment of disbelief and something… warm, Dagmar thought. Not heated, not like before, but warm nonetheless. She searched, as much as the little light in the back of her mind would let her, for some hint of revulsion or disgust, but if they existed she couldn't find any. Maybe Andorian bonds didn't work like that, though.
"If it doesn't bother you, yes. It seems like a good solution to me." The redheaded woman said honestly, curling her free hand around his forearm, feeling the muscles shift minutely beneath his sleeve. "Does it? Bother you, I mean."
"I find your willingness to endure pain simply for the asking somewhat concerning." Shral revealed after a long moment. "But the idea is intriguing nonetheless. Perhaps we can revisit this at a later time. It shouldn't be difficult to modify a courting ring in the meantime."
It wasn't, Dagmar thought immediately in protest. It wasn't like that. It was because of who asked, because she loved the same way her father loved (deeply, quietly, recklessly) and showed it the way her mother had (freely, easily, without reservation) and there were precious few people in this strange future that Dagmar had left to care for at all.
Still, Dagmar was happy enough with Shral's answer, and she offered a smile as she wondered, "Seems reasonable. Do we get each other courting rings, or just pick something individually, or maybe together? How is this done?"
Shral's antennae bowed in a shrug, and the aide answered easily, "Some Clans have specific traditions regarding courtship rings, but mine never has. My birth mother chose her own rings, though my second mother preferred to have her courtship and marriage rings chosen for her. My fathers came from Clans with traditional courtship rings passed down from generation to generation, which they returned to their birth Clans when they married. I thought, given that you are Human, you might wish to choose for yourself."
"Okay," Dagmar nodded along with Shral's explanation. "As long as the post isn't too large, or I won't be able to wear it. I don't know if I'll have any contact allergies with whatever metals Andorians use for these things, though. I couldn't wear anything that wasn't platinum, silver, or gold back in my time."
That, of course, led to a series of increasingly technical questions about post gauges, materials, metal allergies, and metal purity that resulted in Dagmar giving up, grabbing Shral, and dragging him to her bedroom. He followed readily enough, seeming amused by the curl of his antennae, and watched with interest as she unearthed her jewellery box of shiny baubles she'd accumulated since being dumped in the strange new world that was the future. She had a little bit of everything, but mostly it was Human-origin stuff, a few experimentally recreated pieces that she loved from her original timeline, that sort of thing. She'd even splurged a while back and gotten some very fine pieces that she was looking forward to debuting at some point, when the occasion called for something properly formal. She pulled out a few of her favourite everyday earrings to show what she meant, and was secretly quite gratified when Shral seemed to give the matter his full attention.
"I believe I understand your meaning now." Shral concluded after a few minutes of listening to her ramble on, turning over a slim hoop of interlaced gold strands in the centre of his palm, vibrant against the stark blue shades of his skin, with his thumb. His eyes flicked up to hers as he asked, after a very deliberate pause, "Why do you not wear these? I seem to recall you wore earrings on Earth."
Dagmar shrugged, "In the early days, sure, but people stared and it was a little uncomfortable. I could probably start wearing them again, as long as it isn't against some kind of dress code."
Shral huffed his familiar, rasping laugh and let the earring tumble out of his hand into its little partitioned square of her jewellery box with a soft clink. He pulled her close by the waist, his antennae bowed into a heart-shape. "Have you been following the Imperial Guard's dress code all this time, vinzhuukh?"
Dagmar's face flushed a little, and she ducked her head in embarrassment. She had been, for lack of anything else to model her choices off of. She mumbled something along the lines of, "...I might've."
Shral smiled an Andorian smile, and then a moment later a thin Human one. "Come, let me show you what courtship rings look like."
Admittedly, Dagmar felt a little weird about looking at courtship rings. Meant for antennae or not, they looked an awful lot like wedding bands, and the idea of looking at rings in the context of a relationship was so deeply entrenched in her mind as something for engagements and marriage that it was hard to separate the two ideas. More than once, Dagmar had to stop and coach herself through a sudden bout of self-doubt. Shral gave her space to work through it, the starburst of light at the back of her mind steady and warm, though he never went far from her.
Courtship rings were not terribly elaborate, as far as ornamentation went. Many were plain bands or otherwise quite simple affairs but without any precious stones or complex etchings or anything else that would have set off Dagmar's more Human sensibilities. The lack of ornamentation had actually made the whole process much more tolerable, somehow.
Eventually, Dagmar picked out a style that suited her tastes, and Shral selected something for himself. From there, it was a simple matter of altering the design parameters of Dagmar's choice into something like a huggie earring and then replicating the items using the device built into the wall just beside her kitchen area.
Maybe Dagmar was just weird about replicators, but they always felt a little bit like cheating. Still, Shral didn't seem to mind at all, and the starburst-light didn't give her any negative indicators from his end of the bond.
Less than half an hour later, Dagmar was the new owner of a small hoop meant for her left ear's upper lobe piercing. It was wide like a cuff but lay close enough to the shell of her ear that it wasn't likely to snag on anything despite its width, and it was impossibly light. The earring itself was a subtle thing, patterned with waves like abalone shell and damascus steel, and the metal had a strange, icy sheen to it. Shral himself chose a narrower band meant for his antenna, plain and smooth but with that same odd sheen. It seemed to be a property of the metal itself rather than a coating of some sort, though Dagmar didn't recognize the alloys at all.
Shral insisted on putting the earring on her himself, and admittedly Dagmar hadn't put up much of a fight about it. She turned her head to present her ear, and had to repress an inexplicably giddy giggle when Shral very gently swept the stray strands of flyaway hairs away and let his hand trail down to rest along the side of her neck. She was certain that it was no coincidence that the roughened pad of his thumb ended up resting against a major blood vessel. For all that they had hardly separated for more than a few moments, the scent of him filled her nose - alien and compelling- as if her brain simply refused to get used to it, refused to dampen down the sensory input just yet.
"Stay still." Shral told her, and his antennae flicked a little as Dagmar grinned and deliberately shifted her weight from foot to foot. "Dagmar."
"Oh, alright." The Human woman subsided, forcing the grin down to a more manageable smile. She still felt a thrill at her name, spoken in such a low and sibilant voice. "It's not neurosurgery, though. Open the hinge, thread the post through the upper piercing, and then close the hinge until you feel it click."
"As you say." The Andorian murmured, clearly doubtful, but he nevertheless reached up to do as she instructed.
It was strangely endearing, how Shral proceeded with the sort of care and precision Dagmar would have expected of someone trying to disarm a bomb. He was so careful she hardly felt a thing, and when the earring clicked shut, quietly and more of a sensation than a sound, he twitched just the tiniest amount. His eyes flicked to her face as if expecting her to be in pain, his antennae performing those sweeping, searching movements she'd noticed earlier.
"See?" Dagmar encouraged, not quite able to turn her head with her earlobe still being held hostage by his careful grip. "Easy."
"Strange." Shral countered, though he still hadn't let go yet.
"But easy." Dagmar argued back cheerfully. "Is it my turn now?"
"In a moment." Shral agreed, and only then did he let go and let her turn to face him. He met her smile with his own Andorian calf-eyed one and handed her the slim band he would wear.
"Aside from the obvious," Dagmar began, turning the band over in her hand thoughtfully. "The obvious being to be careful around your antennae, of course - is there anything else I should know?"
Shral bowed his head towards her, just enough to let her access his antenna without having to strain, and reassured her, "Mine is much less complicated than yours - as long as you are mindful of the musthaa."
That was a little easier said than done, Dagmar thought, given that the musthaa were the cup-like feelers at the end of his antennae and would be the first obstacle to putting Shral's courting ring on. Still, Dagmar nodded, held the ring very delicately between thumb and forefinger, and began to very carefully negotiate it over the end of Shral's antenna. Shral assisted as much as he could, seemingly holding his antennae as rigidly as possible, but the majority of the onus was on her.
There was a brief moment of terror, when Dagmar's hands weren't as steady as she hoped and she just barely brushed over the feeler. Shral didn't visibly react, but the starburst at the back of her mind flared suddenly, violently, and then abruptly settled into something more subdued. It was so sudden, there and gone in mere moments, that she couldn't even interpret it in terms of heat or light or emotion. The intensity of it left her breathless.
"Sorry!" Dagmar found herself wincing, apologising, despite the frisson of heat that raced down her spine.
She kept going, because flinching back now would have been worse, and she was able to guide the ring down to the base of his antenna as gently as she knew how. It fit more snuggly at the base than she'd expected, and the sensation of the ring brushing along the tiny chitinous ridges there provoked an awful shudder from Shral even as he straightened.
Shral's pupils were dilated, his antennae writhing and swaying, and Dagmar hardly had time to process that before he was reaching for her, dragging her close with strong hands that framed her face and slipped into her hair. His hand nudged her new earring, and the starburst-light blazed bright once more as he pressed his brow to hers and trailed his antennae over her hair. Dagmar reached up to do the same, rocking up onto the balls of her feet to press closer still, and it felt natural - easy, even- to angle herself to slot her mouth against his.
By the time either of them thought to remember their long-abandoned katheka, it was cold and nearly undrinkable.
When Shral left, which could have been five minutes or five hours left for all that Dagmar hadn't really noticed the passage of time, the starburst-light and its warmth were dimmer, cooler, as though moving further away. At first, Dagmar felt a spike of anxiety, but the starburst remained over the following hours, quiet but lingering, and the redhead was forced to conclude that distance must be a factor in how the bond felt and behaved.
It was difficult to concentrate after everything, but Dagmar was far too awake to even consider trying to go back to sleep. She quickly found herself working through the pile of translations she had waiting for her. Most of it came in the form of business contracts, or arrangements being made for Andorian embassies, and a lot of it was full of complex legalese in multiple languages. They were a challenge to work through, even with her experience, because it was too easy to lose important nuances in the gap between languages.
The Human translator ended up powering through the workload in a state of hyperfixation, her mind laser-focused as she translated complex sentences forwards, backwards, and forwards again to be sure that she was as accurate as possible. She had taken up residence on her couch with an array of PADDs on the coffee table before her. One hand was typing away at one PADD, pulling up references and in-depth linguistics analyses of the different dialects involved, while the other scrolled through a separate PADD, matching each translation to its appropriate reference. The others were displaying some of her previous translations, so she could reference them as well.
Before Dagmar knew it, it was heading into the night cycle and she was absolutely ravenous.
She could have cooked. Arguably, she should have, if only for the practice… but Dagmar had a crick in her neck now, and she felt at once exhausted and like she had something fizzy and bright in her veins instead of blood. So, she replicated a meal instead - standard Andorian fare, with shredded meat on spiced flatbread and fried tubers- and firmly reminded herself when she found it bland that she made the choice to replicate it over cooking and now she had to live with it.
Replicators. They felt like cheating, and didn't even have the decency to make food that tasted good.
Still, Dagmar thought wryly as she reached up to touch her new earring, maybe they were good for a few things.
A/N: Another chapter for you, my lovelies!
If you haven't wandered over to my tumblr, it has fanmix/playlists for Émigré and a bunch of my headcanons about Andorian society and culture! I'm always happy to chat, answer any questions, and just generally geek out! Feel free to find them at indignantlemur . tumblr . com
Thank you all for your continued support and kind words! Your reviews and enthusiasm sustain me!
