"Search"

[OdileCondacin 0]

The Science Lab was darkened. But even for during the middle of the day, it was relatively normal. O'd'yl preferred the dark. Maybe it was a result of having been raised on an inhospitable little rock of a world where sand, an inferno of a sun, and heat were gods; water and vegetation valuable commodities. The dark was cooling, soothing in ways that off-worlders didn't understand.

 

She switched on the lamp at Kroells' desk, lacing her fingers across one another as she mindlessly inspected the skin upon them. Light struck the blade of her cherished weapon lying on the table, drawing her attention to it. Tracing along the edge of the finely engraved hilt, she closed her eyes.

 

This region of space troubled her. The damage to the ship troubled her. JoNs' and Harper's frames of mind troubled her. Shadow flat out worried her.

 

Condacin was genuinely frightened by the entity. She hadn't had that kind of unbridled terror that had stricken her when it... he... had first entered the Lab since long before she joined Starfleet. Despite all reassurances from him, Kairi, and Levy, he still left her with sensations of fear, apprehension and dread that all but paralyzed her.

 

O'd'yl was used to the superstitions of paranoid shamans that warned of the evil being caught in a status between life and death after their demises, but never paid it much note. After all, she was, despite the accusations of a good deal of her countrymen, a scientist. Haunted houses and blood-suckers in the night could all be explained through rational explanation.

 

But ever now and then, there was a part of her consciousness that nagged at her for those loudly vocalized refutations of the amulet dealers and exorcists that she made. The part that reminded her how some things couldn't be completely explained by science, at least not by science that was at all likely to be understood within her lifetime. Some things weren't traceable on a tricorder. Some things were mysteries.

 

Dropping the knife a centimeter or two back onto the surface, she stood. She paced a few meters back and forth as she touched her damp brow.

 

She was breathing heavily. It surprised her. Usually, physiologically, she was exponentially better at keeping her calm. But extreme stress was known to do that to her. Eyes glued to the bulkhead ahead of her, she took a few more steps. Finally leaning against the wall, she grimaced, memories better kept submerged resurfacing.

It hadn't been entirely her fault. After all, who could resist it? The Pit was something feared, respected, and utterly off-limits to Xenexian children. Which was exactly its appeal. The brave and resourceful all made their way to it at some point in their lives. After all, you didn't go more than a few days in childhood without hearing tales of olden days when every little Xenexian headed off with knapsack and parental blessings to divine something in his future. Then, according to the urban legends, after a few centuries of losing a sizeable percentage of offspring, the Xenexians tried to wisen up, eventually banning the so-called "Search for Allways" completely. But did that stop the young ones from heading off into the wasteland for a few days?

Hell no.

 

One of the other children had goaded her into her proclamation that she would undertake the Search. O'd'yl was thirteen. Even a little younger than some of her fellow miscreants when she packed up a small sack of supplies. Only what tradition called for: no more, no less. Barely enough water to carry her through a day, and no food.

 

She wondered if she was suicidal to set out on her little journey alone. Everyone did it that way, but that fact didn't add any safety to it. Besides, she liked to use common sense in her decisions, even at that age.

 

Within three days in the heat of the Xenexian desert, she was almost dead, and if most of Condacin's leading families had not ended up sending out search teams for the girl, Agincourt likely would have been short one Xenexian.

 

After a few days of returning home, her father finally did ask her if her Search had indeed turned anything up.

 

She glanced up at him, golden eyes surprised, as if it were preposterous that she had not. "Of course. It was clearly stated that my destiny is not on Xenex, but in the stars." Continuing matter-of-factly, she shrugged. "It was whispered. Along with names. Names of family long gone, names I've never heard, names that someday will have meaning."

She was sitting again by the time her foray into eons past had ended. To her surprise, a small droplet of water fell onto the desk, a few inches from her dagger. Gingerly touching a finger to her damp eye, she exhaled quietly.

 

Little gods, if her destiny lied in the murky corners of the galaxy, so be it, though it was never what she had imagined.

 

She missed the hopes of her youth, the dreams, the beliefs that no matter what, the unknown was able to be conquered. She guessed that until one was submerged into the very depths of such unknowns, as she was now, that it seemed possible. And maybe that was what frightened her most about Shadow -- not so much the entity himself, but what he represented: the indecipherable foreign.

 

Odile glanced over one shoulder to confirm that she was alone before burying the palms of her hands against her eyes, stifling a sob.

 

Despite her bellicosity, for five minutes, she wanted calm, serenity. Peace for spirits. Peace for the past. Peace for the future.

 

"Lights at seventy-five percent," she mumbled, the room becoming illuminated.

 

Let daylight at last fall again upon us.

Edited November 22, 2006 by OdileCondacin