A Great, Secret Wisdom

Posted on Sat 4th Sep, 2021 @ 9:33pm by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

1,802 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: A Good Day to Hunt
Location: Orchids & Jazz, Deck 600
Timeline: MD-5, 1200 hours

"Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason.
For magic is a great, secret wisdom, just as reason is a great, public folly." --Paracelsus

---

Aradia had spent some time thinking about, and a little effort researching, the man she'd talked to on the tram. He was not magic, but had a certain something ... good instincts perhaps? She found him intriguing and had a feeling he felt the same way about her. As she had great faith in fate, it was no surprise to her to run into him again a few days later at Orchids & Jazz. She spotted him seated at the bar and decided to walk over and say hello ... to see what else might develop.

Every once in a while, instead of eating lunch in his quarters, Damion decided to forgo a salad and have serious food. Today, he was eating the bacon and tomato sandwich with a side order of Welsh rarebit and tea. The tall woman dressed in white was difficult to miss, and Damion's eyes widened in surprise at seeing her. "Miss Aradia? Somehow, I never would have expected to meet you here. It's good to see you again."

With a slight smile, she responded, "I do have a normal side, and get hungry like the rest of you. I heard this was the best food on the station, so I'm here to check it out. And you apparently agree that the food is good, as a gentleman of taste." She hitched herself onto a bar chair and flipped through the automatic menu standing on the back of the bar. "Do you have any particular favorites to recommend?"

"That would be the Death by Chocolate dessert," Damion said. "They also make an eggplant lasagna in the evenings that's good, and you should ask what the lunch special is." He glanced at her. "I'm glad to have the chance to talk to you. I've been wanting to look you up but didn't want to intrude."

Aradia looked at him curiously. "To talk to me? About what?" She looked over the menu. "Actually corned beef sounds good to my country ears."

"About magic," Damion said. "Where I come from, it's strictly the stuff of childhood stories--yet the way you spoke of it, it's as real and as constant as breathing. I've seen enough things to know that I haven't seen it all. I try to keep an open mind. So I'm curious. What is magic? How does it work?" He shrugged. "I don't pretend I'm likely to understand, but I had questions, and if you don't mind me asking you about it, I'd like to learn what it is you believe in or do."

"Ohh," Aradia blew out a breath, "that's a big question. People have discussed that for all the ages, on every planet where there are sentient beings, I would imagine. Different answers have been decided on in different times and places. If you want to know what my order's definition is, I can help you with that, but be aware that others have different definitions. I heard a mother tell her son once it was science that grown-ups didn't understand, and I guess that could be one definition. I sense that's not what you're looking for, however." She gave her order to the bartender and contemplated her companion in the mirror behind the bottles across from them.

"I'm not sure what I'm looking for," Damion said. "An easy solution to problems? No. I'd think something like real magic could make them more difficult. I told you the one sort of magic I do believe in, that I'm sure exists. But I don't think that's the same sort of magic you talked to Experiment Number Six about."

"Ah, Number Six. No, not the same at all." Aradia paused, thinking of where to begin and how much to say. "There are those who say I was originally sent to Earth by Diana, the Goddess, to help the poor women survive the strictures of the church of Rome. That may or may not be true, but I have been around for a long time and most of what I do is women's magic. That doesn't mean it won't work for a man, but it's generally women who need magic and who can believe enough to make it work consistently. Are you the kind of man who could believe in things you cannot see?"

Damion thought about that and was silent for a moment as he chewed on his sandwich. He let out a breath. "Good question. I don't know the answer. It might be best to say that I'm not practiced at believing in things I cannot see. My homeworld doesn't teach that sort of thing. I do know that--only in certain people, mind you--when I see that kind of belief, when it has true depth and creates inner power, as it has with you, I respect it. Part of the reason I first came to admire the woman I love is because she believes in God, and by all that's logical, she shouldn't." He smiled. "She, of course, doesn't see it that way. It makes perfect sense to her that she believes."

"What one of us sees as logical, another can miss entirely. Believing is enough. Our magic ... it isn't something that's accidental. It isn't something a concrete mind can work. For instance ..." she brought her hand to the counter top, pressed her fingers into the wood and pulled back ... to show him a wooden twig with small green leaves stretching forth. "That could happen for anyone who believed life exists in all things and can be brought forth." She held the twig out to him. "Go ahead and hold it. Take it home and plant it. I don't know if you have the magic of growing things, but perhaps it will grow for you. If you believe it will."

Damion stared at the small twig of a plant. A mix of awe, amazement, and alarm coursed through him. Aradia had just displayed an ability that people on his hoeworld would kill for. Only because the Federation was a place of abundance could she so casually and safely call forth something like that. It was another secret to keep, like Elizabeth's, he decided.

Her sandwich was delivered and Aradia began to eat. "Um, quite tasty," she remarked.

"I believe it will if I take good care of it," Damion said, his eyes still wide as he regarded the small bit of plant. He accepted it from her and carefully wrapped it in a bar napkin that he moistened from his water glass. "Thank you for the gift. Is it all right to put this in a hydroponics solution, or does it need soil?"

"It will grow wherever you believe it will," she assured him. "That's the secret of magic ... believing it will happen."

She continued to enjoy her food and then sipped the lemon Coke. "Oh, that has a nice taste and a definite fizz! I rather like it. This is a fine place to eat. It has a food magic of its own, and I suspect an excellent chef! What else can I answer for you? I believe you were involved with the Addams sisters and their grandmother ... of sorts ... last year in an effort to help Chlamydia?" She didn't want to probe too hard, but she was curious about what he would remember of the incident ... if anything.

"You mean Dawn Addams?" Damion smiled. "She pranked me but good! I really have had little contact with Dr. Addams except for a case I worked on for a couple of months. If anything, Dr. Addams helped me more than I her. My involvement with them has been pretty much due to that case." He thought a moment.

"I do remember having an interesting dream about Dawn, Ischemia, and Purulence, though. I dreamed I was walking through a dense, dark forest with the three of them and came across a wolf tangled up in ribbon. I had to decide whether to leave him alone or disentangle him." He frowned. "For some reason, I left him tangled up in the mess. I can't think why I'd leave a creature like that."

Aradia's heart leaped. Here was what she'd hoped to find! "Perhaps it wasn't a dream. Do you remember what happened after the wolf? Sometimes, rather than magic, these things are symbolic."

"I...remember feeling happy--reverent, even. I wanted to share that joy with the entire universe," Damion said after thinking for a moment. "I felt as if everything around me was filled with light. I wanted to tell the universe that--someone--was a wonderful person and that it should cherish her as much as I do. But it already did." He gave Aradia an uncertain look. "I'm not usually so poetic, and I'm surely making no sense at all. You really had to be there in the dream, to understand. I've never had such a vivid, bone-deep experience before or since."

"This someone ... it would be the woman you love ... who is both more and less than a woman?" Aradia asked. "Strange to dream so poetically, but ... life is strange sometimes, isn't it?" she gave him a mysterious smile. "I think I'd like to meet this woman who inspires you to poetry." He seemed a practical man on the surface, but obviously had deep depths that perhaps even he didn't fathom.

"You might well meet her, and I think I'd like for her to meet you," Damion said. "We eat here every once in a while. Would you mind joining us for dinner some night?"

Aradia pushed her plate back and took a last swallow of her Lemon Coke. Standing up and straightening her dress, she finally answered. "I'd like that very much, if the dinner menu is as good as the lunch. I'm sure the company will be excellent. Just hail me and let me know when. My calendar is open." With a smile, she walked away, seeming to fade before she reached the door.

Not for the first time, Damion wondered about her. Why was Aradia on Starbase 109? How did she do what she could do? Why was she so interested in the Addamses? That last wasn't really any of his business, he decided, as he was reasonably certain that Aradia had not come to harm Six--but it was still odd. His gaze fell on the plant that she had left him. He picked it up and cradled it in one hand as he too got up to leave. "Well, let's put you in some growth solution and see how you do," he said to it and headed to the tram.

 

RSS Feed

Comments (1)