What Dreams May Come

Posted on Mon 19th Mar, 2018 @ 11:20pm by

597 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Brushfires
Location: Starbase 109, Anesthesia Recovery Ward
Timeline: MD 2, 07:30

There was a meadow, and a stream ran through it. A pair of weeping willows leaned over the stream picturesquely. One stood upstream on the near bank; one downstream on the far. Between them, a half-spindle bridge painted red spanned the stream. The sun was warm on her face. She was walking, she realized. She paused, turned to look back. Members of her crew were walking with her. Most of them seemed unaware of anything but their surroundings, looking at the trees, the bridge, smiling at the warm sun on their faces.

She stopped walking. Someone beside her stopped as well, and she looked at him. "Ojii-kun?" she asked, incredulously. She looked around. "Is this hell?"

Her grandfather chuckled. "That's not the question folks usually ask." He tugged on his whispy white beard. "This is the near shore," he answered.

She turned, watched the first members of her crew walking across the bridge. As they reached the peak of the arch, they faded from her view. "But I'm... we're... dead?"

The old man waggled his hand back and forth. "Chigaimasu," he said, a Japanese word most often translated as "it's different." With his chin, he pointed to the line of people in Starfleet uniforms passing over the bridge and fading from view. "They're dead. You? You're on the near shore."

Someone reached the edge of the bridge and hesitated, looking around. She had long, white hair and surprisingly large eyes. She stepped out of the line for the bridge and waited. A few moments later, another young woman with the same face saw her standing beside the bridge, and stepped out of line as well. The two embraced, and stood, looking and waiting.

"I messed up, Ojii-kun," the Captain said. "I let the pressure of time and the desire to save a life overwhelm my caution." She looked around for two faces in particular: her wife, and their daughter.

"They're not here," her grandfather answered, shaking his head. "They're still in the other world."

"Then I have to go back," she said. "I'll see you again, when the time is right."

The old man nodded, and extended a hand in the direction she had come. She turned, and walked away from the bridge, the trees, and the stream.

---

"Mama, why doesn't ka-san wake up?" The girl was three years old; more than a toddler, but not yet a 'big girl.' She had wavy chocolate-brown hair and amber-brown eyes with an epicanthic fold.

Her mother was blonde and a little on the chubby side, with ocean-blue eyes. "I don't know, ape," she said. They'd called their daughter 'monkey' at first, because of her tendency to climb things, but after an educational holo-trip to a zoological garden, she'd announced that she was an ape, not a monkey. As she was technically correct, the pet name had stuck.

The Captain moved her hand, and her wife stood up suddenly, leaning over the bed. As the Captain's eyes fluttered open, her first sight was her wife's face. She raised her hand, caressed the cheek more lovely to her than any in the universe. After a long moment, she rasped, "the ship?"

"Out of danger," Sarah answered. "We're at Starbase 109."

The Captain nodded, licked her lips.

"Ka-san!" the little girl said, standing on her tiptoes to peer over the edge of the bed. Sarah reached down and picked her up, settling her on her hip. "You're awake!"

"So are you," the Captain said with a smile. Her eyes went back to her wife's face. "We're all awake."

 

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