All My Sins Remembered
Posted on Mon 17th Feb, 2025 @ 1:48am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran
1,148 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
From The Ashes
Location: North Perry Gardens Meeting Space
The scent of coffee teased at Damion's nose as he approached the conference room where the Starbase 109 Crochet and Knitting Club was meeting. He could hear several women inside, all talking excitedly about some new kind of fiber one of them had brought--not replicated, but the real thing! Despite himself, he was curious to see it and run it through his fingers.
He stepped inside. Oh, bloody hell; I'm the only man here, Damion thought. He almost turned on his heel and fled, but it was too late now; they'd seen him. Graves had told him to be more sociable, and he knew, deep down, that the Counselor was right. He didn't expect to have with these people the same kind of deep, wonderful conversations he'd enjoyed having with Elizabeth, but he had to start somewhere. Conversations like those came from deeply knowing another person over time; they didn't happen from day 1. You had to nurture friendships like plants.
Four pairs of eyes gazed at him with rampant curiosity. That was all Damion registered in that first instant, and years of Intelligence training immediately kicked in. For an infiltration specialist, being an obvious outsider and drawing the attention of an entire roomful of people to himself meant the mission was about to fail and fast.
In the next instant, Damion noted every entrance and exit in the room (two, and a ventilation shaft behind a screen) and picked out the leader of the pack (a dark-skinned human woman, fiftyish, who stood sipping a cup of coffee). He walked toward her. "Hello. My name's Damion. I'm here to do some crocheting. Am I on time?"
The woman blinked at him, noticed the craft bag Damion carried, and extended a hand. "I'm Dionne Barker. Welcome, Damion. If you're here to crochet or knit, this is the place. Heck, we'll even take you if you do needlepoint or embroidery."
"Just not diamond painting; leave that nonsense at home," said a very elderly Bajoran woman who pointed the business end of a knitting needle at him.
"I've never heard of diamond painting," Damion replied. Why would anyone paint diamonds, he wondered?
The Bajoran woman gave a satisfied nod. "Good. Complete waste of time. If you're going to paint, use real paint. I'm Baja Meril, by the way."
"Damion Ildaran. Pleased to meet you, Ma'am."
She snorted. "We'll see how pleased you are after I comment on your work."
"Meril...." Dionne said. "This is the first man who's ever joined this club. Are you just trying to run him off?"
"Of course she is," said a tall, slender woman with short, curly, blonde hair. "You can't gossip about men when there's a man in the room." She smiled at Damion and extended a hand. "Margaret Thomas. Nice to meet you, Damion."
"And you," Damion said. He shook her hand and then turned to the fourth woman, who had shoulder-length gray hair and wore jeans and a t-shirt along with a knitted vest. "Are you the one with the interesting new yarn? I heard you all talking about it on the way in."
The woman grinned. "I sure am. Here, have a look at it." She handed Damion a skein of something soft and rust-colored.
"Ohhhh...This feels like it ought to be on a cat. Where did you find it?" he asked.
"Andoria," the gray-haired woman said. "It's hybor fur. Nice to meet you, by the way. I'm Batik Sarkezian."
"Good to meet you, too. My mother would love this." Damion handed the skein back to Batik.
"Now that we're all introduced," Dionne said, "have a seat and show us what you're working on, Mr. Ildaran. If you've got any questions, we'll try to answer them for you."
They all took seats and pulled out their craft projects. Dionne was knitting socks for her husband, Raymond. Margaret was crocheting lace doilies with a crochet hook so delicate it could only be used with thread. Meril was knitting a prayer rug.
Damion pulled a chair over and opened his workbasket. He pulled out a blanket that he had just begun crocheting, done in a basketweave stitch in varying shades of purple and blue bamboo yarn.
"Nice color work," Margaret said.
Meril glanced at it and rolled her eyes. "Boring stitch." She rubbed the bit of blanket Damion had already crocheted between her fingers. "What fiber is this?"
"It's an Earth-based plant fiber called bamboo," Damion told her, wondering if she already knew that. "Water can weaken the yarn, but as long as it stays dry, it should be fine, and it's very soft. I've seen people make dishcloths out of it."
"I gave up washing dishes as soon as the Occupation ended and I got into a functioning house," Meril told him. "Recyclers are a wonderful thing."
"That they are," Dionne agreed, "except when they go out."
"Is yours still out?" Margaret asked. "I thought it would have been fixed by now."
"A guy from Thurmond's came out yesterday--finally." Dionne sipped from her coffee. "Charged me 120 credits for parts and labor. When did the prices go up so much? Durant's never charged like that."
She'd been to the undercover repair shop he used to run? Beads of sweat broke out on Damion's forehead, and he kept his attention focused on his crocheting, willing them to forget his existence as they talked. He did another couple of stitches and realized he was pulling them too tight. Damion sighed under his breath, pulled out the stitches, and repeated them with normal tension, this time.
"Damion, where do you get your repair work done?" Batik asked him.
"I'm in Starfleet," Damion explained. "I put in a repair request to Operations, and they take care of it if I can't fix it myself."
Meril exchanged glances with Margaret. "You can do repairs?"
Basketweave was a boring stitch; he didn't have to think much while doing it. "On replicators, mainly."
"Oh, we'll have to tell Morva," Margaret said to the other three women. "She's been looking for a new replicator guy ever since Durant's closed."
Damion felt himself go dizzy and wondered if he would faint. "You know Morva? She knits?"
"Oh, no, son; she does some kind of Ferengi version of needlepoint," Meril said, "but if you can keep her replicator in good order, she'll fry you up some nice, jellied gree worm in nothing flat."
Damion stared at Meril. "You like jellied gree worm?"
"Not really, but if it's that or flaked blood flea--You don't ever want to insult Morva's cooking."
"Not ever," Damion agreed and desperately concentrated on his basketweave stitch as he wondered how he was going to contrive an extraction from this 'mission.'
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