round 16 PNPC Ensign Taurek - The Various Translations of Love

[+ Saveron]

(OOC Content warning for allusion to distressing topics)

 

(( USS Avalgariad, 2362 ))

 

:: He kept count in his head of how long it had been since T'Reshik was born. It was entirely irrational, but he could not help thinking of his life as something that had been severed into two halves, 'before' and 'after'. And when the pon farr hit, it was almost eleven years to the day. ::

 

:: He had known it might be difficult. Trauma often resurfaced at times of emotional upheaval, and this was the most emotional he'd been since he was a child. Still. Academic knowledge was one thing; experience was another entirely. He had woken up in a cold sweat in his cabin and gone straight to his console before he could think, marking the transmission as urgent. The call had been answered almost straight away::

 

Varek: Taurek. Are you well?

 

(( Da-leb, Vulcan, 2350))

 

:: It was his father, too, who had answered that call twelve years ago, from a civilian comm station on the outskirts of Da-leb city. Taurek had been missing for almost twelve hours. Again, there had been no anger in his father's expression, only the hint of concern. ::

 

Taurek: I am uninjured.

 

Varek: We have been attempting to locate you. :: Pause :: Shivok is dead. He stopped his own heart. We... are told he had sustained defensive injuries.

 

:: The knowledge hit him like a punch to the stomach, and moisture stung at his eyes. Suddenly it was difficult, far too difficult, to speak without his voice shaking. ::

 

Taurek: I am so sorry-

 

Varek: Nobody holds you to blame, my son. Your mother is attempting to locate you now. Can you meet her at the western temple? Do we need to arrange transport for you?

 

:: Shivok had once told him that many Vulcan scholars did not conceive of love as an emotion in its own right. Infatuation, yes, desire, yes, but the state of experiencing a close attachment to another living being was not, in itself, something that required suppression. The drive to protect one's offspring was considered biological and, usually, immutable; it was only logical to protect those with whose lives were closely intertwined with your own.::

 

:: This interpretation was why the English "I love you" became "I cherish thee" in Vulcan, with all its nuances and omissions. To love as the emotional races did was to add a passive component to the experience, where love could be felt without being enacted, and any outward action was driven primarily by one's inner feelings.::

 

:: For their people, however, love was a state of being that existed in its expression, like a language with no written form. Or so it was claimed. Before it became too painful to think of those early lessons with his tutor, Taurek had occasionally entertained the idea that the "love is an action" explanation was nothing more than an excuse. ::

 

:: Now, barely able to hold himself together as his father spoke to him from the tiny viewscreen, he suddenly recalled the day he had returned from the local clinic at the age of thirteen, after a difficult conversation in which he had not been able to divine his parents' reactions from their stony and impassive faces.::

 

::Pausing at the doors to their home, he realised that an amendment had been made to the small panel which traditionally held the names of the inhabitants, a leftover from the old customs of their clan. Where once had read "T'Rel", in his own uncertain hand, was now replaced by "Taurek" in his mother's.::

 

(( USS Avalgariad, 2362 ))

 

:: His father must have been asleep, he realized. In Eastern Da-leb time, it was somewhere in the interim between midnight and dawn. And yet here he was, as if nothing was strange about receiving a call from his son in the middle of the night. ::
 

Taurek: My Time is at hand.

 

Varek: ::pause:: Understood. Have you made arrangements? Do you need us there?

 

Taurek: I have. And I do not. I simply... wished for contact. I apologise for the illogic of my decision.

 

Varek: It is normal for your logic to fail you at this time. We are here if you need us, Taurek.

 

:: And he began, finally, to understand why. ::

 

 

PNPC Ensign Taurek

Counselor

 

simmed by

 

Ensign T'Reshik

Science
USS Constitution
D239311T10