Samira Neathler

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Well done all. Congrats and welcome (back) to the fleet.

Keep trying! @Jo Marshall 😄

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Welcome to the fleet.

Well done and congrats to all participants. All the contributions were outstanding.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

"I got your distress call and came here as soon as I wanted too."

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Well done guys, congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Since we’ve been on shore leave, @Vylaa has graced us with many sims where we get a glimpse of the Andorian life and their extended/complicated family life. Like the three-parter where Vylaa met her partners. This one is just another amazing sim with more of that and the usual humorous tone that Andrew always adds in his sims. ((Vylaa’s Rented House, Lortos City, Bajor)) The big house was quiet for once. Vylaa walked down the staircase and paused at the bottom, thinking. Her mates were out; it was still hours before they had planned to meet at a local lake for a family picnic. Vylaa and her sisters were taking the children early for a fun day. And her children were what had given the zhen pause. If the house was quiet, they must be up to something. She checked the large family room, and the kitchen just beyond. But no, she found no tiny blue people. She even looked inside the lower cabinets in the kitchen, and under the couches. She moved on to the houses small library, where her sisters were engrossed in some of the musty old books that lined the shelves. Sataa: ::Looking up.:: Are you ready to go? zh’Tisav: Yeah… Once I find the children. Where are they? They were down here playing. Thyssa: Oh, uh, they said something about the back garden. zh’Tisav: And you just let them go back there? You were supposed to be watching them. They could be doing anything! Sataa shared an awkward look with Thyssa. Sataa: Well… They kind of…. Snuck off. Vylaa grumbled a few words she wouldn’t want her children to hear as she turned and stormed out the back door. The back garden was, well, impressive, and it offered many hiding places for three small Andorians. The huge walled in space was packed with flora from all over Bajor, to the point where one could argue that they weren’t inside a large bustling city. The foliage of the trees even dampened the sounds from beyond the walls, allowing Vylaa to take a moment to listen, her antennae drifting in gentle arcs searching for the mildest chatter, the quietest giggle to tell her were to look. zh’Tisav: Hmmm… The giggling really wasn’t all that quiet. The trio of siblings had yet to learn how to hide effectively, they were simply terrible at the Terran game hide and seek. She turned her head to the right, the densest side of the garden. zh’Tisav: I hear you… Giggles erupted from a clump of ferns. zh’Tisav: Thought so. She made her way down a pebble-lined path, pretending she was looking for them. She even made a show of peeking behind flowerbeds and shrubs, all the while heading directly to the ferns. The zhen stopped beside the big green clump and looked about the garden one last time, all while the fronds of amazing Bajoran Giggling Fern waved gently in the breeze She reached out and pushed the fronds aside. zh’Tisav: Ah… ha? There, in a small open space between the ferns, were her children. Athyn and Sivaa were sitting opposite each other, their hands and clothes covered with a muddied mixture of fingerpaints. Between them stood their little brother, wearing nothing but about 8 hues of paint and a smile. zh’Tisav: Why did you paint your thi?! Sivaa: Um, amdanalnar? zh’Tisav: Try again. The paint’s supposed to be white. Athyn: ::To Siyaa.:: I told you! zh’Tisav: Again, why? Athyn: Becuse he likes it. zh’Tisav: He’s a toddler, he’d laugh if you rubbed dirt in his face. Don’t! She had seen the glint in her daughters’ eyes as tiny blue hands began edging toward the dirt, so much were they like she and her sisters when they’d been that age. Vylaa groaned with frustration. Any other time, she would not have cared. In fact, she probably would have encouraged it. But now the spanner was firmly lodged in the days plans, and made worse when Thyl ran forward and wrapped his arms firmly around her legs in the biggest hug he could give, leaving a child-sized smear of paint all over her clothes. zh’Tisav: ::sighs:: You knew we were going to the lake… You could have done it there, I would have let you go swimming to clean off! Now you’re trading the time you would have had there for the fun you had here. Thyl needs a bath, and all of us need clean clothes. She stepped back and held the ferns aside while pointing to the door. As they filed by, their feet leaving tiny paint prints on the ground, Athyn looked up to her zhavey and asked with a straight face… Athyn: Can we take our paints to the lake? zh’Tisav: Not now you can’t. Go tell your aunts they have to help you get cleaned up. They let you run wild, so they get to help with the clean up while I give Thyl a bath. They entered the cool darkness of the house, eyes blinking to adjust. There they found Vylaa’s sisters, whose own eyes were wide with shock as they drank in the carnage. The twins marched u to their aunts and stopped, arms held out with palms up, and gazed into their eyes. Athyn: Zhavey said… Sivaa: ...clean us up. Sataa and Thysaa each shrugged a shoulder, opposite shoulders, and took a paint smeared hand and lead the girls upstairs. Vylaa, meanwhile, herded Thyl to the bathroom, doing her best to keep him from touching any walls. He jumped straight into the tub as Vylaa peeled off her paint soaked garments before kneeling beside the tub. She turned the water to a comfortable temperature as she upended a bottle of baby soap over Thyl. zh’Tisav: Seriously, and we’re having another? Lt JG Vylaa zh'Tisav Engineering Officer USS Gorkon

Well done, guys. Congrats and welcome to the fleet.

Congrats everyone, well deserved.

Welp, there's two of them! Just kidding. 😁 Here's another amazing read from @Doz Finch. How dare you to leave us in suspense like that. ((The Apa Farm, Bajor)) The Apa Farm was a towering sage spectacle; fields upon fields of the curious crops stretched for miles in the middle of nowhere, bleached by their warm and life-giving sun and touched ever so gently by a breeze that dared not blow too hard for fear of disturbing the peace. The smell in the air was just as dreamy, just as invigorating, with bits of the green stuff floating within it in tiny speckles—no doubt distempering the walls of her lungs with its natural tinge. It was ironic therefore that the reason she had found herself out there alone was not to volunteer herself to the efforts of the local agriculture, or even to sample and procure a basket of the farm's freshest corn, but instead to return a mischief-making robotic dog that she had, only half accidentally, temporarily adopted. Apa: Remarkable. Finch: It is, isn’t it? Apa: And it was found where, again? Finch: Toppling tourists on Deep Space Nine! I wound up on a goosechase with this stranger who claimed he bought it from you. Apa: I see. And he left it with you? Finch: Forced it on me! He said he couldn’t cope with it anymore. Said it was the single worst investment he had ever made. I mean, if I’m being honest with you, it isn’t hard to see why. Apa: It isn’t? Finch: Well, you tell me! The robotic dog chased after its metallic tail at high speeds, circling on the spot with just enough momentum to suck in any wandering insects that happened to glide idly by. Its head was a simple square, and its eyes a vestigial remnant of what was once a set of eyes, now instead a muddied screen of stains and scratches—and a mechanical panting also emanated out of hidden speakers, almost gurgly, as if it had at some point in the past taken a deep dive into a local riverbed, as would any adventuring dog. In the distance, hovering over the fields, she could see a drone sprinkling water in precise lines, cylindrical and silent, and moving along a dirt path between crops further along was another machine, almost humanoid, brushing and clearing the ground beneath its wheels. A brilliant blend of glistering silvers, browns and greens. Apa: No… I suppose it isn’t. Finch: Returning it to you seemed the only right thing to do. Apa: ::Hesitantly:: You can't take him? Finch: I would if I could. But I’m a visiting Starfleet Officer. ::She looked down at the dog, biting her bottom lip in thought:: I think it would be better off here, on the farm, where it can run and really, you know, ::waving her arms:: be a dog! Apa: ::Scratching his head:: I see. As the three of them stood there, momentarily in silence with only the sounds of the benign winds tickling the tall stalks of the sage coloured crops, Doz did all she could to suppress another memory resurfacing. Try as she might, though, it had become immensely difficult not to dwell on the past. It was as if her mind had become a boundless filigree of memories; an endless spider's web that she, quite like a little vibrating bee, constantly found herself entangled in. She thanked god that most of her memories were, however, very joyous. Memories such as the image of Murphy’s infectious smile, and the fragmented echoes of his laugh irradiating her thoughts, brightening her eyes from within. Or the better days of her childhood, when her home was a jungle of machines and contraptions thrown together by her brothers who all believed they were going to be the next greatest inventor, even though half of their inventions spewed sparks and had the tendency to spiral out of control. She had only ever seen her friend Murphy cry once in all of the years that she had known him, and it had been when the robotic dog that she and he had helped to repair was unfairly seized by another officer, and destroyed. A cruel act by a cruel woman—Gepe Grasa. That was the memory she so carefully tried to ignore. Apa: Follow me, would you? Finch: Right you are. Come along, you! ::she said, clapping her hands to the robotic dog:: Apa: I’m not optimistic. It looks quite broken. I think it may be the end of the road for it, but we’ll see what can be done. Finch: I’m an engineer myself, so I’ll help you however I can. Apa: Oh, you won't be helping me. I’m just a farmer. It’s my friend who designs the robots and the machines—he’s on the other side of the house, in his little scrapyard. Finch: In his little scrapyard, eh? Sounds promising! Apa: Yes. ::A curious look on his face:: Come to think of it… you're quite alike. That “accent”... strange. As Apa walked around the outside of his farmhouse, made entirely of wood, and decorated with bits of reflective metal and mirror along its beige panels, coruscating under the brilliant light of the sun, Doz and the dog followed behind him, both with quick steps due to their shortness. She smiled at the sights that came into view as soon as they turned the corner; piles upon piles of steel and metal were scattered around a yard, as well as bits of dismantled machinery, bolts and tools, a roofless shuttle and a handful more of the hovering drone she had seen earlier on, some with busied arms and one, even more obscurely, with an umbrella fixed on top of it. A smile instantly filled her wrinkled face. It truly was a marvel. The Bajoran farmer stepped over a box of wires, and looked back to Doz with a nervous laugh, as the two of them approached a table, upon which a half-balding man wearing a welding helmet was hard at work, fusing together two components, his back to them both. Apa: We’ve got a visitor. The half-balding man didn’t respond, but continued on with his work. Apa: I said, ::poking the man in his back:: we have a visitor! The man instantly stopped and turned around, his voice muffled under his mask. Doz tried to contain a laugh. Apa: We can’t hear you, you old fool! W. Finch: ::Removing the mask:: I said, you shouldn’t sneak up on an old man like that! I’ll end up having a heart attack, and then you’ll be sorry. As if she had been winded, air rushed out of her mouth with a gasp, her body stumbling back a touch. It was impossible, improbable, and yet it was true. She squinted her eyes at him, her heart racing in her chest at the unlikely coincidence. It was her brother Wallace. TBC -- Ens. Doz Finch Engineering Officer USS Gorkon