sep/oct Body to Body, Heart to Heart

[Anen]

OOC: I thought I might as well try my hand at a good challenge though I'm literally quite fresh off the boat, I pondered this topic while in the last leg of training and wrote this up tonight as the story just kind of flowed to me though it takes several notes from Verana's pre-established back story. I hope you enjoy, I loved writing this and getting to further establish Verana as a person defined by actions and thoughts as I did with my other post here on the forums...

The air was… hot here, like the individual electric sparks of chemistry between two lovers had combusted to create an enveloping, but not quite smothering atmosphere of love, lust, and tension. To Verana this combination of emotions was nothing new, after all she had grown up in a society where love, lust… sex were worshiped, but what made her head spin in an almost euphoric ecstasy was that she was sensing the ambient emotions of aliens, humans, not Deltans.

Verana had kept her ear to the ground so to speak, over the last few years of living in Paris and she knew the reputation that the human sub-culture called the ‘French’ were somewhat infamous in their rituals of love. Verana had observed several of these… rituals.

Wine, chocolates, roses, starlight, the city of Paris itself, from what Verana understood it was all entirely and unquestionably cliché. But then why did so many women, and men, fall for the same trick that their ancestors had been using? Was love really that basic among humans? That plain? At first Verana had thought these clichéd rituals were just that, rituals, a sort of predicable foreplay that humans were expected to go through before mating. But Verana’s senses told her that wasn’t the case, many delighted in these experiences for whatever reason, and it wasn’t just going through the motions or simple ritual to them. To many it was a profound and romantic gesture to sip wine on the Siene, look up at the stars and feel the cool autumn air.

So maybe these so called ‘romantic’ things and experiences were cliché at all, overused definitely, but they still held a deep meaning for many, and captured the imagination of the Parisian children Verana passed everyday on her way through the city.

And now Verana was here in the middle of another so called cliché, a dark lit lounge in the middle of Paris, Piaf playing in the background, and a very handsome man standing across from her, gazing at her with eyes that were just as vibrant as the electric mood.

Part of Verana wanted to turn on a heel and run right out of this situation and not be a puppet to an ages old idea of human romanticism. She would not be party to this insidious and tired concept of a foreign girl finding love in Paris. How dare a cliché come to life right around her! She wasn’t looking for anyone to make her bed warm, she wasn’t looking to fall in love or be a slave to someone else’s emotions, especially not a member of such a sexually immature species such as humanity!

And still, a few minutes later, Verana was still there, in the same spot, precisely four meters from the exit, and precisely five meters towards the very… handsome human across from her, still looking at her, his gaze apparently unbroken. His head relaxed against the post he stood next to and the rest of his body followed. His eyes grew more intense and now he had shifted from simple observation of the seemingly human woman across from him to full blown admiration. There was something about his stance though, the look on his face, that kept his perceived admiration from turning into pathetic longing across a crowded room. No, his gaze was fixed, his face had a slight smile on it, like he found Verana both beautiful and somewhat amusing at the same time.

Verana constantly shifted both her gaze and her body under his steady eye contact. Part of her melted under it, and part of her froze. She had not the will to run and she lacked the strength to move forward, Verana was paralyzed like prey in the sights of the most deadly predator. Did she really consider the man to be that dangerous? Or was it what he represented?

As a Deltan Verana (Despite what her presently black dyed hair that made her appear human inferred) had signed an Oath of Celibacy, to break it and mate with an unprepared and immature individual would induce madness and brand Verana the worst kind of criminal among her people.

A few pairs of people passed between the previously unbroken line of sight between Verana and her admirer. Her instincts told her to run, this was her chance to escape, she was out of the trance that his eyes had put her under, and yet her body did the unthinkable… she moved forward…

There was a sort of urgency to her movements as she parted her way through the small crowd of people flowing from one end of this tiny bar to another. Perhaps once the crowd had moved past he would have taken her way out and ran or evaporated, or turned out to be a figment of her clinically depressed mind. And when Verana met the edge of the crowd and emerged into a clear line of sight she was met by the same eyes she had seen from across the room, and were now inches away from her own.

For the first time Verana didn’t avert her gaze at the sight of those two beautiful green oculars, and she returned his direct eye contact with an unflinching, unmoving gaze of her own.

And suddenly as the crowd passed and the air became slightly clearer, Verana smelled something in the air, something that provoked her heightened Deltan senses to drive her body to lean in and kiss the lips that accompanied those beautiful lips on perhaps the most symmetrical face she had ever seen on a human. Verana didn’t even know him a few moments ago but now as they both melted in the moment of the kiss, their respective scents, tastes, and minds betrayed their true nature as Deltans.

Physical contact between two Deltans was intense and provided more than just an exchange of passions for their tele-empathic abilities allowed for the transfer of ideas, emotions, thoughts, and complex feelings to be absorbed in a simple kiss. The incredible sensations a simple kiss had brought Verana would no doubt have driven a human insane, well perhaps not, but in this moment, Verana didn’t care about accuracy, she could exaggerate her feelings of contentment, no, more than that… feelings of understanding and love, like a door had been opened within her.

Verana didn’t know how long the only two Deltans (Or partial Deltans in this case) in the room stood there for, but as the Piaf played, the internal lighting dimmed, and Paris itself lit up on the outside, Verana didn’t care. Some would call this cliché no doubt but neither seemed to care, and in their tender kiss, two bodies and two hearts became one as only Deltans could experience and that element of foreignness made certain there had never been a night like this in the entire Parisian volumes of love stories. It had many elements of the classics within it to be sure, Paris, lights, strangers meeting, love at first sight… but in this moment Verana couldn’t care less and conceded to the point that just because something was old and tired didn’t mean it couldn’t be, dare she say it… romantic…

Ensign Verana

Intelligence Officer

USS Discovery-C