By -=/\=-Zanh Liis
80801.18
Hours after Command Performance
-=In a Dream=-
80801.18
Hours after Command Performance
-=In a Dream=-
All of her attention was focused on the seemingly simple act of putting one foot in front of the other.
The wooden planks beneath her feet creaked slowly, painfully, each one bending in the center from the weight of her body as she progressed step by tenuous step across the rickety footbridge.
She heard the cry of a large bird of prey in the distance and stopped her progress just long enough to look up to be certain it wasn’t going to swoop down upon her. It was gliding far up over her head, in the cloudless blue…circling.
One false move, and she could end up his dinner.
The bridge was suspended high above a great cavern made of bright red rock. Stories beneath her, a rushing river ran between the walls of the cavern. White water broke over craggy riverbed, the sound whispering to her that even if she could survive the fall should she lose her balance, she’d never survive the swim.
She brought her eyes back to the toes of her boots, refocusing, and wishing she hadn’t looked down.
She was almost halfway across.
She didn’t know how she’d ended up here, or how she’d gotten this far. It seemed that she had simply opened her eyes and found herself in this place alone, with no idea what was behind her that was so frightening that she would be tempted to try such a foolish thing as to cross the most pathetic excuse for a bridge she’d ever seen in her life, let alone what could be waiting on the other side of the cavern that could justify the action.
Was she running away from something, or running to something?
She attempted to carefully calculate each step in her mind for a split second before she took it, trying to judge if a particular board was too weak to step on and should be avoided entirely. More than once she had taken this route, seeing a cracked or rotted board and knowing that it would not support her.
She’d jumped as many as three at one time, but found that upon landing the whole bridge swayed, and the thin ropes that were intended to serve as guide rails felt as weak as shoe strings, offering her no real assurance as to their ability to stop her should she try to use them to prevent falling.
Wind began to blow.
The breeze stirred up from beneath, rushing up across the surface of the water. It howled in her ears, which were already roaring with the sound of the rushing of her own blood.
She stopped and for a moment considered retreat.
She’d come so far by this point, she decided for the moment, to keep going.
Distracted by looking back over her shoulder, she did not see that the board next in the path of her stride was cracked, clear through.
She planted her left foot down upon it and it gave, and instantly the one ahead of it broke apart as well. She fell downward, groaning as she came to a stop with her fingertips grabbing on to the next plank, nails digging in as her weight pulled her down.
She scrambled, channeled every ounce of strength she could muster and pulled herself to her knees. They were bloodied by the time she got back into a standing position, the jagged edges of the planks that had broken having torn through her clothing as she went down through them.
She managed to right herself, and kept moving.
She tried to pick up the pace now, anxious for this journey to be over with, how ever it was going to end. Either she would make it across or she wouldn’t, but it was the wondering that was going to be her undoing if she didn’t come to one conclusion or the other soon.
She heard the sound of the bird’s cry overhead again. He seemed a lot closer than he’d been on his last pass. Could he smell her blood as it soaked into her torn pant legs? Was it telling him that she was weak and floundering and would soon be an easy kill?
Or an easy carcass to scavenge?
She had made it two thirds of the way across the bridge when she felt the wind stiffen, and what had been a breeze turned to blasting gusts. The footbridge rocked side to side, and she knew that she had to hurry. If she didn’t she would end up lunch for her enormous, feathered stalker, one way or another.
She stepped more quickly on the planks, and in her haste, overstressed the already decaying boards. Each one began to crack as she stepped on it, and she quickened her pace even more as the sound of their snapping echoed up beyond her ears, off the walls of the canyon and into the arid, burning sunlight.
As she heard the boards cracking, the sound of her heartbeat amplified. She gasped each breath as she now moved as quickly as she could across the rapidly disintegrating bridge.
She was almost close enough to touch the ground at the other side…
As the boards cracked and fell away beneath her feet as she stepped on each, they left her no path of retreat.
Turning back was no longer an option.
She realized upon reaching the last half-dozen planks that the bridge was actually secured into the rock face below its level ground; if she was going to make it back to solid land she was going to have to climb.
* Or jump... *
She heard the wind whip up again, and her eyes became gritty. Perhaps dirt, perhaps rock dust, she didn’t know what it was but something burned them and obscured her vision momentarily.
She froze in her tracks, just about to put her foot down on the next board when she remembered that it was stepping before she looked that had nearly cost her everything a little ways back.
She blinked hard to try to clear her eyes of the debris, and when she opened them again she saw a familiar figure standing on the other side of the canyon; beckoning her gently with a soft, wrinkled hand.
“This way!” Anian Naloy called, “Liis, you must come this way.”
“Grandmother?” Liis didn’t understand, but she would know that voice, that face, anywhere.
”Tread carefully,” Naloy warned, pointing down to Liis’ feet. “The way is difficult.”
Liis looked down and now saw for the first time that the rest of the boards were missing entirely. She had, literally, come to the end of her rope.
Now there was no way back and also, it seemed, no way forward.
“I can’t,” Liis called, her voice reverberating all around them. “The bridge is gone.”
“We must make our own path, Zanh Liis, when we believe there is none there for us to follow.”
“But the ropes won’t hold me,” Liis tried to work out a solution to her current dilemma in her head as she once again looked back.
“You cannot go back and change what is behind you,” Naloy warned, “Nor can you run forward. But you cannot stay where you are. If you do, you will fall into the abyss and be lost.”
“What other options are there?” Liis felt anger rising in her. “Don’t go back, don’t go forward. I can’t freaking FLY, Naloy! What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“A leap of faith, child,” Naloy answered softly, patiently, extending her open arms toward Liis. “When the path you’ve known is lost, you must build your own.”
The wind whipped up again, shaking the bridge fiercely. Liis gasped as her fingers wrapped around the rope railing that she knew could not truly support her.
She had no other choice. She had to go on.
There was a narrow ledge on the rock face directly across from the end of the bridge. She would have to jump for it, and then decide what to do from there.
She steadied herself as much as possible, gave a battle cry and leapt.
The toes of her boots caught the edge of the rock ledge, and she propelled her body forward into the stone. She grabbed a hold of the jagged, protruding rocks with her fingers, cutting them to ribbons, but holding on.
The weight of her body as she’d propelled from the bridge was more than the structure could take, and the rope beneath the boards snapped, plunging broken planks and all else that remained of the bridge itself down over the river; swinging backward until it slammed into the face of the cavern on the opposite side and splintered.
“Well, we won’t be going back that way that’s for damn sure.” Liis said out loud. “Naloy, are you still here?”
There was no answer and she knew that the apparition, whatever it had been, was now gone.
Once again, she was alone.
She began kicking the steel reinforced toes of her boots against the stone anywhere she saw any kind of weakness in the face of it, until she made small footholds, anything just to help her climb up and out of this place.
She began to ascend, clawing her way up.
After what seemed an eternity, she was finally able to hoist herself over the edge of the cavern. She moved a good five meters away from the edge before collapsing down onto the ground in a heap, determined she would never get so close to that particular precipice ever again.
As she lay on her back on the ground, the previously clear sky began to cloud and rain upon her. Instead of seeking shelter, she let the water soak into her.
The sound of thunder in the distance served to warn her that she could not stay in this location too long either, but for the moment, she did not know where she was going to go or what she was even trying to find when she got there.
“When the path you know is lost, you must build your own.” Liis whispered to herself, repeating her Grandmother’s words. “Make your own path.”
-=/\=-
Liis woke from the dream, unsure of where she was.
She thought instantly of her conversation with Vol on the trip to Betazed, in which she tried to explain that to her, her life suddenly felt as if she’d woken in an unfamiliar room. Everything was unknown.
Apparently she still felt that way.
She glanced over at Jariel as he slept silently nearby. She extricated herself from the blanket he had thrown over her at some point, and moved toward the doors to the balcony.
She opened the doors, cringing as they squeaked slightly and he stirred. She waited before moving as he rolled over and settled back into his pillow.
She stepped out onto the balcony; the view was not to be believed.
To the right, it looked out over the water; to the lake, the rock faces covered with versina, which in its unlit state in the nearly total darkness had an emerald glow.
She sat down in the chair, and watched as dawn slowly broke over Betazed.
She contemplated her dream, and the message that it seemed to contain. She couldn't go backward, going forward would not be easy, but if she was going to survive the journey she was going to have to take risks, and make a leap of faith.
*Naloy, sometimes I really wish you were here to just tell me what I should do. * It was so easy as a child to trust the woman, knowing that she always not only had the right answer, but that she had Liis' best interests at heart, always.
As the sun crept up over the horizon and illuminated the glittering mountains, Liis’ breath caught.
The closest thing she had ever seen to colors this intense was…what was that thing that Reece called it, Technicolor.
It was like stepping out of the monochromatic version of Kansas and into Oz with Dorothy Gale; seeing the Emerald City in the distance in all its grandeur, and knowing that if you just had the guts to make the trip that when you arrived you would finally find out not only what you were made of, but how to navigate your way home.
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-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012