by Lair Kellyn
90312.2200
Immediately following Half-baked
-=Flashback, continued=-
90312.2200
Immediately following Half-baked
-=Flashback, continued=-
Kellyn couldn't have been more shocked if he had drawn back his hand and slapped her. "What?"
"I melded with Taris before she died. To try to bring a sense of peace, and closure to us both before she left this life."
Instantly, Kellyn understood.
Just as rapidly, she was sickened by the thought like no other she had ever known.
What he'd tried to do may have been noble, but the results were plain to see. His attempts had backfired. Taris may well have felt some sense of peace before she died but Salvek was now paying the price for it, and so was Kellyn.
"How..." Kellyn stammered, truly heartbroken. "How could you."
"Her mind, it needed the stability of mine, if she had any chance of,"
"Your mind belongs to me!" Kellyn shouted, her pain evident as her voice broke. "And mine to you. That's part of...it's. We."
She stopped, shaking her head. It wasn't that Salvek had never melded with anyone else, he had when necessity had demanded it and Kellyn understood that. It was the way of his people, to guide, and help others if they could. But this...this was something entirely different.
He had tried to make a deal with the very devil; and now he was stuck living in her Hell.
"Doesn't matter now. It's too late," she whispered dejectedly.
Nothing could turn back time and reverse what he'd done. It couldn't be undone, and they would both have to begin trying to learn how to live with it.
-=End Flashback=-
Only since, neither of them had been able to live with it.
While it was a dull nagging ache that chronically pained Kellyn, the injury it had inflicted upon Salvek was acute, severe, and much more dangerous.
He was like a man walking around with a knife sticking out of his back; everyone knew it was there but no one dared try to remove it because they knew that the damage could be even worse afterward.
So she'd come with him to Vulcan. Where she had, as she'd fully expected, been turned out from the sacred places.
Sent away, left to her own devices and the mercy of the brutal elements of her husband's home world.
"This is insanity." Kellyn declared aloud at last. "If they won't invite me in through the front door, I'm going to have to break in the back. I have got to find another way in."
"There is no other way in."
"Of course there is. Every structure, even a naturally occurring one, that is inhabited by that many highly intelligent people has to have a secondary-"
Wait a minute.. Kellyn's mind shouted. She was was clearly not talking to herself, because she never answered herself back in a different voice.
Unless I've finally gone mad from the heat.
She drew her hand up to the phaser at her hip, and very slowly turned around.
A small figure, bent over and hidden beneath a black robe similar to the one Salvek had been wearing, was leaning against a gnarled walking stick, standing directly behind her.
"Perhaps," the woman said slowly, in a hoarse, grating voice, "there is another way in. Even so, you will never find it."
"You sure about that?" Kellyn scoffed.
"Yes." The woman replied, offering nothing more.
"And you're sure of that because..."
"Because no one else has ever found another way in."
"Well I've got news for you." Kellyn's posture relaxed as she decided that the woman did not constitute an immediate threat. "There's a first time for everything." Kellyn kept her eyes on the woman as she bent down, hoisting her pack up onto her shoulder and pulling the hood back up over her head. "Just because no one else has found the way doesn't mean I won't."
"Arrogant." The woman said tonelessly. "And over-confident. Is it any wonder that outsiders are turned away from the holy place?"
"For your information, lady, this 'outsider' has been living the life of a good little Vulcan wife for the past decade plus. I even eat that damned root stew you people insist is healthy, even though it tastes like shi--" Kellyn stopped as the wrinkles on the woman's forehead deepened along with her frown.
"Look. I don't mean to be disrespectful. But I have to tell you, as a woman who tries very hard to support her mate in his pursuit of All Things Vulcan, coming all this way and not even being allowed to seek shelter from the heat is more than a little insulting."
"You could always go home."
"No, I can't go back without him and hey, you know what? This really isn't any of your business, anyway. So if you would just move along and leave me to my sizzling in the sun, I would appreciate it. I haven't passed out from heat exhaustion yet and I'm really looking forward to doing that soon. So have a nice day."
Kellyn started walking, and the shriveled little figure followed. She pulled what appeared to be a small pouch of liquid from the pocket of her robe and held it up.
"I just thought you might be thirsty."
Kellyn kept moving. "I'll manage. Thanks."
"Arrogant, over-confident and distrustful." The woman shook her head.
"You're a delight yourself." Kellyn's patience with her uninvited guest was finally at an end. "Could you just move along, little woman? I'm sure that you have...important...stuff...to do in there." Kellyn jerked her head back in the direction of the entrance to the cavern, and the woman shrugged.
"Yes, I do. In fact, the Masters sent me to make sure that you were taken care of."
"I assure you, I can take care of myself..." It only took a second for Kellyn to read a much darker meaning into the woman's words.
The Vulcans were a nonviolent race, but that didn't mean that there weren't exceptions.
Perhaps there were those still so intolerant that she was truly in danger here. She suddenly worried for her own safety for Arie's sake and pulled the phaser from her belt, taking aim.
"You have a reason for drawing your weapon?"
"Not sure. You going to give me a reason to shoot you?"
The woman sighed. She shook her head and began to mutter in Vulcan, lowering the hood of her robe and unclasping it at the neck to reveal an elaborate outfit beneath- one of a Vulcan priestess.
"Who..." Kellyn stammered, "Who the hell are you?"
"I am called T'Pryll, Lair Kellyn." The woman announced. "...and I am your nightmare."
"This whole planet is my nightmare!" Kellyn put her weapon away, and began pacing back and forth like a cornered animal.
"Then leave it." T'Pryll suggested serenely. "Take the child with you as well. Neither of you ever can, ever will, understand what Salvek is. What it is to be Vulcan."
"Maybe not," Kellyn growled bitterly. "But he is k'hat'n'dlawa to me. I will not leave him."
"You will not have to. He has already left you."
Kellyn stood fast even though the words cut deep and she was certain that internally, she must be bleeding.
"He will not choose you over Logic," T'Pryll warned. "No Vulcan in his state has any choice but to reject all remaining emotion and anything, or anyone, associated with it. It is his only hope."
She turned away from Lair at last and retreated toward the sanctuary.
"Tell me this, Lair Kellyn, k'hat'n'dlawa of Salvek." Her words took on a tone of considerable condemnation for a woman who was supposedly free of any such trappings of feeling.
Kellyn followed at her heels and the Vulcan spun, seeming much taller and imposing than she was as she leaned in.
Her face hovered merely inches from Kellyn's.
"You embrace emotion unapologetically, as do all of your kind. Tell me, Bajoran, do you love Salvek enough to let him go?"
"I love him enough," Kellyn replied, choking on the words, "to do whatever it takes to save him."
"Then let him go. Do not fight for him any longer." T'Pryll's steps quickened as she approached the guards at the door.
Without a word or other gesture, they bowed to her and stepped aside, clearing a path for her to pass by.
"You are not what Salvek needs. Your character is flawed, and my judgment has been made. Your katra has been assessed and you are found wanting."
Kellyn attempted once more to enter the temple, but was met with the loud clang of the guards staffs as they again blocked her path.
Her eyes burned through them, her fury stretching out and reaching T'Pryll as a physical sensation. Though able to conceal it from her audience, the old woman shivered.
"Go to hell." Lair Kellyn hissed, turning away.
She would waste no more time on this.
She would never gain the woman's approval, so she'd best stop trying to attain the impossible.
There had to be another way in, or at the very least another way that she could help him and damn her, she was going to find it.
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Commander Lair Kellyn
Currently on Vulcan
Commander Lair Kellyn
Currently on Vulcan