210: The Magic Feather

By Dr. Dalton McKay
80311.00
Following Cry, Little Sister and Spelunking

-=Laboratory of Lt. Commander Dabin Reece:

Chief Science Officer USS Serendipity=-

"I should be getting back to check on her," Dabin said at last.

He'd been talking with Rigin, McKay and Jariel for hours now, and he was feeling a lot better already. Just being with the three men and knowing that they were going to do all that they could to help him restore the light to February's eyes gave him hope he hadn't felt in days.

"Get some rest, Reece. That's an order. I don't want to see you anywhere near this lab again until mornin'. Got it?" The LMH warned sternly.

[[As Ship's Counselor, I second that.]] Jariel chimed in.

"All right, all right. I hear you. Both of you." Reece rubbed his chin, his rough whiskers scratching against his hand; his beard had gone way past five o'clock shadow long ago. In reality he couldn't wait to get home. Now that things were in motion and Rigin was finally aboard, he thought he may actually be able to get some sleep tonight.

[[Goodnight.]] He signed to Jariel, and then he turned to Rigin and McKay. "Goodnight. Shut the lights off when you go?"

As soon as he was gone, McKay turned on Rigin.

"I can tell you right now, this telepathic ritual dealeo is not going to happen anytime soon. Not while I'm overseeing February's care. And no sneaky going trying it behind my back, either. I don't require sleep. I have a mobile emitter. I will shadow you from room to room every moment you're aboard this ship if I have to but nobody is going to do thing one to that girl's brain with the state she's in. Got it?"

[[Doctor,]] Jariel wedged himself between the hologram and Rigin, who was standing taller to try to make himself seem more imposing. The act reminded Jariel of the way that tiny tac kits, just weeks old, would puff up their tails and hiss in an attempt to look menacing, succeeding only in looking at best cuter than before, at worst, absolutely ridiculous.

"You can hold on to your sermons, Father, this ain't Sunday."

"Reece brought me here because he believes I can help her. So let me help her!" Rigin insisted.

"I don't care if the Federation President brought you here on Starship One!" McKay's voice climbed in pitch and volume. "I'll keep throwin' a full blown hissy-fit if that's what it takes to talk some sense into you organic types! My mouth is moving, I'm talking, but ya'll ain't hearin' a word I say!"

[[I hear you.]] Jariel signed.

"I hear you." Rigin concluded. "But I promise you, there will be no risk to February from this procedure."

"How can you be sure? You said minimal when I asked you about it before." McKay quickly pointed out the inconsistency. Organics had such a tendency to be inconsistent, and imprecise, and the more time he spent living among them, the more maddening it became.

"I'm sure because," Rigin sighed, lowering his voice, "I'm not actually going to do anything."

Both the Vedek and the LMH stared at each other, then at Rigin, jaws dropped in confusion.

[[What?]]

"What?"

Rigin sighed, folded his pencil-thin arms, and whispered.

"There IS no ritual that exists for this. I told you, the only experience that Guardians have is in telepathic communication with the symbionts directly, and the memory transference needed to conduct the zhian'tara. That's it. I have no idea how this connection between Grace and Reece works, and I have no idea how to impact it, one way or another. So, I was just going to. . ."

"Fake it." McKay finished.

"For want of a better term. But I prefer to think of it is as offering specialized counseling. To give February the nudge that she needs, emotionally, to find the way to bridge the gap herself. She just has to make the leap and believe that the connection has been restored. It's like. . . like. . ."

Rigin frowned, concentrating. His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling and he thought very hard. "What was the curious name of that book? The one that mother was reading to her small son while we were waiting for the donkey ride down into the Grand Canyon? Bimbo. . .Rambo. . .no, that wasn't it. Brando. . .Polo. . ."

"Take all the time ya want figurin' that out there, Rigin. I'm a hologram, I don't age. I got as long as the ship's computer can run to wait."

"Dumbo!"

"Hey, now, there's no need for insults,"

"NO! The story! It was about a little animal called Dumbo. The eleo. . . No, wait. Eli. . . elo. . ."

[[Are you kidding me?]] Even Jariel's near infinite patience was staring to wear thin, causing him to sign the phrase he so often heard Liis use in frustration.

"Elephant! That's it!" Rigin stepped forward and accessed one of the science terminals, bringing up the database entry on elephants. "From the order Proboscidea; family name is Elephantidae. Extraordinary creatures. Seeing one in the wild is on my 'to do' list before I finish up my sight seeing on Earth."

"Yeah yeah. Majestic beast. I'm familiar." The LMH gestured for him to wrap it up.

"I'm sure you are." Rigin tried not to roll his eyes, and continued. "This Dumbo was a juvenile elephant, who had exceptionally large ears. Ears so big that he could fly."

"Elephants can't fly!" McKay laughed and indicated the screen. "I mean look at the size of that thing! Ain't gonna happen. You'd sooner see Zanh Liis taking the Miss Congeniality Award at the Miss Alpha Quad Pageant."

[[Hey now,]]

"Sorry, sorry, Vedek." McKay raised his hands in surrender and backpedaled, forgetting for a moment just who his audience was.

"It is a children's story!" Rigin was exasperated. "Just let me finish would you? The little elephant had been tormented, teased because of the size of his ears compared to the rest. So, his mother becomes agitated when she sees people being mean to him and they think she's gone mad, and they lock her up and away from Dumbo."

[[Another light, happy bedtime story for the children of Earth.]] Jariel signed, horrified at the thought. Sometimes, he seriously wondered if anyone on the planet ever thought about the impact these little gems had on impressionable young minds. He was getting misty eyed just thinking about it and he was a grown man. He'd never seen a society with so many heartbreaking, ill-conceived storybook tales in his life.

"It's FICTION!" Rigin stammered as the LMH translated Jariel's critique. "Anyway! Dumbo was so traumatized that he didn't believe that he could do anything good with the ears. But he could. He could spread them out and fly! So the little mouse that rode around in his hat,"

[[The elephant wore a hat?]] Jariel asked.

"There was a mouse with this elephant?" McKay asked. "I thought that elephants were afraid of mice,"

"Yes, a little red hat and, no, that's a myth actually about the mice," Rigin, short attention span that he had, was momentarily taken off-topic. "Hey I'm telling a story here!"

He glared at McKay. "I thought you knew everything that there was to know about everything!" The Trill pointed his nose in the air, imitating the over-confidence he found to be so grating about the man before him.

"Well bring on the medical questions, big boy, and we'll see how you do mono a mono. So I don't have the complete contents of every book ever written in my database. I'm a doctor, not a librarian."

[[Ladies, ladies!]]] Jariel signed in frustration, attempting to make a joke, only no one was watching.

"If you don't stop interrupting me I will figure out how to deactivate you myself!" Rigin snapped. McKay sighed and folded his arms, leaning against the wall and gesturing with his head for Rigin to continue.

"The mouse wanted the elephant to fly so he'd be a star at the circus. So he told the little elephant that if he held on to a magic feather with his trunk, that he could fly. Because the feather was magic."

McKay simply stood motionless at this point, blinking at Rigin slowly. Jariel's expression was equally blank.

He started to sign something, then he and the doctor exchanged a perplexed glance, and finally he just threw his hands up in the air and walked away. He didn't know what to say at this point.

"If we give Bru a magic feather as it were, and tell her that the connection is fixed, then she may believe it and find the way back on her own. It could take the pressure off of her emotionally and allow her to open up to the link again."

[[The link must still exist on some level,]] Jariel interjected. [[Reece said he's already heard one or two random thoughts from her at times when she was distracted and not focusing on things.]]

"Precisely. This can work, I'm telling you."

"Placebo effect." McKay added at last, when he believed Rigin was finally done. "That's what they used to call it in medicine. Give the patient a sugar pill and tell them that it'll help, and oftentimes, it would because the patient would believe it."

[[The mind/body connection is very powerful and very much misunderstood.]] Jariel concurred.

"Exactly." Rigin sighed, content at last that he'd finally gotten his point across. "So there will be no need for you to worry, doctor, about my telepathic procedure harming Reece or Grace. Put the neural monitors on us all, make a great show of it. But know in the end the most I can do is initiate a link with their symbionts that's pretty much the equivelent of shaking hands and saying hello. I don't believe I can do anything for the host but provide moral support."

[[After seeing February earlier, I think that is what she needs most of all. Moral support.]]

"One thing." Rigin cautioned. "We can't tell Reece that the ritual isn't for real. Because February is very intuitive. If he doubts, she'll sense it on some level, maybe even before she gets the link back and peers into his thoughts. We must be agreed that as far as Dabin is concerned, it's really going to do something."

The Vedek and McKay agreed.

[[I have another thought as well. . .]] Jariel began to speak, when into the science lab walked a very unexpected visitor: TC Blane.

"Afternoon, Vedek. Doc." He looked at the slightly built slip of a man before him and stepped back a pace, surprised. "Rigin? Is that you?"

"Gentry!" Rigin threw his arms around Blane and hugged him. TC scarcely felt it, as Rigin's twig-like arms barely made it around his massively built, brick-wall physique. "I mean, Mr. Blane! It is very good to see you again."

"Looks like I missed a hell of a ritual." The LMH lamented, feeling left out because he was the only one in the room who hadn't taken part in the zhian'tara. "Sounds like ya'll had a high old time."

"I won't forget it anytime soon, that's for sure." TC replied. "Rigin, I didn't know you were aboard. Bru mentioned something about Reece bringing a mystery visitor aboard, I take it that's you?"

"In the spots!" Rigin replied, frowning. "I only wish I were here under happier circumstances."

"You and me both." TC replied. "I had actually come here looking for you, Vedek, because I know how close you are to February and. . . I'm really worried about her. We just had a long talk and," he paused. He didn't want to betray anything that February had told him in confidence, so he waited to see if anyone volunteered any information.

He knew that she had not told Reece that she had been in contact with her parents, but Blane did not know that Reece had come across the information by chance already and shared it with the others.

[[Reece was here. He explained to us about the messages from February's family. We were just discussing a plan of action.]]

"Well if I can help, let me know," TC offered. "I hate seeing her, both of them, like this."

Jariel tilted his head toward the Commander.

[[Mr. Blane, there may be something that you can do to help me with a small project I'd like to plan. I just realized that during Liis' rescue mission, when February came to tell me about her secret wedding, she told me by asking if I would be willing to bless their union.]]

"I remember her saying that she was going to ask you about that." Blane remembered, in fact, that he was the one who suggested that Grace share the happy news with Jariel, to shore him up during his own time of sadness. "How can I help?"

[[Well, that blessing has yet to take place, and I think that now would be the perfect time to show Reece and Grace that they are surrounded by people who care about them and who support their Reassociation and marriage. So I wonder. . .if I can get some help from you,]] he looked at Blane, [[And you,]] he nodded toward Rigin, as the LMH continued translating Jariel's signs into words for the Guardian.

[[. . .and I can pull this off. . .would you be willing to give the bride away?]]

---------------------------
Dr. Dalton McKay
Long-Term Medical Hologram
USS Serendipity NCC-2012