91027.0330
Immediately following Women Have Wiles and Men Have Needs
-=A Muddy Field, on Sibalt=-
The woman's dearest immediate wish was one that could only be expressed in deeply felt, passionately spoken words.
This one thought was so overwhelming that it threatened to consume her, as well as the man that wish involved along with the stirring and powerful emotions that inspired it.
She inhaled as deeply as she could given the way that she was trembling and at last gave voice to her desire in low, hypnotic tones.
"I hope you choke on a Jumja stick and die."
Ashton Ledbetter sniffed haughtily in the general direction of Lair Kellyn. The engineer stomped away after hurling the insult at him along with a very pointed look of pure, unadulterated hatred. She didn't look back, her head held high even as she was leaving a trail of muddy water in her wake.
"Highly unlikely." He replied smugly. "I'm not Bajoran."
Just as Ashton was smiling secretly within at how he had escaped falling into the muddy water, he suddenly found himself careening face first towards it.
Standing on the bank where he'd been before was host of the 'games', Jelca Rued.
Rued calmly folded her hands, even as Ledbetter flailed in the shallow depths and screamed like a girl that he was drowning.
All those around stared at her, mouths hanging open, amazed that she had been the one who pushed Ledbetter into the drink.
"I am sorry." She remarked with a shrug. "But your team lost the challenge and went into the water. You would have an unfair advantage over them if you were not to suffer the same fate and the after-effects of that fate."
Ashton sputtered and grumbled that he would have someone's head over this once he got back to Starfleet and "talked to Gem." Landry Steele, closest to Ledbetter as she made her way out of the muck, sighed and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, or rather by the collar of his soggy uniform.
"Don't you get it, Ledbetter?" She sighed. "Gem is the one who sent us here."
"It is time to set up camp." Rued continued.
"Right now?" Dane asked, folding his arms as he was finally pulled away from the sight of Gira as she tried to wring the muddy water from her hair.
"Yes, Ensign Cristiane. Right now."
"Don't we get a....bath or something first?" Gira inquired meekly.
"Perhaps the rain will help wash off some of the mud." Jelca replied. "I believe it will be picking up again soon." Once again she gave that overly sweet, overly wide smile and Dane grumbled softly.
"You will be assigned to tent-mates." Jelca continued, ignoring the murmurs of protest rising all around her. "Lair and Lassiter. Ryn and Steele. Cristiane and Halliday, Samson and Ledbetter, Sterling and Tryst, Salvek and Briggs."
"Wait a minute..." Vol protested, but Jelca raised her hand.
"These are your assignments for the duration of your stay on Sibalt, Lieutenant Tryst. You are not to deviate from them."
"Not even if we're married?" Kellyn asked, raising her muddy hand in protest.
"Or don't want to be?" Vol added wryly.
"Especially not if you're married." Jelca replied simply to Lair, before turning her attention to the Betazoid. "Or don't want to be."
"But on the other side, they've got one extra in O'Sullivan as observer. Who gets the tent alone?"
"They'll have to figure that out on their own." Jelca replied. "Teamwork."
"I bet the Captain gets to pick her tent-mate." Cristiane complained, having meant only to think it.
"'Course she does.." Keiran called, grinning at the young man as he approached. "She's the Captain."
"I'd suggest that you get to work. The materials needed to raise your tents are over there." Jelca gestured down the field a long ways.
"Way over there?" Landry moaned.
"Yes, Ensign. Be grateful you do not have to hike for hours trying to find natural materials to construct your shelters from." The rumble of thunder punctuated Rued's words. "I'd suggest you make haste. Have a good night's sleep, everyone. We begin again at sunrise."
Jelca's form shimmered and faded from view but then just as suddenly she reappeared. "Wait. Commander Reece..." She waved a hand, her unnaturally long fingers beckoning the sopping wet Trill forward.
"Yo, Medusa. You rang?" Dabin muttered.
"You violated the spirit of the rules of the game when you let go of the rope to yell at your teammate. You will assist the Alchemy team in setting up camp."
"Hey, I call no way!" Reece objected. "They were cheating."
"We were just using a tactical advantage." Vol countered, still rather satisfied with the work he'd done.
"Bite me." Reece stomped over toward the Alchemy team. "Fine, queen of the gorgons, have it your way. But I'm campin' with them." He jerked a thumb in the direction of his team.
"We won't stop you!" Ledbetter assured, as he tried to straighten the bobbing clump of dripping blond hair that was hanging down over his forehead.
Jelca merely nodded serenely towards Reece and then once again she was gone.
Zanh Liis made her way over after Rued's exit, and as she walked, she stopped to talk to each member of the Alchemy's team one by one to check on their welfare.
She began each short conversation with the same simple question, one that any concerned leader would ask before any other. "You all right?"
One by one, she heard the same short reply: "Aye, Sir."
Everyone said it, until she got to the last of the lot, Gira Lassiter.
When she asked the young woman the same question, she noticed that Gira was much slower to answer than the others had been.
Dane, who was standing nearby, also noticed. He moved to retrieve the jacket he'd been wearing earlier from the ground beside the muck where he'd left it, wanting to give it to Gira now as it was obvious she needed it from the way she ran her hands up and down her arms to try to fight the chill.
Zanh raised her eyes to Cristiane, her expression telling him to stand where he stood.
"Yes...Sir." Gira finally replied, barely audibly. She knew that she was lying, but she didn't want to let her teammates down by showing how bad she felt and risking bringing them down too. She wished she'd been stronger during the challenge, that she could've helped them to better fight against their inevitable defeat.
All her life, she had wished for the ability to do more to stave off the inevitable defeat which always seemed to find her, somehow.
"Walk with me, Ensign." Zanh instructed, catching and holding Keiran's eye for a moment as she reached up and put her arm around the soaked and shaking Lassiter. Finally, she removed the jacket she'd been wearing and draped it over Gira's shoulders.
"But Captain, my team is-"
"Your team can live without you for a little while. Besides, Reece can haul more tent equipment in five minutes than you could in an hour, you featherweight. Come with me."
"Yes, sir."
Keiran sighed as he watched the two women walk away. Rain began to fall again, a much colder, soaking rain, and he realized that even though the Alchemy team was supposed to put up camp alone, if they didn't all work together to try to create a source of heat, everyone was going to catch pneumonia.
"We need to figure out how to get a fire going." TC Blane said to O'Sullivan, as if reading the Irishman's thoughts. "Shelter it somehow so it doesn't go out in the rain. Sun's setting quickly."
"Right you are, Thomas." Keiran agreed, though his thoughts were following Liis and Gira as they walked instead of truly on his task. "Right you are."
"I'll track back a little ways, look for anything we can burn." Blane replied, retreating.
"Commander O'Sullivan?" Hearing another familiar voice behind him, Keiran turned. He found the equally familiar form of Rada Dengar standing just over his shoulder.
"Aye, Dengar, what is it?" Keiran asked nervously. From the look on Rada's face it was difficult to tell what he was thinking.
"Would it be considered a violation of the rules if we helped them?" Dengar inquired.
"Helped them?"
"Yes. If...those of us who want to, volunteered to help the Alchemy team set up camp."
Keiran rubbed his chin thoughtfully, thinking that not many men would have bothered to even ask the question. "Dunno, Rada. Why? You wanna help 'em?"
"It just seems that it wasn't really fair," Dengar remarked, shrugging his shoulders. "The teams weren't evenly matched. They really didn't have a chance."
More often than not in life, boy, the teams are not evenly matched, Keiran thought sadly. Life is hardly fair.
"Well, I'm just an observer, I'm not makin' the rules, right?" Keiran answered softly. "So, if ya want'ta help 'em, I'm not the one to stop ya. Either that unusual hostess of ours, or yer Captain would be. Since neither of 'em seem ta be around just now, if ya want to offer yer assistance to Commander Salvek 'til someone objects, am not gonna stand in yer way."
"Thank you, Sir." Dengar said. The Angosian returned to the group of Serendipity officers who were standing by, watching the others plod off down toward the piles of supplies that had appeared on the surface.
Dengar said a few words to the group, and then to his amazement, Keiran watched as each member of the Sera's team, to the last, made their way down the field to assist the Alchemy team in starting to set up the tents.
"Quite a crew you've got here, Zanh Liis O'Sullivan." Keiran said softly, shaking his head as he himself moved to join the others. "That's what I call teamwork."
-=/\=- Zanh Liis O'Sullivan
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012