by Rada Dengar
101109.2200
After Nothing Left Unsaid
-=O’Sullivan Residence: County Cork, Ireland, Earth=-
101109.2200
After Nothing Left Unsaid
-=O’Sullivan Residence: County Cork, Ireland, Earth=-
It was quiet in County Cork tonight, save only for the crackling beat of the flame that danced before his eyes. It was not a sad sort of a quiet that seemed to have overcome the rest of the world, but merely a subdued one. There were faint murmurs of personal conversation that travelled far on the stillness of the air. Every so often you could even hear a little laughter, which somehow always achieved a greater volume than the joke that had inspired it. It wasn’t really loud laughter though.
This was the type of night where those willing and able to listen could really hear how Mother Nature felt. Tonight, she was in a quiet mood too. There was only the odd distant sound of the local animals; Rada lacked the experience to say exactly which ones, but they weren’t the sounds of animals in conflict. They were just all tending to the communicative matters of their daily lives. Rada meanwhile tended the fire.
There really wasn’t much to do with it. A sufficiently large branch at its core ensured it’d burn well into the night, regardless of their involvement. A log had been placed here nearby which he was using as a makeshift seat. To his left and just behind it, he placed a cup of water. To his right a pristinely kept wooden handled rake rested against a nearby wooden stump and every now and then Rada would use it to sweep stray embers into the centre to keep the flame neatly contained.
Throughout the evening many people had and would keep an eye on it and now Rada took his turn. It gave him an excuse to be alone, to just appreciate the moment, after others had earlier left the fire for more comfortable positions to be seated while they dined.
It wasn’t that he wanted to be alone because he was sad. It was true that he was worried about Kellyn but that was an area in which he knew he’d just have to wait. It was just that for so long his mind had been clouded and muddied by mistakes in his memories; which he knew he had to sort through still, that now it was finally as clear as the sweetly natural air around them he had a lot of thinking to catch up on.
Perhaps he should have been pondering the great mysteries of existence, or his place in the vast galaxy. Tonight however he found himself simply admiring the continued waltz of the flame.
At first, he didn’t even notice the footsteps on the soft ground of the approaching Keiran O’Sullivan, here to check that everything was alright. When he finally arrived though, Rada did not startle. Here merely turned his head to look upward to speak, revealing an understated but content smile.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it sir?”
“The countryside, yeah?” Keiran asked, questioning what Rada had meant.
“The land is beautiful,” Rada acknowledged. “However I was referring to the flame.”
“’Tis warm,” Keiran mused as he lowered himself onto the log next to Rada. “Will be very welcome as the air begins ta cool down. Though I get the feelin’ that’s not what ya meant.”
Rada shook his head, still just smiling almost in awe of what he was seeing.
“It’s beautiful because it’s constant, Commander. I’m so very far away from where my life began. I look to the ground here and it is not the grass that as a child I felt between my toes. I look up at the sky and through the clouds, but those are not my stars. However no matter who you are or how far you’ve come, given the right atmosphere and some good wood, fires always burn the same.”
Keiran studied Rada, wondering where he was going with this.
Rada at the same time found himself truly taking in every aspect of the fire. The gentle crackling of the wood, those eternal elegant games of the light; the same flame belonged to all who saw her. He didn’t know how anyone, including himself in the past, could fail to observe just how beautiful that was.
“I know I miss this land when I’m away,” Keiran thought, though it was less a matter of grass and soil and more of the less tangible things that he could find here. “Are you wantin’ to stand on Angosian soil again?”
Rada thought about the possibility for a moment.
“No, sir,” Rada answered truthfully. “I’m just remembering it.”
Angosia III may have had his grass and his stars, but it was not his home to miss anymore. His home was up in orbit, wherever Wren and Tam may at this moment have been. So his homeworld, with all its wonders and follies, was an experience not so much missed as it was simply recalled.
“I recall that things were simpler there.”
Keiran was a man who could appreciate many of the good things in life being no more complicated than they needed to be and he nodded that he understood.
“Sometimes simplicity can be something ya miss on its own.”
The older he got, the more Keiran realised that statement was true.
“Yes, but not always. I remember something one of my lecturers at the academy once asked us. He was a small man but one with a booming voice and a very large presence in a room. It was late in the day and a lot of people’s minds had started to drift away the lecture. Realising this, he stopped and asked us a question to try to wake us up. He asked us if we knew what you got when you started taking apart a warp core. First you strip away the casings, the regulators and the controls. Then you tear out the housing for the dilithium crystals and drain the antimatter away…” Rada smiled a little and turned to Keiran again. “Do you know what you get at the end?”
Keiran thought about the remaining components for a moment then shook his head that he didn’t.
“Stranded,” Rada answered with a slight further curl of his lips.
Keiran laughed softly, more from surprise than anything else. He couldn’t recall Rada ever telling a joke with him before.
“I know you should never trade away the things that really make the difference in life for simplicity,” Rada explained.
“A wise way ta think about it,” Keiran added.
Rada neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement. He didn’t consider himself wise, but it was something to aspire to. He knew that he worried a bit too much more than a lot too much. In fact to be honest he had considered three times in the last two minutes the possibility that he’d be blamed if a stray ember somehow travelled the impossible distance and defied all laws of thermodynamics to burn down the Captain’s house. It was however a serious concern as unless this bizarre hypothetical perversion of natural laws somehow followed to physical force and just general fighting ability then in a conflict with Keiran O’Sullivan he was at a bit of a disadvantage.
He also knew he probably shouldn’t need to hide his personality to survive when he was in trouble, and that even if he did then requiring a toffee or indeed any other small treat was probably not the most adult way to go about it. Even still as he thought about it, after he’d lost and regained his memories, he liked himself better than he used to before it.
“I feel I should thank you, sir,” Rada said, picking up his drink from beside him, which had warmed quite a bit itself, and drinking a few mouthfuls to try to restore some of the liquids the fire was taking out of him.
“Thank me fer what, lad?” Keiran asked curiously.
“On Sibalt,” Rada started quietly, for the first time the smile really leaving his face completely. “We were sitting by a fire like this and you tried to help me. I couldn’t see it for what it was at the time, or to understand how hard it must have been. Now I do though.” Rada sighed, though it wasn’t really a sad sigh. “I think there’ll be a lot of people in this crew I owe thanks to.”
With everything he’d been through before and since, Keiran was surprised that Rada would even remember let alone think of that conversation they’d had.
“Don’t worry about thanks, yeah?” Keiran suggested, though he appreciated that Rada was not the type to easily forget his gratitude. “Ev’ra’one will just be glad ta see you back at yer post.”
“I have to worry about it, sir,” Rada answered, the smile returning to his voice if not his face. “I haven’t worried nearly enough recently.”
Keiran ran over the last sentence in his mind, wondering just how he should take it.
“What d’ya mean by that?”
“It’s just something I’ve realised recently, sir. I can’t speak for everyone but worrying; really worrying about something going wrong, is what I do when I’m happy.”
Keiran thought about the statement and first it seemed a little strange and a little sad, until he really thought about it again.
“I think I know what yer sayin’. ‘Tis like havin’ a child. One of the happiest experiences of your life but ya never again fall asleep without wantin’ ta be sure they’re alright.”
Rada could certainly relate to that. It was a curious and beautifully natural thing how even having seen that Tam was absolutely fine before he ever heard the news that anything had happened while he was gone, he still worried for him in retrospect.
“It’s sort of like falling in love,” Rada thought aloud, an expression halfway between sadness and amusement crossing his face. He remembered all too recently thinking of the Captain and Keiran and wishing he had what they did. All along it’d been right there just waiting for him to remember it.
“A lot like it,” Keiran agreed, his own concern for his wife surfacing now. He and Rada were very different people, as were Liis and Wren, but the effect love had was something they could all agree on. “Fire’s not the only thing that’s the same no matter how far y’ve come.”
Rada finished off the contents of his drink and put the cup down again where it’d been.
“Nor is it the only thing that is beautiful,” Rada acknowledged, thinking that for all that he still saw in the flame he was spending far too much time appreciating one of the relatively paler beauties in existence. He turned again to look towards Keiran. “Would you mind, sir, if I left to go back to the ship a little early?”
“Of course not, lad. Is there somethin’ wrong?”
“No, sir,” Rada answered, picking up the cup again and beginning to stand. “There are just some people up there waiting for me.”
Lt. Commander Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012