Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: 4 Jan 2004 08:23:35 -0800 In: alt.startrek.creative From: watergal@mindspring.com (Lyra) Title: Brueghel's Icarus Author: Lyrastar Series: TOS Codes: S/m, K/S themes Rating: NC-17 Parts: 2/4 Contact: lyrastarwatcher at yahoo dot com For more information, see part 1 of 4 --------------------------------------- Instead he dreamed of a mighty eagle with feathers of silver streaking through a jet-black sky. The bird swung low over the red desert land and sailed easily amongst the rocky peaks. There was the sound of a gong, the tintinnabulation of dozens of delicate bells, and then the silver bird was joined by another. Together they swooped over the fiery sands and disappeared among the tall rocks. T'Khut hovered round and full in the sky. The sun rose, but it was not the sun at all. Instead it was a face, a brilliant face with a smile so bright it was painful to behold. And then he was being shaken awake. With alarm, Spock realized that he was trembling. The healer had one hand on his shoulder. His body quivered against it sending tremors through his chest. With great effort Spock willed his body to stillness and sat up to face his friend. He raised one eyebrow. "You require something?" Chiz Yazzie didn't balk. "You are ill." He raised a clay cup in his other hand. "Drink this." Spock glanced at the brew. He reached for his tricorder and scanned it briefly. "This contains peyote," he observed. "Among other things. It will break the fever. Drink it." Spock took the cup, but instead of drinking, set it down on the earthen floor. "Hallucinogens are unwise for my people, particularly in this circumstance. In any event, I am not ill. My basal body temperature is significantly higher than yours. I do not require your healing arts at this time." Chiz Yazzie's face did not change. "I have tended you through these many weeks. I am familiar with your body's nature. You burn. If my skills are unwelcome, I will not bother you further. But you do burn." Spock regarded him. It could matter very little now. It was progressing much faster this time. It would soon be beyond his ability to control. He would not make it home. He would die here. If nothing else, he did owe this man the courtesy of the truth, any comfort that could be gained through the knowledge that it was not his skill that had failed. And he could be trusted. Spock's free and living presence was proof enough of that. "You are essentially correct. My temperature is elevated, but it is not an illness. It is a biological function of my people. We have a fertility cycle, of sorts. I must return home to mate and complete the cycle." "Or?" "If the cycle is not completed, I will die. So I must go." "Home is a long way. You do not have your vehicle. Will you arrive in time?" No, thought Spock. "The future is uncertain. If you will take me to the highway, I will attend to the rest. I would like to leave at first light." The healer furrowed his brow and searched Spock's face. "In that case, you should rest." He walked out of the hogan without looking back. Spock did not return to sleep. Chiz Yazzie did not return inside. At dawn Spock emerged to find him sitting on a rock by the cold ashes of the cook-fire grinding wood embers between two smooth rocks. A large woven basket sat by his feet. From the vicinity of the smokehouse he could see that another fire sent a meandering stream of thick gray smoke up into the nearly cloudless sky. "I am ready," Spock said. The healer glanced up from his work. Spock's hair remained at his shoulders. "You take no food or water?" Chiz Yazzie asked mildly. Spock realized he had made an error. His mind was already untrustworthy. He would not take needlessly of the valuable food supply, but if his ruse were to work, he would have to act as one preparing to cross the desert. "I will fill a waterskin while you make the horse ready. I require no food for the journey. My people are well acclimated to desert travel with minimal provisions." Chiz Yazzie kept his eyes on his task. His voice was impassive. "You do not believe you can get home in time. You no longer intend to go to California." Spock simply could not lie to a man such as this. No Vulcan could. He matched his tone. "No." "Do you have some other arrangement for completing the mating cycle?" Chiz Yazzie's hands moved smoothly, never breaking the rhythm as they crushed the embers into smooth black powder. Again, "No." "Then there is no need for you to leave." He continued to grind. It was rumored that the Navajo had had a logical pragmatism that even a Vulcan could admire. It appeared to be true. "I cannot stay," said Spock. "As a rutting ram becomes wild and dangerous when unable to reach his mate, so do my people. " Chiz Yazzie set down the stone grinder and walked to a nearby pinyon. He broke off a branch and returned to his seat. He carefully began to peel the long green needles into a neat pile. "A rutting animal can be assuaged by other means. A stallion will take another stallion, for example." He finished stripping the branch and tossed it aside. He placed a few needles into the makeshift stone mortar and began to grind. Spock felt himself beginning to tremble. Although the night chill had not yet left the air, his face flushed hot. He locked his hands behind his back and bit his fingers firmly into his own flesh. He pressed his lips tight. The silence seemed interminable. Chiz Yazzie finally asked, "Is it so with your people?" "Yes." By rights he should have felt nothing. But the single word fell in the pit of his stomach with a sickening thud. "Then, again, you need not go." He looked up and met Spock's eyes. "I am a medicine man from a line of eight Dine medicine men before me. It is my place in this world to give aid. If for no other reason than that, you are welcome to stay." Spock felt the quivering in his legs redouble. He moved to sit on the neighboring rock. He told himself it was logical action to spare his aching hips and legs, but it felt like surrender. "You do not understand. We...my people, like the wolf or the fox, mate for life." Chiz Yazzie placed the pile of fine green powder to one side and picked up another handful of needles for the mortar. "And so it was once for me as well. But she is dead and circumstances change. I would not have you die. I would prefer not to return to being alone. You have heard my voice. The choice is yours." Spock swallowed. "There is more. There is another for me." "At home?" Chiz Yazzie asked. "Yes. The one I would be with for life." "You can only join with her?" Spock said, "No. We are not yet joined. It has not been decided." "Why not?" Why not, indeed. Through all the years there had been so many reasons put forth by the both of them. All so sound, all so consummately logical. And not one of them seemed to matter now. With all his powers of logic, how could he have failed to foresee this day, or one of the infinite variations of it? He had little feeling about his own death, but this loss was almost too great to bear. With him would pass all the wondrous possibilities that are given only unto truly mated souls. All the glories that had been conceived in dreams would now die, still unborn, here on the barren desert floor. Had he been the only one who had been so blind? Or had there always been a cool reason behind all of Jim's gentle persistence? For all Spock's precious logic, had he himself been the one to fail to see the truth? He labeled himself the worst kind of fool. "I have no answer for that," Spock said quietly. "Then it is this discrepancy which destroys your hozho and causes your illness." Spock considered briefly. "That is essentially correct." Chiz Yazzie said, "There is more than one force which can restore hozho. If you cannot go to her, then it seems that the joining must be here. For decades I sang the sacred songs and performed the rites to restore balance to many spirits fallen adrift. It would be my privilege to do so once again." Spock's heart flipped once and resumed. He shook his head. "While I do not debate your wisdom, this land is not my land. My answers, my...balance, if you will, lies at home. It cannot be forced here." "She would rather that you die than join with someone else?" "No. He would not," said Spock. Chiz Yazzie looked up with some surprise. Spock continued, "But you would be joined to one whose heart is with another. And this joining is for life. It cannot be undone. This is not a simple matter of ceremony or sexual congress. It is a bond for life." "Spock, bidden or unbidden, all spirits are joined for life. There may be those that we treasure above others, but if a man's heart is with one spirit of the world, than it is with all spirits. What you say does not frighten me; in fact, I welcome it." He wiped his leathery hand across his chin in a most familiar gesture. "More that 20 years ago, my wife died. I loved her above all others and never thought to be as a man with another here on this earth. Although I know she is still of this land, I can no longer feel her around me. I can no longer even see her face. "For so long I have felt alone in the world I used to love. I had thought it would always be so. "There is a certain irony that it took the arrival of one so different to reunite me with the truth of my world. And there is a certain balance in finding my way back through him. "There are, among my people, some so gifted as to see the world through both the eyes of man and the eyes of woman. To these people are many more truths of existence revealed. They make the best medicine men. "Such a gift has not been granted to me. Perhaps until now." A shudder ran the length of Spock's traitorous body at the tacit offer and all that it implied. Spock said, "Regardless of any other occurrence, if I live, I still must attempt to make the journey back to my nation. I do not know what effect that will have on you." Chiz Yazzie replied, "If we are joined, I shall go with you." Flawlessly logical. "So one would think," Spock agreed. "But the paradox is that you cannot. Where I must go, you cannot go; your place is here. Your people need the balance of one with both the knowledge of the past and the ability to change and grow in harmony with foreign ideas or foreign people. "When the time comes for me to go, you may experience some...effects. I cannot predict what they may be." "Yes, the future is uncertain," Chiz Yazzie quoted. "I will be well. I have come through worse. "And you? When you return to your nation already joined to another? How will it be?" With a gut wrenching shock, Spock realized they both spoke as though they had already made pact. Try as he might, he could not identify the moment where his decision had reversed. Fascinating. Spock said, "It will not affect me...at home. If I am able to return, what formed between us here will no longer exist. " "You said it could be only broken by death." There was no trace of concern in the old man's voice. Spock hesitated. "You will live out your natural life here, but where I go you cannot follow as you would cease to be there. And so our bond will also cease to be." "Because your love walks among the stars." Spock all but gasped. Had he been so very obvious? "Yes." "And you also walked among the stars," said Chiz Yazzie "Yes," said Spock. "You bleed green, and yet you bleed and die as one of us." Spock replied, "I am not a god. I am not one of the Holy People. I am fully mortal." He paused for emphasis. "But I am not like you." Like a thunderclap out of the clear blue sky, Chiz Yazzie grinned widely. His parched face threatened to crack at the strain. His eyes sparkled with an energy Spock had never seen before in the old man. A sound that was perilously close to laughter came from his nose. "That, my friend, may be the only thing you have said that I do not believe." Composed again, the healer arose and swept the piles into several small skin pouches. He placed them all into the basket. He picked one small packet out of the basket and tucked it into his jerkin. "As it seems that it is the normal ways of your people that caused the imbalance, I doubt that the answer lies there. Perhaps you should try the ways of the Dine instead. They have served you well so far. Come," he said. He picked up a bulky waterskin and strode off in the direction of the fire. Spock hesitated. To do what he was now contemplating was an abhorrence to the inherently monogamous Vulcan katra. He did not even know if it was possible. His body, everything that was not of the mind screamed for it, but the bonding center was intended to respond to one other alone. His had already been primed for the one it had chosen. There could no longer be any doubt as to that. On Vulcan with a learned healer the pon farr could be survived without the selected mate, but he knew not whether a psi-null human and a hybrid half-Vulcan would stand a chance. He looked across the broad expanse of the desert, rosy in the rays of the early morning sun. It was strangely comforting, not so dissimilar to the sands of home. Not such a bad end. Aside from the horror of the plak tow. He would never know if it was logic, friendship, or simple biology which lead him to the choice he made. He did not know if it was the ultimate betrayal or the ultimate loyalty. After a long moment, he followed the healer over the hill. ~end part 2 of 4 -- Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCL/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:ASCL-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From ???@??? Mon Jan 05 01:42:01 2004 Status: U Return-Path: Received: from n23.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.79]) by condor (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1aDoqw2CT3NZFjK0 for ; Sun, 4 Jan 2004 22:41:24 -0800 (PST) X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1977044-12814-1073284883-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.