USS Venture: Intergalactic Girl Talk

Posted on Sun Jun 21st, 2020 @ 4:19am by Lieutenant Kalin Brennan-Griffin PhD & Cailus Griffin & Lieutenant Ziara Rrareth & Eva Griffin
Edited on on Wed Jun 24th, 2020 @ 7:42am

Mission: New Moon Rising
Location: Shae's Quarters (Pandora)/ Ziara's Quarters (Venture)
Timeline: Current

Ziara sat at the communications console. It had taken a little bit to get the call set up. She pressed the button and the spinning starfleet symbol appeared as it connected to the other ship. As the other two appeared on the other screen, Ziara smiled at her friends and waved kinda stupidly. “Hey!”

Thousands of lightyears away on the USS Pandora, Cailus Griffin was busy engaged in one of his favourite activities: watching Shae and her daughter, Aoife, struggle with dinner. Tonight, Aoife appeared to be firmy victorious: she was determined not to eat, and not even Shae’s most persuasive cooing was having an effect. Seated at Shae’s desk, well outside the danger zone, it was all Cailus could do to not laugh when he heard Aoife’s little growls.

As Ziara’s cheerful visage popped up on the wall-mounted screen, Cailus tossed back a friendly look in greeting.

“Sorry Ziara,” he said with teasing sternness, trying hard to control his smile as he gestured at the mother and child. “We knew you’d be calling, but as you can see, Shae has a mutiny on her hands.”

“Ziara!” Shae said with excitement, making one last attempt to ensure that some food made it into Aoife’s belly, but the little imp was too clever and food went flying. With a terse smile, Shae started picking food out of her hair. “Hey Ziara, you want this little mini-me? I promise, she’s perfectly well behaved,” she said in jest, trying her best not to let her frustrations get the better of her.

“I see,” Ziara said with a smile at Cailus and Shae. “I take it she’s not being a cute little vixen at the moment.” She said, trying not to slip into baby talk at seeing Aoife. “She’s grown since last I saw her and more coordinated too. I take it you are settling into your new assignments easily enough?” Ziara asked.

“Oh, she has no problems be perfectly adorable, an adorable pain in my backside,” Shae replied with a chuckle. She got up to get a washcloth, then quickly returned. “Alright you, I think we’re done with dinner, yeah?” she said to Aoife as she washed up her messy face, then released Aoife from her chair, setting her on the floor to play so Shae could clean up the dinner dishes. “We’re settling in well,” Shae finally answered Ziara’s question. “How about you? You transferred to the Venture, right?”

Ziara nodded, “Right, it’s my first time on a Galaxy class. There are so many people here. The Tornado looks like a dinghy in comparison. The quarters are larger too, and more empty without Riaan with me. The department is so much bigger, I struggle to get flight time with all the paperwork. I swear, they promote me one inch above chief of flight control and I’ll quit. I’m not here to read reports and sign my name a million times. If I’ve got my own ship, I can fly her whenever I want.”

“Aye, I can relate! I never realized just how much paper work goes into running a department,” Shae replied with a sympathetic nod.

Looking between the two women, Cailus shrugged self-consciously. “It gets easier after the first few months, especially if you delegate. The problem is finding new ways to trick your deputy chiefs into taking the boring stuff.” Standing up, he nodded amicably at Ziara, almost but not quite smiling; he found himself pleasantly surprised by how good it was to see that bubbly Caitian again. “Speaking of which, I’ve got a drill scheduled to see how my security teams handle sim combat at forty five degrees celsius. It’s good to see you, Ziara.” Turning to give Shae’s shoulder a quick squeeze, he added more softly, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Is it time for you to go already?” Shae asked, glancing at her watch; he had warned he’s be doing a drill tonight, but it seemed time had managed to get away from her. “Stars above, it feels like there’s never enough hours in the day,” she said with a sigh, then offered him a smile in farewell. “Don’t work too hard.”

“It was good to see you again Cailus. Good luck with the drill.” Ziara said, waving goodbye to him.

With a snort of dark amusement, Cailus moved to the door as he said in parting, “Wish them luck, you mean. This drill is pure hell…”

“At forty-five degrees celsius, it certainly sounds like it.” Ziara said with a laugh, glad that she was safely far away from that drill. Ziara waited until he was out of the room and gave Shae a look, “So you and Cailus…” She suggested.

“Yes…” Shae replied with a blush. “We, uh, well… just kind of happened while we were visiting my family on Earth,” she explained sheepishly, not really knowing what else to say.

“Isn’t he a bit old for you? I mean, he’s over a hundred and twenty.” Ziara said teasingly, then more seriously, “Good for you. He’s a good man and if you stick together, he’ll take care of you.”

“He’s 36 and I’m older than him,” Shae stated matter-of-factly. “He is so stern, but then he makes me melt when he’s being sweet… And Aoife adores him! There’s some days I think she prefers him to me!”

Ziara nodded, “That’s how it is when you have kids. Some days they like you, some days they don’t. You still have to change the diapers and feed them on both kinds of days. Don’t worry when she doesn’t listen to you, she’s always watching you. The kind of man who you choose and how you choose is going to be a model for her, even if she doesn’t always realize it.”

“Aye, I know, I know,” Shae said with a nod as she finished tidying up the dinner dishes and sending everything back through the replicator. “Though lately I think she’s just being stubborn as an assertion of her personality; she becoming much less subdued, and she’s no longer afraid to give us a piece of her mind! Honestly, it’s downright adorable and I have to resist the urge to laugh.”

Ziara remember the much more subdued Aoife on the Tornado. She was barely crawling around then. “I remember when she cornered Riaan once while we were babysitting for you. She was so cute and Riaan was so consternated that she had been out maneuvered.”

Shae giggled merrily. “Yes, she’s really getting around now. She doesn’t really crawl, she kind of scoots, but she can definitely move! And we’ve been doing therapy to build up the strength in her legs and she can support her own weight now! Not enough balance yet to stand on her own, she still needs the support, but she is trying, the dear thing,” Shae said fondly as she watched Aoife playing with her toys. She got a cup of tea and brought it to her desk where she could continue to chat with Ziara and keep an eye on her precocious child.

“So, you said Riaan isn’t with you?” Shae asked curiously, sipping at her tea as she settled into her chair.

Ziara nodded, slightly sadly. “Well, that’s a long story. Riaan’s still on the Tornado, working with Caradan and Ivy. Did you get to know Ivy before you left? Riaan and Caradan are together, I’m not a monomuggle, but Riaan was and she’s still stretching her wings. We decided it was alright for me to go on to a different ship. Being with Caradan is really good for Riaan and being here on the Venture is a dream come true for me. She’s also really happy with the work that she’s been doing. I just miss her, a lot. For example, I wanted to invite a crewmate over for dinner, but I can’t cook. Riaan is the one that does all of that. We are trying to communicate routinely, but connections are spotty, even though we are both working the same area of space. Somehow replicating a warm steak is not the same as Riaan cooking a warm steak. Then there is that the bed feels so empty without her. I don’t know if you and Cailus have reached that point, but once you do, it’s strange sleeping alone again.” Ziara explained.

“Aye, I met Ivy; I was there with Riaan and that botanist fellow when she was first brought to the lab, we were nursing her back to health,” Shae said with a nod. “But wait, Riaan is with Caradan? I could have sworn that Caradan and Mindo were getting physical,” she pointed out with some confusion. She knew Mindo and his kind were very open minded, but she was under the impression that Caradan wanted to start something serious with him. “Oh, never mind, I suppose it’s not all that important; the point of this is you miss Riaan… Do you two have plans for reuniting? Could be that if you have something to look forward to it might help pass the time. Or a hobby,” she suggested, carefully skirting around the topic of her relationship with Cailus; she was still shy about talking about her own relationships, especially since this was her first real relationship, so she decided to keep the juicy details to herself.

“They were, Riaan’s not very physical, unless it is with someone she really trusts. Mindo makes a very good bunkmate, but he’s not as good at the emotional side of things. I think that Mindo was the physical aspects, while Riaan is a bit more of the emotional aspects. I’m not sure that makes sense, but it does. We are planning on getting back together when our tour is over. Just a short little separation, hopefully. Things get a bit more complicated when there are three people to be worried about.” Ziara explained.

“No, that makes sense,” Shae assured her with a nod. “Relationships can be a funny thing; no one person can satisfy all your needs 100% of the time, and it can be exhausting for both sides to expect that of someone. So nothing wrong with a bit of a love triangle there, as long as everyone is happy,” she offered with a smile. Shae was utterly dedicated to Cailus, so while she didn’t find her own words to ring true for herself, she was still open minded enough to know that sometimes it was what worked for other people. “The point is, I guess, that you and Riaan are okay with this arrangement.”

“We are, if we weren't then I’d still be on the Tornado. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Ziara said, “Ok, enough with the mushy relationship stuff for the moment, even though you haven’t told me near enough about you and Cailus. My only mushy romantic thing will be that Riaan was the one who named the Dream Girl and posed for the nose art. She said, ‘If you're going to be dreaming of her while you’re with me, you might as well be dreaming of me while you are with her.’ Here’s a picture of it.” Ziara said, sending over a picture of a fast looking shuttle and then a closeup of the words ‘dream girl’ with a rather saucy stylized image of Riaan in a sort of a dream cloud..

“Oh… oh my,” Shae said with a light blush. “And she posed for this? Good girl, Riaan!” Shae added with a smile. She paused to take a sip of her tea; clearly Ziara wanted some details about her and Cailus, but Shae wasn’t the sort to go bragging about her romance, not that she’d had many, so she didn’t really know what to say. “If you really must know about Cailus and I…” Shae started with a sigh. “It just started as lunch; he was just trying to be a friend and bridge a gap between me and the crew. After a while, it happened that we were having lunch every day and he was growing quite protective of Aoife and me. Then we got to talking about our pasts, talking about going home, you know, for closure… He didn’t want to go to Mars alone, I didn’t want to go to Earth alone, so it only seemed natural to go together, for solidarity I guess. Then he met my family and… I don’t know, it just happened. I guess looking back on things, I can see how I fancied him in the days leading up to the trip, but I didn’t realize it at the time and I certain had no illusions of wanting to start something, but then there we were on the kitchen table…” Shae eyes went wide and she blushed deeply when she realized what had just come from her mouth. “Oh stars above, did I actually say that?!”

Ziara grinned devilishly. “Yes you did. I think it’s very romantic. You two slowly but inevitably falling in love over lunches and then realizing it during a trip to a beautiful place together. Making love where they finally realize the truth. Kitchen tables are too public and hard for a main course though.” There was a sense of joy in her words. Not for herself for hearing the salacious details, but for Shae and Cailus. As if them being happy together was what made her happy. She wanted the information not for gossip, but to share in their happiness. “So what happened after the kitchen table? With a place as beautiful as Ireland to be in, you probably had some awesome dates. Does your family know?”

“Oh yes, the family knows…” Shae replied with no shortage of embarrassment. Stars above, did they ever know… “And, uh, we actually didn’t get much time for a proper date; our transfers came in, so we didn’t have a lot of time for each other, I had to get in as much family time as I could before we had to leave. We’ve continued with our daily lunches, mainly because we’re so busy that sometimes it’s the only time we can get away to spend time with each other, although he did take me on a proper date once the Pandora left spacedock. Lovely evening, though Aoife kind of put a halt to things; night terror, unavoidable… But, uh, we’re just taking things one day at a time, figuring things out as we go along.”

Ziara nodded sympathetically, “Dating Riaan during the academy was much the same. I was gone most weekends, and then during the week we had our courses. Some Days our only contact was passing each other in the hall and giving a kiss in passing. It wasn’t fun when we were going through it, but looking back on it now, well, I wouldn't trade it for the world. One of my sisters has night terrors, we adopted her after the occupation from Bajor. I think the worst thing for me about it was that while she was in the grip, we couldn’t reach her no matter how much we wanted to. She never talked about her life before joining our family.” Ziara shook her head, “Sorry, that’s not a happy place to go. So what happened with trying to get him closure on Mars?” Ziara asked.

“It’s alright, I understand, and thankfully all of Aoife’s episodes have been short lived; she usually just needs some reminder that I’m here and there’s maybe a few tears and then she’s back to sleep. It’s always been my hope that as she grows older, she’ll forget all the pain that haunts her; she’s young enough now, it should all just fade away,” Shae replied with a hopeful smile. “And Mars was our first stop. We were going to stay with my brother at Utopia Planitia, but as it turns out Cailus has some surviving family and we stayed with them. Lovely people, I look forward to seeing them again sometime! But it was hard for Cailus; he learned a few details about… about his wife and daughter, and I don’t think he was really ready to hear it, so I’m glad I was there so he didn’t have to face it alone. While we were there, Cailus called in a personal favor; apparently his family married into influence, well, at least an admiral, and she put in a transfer for both of us. I think it was at that point that we were starting to realize that there was more than friendship there between us, but we weren’t willing to say anything about it yet. Sophia noticed, though; I never knew the admiralty could be quite a devious as she! Anyway, she suggested that since the transfer could come in quite quickly, we should go on to Earth so I could spend time with my family, and we ended up staying there a couple of days before having to ship out.”

ZIara looked at the clock, “Good, time flies when you are having fun. It looks like I’ve got to get back to my shift soon.” Ziara paused, “I’m glad we were able to set this up, it’s good to hear from you and Cailus. So many times once someone leaves your ship you never hear from them again. Oh, and when you see Mindo remind him that his bunkmate doesn’t like the interruption of being on different ships.”

“I will,” Shae said with a nod. “You take care, and stay safe.”


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Guest Starring:

Lt(j.g) Ziara Rrareth
Chief of Flight Operations, USS Venture
as played by Alonzo