ENTERPRISE - JL | Arrain tr'Verelan, Princess Xue'Daio - "Doubt Thou The Stars Are Fire"

Posted on Sat Aug 15th, 2015 @ 6:57am by Xue'Daio Nox

2,361 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Agua Mala

Sweet darkness rose to claim the sea. Night’s dark veil shrouded the smoky rim where surf met sand, and the great open waters simply sighed in resignation, yawning in the tiring pursuit of that which they’d never attain. Darkness, however, was never pure. It was always punctuated by beacons of twinkling starlight as it played across the satin heavens the way a one’s hand would stroke and caress the curves and liens of their lover’s body, the way an artist’s brush would dance across canvas. That night was nearly an exception to that rule. While the stars had indeed come out to peer down at the weary world of Apsha with great interest and envy, the moon remained yet unseen. It was her cycle of rest, and she left the sky daunting and afraid. The stars quaked in apprehension as they looked upon the beach that night, watching as the young Princess lit the sands with her shivering grace, and her silver light.

Perched atop a rock that jetted nearly a hundred feet into the dangerous ink black waters of the sea, Xue’Daio could easily have taken the place of the moon. Clad in the simplest of metallic white gowns, her pale complexion burned bright as starlight against the awesome onyx and cobalt backdrop of the night. Her hair was loose, its soft silken length being tossed by the spray dusted breezes coming off the water – an image best left for fairy tales, far too pure to have ever warranted belonging to such a creature. But it did, and the stars couldn't help but sigh in wonder, watching as their fallen sister simply allowed herself the freedom to be and breathe far far away from anyone and anything. Or so she’d thought.

Her fingers tightened against the jagged rocks beneath her. Rubbed the wrong way, they’d turn her perfect alabaster image into ribbons of scarlet – but the feel of eyes pressed against the hollow between her bare shoulder blades left her quivering. Over the roar of the waves and the sighs of the wind, she couldn't hear his footfalls – but she knew he was there. The rose colored depths of her irises were gently obscured by the perfect snow of her eyelids and the heavy veil of her silvery lashes, silently willing him away while the beacons above all but shouted at the Shadow Prince’s benevolent life force steadily encroaching in on their flesh and blood reincarnation. In the long nights since their last encounter, Xue had come to realize that what transpired had not been the casting of some horrendous incantation. She hadn't been enchanted by some form of black sorcery or witchcraft, in fact she highly doubted he’d ever dabble in such fallacy, but rather something far more unique had happened. They’d forged a bond, titanium-clad, that had left her with a panoply of his every dream and memory; the very essence of the Cimmerian man.

Death… Cruel, cold, and permanent, would be the only way to sever the binds that knit him to her in ways she’d begun considering more of a haunting than some pervasive infringement on her troubled and savage psyche. A stronger gust of frigid sea air blasted against her delicately sculpted face, and she gasped as she was thrown from her own thoughts and firmly rooted back in the obfuscating reality of that moment in time – back to that pivotal moment where she’d allowed him close enough to bury her should he so desire. “Voi?”(why?) she asked the simple question in his native tongue, almost certain that the zephyrs would carry it away long before it could reach his ears.

It was hard not to look into every shadow on this world. It was a perilous place of strange beings that Maec would have well wished to avoid. If his encounter with the princess was any indication of these people he had little desire to familiarize himself with their culture…such…he closed his eyes as the image of his recent dream flashed into his mind. His cold hands around a throat, strangling the life from that monster…or…mother? He opened his eyes and shivered wondering how such an image infiltrated his psyche. This world was a nightmare to him represented in the dark waters of this near desolate stretch of beach.

The thunderous roar of the waves was to be her only answer, and the sea-breeze gripped her face by the chin to turn it towards him. From over her alabaster shoulder, the moon-child's glowing eyes of dusty-rose pierced through the magnificent darkness to take in the sight of his face. They searched in uncomfortable silence for a few moments longer before Xue carefully got to her feet and picked her way back over the sharp, slippery jetty rocks. Each step required precision and grace, something the heavy gales threatened to upset as they caught her dress like a sail, pressing it against the back of her nubile body as she defied the elements and continued her approach. "Voi?" She repeated when she came to rest before the Romulan, tilting her head and blinking up at the glittering dark voids of his eyes. Why... Why did they now share such a horrendous obligation to one another; holding their deepest and most secret of memories near to the pits of their own souls. Why... Why had he left the safe sanctuary of his room to precariously stand there on that treacherous breakwater. There were so many reasons she asked the Shadow Prince 'why', but as her lips pursed back together in their natural and delectable pout, she hardly expected him to have an answer, let alone give one to her.

It was as if the very elements were mocking him. Maec could smell the decaying scent of that pugnacious princess’ attitude. He eyed her briefly like a hawk eyes a wolf bearing down on its mark- with caution but fury. For some reason he hated this woman- resented her for reasons he did not know…and yet…he could feel something about her. Foreign and strange. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it. What was this emotion? Certainly not his own.
Xue shivered beneath half-lidded eyes as the sound of water booming against the jetty gave way to the resounding hiss of foam and water as it raced up and over the sharp, black rocks to reach the brave souls perilously perched atop them. While her skin prickled at the sensation of the sea’s frigid, briny fingers reaching through the thin fabric of her dress to wrap themselves around her ankles, she dared not move from the spot she’d claimed as hers before still silent Romulan. For so long she’d heard only that the rest of the universe was inferior, dank, and daft. So often the Romulan race had been portrayed as scavenging jackals; lost, ignorant, violent, and primitive – and yet here before her stood a creature that was anything but. He was ruthless, cunning, even, but tempered by a measure of intelligence and reason that seemed to defy all logic, rhyme, and reason. She could see if burning in the dark embers of his eyes, hear it in the steady hammering of his infernal heart as it beat a tattoo in his chest.

He knew the darkness that threatened to overtake her; the pain, the worry, the strife, the loveless nature of her entire existence – and she, in return, had shouldered the burden of his darkest hours.

The tide was turning… Not the water surging towards the shore in violent undulations, but the metaphorical one that resided within each of them. It threatened to consume and drown them, to grab them and drag them far out to a sea made turbulent by emotional chaos and a combined knowledge that should have never been born. Xue could feel him, his essence, his emotion. It coursed through her psyche in an aurora of colors, twisting and turning in ways the young Stenellis had given up her attempts to repress them and simply had acquiesced to demands of whatever link had been forged between them. In many ways the ‘why?’ didn’t matter nearly as much as the ‘how?’ – but even then she knew there simply would never be an easy answer.

It was a tide of revolution tainted by the way they had come to evolve, and she; the warm-blooded incarnation of the moon and stars, had been torn asunder by what shouldn’t have ever been. It was… treasonous, venomous, impious, and a thousand other ‘ous’es that could and would easily define what was and what would be. None of them stopped her as she felt her shivering body lift on tip toe, rising in the same elegant fashion of a cresting swell, to bring her lips to those of the Romulan in a kiss so whisper soft it nearly failed to exist altogether.

It was like fire- his body sudden flared with a torrent of emotion that caused him to mentally reel and pull away from the woman. He turned to her- stared at that dotted visage as a few glossy drops of moisture seeps across the contours of his lips. Anger? No…this burning was different. His face felt hot and he suddenly turned away from her unsure of what to make of his reaction. What am I doing? What did she do to me? As he looked towards the dark ocean some depraved emotion he didn’t knew existed was encouraging him to turn around and look at the Princess… He shivered and then accepted the embrace.

Seconds had ticked past, and each one had been an eternity where the moon-child had watched the shadow-lord with eyes as wide as saucers. Her breath had caught when she'd realized what she'd done, and just how damning such an action could have been -- but something burned within and between them... Something fierce and just as unable to be harnessed as it was unable to be squelched. In his gaze it was raw and unfettered, unabashed, and downright feral as his coal black eyes followed the gentle contours of her face. Neither one tried to back pedal into the depraved depths of denial, nor did they gloss it over with pretentious false hatred, though the line they walked along ran fine along those grounds; it burned just as intense, but hardly as detrimental... For now... Until such a secret broke.

The cold, wet wind, the sea, and the exalted stars above stood as the only witness to such taboo; the moment two titans allowed themselves to drop their proverbial armor and stand as nothing more than man and woman. Even in the confusion, there was relief... The first of it that Xue had felt since the night it had happened. That bond seemed only to grow stronger; now iron-clad and teflon coated by an emotion her mother swore would never find her. But he was there as living proof that such a thing existed in her world - that it could exist in her world. She felt his body relax against hers, allowing her to slide her arms around his waist and rest her chilled cheek against the breeze dampened cloth covering Maec's chest. Beneath her sensitive ear she could hear his heart beating a steady tattoo; yet another reminder of his mortality and just how delicate, and precious, life could be... And just how precarious a situation they were in so long as they were on Apsha... Or in Ascendancy space.

Shame. The feeling of shame hit him like boiling grease and he recoiled suddenly from the pale woman’s embrace. He shuddered at his own foolishness. What had he done? An alien…such a vile creature. Maec coughed and sputtered turning to face the tumbling waves of the ocean behind them. “I’m sorry.” He spoke the words bitterly but the tang was not directed at her but rather his own self. His own weakness. His own stupidity. “I need to return to the Enterprise.”

The swell of the man rising against and away from her sent Xue stumbling backwards a couple steps. She didn’t dare open her eyes, didn’t dare drink in the sight of the Romulan fighting against his own base instincts that which never should have come to pass. It was unnatural. Both races were so pure, so perfect, so… Xenophobic. Words struggled to reach the Princess’s coral hued lips, held by some imaginary fist in the pit of her throat as she worked to come to grips with every unfathomable emotion that had come to change the path of her existence.

Sorrow. It bloomed in blues and grays behind her tightly shut eyelids in clouds and mist that slowly twisted and undulated with the lavenders and purples of hope that dared to show their face in a time of such turmoil and uncertainty. She could feel his thoughts, the anguish, the trepid nature of him trying to come to grasps with what had happened – and she knew, in that moment, that he could glean the same from her. The miasma of feelings crested and swirled and through it all she reached for him. It wasn’t a physical reach, but rather touching of minds that simply whispered, “I never meant for this, would never have asked for it… But it’s here, it’s happened, and if I could change it… If I could free you… I would.”

The swelling water-like quality of her ethereal thoughts disappeared just as quickly as it came to be. Telepathy between Stenellis and Romulan was yet another sin committed by a child of the stars and sea – and she felt no further remorse as she carefully stepped around him, elegant as ever, to leave him on the darkened jetty.

---

Arrain Maec i'Ahaefvthe tr'Verelan
Chief of Security & Tactical
Exchange Officer
USS Enterprise

&

Xue'Daio Nox
Crowned Princess of the Stenellian Ascendancy
Lady of Aleine
Regent of Apsha
Stenellian Ambassador to the Federation

 

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