Fic - Archaic Song
Title: Archaic Song
Author: marymac
Challenge: Uhura Is Awesome Fest
For prompt #116: I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
-"To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence", James Elroy Flecker
Uhura and two lovers in bed, conversing about a poem she read along these lines, or another culture's love poem to two or more people (an Andorian love poem to the author's three spouses?) or so on.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Uhura/Spock/Kirk
Warnings: None I can think of. Excessive English Lit?
Word count: 1058
Summary: Poetry and early morning light.
Disclaimer: Don't own
Notes: Betaed by doyle_sb4 , who really should not encourage me.
Archaic Song
It isn't a formal thing, as such. There was never a discussion (and she never thinks about that, the way they can between them talk everything in space to death, but never talked about this, because then she’ll have to make it make sense). But there are times like this, only on shore leaves, the leaves that come after the hardest of hard weeks and months of missions, when Jim stays with them all day, into the night, and the conversations slide into intimacy and intimacy into sex, into intimacy, into conversation again with the growing light. Rousing in a comfortable haze, Spock's arm curled warm under her neck, the end of her braid spilled over Jim's shoulder, caught between desert and prairie, Nyota hums quietly, barely a tune, a breath of an air and tangle of syllables. Jim's eyes flick open, shards of blue in the gilded glow of dawn, fingers trailing idly across her skin.
'What is that?'
'A song. A poem. The language, they're the same thing. An old one. I learned it for a presentation once.'
Spock murmurs, 'Xeno-L 204, Performance.' He isn't awake, really, information supplied on automatic, like the twist of his body that wraps him round her and lets his hand slide up Jim's side.
She tangles her fingers absently in his hair. 'I knew it long before, in translation. I learned it in the original for that class. It's beautiful. A love-letter to the future, from one who knew what would come, though they would not see it.'
'They saw the future?' There is gentle amusement and genuine curiosity in Jim's words. Something he doesn't believe in, quite, but then he took the word of mysterious stranger from a future that isn't theirs and bet all of their lives on it, so he almost might be convinced. Spock probably never will be and Nyota herself takes all these things as they are, proof or disproof as it comes, whatever it takes to understand.
'No. They just saw how things were changing.'
'Say it for me. For us.' She'd argue with him, on principle, because she does, when it's not important, but there is a soft sound of agreement against her neck and she gives in.
'I don't know if I remember all of it.'
‘I bet you do remember it,’ says Jim. Jim would dare the stars themselves if he thought he’d win. Spock radiates amusement, gives her a gentle mental push.
Deep breath, a shift against the pillows, a twist to free an escaped strand of hair, and she begins, hums each line and then softly gives the sense of it freed from the confines of classroom translation to turn the story she first found in the words as a girl (she isn't a girl now, any more than Jim is a boy, or Spock a raw young man, not anymore). The story told as it should be.
'He writes to speak across the years, the centuries, for his song to travel where he will not.
The inventions of the future do not matter, he says, why should he care for flight or metalwork or architecture? Why should travel across the seas or the sky or the stars be held important by one long dead? There are things more important in life, things there is no reason to look forward to a future without.'
Spock is awake now, she knows without looking, head tilted back, gaze dark on her face. She is pinned between their attentive eyes, one captive to the song, the other the story, both silent (in this, they are both still very little boys). This is the power of the storyteller, the translator, to wind the listener into a world not their own. So she sings again, tells some more of the tale of an ancient poet, writing far away and long ago.
'His question is not one of inanimate things. He asks of people, of life. He asks of the future, "Is there wine? Art? Good food? Music? Beloved friends? Dear lovers?" He asks if we have still the ideas of right and wrong, still have faith in whatever we believe. He asks, "Can you conquer all with your hope and imagination and faith, as the elders taught long ago?"'
Spock says so quietly they barely hear, the ghost of a planet in his words. 'With you, yes.'
Jim reaches to link his hand with hers against Spock's head. ‘We already did.’
Shivers run through her, because they did, they really did. And soon they will have to go out and do it again. She presses the shivers away, takes a breath. The story she loves has new weight now, as she meets Jim's eyes and Spock buries his face against her neck again.
'Go on.’
‘And then.’ She closes her eyes against their attention, ‘And then he says, “Read my words at night, alone. Read them in the day, to your loves.” He says, “I too was a reader, a poet, a singer, I was young.” And so he since he cannot see us, or greet us, or take our hands, as he would do a fellow traveller, he sends his words, his heart and soul instead. He asks that we understand. If we understand.’
She looks between them again as she stops, watches Spock’s hand trace the lines of Jim’s hip, then hers, drawing some thoughtful invisible line between them as he murmurs, ‘He was right, about what is important.’
‘Very right,’ she answers, turning into his touch as Jim reaches to mirror the gesture, their arms wrapping around her in warm and heavy comfort against the weight of new understanding. The thought of what they’ve done, who they are, how they would look to their ancestors, if they could see them now, is running between them, unspoken.
Jim breaks the silence (it always comes to Jim to break the silences), 'So, how would you answer him?' There is mischief in his eyes, but his voice is as serious as it has ever been on the bridge. She thinks about it for a minute. 'I think I would say, "I spoke your words to my lovers and they understood."'
Author: marymac
Challenge: Uhura Is Awesome Fest
For prompt #116: I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
-"To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence", James Elroy Flecker
Uhura and two lovers in bed, conversing about a poem she read along these lines, or another culture's love poem to two or more people (an Andorian love poem to the author's three spouses?) or so on.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Uhura/Spock/Kirk
Warnings: None I can think of. Excessive English Lit?
Word count: 1058
Summary: Poetry and early morning light.
Disclaimer: Don't own
Notes: Betaed by doyle_sb4 , who really should not encourage me.
Archaic Song
It isn't a formal thing, as such. There was never a discussion (and she never thinks about that, the way they can between them talk everything in space to death, but never talked about this, because then she’ll have to make it make sense). But there are times like this, only on shore leaves, the leaves that come after the hardest of hard weeks and months of missions, when Jim stays with them all day, into the night, and the conversations slide into intimacy and intimacy into sex, into intimacy, into conversation again with the growing light. Rousing in a comfortable haze, Spock's arm curled warm under her neck, the end of her braid spilled over Jim's shoulder, caught between desert and prairie, Nyota hums quietly, barely a tune, a breath of an air and tangle of syllables. Jim's eyes flick open, shards of blue in the gilded glow of dawn, fingers trailing idly across her skin.
'What is that?'
'A song. A poem. The language, they're the same thing. An old one. I learned it for a presentation once.'
Spock murmurs, 'Xeno-L 204, Performance.' He isn't awake, really, information supplied on automatic, like the twist of his body that wraps him round her and lets his hand slide up Jim's side.
She tangles her fingers absently in his hair. 'I knew it long before, in translation. I learned it in the original for that class. It's beautiful. A love-letter to the future, from one who knew what would come, though they would not see it.'
'They saw the future?' There is gentle amusement and genuine curiosity in Jim's words. Something he doesn't believe in, quite, but then he took the word of mysterious stranger from a future that isn't theirs and bet all of their lives on it, so he almost might be convinced. Spock probably never will be and Nyota herself takes all these things as they are, proof or disproof as it comes, whatever it takes to understand.
'No. They just saw how things were changing.'
'Say it for me. For us.' She'd argue with him, on principle, because she does, when it's not important, but there is a soft sound of agreement against her neck and she gives in.
'I don't know if I remember all of it.'
‘I bet you do remember it,’ says Jim. Jim would dare the stars themselves if he thought he’d win. Spock radiates amusement, gives her a gentle mental push.
Deep breath, a shift against the pillows, a twist to free an escaped strand of hair, and she begins, hums each line and then softly gives the sense of it freed from the confines of classroom translation to turn the story she first found in the words as a girl (she isn't a girl now, any more than Jim is a boy, or Spock a raw young man, not anymore). The story told as it should be.
'He writes to speak across the years, the centuries, for his song to travel where he will not.
The inventions of the future do not matter, he says, why should he care for flight or metalwork or architecture? Why should travel across the seas or the sky or the stars be held important by one long dead? There are things more important in life, things there is no reason to look forward to a future without.'
Spock is awake now, she knows without looking, head tilted back, gaze dark on her face. She is pinned between their attentive eyes, one captive to the song, the other the story, both silent (in this, they are both still very little boys). This is the power of the storyteller, the translator, to wind the listener into a world not their own. So she sings again, tells some more of the tale of an ancient poet, writing far away and long ago.
'His question is not one of inanimate things. He asks of people, of life. He asks of the future, "Is there wine? Art? Good food? Music? Beloved friends? Dear lovers?" He asks if we have still the ideas of right and wrong, still have faith in whatever we believe. He asks, "Can you conquer all with your hope and imagination and faith, as the elders taught long ago?"'
Spock says so quietly they barely hear, the ghost of a planet in his words. 'With you, yes.'
Jim reaches to link his hand with hers against Spock's head. ‘We already did.’
Shivers run through her, because they did, they really did. And soon they will have to go out and do it again. She presses the shivers away, takes a breath. The story she loves has new weight now, as she meets Jim's eyes and Spock buries his face against her neck again.
'Go on.’
‘And then.’ She closes her eyes against their attention, ‘And then he says, “Read my words at night, alone. Read them in the day, to your loves.” He says, “I too was a reader, a poet, a singer, I was young.” And so he since he cannot see us, or greet us, or take our hands, as he would do a fellow traveller, he sends his words, his heart and soul instead. He asks that we understand. If we understand.’
She looks between them again as she stops, watches Spock’s hand trace the lines of Jim’s hip, then hers, drawing some thoughtful invisible line between them as he murmurs, ‘He was right, about what is important.’
‘Very right,’ she answers, turning into his touch as Jim reaches to mirror the gesture, their arms wrapping around her in warm and heavy comfort against the weight of new understanding. The thought of what they’ve done, who they are, how they would look to their ancestors, if they could see them now, is running between them, unspoken.
Jim breaks the silence (it always comes to Jim to break the silences), 'So, how would you answer him?' There is mischief in his eyes, but his voice is as serious as it has ever been on the bridge. She thinks about it for a minute. 'I think I would say, "I spoke your words to my lovers and they understood."'