Taste What You Feel

[harbors_madness]

She was never silent. Her voice was one of metal and digital information, passing in constant measures across the length of her body. The tiny creaks of her elegant form as she hovered in planetary orbit, silent from the outside, loud from the inside. With a desire to hurry, the Klingon ship that had been her last real meal was being incorporated

Comments

[sehlatbear]

Spock approached his own meal more calmly. He had eaten adequate nutrition with Jim but... much had happened in the intervening time.

Amusement and a certain sober quality of observation warred within him to watch Ayel attack his meal. The mind work would account for a great deal of hunger; however, Spock suspected, there was more to his hunger than the exhaustion that could come with telepathic effort.

Growth needed fuel.

"The Narada. Is she also hungry?"

[loyalty_ever]

For the first time in far too long, he had someone other than crew to lose.

Getting Spock safely out of the room was the best thing he could do for all their sakes. He was too shocked to move, watching Spock fix the dishes, of all things. His liver tried to climb up into his mouth. He swallowed it down and checked his stride to keep from running through the door.

Once on the other side of it, they had time.

He isn't himself. The justification died on Ayel's tongue.

That was the entire reason Spock was here. And he seemed--nonplussed by custom, by things his society perhaps rightly rejected as impractical.

Offense couldn't be given if Spock refused to take it.

Ayel took a breath, let it out again. "Yes." That worked for both points. Fire and rain! The tips of his ears had begun to ache from all this blushing. "Yes, I--anything. Anything you'll tell me, I'll do."

The memory of Bones, a man he'd never met and never known except in terms of overwhelming love, brushed up against him. Kirk's memory. His now, too

[sehlatbear]

Spock had visited the monastery at Gol as he considered following the path to kohlinahr. At the time, the ascestic lifestyle had seemed simpler, more peaceful. Now he surveyed the spartan mattresses that Ayel stacked in an effort to demonstrate hospitality and allowed himself another reason for gratitude that the final path to his purging his emotions would not feel his feet.

That would not prevent him from showing the proper form, however. He nodded his thanks, was attentive to Ayel's instruction, was turning to find himself a space for more meditation when Ayel's tone stopped him.

Ael.

Spock straightened - his posture suggested dress uniforms, formal robes, both his status as Spock-son-of-Sarek and Spock, the first officer of the finest ship Starfleet had, second only to the greatest captain Starfleet had.

"Live long and prosper, Ael."

He regarded Nero's second for a moment longer.

"Spock."

He gave it the subtlety of the Vulcan pronounciation his human shipmates could not manage, though perhaps Uhura... A question for another

[harbors_madness]

She watched over them in silence, constantly keeping track of where they were within her. Spock could have had greater comfort as an organic within other locations, she surmised, but calculated there was a reason for Ael's choice. She took it upon herself to increase the temperature of the area, one of the few things she could apply that might be considered comfort.

But as long as she remained on the Enterprise, she was learning. Unfortunately, without supplies, she could do no more on her designs and increasing knowledge. Someone hungering could deal with the pangs and pains mentally without ever seeing it, but placed before a meal and told it was forbidden to eat made it far more difficult.

She could feel alha deep within her, a protected part of her that made the energy surrounding it nearly shiver with his entrance. She was cradling him in his sleep, harboring his body in safety.

But her hunger was growing, and remaining here without action harder and harder.

[loyalty_ever]

"Spock."

It was very clear, a harsher nuance to his name, clean and hard in a way humans couldn't manage--and an important difference in the way he spoke it, solemn. Standing straight enough to set a compass by the line of his backbone, grave and pure. An offering with the weight of full status behind it.

An even trade. Even trust. Ayel inclined his head nearly neck-deep--full courtesy--and repeated the name exactly as it was given to him.

"Peace and long life, Spock."

He would have at least one night of peace and quiet, for a certainty.

The catch of the locks was hard and final at Ayel's back.

Never enough time. It was always running out. She needs to eat. His lips pressed down flat; he bit them. And they'll want to talk about it.That was how it went. Ramifications of this, political implications of that, a maze of reasons in which "perhaps after further deliberation" was the same as "never