12-16-2024, 06:43 AM
Qi nodded, taking a long sip from his mug. A warm, comfortable fire was starting to build in his stomach. He felt close to Thorn, despite their relatively short time together. After all, she’d seen him fall under the spell of both of their Orion captors. If it weren’t for her abilities as an engineer and a fighter, he might have never broken free.
“I guess things are moving pretty quickly in one sense, but Lumis and I have known each other since we were in school together. We helped each other with our applications when we applied to the Symbiosis Commission. He was matched with a symbiont; I wasn’t. I’m sure you can guess what happened next.”
Qi grimaced. He was skimming over a lot. His mother’s family wouldn’t say it directly, but he knew that they blamed his human father for his rejection. At the time, he’d felt lost, like an alien on his own home world. Starfleet offered him an opportunity to search for answers in the stars. Since then, he’d met many brilliant people, many of whom were similarly lost themselves.
“I thought we were done for good, but some relationships are like a moon,” he circled his finger in the air, imitating an orbit. “On Pleione IV, their moon’s apogee is so far from the planet that it can’t be seen with the naked eye, and its orbit takes almost a century to complete. By the time the moon returns to the sky, the inhabitants of the planet and the moon have grown up, had kids, even died. They have a saying there: ‘like chasing the moon’, meaning to expend a lot of effort on something that was going to happen eventually.
“Lumis and I drifted apart, but now we’re back again as different people. Maybe it’s temporary, but I plan to enjoy it while it lasts. I’d love for you to meet him sometime.”
Qi smiled, feeling vulnerable but comfortable. If he had said this much to anyone else, he probably would have been embarrassed.
== Tag! ==
“I guess things are moving pretty quickly in one sense, but Lumis and I have known each other since we were in school together. We helped each other with our applications when we applied to the Symbiosis Commission. He was matched with a symbiont; I wasn’t. I’m sure you can guess what happened next.”
Qi grimaced. He was skimming over a lot. His mother’s family wouldn’t say it directly, but he knew that they blamed his human father for his rejection. At the time, he’d felt lost, like an alien on his own home world. Starfleet offered him an opportunity to search for answers in the stars. Since then, he’d met many brilliant people, many of whom were similarly lost themselves.
“I thought we were done for good, but some relationships are like a moon,” he circled his finger in the air, imitating an orbit. “On Pleione IV, their moon’s apogee is so far from the planet that it can’t be seen with the naked eye, and its orbit takes almost a century to complete. By the time the moon returns to the sky, the inhabitants of the planet and the moon have grown up, had kids, even died. They have a saying there: ‘like chasing the moon’, meaning to expend a lot of effort on something that was going to happen eventually.
“Lumis and I drifted apart, but now we’re back again as different people. Maybe it’s temporary, but I plan to enjoy it while it lasts. I’d love for you to meet him sometime.”
Qi smiled, feeling vulnerable but comfortable. If he had said this much to anyone else, he probably would have been embarrassed.
== Tag! ==