Mission 00X: Leaving the Nest – I Don't Paint Myself in to Corners Anymore
by Lieutenant Commander Kimberley Ellison-Swift (PhD) & Lieutenant Michala Stephens
Post Details
ON:
Kimberley Ellison-Swift wandered in to the Officer's Mess. As she stood and surveyed the room, it suddenly occurred to her that she had been aboard the ship for seven days now, and had yet to stop by this particular room. The thought frightened her a little bit. The realisation that she had spent so much time wrapped up in paperwork and the 'business' of the ship that she hadn't been able to socialise with the staff under her command, was discomforting to her.
Trying to ignore her guilt, she crossed over to the bar and ordered an orange juice. Having been served, she took a seat by the view port and looked out at the stars as they whizzed by. She loved watching the stars when the ship was at warp. It was fascinating - almost hypnotic...
"One Nine Three Zero hours," Michala dropped a knee onto the seat next to Ellison-Swift; sliding in to lean against the backrest, folding her arms over the top of it and sitting her chin down on unbuttoned cuff "Or thereabouts."
By draping herself over the chair's backrest the Valkyrie pilot could sit herself on her heel and pivot a nod about the chin out to Swift. Now advertising she was off the clock; the Ensign had swapped her tightly pulled updo for a more tousled variety. Her duty uniform had been thrown carelessly over her bed and swapped out for dressy leggings and a pseudo military jacket with sharp look shoulders and a cinch at the waist as part of the stylised cut. Rather than break out a 'so what am I doing here?' or intrudingly asked 'Not intruding?' Michala accessorised with a warm smile and ventured;
"First sighting of you here I think," Her head happily rested ontop of her arms but her eyes flitting about the Officer's Mess before casually wondering "How's things?"
"Yeah..." Kimberley replied with more than a hint of regret. "First venture." she said, "I guess it's safe to say that things have been busy." She looked around the place again, more for effect than out of necessity. "Nice in here." she commented.
Michala twisted at the waist to survey the evenning crowd and hoisted her eyebrows then dropped them as quickly, as if to intimate she thought it all a fair enough appraisal. There was something rueful about the Command Lieutenant when she spoke but the pilot believed those in charge thrived on 'busy' more than anything else.
"No rest." the Ensign agreed and casually left off the part about it applicable to the wicked.
"Indeed not." Kimberley smiled and took a sip from her orange juice, before moving the subject on. "So, after our conversation in the hanger earlier, I just realised that I've been so busy with, y'know, the business of getting the ship ready, that I've hardly had time to get to know anyone..." She shook her head a little and took another sip of her drink, her face adorned with an expression of weariness. "So," her face suddenly changing, as if suddenly reinvigorated, the tired look replaced with a professional façade, once again, "how are you finding things since the transition?"
"Oh I've been in a state of transition for the better part of my Starfleet career." Stephens expalined matter-of-factly then took to sucking on her bottom lip as she tended to when listenning or thinking or being at a loose end. She explained that "On Nag and now here I was breveted through a set-up period." The single pip she wore after the transition evidence of the change of circumstance "The faces change a little but the speeches are the same and so are the high expectations. You realise that in the flux things are pretty same same."
Michala wondered if she'd explained herself correctly and cast her eyes out the viewport to frown and consider before returning her attention to the XO:
"It's much easier now though," she reckonned "When you have people volunteering for more shifts when you ask- rather than volunteered."
Michala raised her chin and freed a hand to stow a few falling gold locks behind a ear before returning to rest position. The Lieutenant had betrayed some tiredness for but a moment and at what the Ensign didn't choose to guess at. The 'busy'? Not enough hours for everything? Not enough recognisable faces around the lounge scene? The pilot didn't realise she gave out a little shrug as answer. "You'll get to know people," Michala was sure "Apoc's a big ship and it takes everyone a while. You just have a better excuse to avoid karaoke night than most." Running an example out loud for one of the less often realised benefits of being busy:
"Eurovision night? Oh no- I wish I could but I just realised I have to go over some requisition forms for left handed spoons the Ops department made. 'Too busy to make a fool of yourself on open mic night' thy name is XO."
Kimberley laughed, a genuine hearty laugh. "Well," she managed to say eventually, "you certainly won't be seeing me up doing karaoke." suddenly her face became very stoic and serious, with all trace of emotion removed in less than a second. "Don't you know I'm a Vulcan?"
Michala half turned to sit properly in her seat, rather lounge and reassured the Lieutenant that she'd "Noticed," but then giggled out a lie that "Some of the best 'interpretations' of Billie Jean I've heard have come from Vulcans- terrible moonwalkers though."
"Let me ask you a question." Kimberley ventured. "There is a vacant wing commander post on this ship which you're clearly qualified for..." She looked directly at the blonde ensign, fully aware that she knew what the next part of the sentence was going to be. She chose to add it anyway, just to ensure that she had made her point. "And yet, I don't see your name on my list of applicants." She smiled again, gently, genuinely, "Why is that?"
The Starfleet pilot shifted in her seat, dropped her hands between her thighs and let her shoulders creep in on themselves as though she had found issue with the climate control setting. The smile she wore was the same but the warmth behind it dimmed and some mixture of firm disbelief at the Lieutenant's assessment of things with suspicion around the vacancy spiked and soured the energy she radiated out. Michala, to her credit, returned to chewing her lip and making as though an answer to the question was moments away rather quickly.
"I'm not after it." She said simply and truthfully but gave out before she could spin a casual remark from it.
"Okay." Kimberley replied simply, reading the ensign's face as she took yet another sip from her juice. Clearly she had struck a nerve with the young pilot, but decided not to press the matter any further. instead she turned away from Stephens and looking back out the window. "I tell you what," she said, without turning back, "there are days when I wonder how I ever got lucky enough to be able to do this job."
The Ensign cast an eye bar-ward but caught herself before she did anything like wave down staff for anything. Michala didn't get what the XO meant and wondered whether it were something self-aggrandizing she was supposed to buy into or giving thanks to the universe; in the way those with a healthy deference for the divine tended to. Then there were a whole lot of other ways to take it. Throw-away comment not the percentage option to go with though. With a casual flick of the head that did nothing much to cast a stray golden lock off her forehead Michala answered with an open-ended
"Yeah?" wondering whether the Ellison-Swift were the type of Vulcan to 'talk on' casually.
All of a sudden Kimberley felt a slight shift in emotion from the young pilot. Clearly her attempt to change the subject hadn't really had the effect that she had hoped. Unfortunately, she was now committed to that particular lone of conversation. "Yeah," she said, dismissively, "when I was young I always resented my father for being away with Starfleet all the time, but now I can understand why. Who wouldn't want to be out here among the stars?" It was almost a rhetorical question. She didn't really expect an answer from the pragmatic young woman sat opposite her. She had tried fishing with Stephens, and so far not caught anything, perhaps such an open topic would draw her out a little more.
The blonde started idly fiddling with her updo; coiling a lock at the side around her finger. Resentment; she wondered if anything like that was kept for her by her family?- probably not. They didn't understand what she saw in the stars and they didn't like the departure from the hand-me down lifeplan, from home, but they didn't hold it against her. Michala raised her chin minutely; as if about to press or challenge. She couldn't understand how the stars could have trumped a daughter in the way the Vulcan seemed to relate it. Not for balls of gas, not for aliens that looked like they came from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. But for all she knew the Ellison-Swift's could have put their own spin on Gibran's The Prophet; your children are not your children... the thought brought with it an appreciation for different truths. So the Valkyrie jockette didn't lend voice against it, doing a much better deadpan;
"You must have been a real hellraiser to have a parent skip the planet." Michala framed her childhood unseriously "My dad had a shed he'd bunker down in. He had a gimp knee and knew he'd never get away far enough fast enough."
Kimberley thought back over her childhood with a tinge of regret. "My father was the Vulcan one." she began by way of explanation. As she began to speak, she felt he mouth get a little drier - a classic sign of nerves. Taking another drink of her orange juice between sentences, she continued, "To him, continuing his career while mum looked after me was the logical thing to do." She refocused on the ensign, who was still subconsciously playing with her hair. "After a few years it became obvious that it was also the selfish thing to do. My parents divorced when I was nine." she concluded, taking another gulp from the fruit drink in front of her, finishing the beverage off.
Michala's eyes dropped to her lap when the half-Vulcan had cast a look her way and it wasn't until there was the click of an empty glass being set down that she flicked her blue eyes back up. There was some finality with the judgement Ellison-Swift handed down and the blonde nodded not quite sure whether this was how a quiet chat with the XO was supposed to go.
"That wouldn't have helped seeing him" the Valkyrie pilot supposed before she could stop herself.
Michala winced a little at Ellison-Swift; a non-verbal expression part 'oops', part apology and part is there a quantum reality where I didn't say that we can pretend we're in from... now.
Kimberley smiled - a genuine smile intended to put the young woman at ease, but said nothing.
The Valkyrie jockette asked, as if interjecting with some measure of wonder "You grew up on Earth?" with some standard idea, inspite of the odds, that she might just know the specific address in an intimate way.
Kimberley nodded. "Yes," she said, with a far-away look in her eyes. "Orange County, North Carolina." she nodded her head, as if agreeing with the image that her memory had drawn up. "Beautiful part of the world. What about you?" she continued, almost visibly dragging herself back to the here-and-now, "Where are your roots?"
The Ensign rolled her eyes away as if the half-Vulcan were inviting a long story. She was torn between the voice of her grandmother in one ear to tell everything that had been passed on for educational reasons and her grandfather's drawl to keep it short;
"Earthling too." Michala answered with a half nostalgic smile "Our family had a farm I was brought up on. Flat, wide open paddocks; sunburnt everything and a real lazy idea about the pace life should take."
Kimberley nodded in understanding of the scenario that the young ensign described. "Sounds good." she said simply, inviting her to continue.
"Your kidding?" Michala levelled then explained it as "Achingly boring. We weren't really farmers or anything; the land has just been in the family and the property managed for us. Our only hope were trips into town where everyone knew you; so it was intimately achingly boring or to the closest city which was Melbourne."
She wrinkled her nose up in faux disdain "Bunch of self absorbed-" and caught herself before saying anything disparaging.
"Great bars though." She felt the need to explain though how that had led her spaceward "What I like about the stars but is that," Michala casually pointed out the viewport with something like awe in her voice "that you can just fly away get lost and never be found."
Kimberley didn't reply. She simply looked back toward the view-port and nodded her head in agreement with the ensign's wisdom. As much as she missed her husband, there were days when getting lost and never being found was a most attractive proposition...
OFF:
by Lieutenant Commander Kimberley Ellison-Swift (PhD) & Lieutenant Michala Stephens
Post Details
| Title | I Don't Paint Myself in to Corners Anymore | |
| Mission | Mission 00X: Leaving the Nest | |
| Author(s) | Lieutenant Commander Kimberley Ellison-Swift (PhD) & Lieutenant Michala Stephens | |
| Posted | Mon Jun 21, 2010 @ 8:49am | |
| Location | Deck 6 - Officer's Mess | |
| Timeline | MD-07: 1925 hours |
Kimberley Ellison-Swift wandered in to the Officer's Mess. As she stood and surveyed the room, it suddenly occurred to her that she had been aboard the ship for seven days now, and had yet to stop by this particular room. The thought frightened her a little bit. The realisation that she had spent so much time wrapped up in paperwork and the 'business' of the ship that she hadn't been able to socialise with the staff under her command, was discomforting to her.
Trying to ignore her guilt, she crossed over to the bar and ordered an orange juice. Having been served, she took a seat by the view port and looked out at the stars as they whizzed by. She loved watching the stars when the ship was at warp. It was fascinating - almost hypnotic...
"One Nine Three Zero hours," Michala dropped a knee onto the seat next to Ellison-Swift; sliding in to lean against the backrest, folding her arms over the top of it and sitting her chin down on unbuttoned cuff "Or thereabouts."
By draping herself over the chair's backrest the Valkyrie pilot could sit herself on her heel and pivot a nod about the chin out to Swift. Now advertising she was off the clock; the Ensign had swapped her tightly pulled updo for a more tousled variety. Her duty uniform had been thrown carelessly over her bed and swapped out for dressy leggings and a pseudo military jacket with sharp look shoulders and a cinch at the waist as part of the stylised cut. Rather than break out a 'so what am I doing here?' or intrudingly asked 'Not intruding?' Michala accessorised with a warm smile and ventured;
"First sighting of you here I think," Her head happily rested ontop of her arms but her eyes flitting about the Officer's Mess before casually wondering "How's things?"
"Yeah..." Kimberley replied with more than a hint of regret. "First venture." she said, "I guess it's safe to say that things have been busy." She looked around the place again, more for effect than out of necessity. "Nice in here." she commented.
Michala twisted at the waist to survey the evenning crowd and hoisted her eyebrows then dropped them as quickly, as if to intimate she thought it all a fair enough appraisal. There was something rueful about the Command Lieutenant when she spoke but the pilot believed those in charge thrived on 'busy' more than anything else.
"No rest." the Ensign agreed and casually left off the part about it applicable to the wicked.
"Indeed not." Kimberley smiled and took a sip from her orange juice, before moving the subject on. "So, after our conversation in the hanger earlier, I just realised that I've been so busy with, y'know, the business of getting the ship ready, that I've hardly had time to get to know anyone..." She shook her head a little and took another sip of her drink, her face adorned with an expression of weariness. "So," her face suddenly changing, as if suddenly reinvigorated, the tired look replaced with a professional façade, once again, "how are you finding things since the transition?"
"Oh I've been in a state of transition for the better part of my Starfleet career." Stephens expalined matter-of-factly then took to sucking on her bottom lip as she tended to when listenning or thinking or being at a loose end. She explained that "On Nag and now here I was breveted through a set-up period." The single pip she wore after the transition evidence of the change of circumstance "The faces change a little but the speeches are the same and so are the high expectations. You realise that in the flux things are pretty same same."
Michala wondered if she'd explained herself correctly and cast her eyes out the viewport to frown and consider before returning her attention to the XO:
"It's much easier now though," she reckonned "When you have people volunteering for more shifts when you ask- rather than volunteered."
Michala raised her chin and freed a hand to stow a few falling gold locks behind a ear before returning to rest position. The Lieutenant had betrayed some tiredness for but a moment and at what the Ensign didn't choose to guess at. The 'busy'? Not enough hours for everything? Not enough recognisable faces around the lounge scene? The pilot didn't realise she gave out a little shrug as answer. "You'll get to know people," Michala was sure "Apoc's a big ship and it takes everyone a while. You just have a better excuse to avoid karaoke night than most." Running an example out loud for one of the less often realised benefits of being busy:
"Eurovision night? Oh no- I wish I could but I just realised I have to go over some requisition forms for left handed spoons the Ops department made. 'Too busy to make a fool of yourself on open mic night' thy name is XO."
Kimberley laughed, a genuine hearty laugh. "Well," she managed to say eventually, "you certainly won't be seeing me up doing karaoke." suddenly her face became very stoic and serious, with all trace of emotion removed in less than a second. "Don't you know I'm a Vulcan?"
Michala half turned to sit properly in her seat, rather lounge and reassured the Lieutenant that she'd "Noticed," but then giggled out a lie that "Some of the best 'interpretations' of Billie Jean I've heard have come from Vulcans- terrible moonwalkers though."
"Let me ask you a question." Kimberley ventured. "There is a vacant wing commander post on this ship which you're clearly qualified for..." She looked directly at the blonde ensign, fully aware that she knew what the next part of the sentence was going to be. She chose to add it anyway, just to ensure that she had made her point. "And yet, I don't see your name on my list of applicants." She smiled again, gently, genuinely, "Why is that?"
The Starfleet pilot shifted in her seat, dropped her hands between her thighs and let her shoulders creep in on themselves as though she had found issue with the climate control setting. The smile she wore was the same but the warmth behind it dimmed and some mixture of firm disbelief at the Lieutenant's assessment of things with suspicion around the vacancy spiked and soured the energy she radiated out. Michala, to her credit, returned to chewing her lip and making as though an answer to the question was moments away rather quickly.
"I'm not after it." She said simply and truthfully but gave out before she could spin a casual remark from it.
"Okay." Kimberley replied simply, reading the ensign's face as she took yet another sip from her juice. Clearly she had struck a nerve with the young pilot, but decided not to press the matter any further. instead she turned away from Stephens and looking back out the window. "I tell you what," she said, without turning back, "there are days when I wonder how I ever got lucky enough to be able to do this job."
The Ensign cast an eye bar-ward but caught herself before she did anything like wave down staff for anything. Michala didn't get what the XO meant and wondered whether it were something self-aggrandizing she was supposed to buy into or giving thanks to the universe; in the way those with a healthy deference for the divine tended to. Then there were a whole lot of other ways to take it. Throw-away comment not the percentage option to go with though. With a casual flick of the head that did nothing much to cast a stray golden lock off her forehead Michala answered with an open-ended
"Yeah?" wondering whether the Ellison-Swift were the type of Vulcan to 'talk on' casually.
All of a sudden Kimberley felt a slight shift in emotion from the young pilot. Clearly her attempt to change the subject hadn't really had the effect that she had hoped. Unfortunately, she was now committed to that particular lone of conversation. "Yeah," she said, dismissively, "when I was young I always resented my father for being away with Starfleet all the time, but now I can understand why. Who wouldn't want to be out here among the stars?" It was almost a rhetorical question. She didn't really expect an answer from the pragmatic young woman sat opposite her. She had tried fishing with Stephens, and so far not caught anything, perhaps such an open topic would draw her out a little more.
The blonde started idly fiddling with her updo; coiling a lock at the side around her finger. Resentment; she wondered if anything like that was kept for her by her family?- probably not. They didn't understand what she saw in the stars and they didn't like the departure from the hand-me down lifeplan, from home, but they didn't hold it against her. Michala raised her chin minutely; as if about to press or challenge. She couldn't understand how the stars could have trumped a daughter in the way the Vulcan seemed to relate it. Not for balls of gas, not for aliens that looked like they came from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. But for all she knew the Ellison-Swift's could have put their own spin on Gibran's The Prophet; your children are not your children... the thought brought with it an appreciation for different truths. So the Valkyrie jockette didn't lend voice against it, doing a much better deadpan;
"You must have been a real hellraiser to have a parent skip the planet." Michala framed her childhood unseriously "My dad had a shed he'd bunker down in. He had a gimp knee and knew he'd never get away far enough fast enough."
Kimberley thought back over her childhood with a tinge of regret. "My father was the Vulcan one." she began by way of explanation. As she began to speak, she felt he mouth get a little drier - a classic sign of nerves. Taking another drink of her orange juice between sentences, she continued, "To him, continuing his career while mum looked after me was the logical thing to do." She refocused on the ensign, who was still subconsciously playing with her hair. "After a few years it became obvious that it was also the selfish thing to do. My parents divorced when I was nine." she concluded, taking another gulp from the fruit drink in front of her, finishing the beverage off.
Michala's eyes dropped to her lap when the half-Vulcan had cast a look her way and it wasn't until there was the click of an empty glass being set down that she flicked her blue eyes back up. There was some finality with the judgement Ellison-Swift handed down and the blonde nodded not quite sure whether this was how a quiet chat with the XO was supposed to go.
"That wouldn't have helped seeing him" the Valkyrie pilot supposed before she could stop herself.
Michala winced a little at Ellison-Swift; a non-verbal expression part 'oops', part apology and part is there a quantum reality where I didn't say that we can pretend we're in from... now.
Kimberley smiled - a genuine smile intended to put the young woman at ease, but said nothing.
The Valkyrie jockette asked, as if interjecting with some measure of wonder "You grew up on Earth?" with some standard idea, inspite of the odds, that she might just know the specific address in an intimate way.
Kimberley nodded. "Yes," she said, with a far-away look in her eyes. "Orange County, North Carolina." she nodded her head, as if agreeing with the image that her memory had drawn up. "Beautiful part of the world. What about you?" she continued, almost visibly dragging herself back to the here-and-now, "Where are your roots?"
The Ensign rolled her eyes away as if the half-Vulcan were inviting a long story. She was torn between the voice of her grandmother in one ear to tell everything that had been passed on for educational reasons and her grandfather's drawl to keep it short;
"Earthling too." Michala answered with a half nostalgic smile "Our family had a farm I was brought up on. Flat, wide open paddocks; sunburnt everything and a real lazy idea about the pace life should take."
Kimberley nodded in understanding of the scenario that the young ensign described. "Sounds good." she said simply, inviting her to continue.
"Your kidding?" Michala levelled then explained it as "Achingly boring. We weren't really farmers or anything; the land has just been in the family and the property managed for us. Our only hope were trips into town where everyone knew you; so it was intimately achingly boring or to the closest city which was Melbourne."
She wrinkled her nose up in faux disdain "Bunch of self absorbed-" and caught herself before saying anything disparaging.
"Great bars though." She felt the need to explain though how that had led her spaceward "What I like about the stars but is that," Michala casually pointed out the viewport with something like awe in her voice "that you can just fly away get lost and never be found."
Kimberley didn't reply. She simply looked back toward the view-port and nodded her head in agreement with the ensign's wisdom. As much as she missed her husband, there were days when getting lost and never being found was a most attractive proposition...
OFF: