The Source of Your Power

Posted on 17 May 2021 @ 12:26pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 27 Aug 2022 @ 1:12am

Mission: M2 - Sanctuary
Location: SF Barber
Timeline: MD04 0730hrs
1069 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure

“I’d like a hair cut.”

Calliope was up early the next morning, her joints all the more sore for the paces she had literally put them through the evening prior. But Zuzal was available for the day, being off of school, and Calliope planned to take full advantage of her availability, paying her as an aide, and telling her to bring studies or whatever for the down times between. So Zuzal was in a nearby waiting area as Calliope took a chair at the starfleet barber. Seeing her there absorbed in her course reading took Calliope back to her own catch-up crunch in highschool, making up for the time she lost in Freshman year… when she had made all of the wrong ‘friends’...

“That is why we serve.” The skinny older Antican with the perfectly trimmed mustache barked a laugh which brought Calliope back to the present culmination of her life choices. He knew who she was and he had heard most of the rumors about her. He decided to keep them to himself as the better part of valor. What ever the truth surely was, it was probably painful and better left unprovoked. “What style do you want it in?”

“Shaved. All of it.”

He looked taken aback, as though he were an artist being asked to whitewash instead of paint. “Shaved?”

She paused, not wanting to explain her condition and reasons in detail. Not interested in a pity party or finding the shortest way to summarize, or pick and choose which part of the tale was most relevant this time. Instead, she decided to demonstrate. With tired arms, she ducked her head down towards her lap, and began to undo the wrap which Lance had helped her to put on the day before, the long cloth unwinding from her hair, some of the locks shedding away with the cloth and hitting the floor without any assistance from the professional’s shears. She saw the antican barber’s face fall with understanding. “It will grow back,” she reassured him as much as herself. “I’m recovering from some medical treatments. I just think it would be better to be off with it all. Just start again.”

“We can start root regeneration today,” he said reassuringly as he went after his razor and fittings. Somehow he seemed to understand that she didn’t need pity and offered a nonchalant hope instead. “Granted you’ll only get a couple centimeters back.”

“How long will it take?”

“A couple of hours. You may nap if you like.”

Calliope considered. She had only so much time while Zuzal was available so as to keep medical appeased that she wasn’t left unattended. As far as she knew no one had bothered to compare her records from yesterday, but if they did, she’d prefer it was a forgivable, explainable ‘aberration’. She couldn’t waste her opportunity with Zuzal’s free time. She leaned back in the chair. “Just the shave. I can come back another time.”

“As you say, Commander.” He smiled, highlighting all his age lines. “You can always come back tomorrow.” Calliope wondered how many generations of starfleet officers he’d been trimming in his service. He’d no doubt outserved her by a stretch. She felt he had more of the air of a grandfather than anything else.

“Please,” she said, “You can call me Calliope. What do you go by?”

The Antican unfurled a cape like a checkered flag to start a race and whipped it around her. “My friends call me Saldo.”

She relaxed and took a deep breath as she heard the hum of the trimmers switch on. In the mirror she watched her own face and tried to decide how she felt. What expression should she wear in that moment? She didn’t have one rise on it’s own so she sat expressionless.

“Are you ready?”

Lifting one hand up from the hem of the cape, Calliope pressed her fingers along one temple, pressing back the little stray strands that always tickled or got in her eyes. She nodded her assent. “I’m ready.”

“Good. You know, I have some philosophies about hair.”

Calliope didn’t speak. It wasn’t quite like being at the dentist with appliances in one's mouth, but as Saldo’s hand pressed padded fingertips against her forehead to position and turn her to accommodate the shearing, she felt a no less similar passive experience settle over her. “Oh?” was all she said. She wasn’t entirely surprised that a careerist Starfleet Barber would have a philosophy about his own field. And some part of her was actually deeply curious in spite of her own overwhelming woes. She closed her eyes and listened.

“Yes. You see, hair physiologically speaking, is a thing that expresses us as it emanates from the inside, out, and is also a mode that we express ourselves through by styling it, also displaying something of the inside on the outside, emotively. It’s got a living root, but is otherwise a sort of remainder of our living bodies.

A lot of cultures have different practices surrounding their hair. It’s often a covering, expressed almost the same way as shelter, or a practice surrounding humility. Which is a little baffling because, in some cases, the humble thing to do is to never cut it. Yet in others, to remove it completely is an act of contrition or dedication to an order— removing the hair makes such people part of a unit, or a brotherhood, like a monastic tradition or a military battalion. It likens them to one another, removing that individual mode of expression.

But on the other hand of that yet, there is incredible folklore about mighty warriors gaining power from their long locks. Their enemy hacks it away from them usually by trickery or threat to something else they love. Losing their magical hair is practically a death sentence to such figures. Still in every one of those stories…

While everyone has forgotten and forsaken them and moved on, the hair grows back. And so does their individual might. And…”

She felt Saldo whip the cape away and opened her big dark eyes into the face in the mirror. It was her, but without the crowning halo of dense dark hair. Just her.

“...the enemy is usually very, very sorry in the end.”