A Sprout in the Gunks
Posted on 20 Jul 2023 @ 10:59pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 10:37pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Southern New York, Sol
Timeline: Backstory 2376
3003 words - 6 OF Standard Post Measure
Ibis had worn the uniform the camp had required. It was very different from her usual school uniform. This one was thick and rugged canvas overalls, a kind of tan-green color, like the trees or a patch of dust. Khaki, her mother would have called them. The shirt under the overalls was issued in different colors to differentiate which cabin they were to be sorted into. Hers was a teal color.
She knew for a fact that her mother would have found it 'garish' and told her to take something in a warmer tone to keep her skin from appearing so pale. She almost tried to return it and ask to exchange it for gold, red, or magenta. But what passed for a line among the public school children had already carried her away and so she'd changed without protest and decided that teal could be her new favorite color, and maybe she could even keep it a secret from her mother so she wouldn't go on about it not being her hue.
The other children were loud and pushy and Ibis found her head filled with noise, noise, noise. It hadn't been like this until just a couple of months ago. In fact she had felt human, like anyone else. She could hear her telepathic family, of course, but not the rest of the world. Her mother had taken her to specialists and they had said nothing was medically wrong with her. She was just a little hormonally behind in her development. The telepathic hormones had come in with all the rest of everything and she had found herself often anxious and overwhelmed.
The Betazoid doctor had tried to give her therapeutic training in differentiating the thoughts and feelings of others from her own, but ultimately she had told Ibis and her mother that the learned control would just happen more slowly if they remained in the Sol system, since the people she lived around weren't Betazoid and had no method of managing their own mental and emotional projection as was common for adult Betazoids to learn "mental manners", which ironically made things less chaotic among their own telepathic kind. Until her inner telepathic ear could differentiate, she would have to muddle through the cacophony in her head, made all the more challenging as her telepathic sensitivity was much higher than average.
Her gift was her curse.
And so at sixteen, nothing had looked more appealing to Ibis among the hologram camp brochures her father had given her to peruse than the one full of lakes and trees and rocks titled "Camp in the Gunks". Unlike the Summer programs her mother usually enrolled her in, this one had no tryouts or prerequisites. You just had to be a student in the region. That was it. Her father had put her on a hover bus before her mother was due back from her latest symphony tour. She'd hugged him at the loading station and he'd said one of his little prayers over her and kissed her on the top of her head, assuring her she would have a good time and would tell him many stories when she returned.
"Try not to be afraid," he'd advised. "And unless you're in danger, try not to call out to your mother over every little thing. Leave her to me. Let's see if we can each try a little independence of our own."
Now as she filed into the self sorting color groups, connecting with the other children also sporting her shade of teal, she hoped they would soon break into smaller and smaller groups and she could finally pick her own thoughts out from the noise. Maybe, she hopped, squeezing her eyes shut, all of this anxiety wasn't just her own, but that of dozens of other young adults as nervous and uncertain as she was about two months sleeping away from home.
"Welcome to the Gunks, kids!"
Ibis' head snapped up at the sound through a loud speaker.
"I'm the director, Mr. Shawn. Easy to remember— Mr. Shawn of the Shawangunks. You'll each find a counselor with a flag in your own color and cabin emblem. Your counselor will talk you through the schedule of events, meal times, and core program items, and then give you the sign up sheets to choose your other activity blocks. If you don't know how to read a schedule or a map.... we'll work on that."
Ibis looked up and around as her group of teal seemed to filter towards a matching flag. The emblem on it was a sprouting seed.
"M'kay, Sprouts." The lady loosely wielding the standard at a crooked angle was nothing like her usual instructors and counselors. The usual sort were well kept and always well enunciated and poised. This woman was a little pudgy, slouchy, and had hair in matted locks, bound up with what looked like strips of rags. She had all kinds of symbols tattooed in seemingly random positions and piercings along her ears and nose and one in her tongue Ibis saw when she spoke and between each open jawed chew of her gum. Her nails were cracked and worn down and dirty, her knuckles skinned and some bandaged, and her coveralls were sewn over with patches and as marked up with drawn symbols as her skin.
Ibis found her fascinating, although she was confused as to where to look exactly, trying to make out the meaning of the markings that began to look more like built up texture than messages in themselves. And she had a strange telepathic aura too. She wasn't human. She wasn't Betazoid. She wasn't anything Ibis could put a finger on. Maybe her senses were just very confused in all of the excitement today.
"It's rude to stare, Xeri," the counselor said as she stuck her big wad of chewing gum on the back of her oversized tracking padd, with FANNA painted in bold uneven lettering on the back.
Ibis didn't remember giving her name to this lady yet. "How did you—"
"My name is Miss Fanna." She yelled out to everyone suddenly, making Ibis startle. "You'll each be needing one of these," She started reaching into her pocket but had to dig out handfuls of what looked like scraps of wool and thread to get to the bottom of the pocket. "Sorry, I meant to put that in the nesting scrap for the birds." A few mangled pinecones were dug out of the opposing pocket without explanation before she came up with what she was after. "Here, your itinerary chips. Clip them to your coveralls, like so."
Miss Fanna latched one onto Ibis' D ring on one of her shoulders to demonstrate to the other campers what to do. As she moved to do so, Ibis thought she smelled like some strange herbs and dirt.
Miss Fanna jerked the hook to get Ibis' attention. "An' if you lose 'em, you answer to me, Sprout, and I pick your free time activities for you." She put the gum she'd stuck on the back of her padd back into her mouth and took up her stylus from the side magnet latch. "Now, everybody sound off and I'll register your chip."
"Ibis Soraya Xeri," Ibis raised a dainty hand and said right away, always eager to be the head of her class.
"Not you. I already registered you, genius. Sit yourself down."
Ibis looked around for a chair for an awkward moment until the counselor pushed her down by the shoulder; Ibis was slow to catch on but she got the picture after too long of a moment and crossed her legs in the scrabble-grass of the gravel they were gathered on. The other kids laughed and Ibis felt her cheeks flush. She was the only one sitting while everyone else sounded off with their names and registered their chips.
It seemed to take a long time and Ibis purposely tuned out to try to block the thoughts around her. Mind ringing with the attempt at clarity, she searched for a focal point as a distraction, like her therapy had suggested, and being sat at Miss Fanna's feet, tried to make out the tattoos on her hairy shins between her hiking boots and the rolled up cuffs of her coveralls. Among the many symbols and characters and creatures all over, Ibis found a scroll with Betazoid lettering with the words for "death" and "life" written stylistically as if they were reflections of each other, between a skull with a snake threaded through the eye sockets and something like a rose with a stem made out of barbed wire.
"I told you not to stare, Xeri."
Ibis snapped-to, only to discover all the other kids were gone. She was sitting in a gravel patch staring at a woman's hairy legs.
"Where is—"
"They get a free period to set up in the cabin and choose their bunks. Go'n get, Sprout. At this rate you're stuck with whatever's left over."
On a terrace overlooking an expansive, hedged, green lawn and a well kept pier on the Hudson River, J'lainie Xeri sat with her lace bejeweled sleeve arms crossed, regarding her husband over the brunch table, the top of Irwin Xeri's nearly bald head visible towards her as he studied a display of material analysis. Although they were both silent, there was hardly a lack of exchange between them.
A bolian chef's assistant came up from the kitchen, bearing a hover tray and a cheery disposition, unaware of the silent argument between the couple she was serving. She'd been thrilled to have the Xeri assignment, waiting on the Betazoid household. They often held extravagant dinner parties that called for unique artistry. But brunches were a fairly simple affair, letting her work with the chef on the next planned event. They'd earned this assignment from the Culinary Institute as a top billing. The household often entertained guests from off world. With a little luck they could have references to new exotic postings, as the team before them had. So she never failed to serve with a smile.
Today it received only a quiet, "Thank you, Angi. It looks very fine," from Mr. Xeri who made sure to first take in the aromas as usual. Mrs. Xeri appeared a little more stern and said nothing, although Angi didn't take it personally. Everyone in the house staff knew that Mrs. Xeri was prone to moods and it was best to steer around them. So she pardoned herself and didn't tarry to talk.
J'lanie Xeri, meanwhile, told her husband telepathically that she could hardly believe he had the capacity to keep up the barrier between her and their teen daughter while at the same time reading his charts and numbers.
He asked J'lainie if she'd considered that Ibis' newfound giftedness might have come from his side of the family. He had, after all, a number of relatives with faith gifts, not just in telepathy, but in precognitive skills as well, and even one great-great-great grandfather, Sainted in the church of Imza, with evidence of telekinesis and a very expansive touch healing and teaching ministry.
Yes, yes, a thousand years ago. And contested now, at that.
Not a thousand— and why must you be so dismissive of Saint Ernest?
J'lanie smacked the table and all the dishware clattered. Why must you keep me from contacting Ibis while she's away at that bedeviled camp you insisted on sending her to?
He didn't flinch, although he did look up from his tables. She wished to attend, and you must let the child breathe once in a while. Have her own adventures. She is afraid to be without you, but she must learn to be alone in her own mind, once in a while.
J'lainie scoffed.
You never made this much fuss about giving our boys a little room for their own thoughts.
"How dare you, Irwin!" J'laine stood up, indignantly, now voicing her umbrage. "I love them just the same! Ibis is different, that's all. She needs me more than they did. But I love all of our children!"
"I know, you do, Imzadi of mine."
"Don't Imzadi me! I want to speak with Ibis!"
"Ibis is fine, I assure you." He looked up and to the left. Most thoughts of his own caused him to look to the right, and J'lainie knew that a glance to the left meant he was syncing his thoughts with someone else's. In this case only observing and not communicating. "She's bird watching. Now. I am not going to keep staring at her. She'll call out if she needs us. You must resist your incessant checking in with her so she can enjoy her time, make new friends and learn new things."
"Nature camp." J'lainie scoffed. "When I had her enrolled in Bardavon's Summer Drama and Music Conservatory! You sent her to Nature Camp with a bunch of under performing publicly educated—"
"Imzadi, dear. She chose the program."
"—how could you let her select from an option like that? I could have come up with a dozen more quality uses of her summer months!"
"Do you remember who it was we petitioned for a daughter?" Irwin asked. J'lainie grew uncharacteristically quiet at that. So Irwin reached across the little table and put one hand around his wife's fingers and continued, despite her turning her face away from his in protest. "You cannot ask Fana for a daughter and then years later, when Ibis is now a young lady, go and cheat the goddess of your promise that she would serve Fana."
"I don't want my daughter to be some ill mannered dirty little wilding. When I had no daughter, it seemed a fair enough thing to just read the engravings on the rock or whatever to Fana." She waved her hand dismissively. "I just said some words from an old poem. Now I don't see why it should matter to some imaginary capricious woodland goblin lady how I raise my child."
"Don't speak ill of Fana like that. Her mark is on Ibis' spirit. You're of Fana as well, you know. She printed you with a gift, too. You just deny it except when it suits you."
"You would say such a thing."
"Oh?"
"Being from the Church of Imza. You're all so pious. This is the 24th century. There are no real gods and goddesses. Just other powers we don't fully understand. Fana is real enough, as a pattern of forces and principles of nature. Even if she is real, which is debatable, she can't be any more fearsome than, say, some Q. Or than an alien happening to take up residence in the Bajoran wormhole."
"Aren't the Q fearsome enough?"
"I don't want to have a religious debate over brunch. I'm not afraid of Fana. And if you cared at all about Ibis, you'd pray to your Imza that her sister would take her mark off my daughter so she would go to music conservatory and not waste all of her potential playing in mudpuddles and counting a bunch of twittering birds!"
"I will petition Imza." He prayed to her all of the time, in fact. Although he made no promise to his wife as to the content of the prayers. Irwin took up his coffee, blowing away some of the steam. "I'll talk to her about it, even though she and Fana are not known for being the most easy to negotiate with. You might have to take it up with someone from the temple of Altha to have her settle the matter for you in court with the other sisters." He held back a smirk, knowing that the little matter of one promised daughter to Fana would hardly be an issue for a full blown court of the goddesses. Such courts were demarcations of entire ages of history, not petty matters. The other sisters would leave Fana her due. "But I think you should just allow Ibis to bloom and appreciate the mark of Fana in her, the way we agreed when we brought her to this world."
"I will not raise a dirty little uncivilized wilding!"
"No matter what you do, the goddess will exact her price. One way or another."
"I dare her! She's just some garbled old fairy tales no one but a bunch of wasted, unwashed, brainwashed, drifters really believes."
"You believed in Fana well enough when we couldn't conceive again. You begged me plan the trip home to visit Fana's glade with you."
"It's you, not Fana, who is in the way here!" J'lainie accused. Yanking her hand from his, she stomped off to her music room down the hall.
Irwin frowned and returned to his coffee and business reports.
Predictably, his wife continued to berate him, telepathically. Although she'd left the table without touching her meal, she'd hardly begun to give up the argument. It was going to be a very long day for Irwin to maintain the telepathic defense between his wife and his daughter.
Tired already before noon, Irwin sighed and breathed a heartfelt prayer. "Imza, help me. My Imzadi needs to content her soul with the gifts she is given. Give her peace or, at the very least, grant me the grace to endure her displeasure over the matter."
"Mr. Xeri?" the bolian asked, peering back in as the lady of the house stormed past her in the hall.
"Angi, yes, I expect Mrs. Xeri will be taking her brunch in the conservatory, likely practicing some very stormy bars of Iocovone's Concerto for the Blood Moon in some unpleasant key or another. If you would set it out for her there, please, there's yet a chance she may take an interest in a meal this morning..."
