When Push Comes to Shove
Posted on 19 Aug 2024 @ 2:45pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: OC, Promenade, Play Area
Timeline: MD 23 Morning
1669 words - 3.3 OF Standard Post Measure
Ikemba let Ibis hold his hand, although she really wanted to carry him, to crush him against her until there could be no question, legal or otherwise, that Ikemba was hers to care for. But as they trotted along through the station, she knew that they didn’t look like most families did, taking one generation after the other in all sorts of obvious ways. Not that it would be completely out of place. There were other adoptees and mixed families and inter-planetary couples. It was just their reflections in all of the shiny panels didn’t quite match. He would look like the Omoleyes, though a shade lighter than his father, the resemblance had always been easy to remark on as Jimoh had carried baby Ikemba. Even Rachel’s family, the Childresses… Maybe not at first glance, but on the second, you would match her family’s features to Ikemba’s.
Ibis didn’t have her hair or eyes or nose or cheekbones to give to Ikemba. It just felt as if she were wound into him by all of her invisible fibers instead of any visible traits.
She wanted this afternoon’s meeting with the lawyers to go well. For Porter’s brother Marcus to like her. Not for the usual reasons you wanted your future brother in law to like you– to make a good impression so you could get along with the extended family well enough over Christmas and Summer Barbeque. No. Because… Ikemba.
His fingers twisted in her own hand. She realized she was gripping too tightly, like so many other times. With a conscious effort she relaxed her hold.
When the common area play yard in the Promenade was barely a glimpse around the corner and through the benches and shrubbery and signage down the center court, Ikemba lost all interest in keeping hold of Bibi. He raced ahead, and she had to let go, watching his little legs bound away, the bounce of his full head of dark curls, his whole body charging into the scene of ship themed jungle gyms and trampolines, filled with the colors and lights and sounds of hologram characters and neon lighting, not to mention a dozen or more other children, their parents standing around the periphery.
Ibis could match almost every single one to the adult watching after them.
Eventually she caught up and stood on the outer edge of the ‘Alpha-Beta Zone’ the play ground region demarcated like a stellar cartography display, with vectors and directional degrees marked out either directly on the play equipment and soft landing pads surrounding everything, or projected holographically. It was actual operations and astrometrics coded into the design of the playground, and that impressed her. The children were learning navigational reading and terminology probably without even knowing it, as challenge holograms popped up to give missions. Children who engaged with the historical captain and admiral characters represented were given a task to accomplish in the playground. One that would require them to use the displays and to read the maps. Each different ‘ship’ construction in the yard had it’s own non-physical-holographic crew displays which responded to the children’s antics with a certain reserved joy. She watched a child organizing her crew into a game of hopscotch. Which the officers followed through and awaited their performance reviews from the diminutive team leader.
Ikemba ran right through the holograms. He didn’t stop to even wonder what they were. They were just animated light shows, like the holonews when it was left on in their quarters. All he cared about was climbing. And jumping. And climbing higher and jumping farther.
“Bibi! Jump!” He shouted, hopping up and down at the peek of one of the climbing towers, planning another tumble down a sliding tarp.
“I see you. I see you jump.” She tried to call back, but her voice was a rasp.
“NO! Bibi! Bibi jump!”
“You jump. Ikemba jump for Bibi,” she said, trying to motion for him to go on.
Another small child clambered to the bridge level of the same ship. “Captain on deck!” the projected upper half of a cartoonized Bolian hologram in uniform said with a big grin and a smart salute to the little one.
Ikemba shoved the small child down the tumble slide.
Before Ibis even knew how to react, there were three adults and twice as many holograms on the scene. The tumble slide had been a harmless break to the little one’s fall, the pudgy trill boy sitting at the bottom, only shocked at first, still processing the unexpected tumble, until the adults and the medical themed holograms were there, picking him up and rendering aid, at which point, it registered to the child that something untoward had happened and that he should be upset about it, culminating in a series of big gasping sobs and ultimately a wail.
“Are you his minder?” The Trill parent asked, the little one in arms as she approached Ibis. The Trill mother pointed to Ikemba at the top of the climbing frame, where he was bouncing through the holograms reciting the ‘Universal Directives of Fair Play.’
“I… I’m…” Ibis wasn’t able to find a word to describe what she was. “I’m his Bibi.”
“Listen, Bibi. You can’t just let your little charge push smaller children around!”
She shook her head, aghast, unable to explain. Maybe he’d seen and played with other children when Porter had taken the kids to the park. But it was the first time she knew that he’d ever even come into contact with someone his own height, let alone younger than him. Everyone who had ever rough-played with him had either been an adult or a Korinn pup, thrice his size, tumbling in the surf with him.
“He’ll grow up to be a bully!”
Ibis looked up at Ikemba gnashing his teeth in play growls at the holograms as he rolled through each iteration that regenerated, as though he were popping them like a bubble.
“He doesn’t mean–” She whispered with great effort before she was cut off.
“You’re making excuses for him, look! Look!”
The Trill woman turned so Ibis could see the big teary eyes of the offended little Trill toddler, his little finger on his lips, pooling over with drool around new molars, his rosy cheeks wet from crying. Ibis felt guilty and wrongly charged all at once. If only she could explain for Ikemba. For herself.
Her throat was locking up.
The Trill woman was carrying a new tirade on as Ibis began to look right through her, tuning everything out around her. Her ears squelched over all of the other busy sounds, the woman’s lips moved without words. There were forms and shadows. She forgot to hardly blink. The pulse of her veins became the roar of waves.
A familiar hand touched hers and she knew without looking...
...her father was here.
“ – You’re right of course.” He was saying, having taken over the altercation in progress some time ago. Ibis wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there intervening. “Under normal circumstances I should have our rambunctious little fellow apologize. But I can’t quite get the concept across to him. For all of these reasons, he doesn’t understand to be sorry yet, as he thinks that the purpose of standing at the top of things is to go down them!” He took off his hat, in a gesture of deference. “I do promise to take the next opportunity to help him understand.”
The Trill woman’s ire had abated some as the older Betazoid had kindly been explaining their circumstance and the newness of this sort of scenario for the human boy.
The Trill toddler himself had long since recovered his hurt feelings, growing a new interest in a sliding puzzle game between two of the play ships and having wrenched his way out of his mother’s arms. Arms which she had been holding crossed ever since, but which now fell open with a sigh. “I sincerely hope so,” she said, shaking her head to return to hovering over her little one once more.
“There, you see? Crisis averted.”
Ibis hugged her father and he pulled his own ‘little one’ close, rubbing her back.
“Why does every little thing feel so big?” she sobbed into his shoulder.
“Give yourself time.”
“I am!” she cried.
“More time.” He kissed the top of her head as if it were Ibis that had tumbled off of a slide and found herself disoriented at the bottom. “You’re doing fine.”
Irwin allowed his daughter to cry for some time, all the while keeping a watchful mind’s eye on Ikemba.
It wasn’t long before, by act of will, Ibis collected herself, rubbing her eyes. “Olivia starts school today,” she said quietly. “I have to go. You’re okay with Ikemba?”
"Ikemba and I already understand one another." Her father beamed softly, grasping her shoulders. “We have all sorts of plans. Ikemba and I have blocked out the entire day."
Once more Ibis tried not to be jealous of her father for his telepathic conversations with Ikemba, sometimes even from afar. For a boy who didn't have command of much language, it was probably very freeing to be understood by someone. Especially someone like her father, she thought.
"I will return him to you this evening, completely tuckered out. You needn't worry on our account. After all, your mother and I raised you and your brothers. ”
“Okay. But–” Ibis started laughing at the very funny stipulation that came to mind.
Before she could say it, her father was laughing at it too.
“You have to promise me!” she insisted hoarsely, but no less in earnest through her laughter. “Out loud!”
Irwin held his palm up. “I swear, by the Sisters, I will not bring Ikemba home with any tattoos!”
