Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Captain’s Quarters- If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Captain’s Quarters- If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Captain’s Quarters- If You Can’t Stand the Heat
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Alex nodded in understanding. “I worked with a man once… right bastard when it came to getting people to do what he wanted, but a great Intel officer from all I have heard… anyway, he arranged for new lives for some of the folks we pulled from the camps after the war. Saw some of them… not pretty.”

Cochrane

Faye nodded slowly. “Yeah, he didn’t talk much about it, but even the tiny bits he shared you just… knew.” She grabbed the cutting board with the balls of dough and brought them over to the side of the stove. “But yeah, he taught me this recipe on my birthday because he wanted to share something special, and on Tracken, knowledge was our commodity. And while we cooked he sang some of his favourite folk songs from his childhood. He never said it, but I think he was recreating a moment he had had with his grandmother. Conjecture, of course, but one I can feel confident about.”

Hovering a hand over the skillet she checked it was hot enough and then, with a brush, coated it with a thin layer of oil. “Okay, there’s a couple ways I can do this, but do you have something round and heavy but also flat?”

~Faye Calloway

Alex looked puzzled for a moment and then said “How big do you need?”

Cochrane

“Just smaller than the skillet,” Faye replied, as she peered over at the vegetables and inhaled that gorgeous pungent smell. “Good thing I’m hungry. We’ve enough to make more than one each,” she said with a grin.

~Faye Calloway

Alex nodded and walked over to the desk and picked something up and walked back over. He tan the object u der water and dried it and handed it to her. It was a slightly larger than a fist flat, round disk of a clear material; inside of which was displayed… the Karagite Order of Heroism.

Cochrane

Calloway eyed him and then the order. “Well, you don’t hand an object like this over to someone cooking without expecting them to use it in said cooking process, so.. I guess we’re adding some heroism to tonight’s proceedings. Jaris would either be honoured or miffed, I’m not sure which,” she said with a grin.

“Use as you see fit.” and he smiled.

“Where did you get it from?” Faye asked as she oiled on side, and took a ball of dough, setting it in the middle of the hot skillet. Then she centred the award on top and pressed evenly down with both hands using the tips of her fingers. When it went mostly flat, she lifted the disk and set it to the side.”

~Faye Calloway

Alex looked at her working the dough and smiled. It was good see her in the moment and out of her head. He hoped that she could learn to be more comfortable with her own self going forward.

“Well, since you asked… I got it from Admiral Blum’t. He pinned that on me when I was a Lieutenant J-G assigned to the Magill, system defense ship assigned to the Parellian system.” and he took a drink of wine.

She scrunched her face up trying to remember where she had heard that name before. It felt familiar and yet she couldn’t quite place it.

“We were attacked by the Borg. Bridge was hit hard and the senior staff was almost killed. I was left on the bridge, so I coordinated a retaliatory strike and we got clear. The citation read more exciting than I think it was.” and he chuckled.

Cochrane

She nodded with appreciation, but also the pieces of his story fit together suddenly. “I think it often does. But then again hindsight is a strange thing and sometimes it can remove the… intensity of the moment. I think that’s why maybe I couldn’t see my recent decisions the way you could. I had almost too much hindsight.” She gave him a lopsided grin. “That and a lot of really intense emotions. Gets me every time.”

“But I think knowing that, Jaris would be secretly honoured,” she said with a deciding nod.

With her fingers, Faye tested the dough, immersed momentarily in the small joy of poking at something soft. Then she flipped it, pressing it down with her fingertips despite the heat. Clearly they hadn’t been babied in the past. “I said I don’t teach people how to make this, and the reason is that Jaris was too special to me and despite everything else I can isolate this one memory out of all the others as actually being happy. Even though he himself makes me sad, this doesn’t. It’s like there is a special shield around this memory, because it was from before.”

~Faye Calloway