Posted by Lieutenant Commander Zef Rollo (Counselor) in Holodeck 3- A Long Way Down (and Up)

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Holodeck 3- A Long Way Down (and Up)

Posted by Shara Calloway (Intel Liason) in Holodeck 3- A Long Way Down (and Up)
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Opening her eyes, Faye turned her eyes to the ocean, watching it ebb and flow. Lifting her right foot to her left knee, balancing strongly, she undid the laces of her workboot and tossed it and the sock onto the sand. Repeating it with her other foot, Faye wiggled her toes into the sand, grounding herself in that sensation. As much as she wanted to run away and hide, she had just come to realize that there was no where left to run to. No where to hide. “Want to? No. Need to? I think we both know the answer to that,” Faye said before gesturing to the water and slowly walking towards it.

Zef looked at Shara and gave her a tiny nod. Faye needed to talk about what happened and the nod was Zef’s way of letting the Cmdr know she would take good care of her daughter.

“I’ll be here,” Shara said. While she had no doubt Rollo had things well under control, Shara wanted to broach the idea of hers and now was as good a time as any. Besides, sometimes it helped just having people who cared about you around, even if they were just there in the background.

Standing at the clear line where the water was currently reaching, the tide slowly going out, Faye let it very briefly touch her big toes. She felt on the precipice of something massive. What that was though still alluded her.

~Faye Calloway

Kicking off her own shoes, she joined Faye at the water’s edge. “Left or right?” Even tiny decisions that had nothing to do with work, were important for Faye at this stage.

—Rollo, CNS

Shara took the guitar once again and settled on the picnic blanket, quietly playing old songs from another life and time. She let herself drift into them- her own form of meditation.

~Shara Calloway

In the end it was pointless- they couldn’t goanywhere- but Faye understood that she couldn’t stay in one spot right now. It wouldn’t help her. “Left,” she said, stepping through the edge of the surf towards the cliff.

“This is a real place,” Faye voiced over the waves. “Muir Beach, outside of San Fransisco. Right over the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. There’s this great park with hiking trails and several lead you down to this beach area. I used to go, well… flee really, from the Academy when it was too much. Maybe it was a instructor who had pissed me off, or my fellow cadets. Often a roommate. I was escape here and sit on the beach. Swim if it was warm. It was a long hike if I didn’t transport over to Marin County but by the time I got here, my mind would be calm and I could just… forget for a little while.”

~Faye Calloway

“Being able to forget for a little while is important. It’s one way our brain gives us a respite from intense feelings.” She looked around them. “It really is a beautiful place. If I’d had something like this around when I was a child, I would have made use of it too. But this doesn’t resemble the area I grew up in. Baj is a very arid planet with a lot of deserts.”

—Rollo, CNS

“It’s different than Tracken too. Where our settlement was had a lot of lush forest around it and we lived in a clearing near a lake.” Faye looked at Rollo and stopped walking for the moment. “There’s a lot I’ve tried to forget, Zef. Stuff I haven’t shared with anyone for different reasons. But I feel like it’s all begin dragged out whether I like it or not. Like I’m coming full circle because the bits of my past I tried to leave behind have suddenly shown up,” she said, casting a glance back towards her mother, who was still quietly playing the guitar, seemingly lost in her own little world.

Looking back at the counsellor, Faye’s vision blurred with tears she didn’t realize she had been holding back. “I don’t think I can keep it all away anymore, but I’m terrified if I let it all into the open it will swallow me whole.”

~Faye Calloway