Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Counter-Intelligence Officer) in Deck 4 Garden- It’s Who you Know

Posted by Civilian Revna Freya McKenzie (Diplomatic Attache) in Deck 4 Garden- It’s Who you Know

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Counter-Intelligence Officer) in Deck 4 Garden- It’s Who you Know

(snip)

Faye nodded. “I’ll show you a few nice spots if you like? Not sure if you have been in here much. There’s a few nooks and crannies that make for nice scenes. And of course all the closeups you can do by sitting next to a bed.” She was already pondering which spots to show her. Her tree, of course, but The Hill was obvious. Less obvious was a bench on the far side of the central garden and on the other side of the pond.

~Faye

Revna grinned, “That would be wonderful. I was here for the promotion ceremony, and then once last week. I really haven’t seen much of it yet. I will have to try some scenes, usually I just do individual pieces.” Revna turned to look over the garden. “It’s beautiful here. The Atlantis had 3 arboretums and they were nothing close to this.”

McKenzie DA

Faye shook her head slightly. “That’s because those were arboretums, and not gardens. Most people would’t know the difference, but there is one, at least botanically.” She gave a lopsided smirk. “Still think I should have done a degree in Botany, but if I had, my life wouldn’t be what it is now, so…” She shrugged.

~Faye

Revna gaze turned distant, lost in a memory. “Aunt Trine would have agreed. Hmmm but you obviously have a natural talent with plants. And we all need a hobby. If you had become a botanist, you might have grown to dislike it rather than finding joy in it. But different choices would have brought you to a different point. You may not be here now. So do get the best of both? Your work and your passion?”

McKenzie

She nodded and gestured for Revan to follow her as she set off down the main path back towards the entrance. “The garden was my way unconsciously of setting down roots. I was on the Atlantis too for awhile, before your time of course. They rescued me after I escaped a terrible situation. Doctor Rinker was my old psychiatrist from the Curie and it was rather apropos that he was there to see me though yet another really difficult time. But I sat in his office and showed him a slip of paper I had written a list on. I still have it. It’s a list of Living. The things I wanted to do with this latest chance at life, but the gist of that list was that I wanted to live, not just exist. But it wasn’t until I came here that I began to actually understand what that looked and felt like. The garden was a way of making sense of a lot of chaos going on, and it’s been my sanctuary.”

Revna listened quietly. Faye’s story had been hard, much harder than her own. So similar to someone she’d known, years ago, or had tried to know. But the parallels of their stories weren’t lost on her either. She wondered if this was another one of those things the Norns had put into the tapestry of her life to knock some sense into her.

Where the garden entrance met the main path there was the path into the central garden that looped around to the right and that’s where the crew gatherings had been, and to the left the path headed past the pond and through the grove and came out the other side by the greenhouse and Faye’s bed and near The Hill. Faye slipped down the path to the right but immediately veered right into the loop. Moving past flowering shrubs and well designed beds, Faye took Revna down an oft missed adjacent path in the corner of the central garden. There, sitting amongst roses and other lovely smelling things was a bench, tucked away in the quiet. She sat down and gestured for Revna to do the same. “This a nice post most people have’t found yet. Secluded but you can hear things going on around you so you don’t feel entirely alone. If you want to be alone, I highly recommend the dewdrop tree at the top path of The Hill. It’s my favourite place in the whole garden aside from the Mushroom House Daggum designed for me.”

~Faye Calloway

Revna sat down on the bench and looked around quiet for several moments. “This is beautiful, but…serene.” It was quiet, but as Faye pointed out you could hear everything going on around you. It was a different kind of quiet, peaceful, but not lonely. “Just between you and me, if I go missing, it will probably be here.” Revna closed her eyes, taking a really, really deep breath. Pulling in the scents of the flowers around her. “I will never take that for granted.”

“Good,” Faye said softly.

She turned slightly on the bench to face Faye, “A mushroom house? Sounds like something out of a fairy tale. The idea reminds me of the holoprogram Mike wrote for me.”

Revna McKenzie

She couldn’t help the slightly goofy smile that slipped onto her face. “It’s a pretty unusual love story, that’s for sure. We’d only known each other a week before he was reassigned, but in that week we connected deeply. I told him things I’d never told anyone else. And then over a year later, after my mom showed up and everything was stressful and chaotic and my BPD was flaring, he called me out of the blue. It was like the Universe knew I needed him in my life again. And we talked a lot in those following days. I broke down in front of him even and he was just… there for me. And I showed him the layout for the garden we were just finishing and he secretly designed a mushroom house in the style of the houses we had on my colony growing up.. Had everything sent over from the Alpha Qudrant including the spores to begin innoculation.” Faye gazed deeply at Revna. “The details that man thought of. I think a part of me knew he loved me but it took being inside and seeing it for myself and having Alex, err, Captain Cochrane, point out that Daggum was head over heels for me.” She smirked. “I’m not the best at social stuff. I miss things that are obvious to others at times.”

~Faye Calloway

Revna grinned, knowing exactly what Faye was talking about with the details. She was going to schedule holodeck time. “I think that’s wonderful you have that house Faye. A piece of him you can visit any time you need. Oh, when it comes to ourselves, even those of us trained at the social stuff miss the obvious. Mike and I had a huge…misunderstanding, we didn’t talk for almost 3 months. And we both should have known better. We left so much not said because we were both waiting for the other to say something. I just knew I had ruined everything, but then my Da told me something. It doesn’t matter if you mess up, it’s what you do to fix it that matters. So if you miss something, that’s okay, I’m sure your Daggum will help you see what you miss.”

Revna McKenzie