Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Cori’s Quarters- Evaluating Options

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dr. Royal Sinclair (Chief of Security) in Cori’s Quarters- Evaluating Options

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Cori’s Quarters- Evaluating Options
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Royal shook his head and said “Huh-uh. I’m not going to let you deflect this. I know the slippers are important, but they are not your entirety of being. You want to tell me? I want to hear. But only if you tell while we unpack and put some things where they go. Otherwise, we can go get some dinner. But if you want to talk, love… you talk while we unpack some memories.”

Sinclair

Dalton gave him a glare. “You suck,” she said before her expression slipped into a smirk.

“Said like every woman I have ever dated.” he replied dryly and then slapped his thighs and stood up.

“Fine… we unpack a crate,” she said as she got up from the couch. Cori slipped into the bedroom and grabbed one of two crates sitting against a wall. When she returned, she set it down on the wooden coffee table and rested her hands on either side it. “I have actually gone through all of it, so I do know what’s here. Not sure how much of it should actually go on display, but we’ll see.”

“As much as possible. Visual reminders of who you were and who you are are important.”

Lifting the lid, she looked at Royal. “After the Klingons attacked the colony and my parents died, I still kept dancing. Except it felt hollow. In the span of days I had gone from looking at the different sort of performing arts schools I could go to elsewhere in the Federation to not caring about any of it. I had grief counselling, of course, and my parents’ friend did their best, but in the months afterwards I couldn’t find any joy in it. I couldn’t dance.” Pulling out a heavily tissue wrapped object, Cori unravelled it to find a glass vase in swirls of green, violet and blue. She held it up to show him. “That there is a handblown vase from a market we visited in Rixx when the Kiratu visited. I had only graduated two month prior and the kKratu was my first posting before the Saracen.”

~Corinne Dalton

Royal nodded in appreciation and said “Then that should go… there.” and he pointed to an empty shelf high up in the empty bookcase. “Set it just a bit off center to the right. It should catch the light really well.”

Sinclair

“And he decorates too…” Cori commented idly, tossing a smirk at her friend. “What’s next, macramé?” she said as she handed him the vase to place where he had suggested.

He took the vase and said “No, but I knit and crochet, smartass.” and set the vase on the shelf.

“Anyway, after the brief occupation by the Klingons there was a lot of rebuilding to do. Most of us spent our free time working with salvage and other sort of teams, most of which were formed by Starfleet officers. I had stopped going to the dance studio, so when I wasn’t at school or doing homework, I hung out with the teams and just did whatever work was needed. The farm was gone and my horses were also dead, so it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.” She lifted her brows as she pulled out a framed object tucked on the long side of the crate. “You can guess where that story goes. It’s so cliché, after all. Child is exposed to Starfleet and for whatever reasons a therapist can easily point out, decides that that is what they wanted to do instead of whatever they had imagined for their life.”

Unwrapping the paper that covered the metal frame with protective glass, she hesitated. She knew what it was and she lived in that world often enough that she wasn’t sure she wanted to drag it here too. But Cori knew Royal wouldn’t let her get away with it and finished unwrapping it. It was a watercolour painting of rolling hills overlooking the ocean with her family’s farm nestled in the one little valley, with two horses (one dun-tan with black mane and tail, one grey) grazing at the top of one of the hills. To this piece of art, Cori had no immediate commentary.

~Corinne Dalton

Royal didn’t ask, he just took the picture and set it on the very top of the bookcase and angled it so that it was visible from the desk.

“What’s next?” he asked without a look to the picture.

Sinclair