ooc: Wanted to do a writing warm-up so I wrote this little character study on Kovan.
ic:

Lonesome, variegated pinpoints of light crowned the pitch black of space. Blackness framed in glass and steel and held at bay by the hull of the USS Sentinel. Kovan watched the blackness, memorized the lights of stars hundreds of thousands of lightyears away. Stars living, dying, or dead, and all he saw now was an afterimage that would one day vanish. Out there in that darkness were planets reflecting the light of a nearby star. In the black were newly formed stars, whose light had not yet reached this place in space.

It was enough to make a person feel small. Insignificant. Kovan studied the lights of stars and planets and the blackness that engulfed them. He memorized this pattern of color and light that will one day cease to exist. Why was it easier to think about his negligible place in the greater scheme of existence than to write a message to his son?

Koven sucked a long breath in and exhaled rapidly through the nose. He never wanted to know the boy; he told Oshremiash over and over again that the child was better off not knowing him. Yet Oshremiash never stopped pushing and pressing and reminding him. She insisted time and time again that Kovan send Isas messages. It didn’t matter what he said, only that he sent them.

Then there were times, like now, when Oshremiash said in no uncertain terms to send the boy a message. Oshremiash knew too much about him and was all too willing to get her way through dirty means. Apparently, a boy absolutely needed to hear from his father on the day commemorating his birth. Kovan delayed the message for as long as he could, but time was not on his side. It had run out.

A blank word processor open on his personal PaDD mocked him. A bounty of words waiting to be typed. He could write one sentence and hit send. He could compose a message for Oshremiash, detailing all the ways her actions ultimately hurt the boy. Isas was better off not knowing him. The kid shouldn’t know his name, much less have a picture of him and his mother taken at a sentimental point in time. Oshremiash’s insistence on the matter could only lead to a lifetime of disappointment and hurt.

Kovan could type many things. None of them would be right.

He picked through his photos folder, by far the largest folder on his PaDD. Some files were actual photos taken with a camera. Others were scanned drawings, transferred into digital files. Kovan selected one he had drawn less than two weeks ago. Caught on paper and charcoal was the ship lounge as seen from the front right corner, facing out towards the Sentinel’s hull. Captured in precise and varied black strokes were people, their games, and the tables they gathered around. In the background the windows he gazed out of now.

Kovan selected the image, attached it to a message with the words: happy birthday, and hit send.

Ensign ch’Sirhc, COMMO/ENGR