Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Reia Shandy (C Intelligence -Comm Officer) in Dagen and Reia’s Quarters

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dagen Thor (CE) in Dagen and Reia’s Quarters

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Reia Shandy (C Intelligence -Comm Officer) in Dagen and Reia’s Quarters
Posted by… suppressed (9) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Dagen came in bearing a non standard wooden crate, but thankfully with handles even if they were rope handles. It was also heavy and he grunted with the effort. Thankfully the doors recognized him and opened automatically. Fumbling with a knob or something with that would have been .. humorous. “Reia!” he called out even as he rested the crate on the edge of the couch as he looked for a place to put it. “Care package from home! Both homes apparently. I’m guessing it was your gran’s idea for the .. container.” Settling on the floor next to the couch he sat leaning on the arm of the couch as he looked at it. The short note for it on the top read, “Care Package.” and was signed by both Dagen’s parents, his eccentric aunt, and Reia’s grandparents. He could only imagine what was inside.
- Dagen

Reia had been in the bedroom replicating some things she needed for that evening’s date night. She had been wondering if dear hubby forgot, he was late getting back to their quarters. Now his tardiness was explained yet unexplained.

“What? Both of them? Oh this is not good.”

Reia smoothed out the bed clothes and got up. She walked into the living room and looked at the box dagging had brought in. It was very interesting, and a little scary.

Dagen did a double take as he glanced at Reia’s evening wear and then back again for another longer look. “I see a conspiracy afoot here by the size of this.” He had set it down and was looking at the lock. It wasn’t made to be high security, but it was biometric and did scan his fingers before snapping open.

“All right love, even if you secretly want to take a phaser to this out of fright, please don’t. Let’s open it as it has been intended whatever that may be. Did you know anything about this because I certainly didn’t.”

• Reia

He flipped the lid and was confronted by a series of separate containers. It was like each was a little Christmas gift, or for him, an Ancestor’s Day gift. They weren’t wrapped per se but each individually boxed. But the boxes were not that individualized. There were two colors. One was a light purple that was definitely a Trill color and the other was a sandy color that reminded him of the Australian beaches. Scooting over so that Reia could sit next to him and look in he shrugged with shoulders and hands. “No note. Yet. It could be buried.” He pulled one octagonal box that was near the top and inspected it. “Pressure seal. I’m guessing food. Shifting the small switch to release it he pulled it back. And smiled. And smelled. “Baking. Ground greva nuts in a pastry. Still warm!” He passed it to Reia to take one. “A childhood favorite. One of those ‘secret’ family recipes.” He looked at the lid where a card had been attached. “Uh, not so secret anymore. The recipe.”
- Dagen

Reia had been watching as Dagen went through the box. It was certainly a puzzle within a puzzle and perhaps some riddles were in there also. It seemed the whole family, both families in fact, had gotten together and collaborated on this particular predicament. She couldn’t help but be excited and a little curious. The smell of the box Dagen had opened reminded her that she was hungry. Reaching Forward she took a tasty morsel and she’d thoughtfully.

“Mmm, tasty. You know, I think I can probably learn to make these or at least get the replicator to do fair justice if I take a little bit of time and your patient. This is really interesting and I wonder what prompted them to take the time to put all of this together. Well, guess I better grab a box right?”

Dagen waved the recipe. “Replicator code right here,” he said. He pondered how a recipe that was all written out there could be whittled down to a one line code of letters and numbers. Would it do it justice? What Dagen didn’t much like was that the ‘nutrition’ of something replicated would be sensible and mixed into it while a true pastry like that would be not sensible and riddled with calories. That was one thing Dagen didn’t like much about replicated food. It was false. He shifted to let Reia get in there.

Reia leaned forward and looked into the box of it before finally selecting a large sandy colored box of her own to open. She went about it slowly because the whole thing was still starting to settle in upon her.

“Oh wow Dagen, I can’t believe they actually managed to do this. They know how much I love this mirror. Wow!”

“They put a lot of thought into it,” he said, agreeing. He had not seen the mirror off the wall and he looked at it as Reia admired it. To Dagen it looked .. well used, not exactly something that most would give a second glance at, either here or in an antique shop. Still to Reia that was precious and he watched with enjoyment at her expressions.

Even though Reia had just exclaimed something she was very happy about, her words were soft. The beautiful mirror that had hung in her room on Earth now set in amongst the sandy and purple boxes in this grand present extravaganza they seem to be having. It had arrived surprisingly intact right down to the crack in the upper right hand corner and ready to be hung somewhere in their quarters. It was a simple mirror with an intricate frame that had been in the Shandy family for at least a hundred years.

• Reia

“I can get that put up for you,” he said. In a way that it won’t fall off in the event of anything shaking the ship, he thought.

He reached down to a tube that was in a corner and lifted it out. It had the same coating to it that was used in a wall design at home on Trill. It figured that, probably mom, would have used that to identify it. Twisting the top off he let out an instant laugh. Closing his eyes he shook his head and took a deep breath. Reia would have seen what looked like a pale matt of violet fur peeking out. “I can’t believe it,” he said. Reaching in he pulled out what looked to be a bipedal bear like creature with fairly uniform violet fur, though along its back it was somewhat darker. One eye looked to have been repaired. Setting it between both hands he held it at his knees and just stared at it. “I grew up with this,” he said. “Called it Mepi. When I was little I tried to give it a taste of all of my food before eating. Drove mom crazy. Took it everywhere. Was on my shelf for years afterward. Usually was the last thing I saw before going to sleep. Wow.”
- Dagen
OOC: Think of it as a violet colored similarity to Sullivan off Monster’s Inc ..

Reia watched as he lovingly unwrapped the package, this one definitely had mom written all over it she thought. She smiled as she watched dragon take out the purple lump and explain all about it. Text

“That’s absolutely adorable. It reminds me of a little kangaroo I used to have. We used to be inseparable until it disappeared on a camping trip. I think I’ll have you hang that mirror tomorrow once I’ve had a good look around the quarters to figure out where to put it. All these sweet remembrances, I wonder if somebody is trying to tell us something? Okay, back into the box I go.”

“Kangaroo. That is one of those creatures that hops about. You said they boxed?” he asked, his memory of them going by a preserve that had them. Trill had nothing like them and it was his first experience with them. Dagen didn’t think it quite had the same look but he could see the theme - that of something well loved. He had it on his lap, rather forgotten that it was there. He glanced at the mirror. Standard quarters weren’t precisely roomy and ‘doors’ on a starship weren’t ones that swung but swished so they were out. “Perhaps by the port hole on the wall?” It was on the far side of the bed and had some space to stand back from it a little. “You mean they aren’t collectively downsizing and want it out of the house?” he asked with a wink showing his playful response.

Reia looked over the packages in the box carefully before deciding on a sandy colored one hidden down in a corner. It was small but heavy. Unwrapping it carefully, she was confronted by yet another box. Opening it carefully she lifted out a small music box. Smiling, she wondered if it still played.

• Reia

A thing to tinker with, Dagen thought. He almost guessed what it might be but held his peace. “It’s decorative,” he commented. It also looked old and hand made. “Tell me about it, love.” If it was what he thought it might be and didn’t work he was itching to take it apart ..
- Dagen

Reia lifted the small music box out of the larger box that all the presents seem to be in and set it on the glass top table. She dusted it down with a cloth even though it certainly didn’t need it. Opening it she revealed a carousel motif. Instead of horses on a Merry-Go-Round it was animals native to Australia. There was a platypus, ostrich, crocodile, and even a kangaroo. Smiling down at it she picked it up again and begin winding it up to play. It actually tinkled out a tune that Reia could not remember the name of. It was surprisingly clear and made her smile again.

That box became more delicate looking with each look at it. Very intricate. THAT needed safeguarding in the event of the ship shaking about too. A small self powered grav-mag would do the trick to keep it stable on a shelf. He recognized the crocodile. The rest were only passing acquaintance or not at all. He watched her bring the music up closer to her ear and it definitely brought back a memory. “What does it remind you of?” he asked, the angles on it glittering in the light.

“See, there’s your kangaroo love. I suppose they look like odd animals to people who don’t grow up with them. I don’t remember if this was given to me by my mum or my gran. I’m very glad that it still works. I know you could do wonders to fix it but, honestly, I’m glad you don’t have to.”

• Reia

The merry go round did go around and made little up and down motions. He smiled in seeing it. “The kangaroo looks like it is hopping. What is ‘that’?” he asked pointing tot the platypus. “Is that even real?” Then, “They made these life size right at one time for people?”
- Dagen

Reia laughed and smiled as she listened to Dagen’s questions. She also smiled at the memories the box brought back to her.

“Yes, platypus are actually real. The English didn’t believe it when the first ships brought them back from the Australian colony. It took a lot of convincing I’ll bet. The memory it brings back to me is almost losing it in a freak thunderstorm when I was about 9 years old. I kept it in a treehouse Gramps helped me build. I was so happy when we found it three days later. Merry-go-rounds, carousels, yes platypus were even on carousels. Silly little animal aren’t they?”

• Reia

“Were you in the treehouse at the time?” Dagen asked. That would have been frightening for anyone being exposed to such an event. Even looking out at them from the safety of the home one had to marvel at the power of nature. Still, Dagen frowned at the thought that Earth had had weather control for decades before Reia’s time. A freak thunderstorm would have been all the more concerning as it would have been utterly unexpected.

“Yes, I was in the treehouse. I like to go out there and just look up at the stars because that’s where I felt like I was from for the longest time. I know these items that we’ve unwrapped so far on my side of the family seem very fragile to you but, to me, they are a constant source of the stability my grandparents tried to give me when I came to live with them, after my mother was institutionalized, and never mind my father because I don’t even know who he is. Don’t worry, we will find a way to make them secure in our home.”

Dagen was an engineer. He could so engineer something to not be damaged through normal or abnormal events. Well, maybe not normal as the wear of life and events did have an effect on anything. He mused over a small tag that could create a temporary stasis field around the object to prevent it from being damaged in a fall or ship turbulence. These things were precious to Reia and deserved that kind of protection. Still he remembered that accident on the Enterprise E, not to mention the D and how that was so damaged. A ship loss would mean the loss of all of this. Dagen wasn’t sure he wanted to put all of their eggs in one duranium basket, however. “Some of these are fit for an apartment we might rent or that home away from home, that shuttle we looked at before.” He didn’t want to outright come out and say he was scared of it all being lost (that being said there was the fear of them being lost with it, but given life over stuff, he might want to keep treasures in different places.

“It looked like it came out okay,” he said, looking at it. No notable water damage on it. It looked almost pristine .. in an aged fashion. “They look like something compiled with spare parts,” Dagen offered.

Tearing himself away from that he picked up a thin box that had been inset on its side. It had some weight to it and he hefted it as though trying to fathom what was in it. A ribbon held this shut. Slipping off the ribbon and lifting the top he groaned. It was filled with a half dozen thin notebooks, the covers dog eared, bent and, at least the top one, covered with doodles and stickers of dogs, or at least the Trill equivalent. “Oh man, I would be scared to look at these. In my time through the Symbiot commission to try to qualify mom said to keep a diary. I was kind of an anxious kid with this as the competition was fierce. I’d have typed it out but mom made me write it. Said that it would focus me better. I can’t imagine the teenage angst in these pages.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Oh ancestors if she and auntie read them!”
- Dagen

Reia succeeded in stopping herself from lunging at those dog eared notebooks. Oh the secrets they held and she would find out every one of them.

“You mean I have something to practice reading my trill with? Oh yay this is going to be such fun. Wow, handwritten.”

• Reia

Dagen laughed. “Handwritten yes. Legible .. ” He made a gesture that was suggestive of ‘well, that might be dubious’. He pulled one out. It had a earthy toned cover to it that had been doodled on. Yeah he’d been a restless kid. Sitting and just writing was not something that came easy. He traced a kind of spiral doodle with his fingers. He remembered doing that. It was at a day when he had absolutely no idea of what to write. Opening it up, his thumb brushed along the curled pages till he stopped randomly at one about a quarter way from the start. It had bold brown ink on it, the lines almost invisible with the writing. “Let’s see here,” he said, believing that there wasn’t much that was ‘too’ incriminating in its lines.

‘10th of Gilia’ .. “That would be about July equivalent,” he said.
‘Just back from the TCT.’ “Uh, TCT. Trill Commission Testing.”
‘Aptitude testing. Not like I couldn’t just tell them what I’m good at but it is just another of their incessant tests. And always repeating that only one of the class of twenty will stand a chance at a symbiot. I’m competing against all of them. It was hard to work this test today. It felt routine quizzes of random questions. Another of those. To think I’d be out playing on the court in intermission with all of them in a game of ‘Matrices’. “Um, Matrices.” He looked at Reia. “Kind of like basketball only being able to stick to one colored region on the court depending on the team you are on. Anyone outside of that is fouled. There is a lot of … jostling to get people out of their zones.” Dagen smiled. Jostling. Near tackling some days! The goal was to get fewer people on the court to be able to move more freely to score. And at that point everyone came back on to play, some to try harder and some to even scores of a different kind. “Where was I?”
‘H’len was another who scored high with me in manual dexterity and object analysis. Big words. We were good with working with things. Sure I was good with stuff. She was an artist. Pottery and sculpture. I like her fingers. Among other things.’ .. “Oh man I had such a crush on her!!”
Dagen