Delayed Christmas Delivery

Posted on Sat Jan 18th, 2020 @ 6:25pm by Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Kodria Mizu & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Fri Jan 24th, 2020 @ 12:04am

Mission: Neutral Zone Neutrality
Location: USS Hera, Deck 8, the Bird's Nest
Timeline: 2397

It was 06:25 when the door chime rang in the shared quarters of the lovebirds Dox and Mona... or at least, that was how Rita Paris thought of them. Waiting for the response, most likely Dox in her housecoat, already up drinking coffee and reviewing reports, Rita regretted her lack of hands to do something while she waited.

Inside the freshly remodeled quarters, Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox was largely fulfilling Rita's internal prediction, with a PaDD in one hand and a cup of steaming coffee in the other. Calling out "Come." from the mid-sized dining room table, the door slid open with a woosh. However, Dox was instead wearing a pair of black sweat pants and a tight lycra workout top with 'HERA' emblazoned in yellow across the chest, as she looked up to see the sight of her superior officer waiting, hands full. "Commander? Is everything alright?"

"Oh, sure. Not a big deal at all, just..." As she entered, the curvaceous commander was working to maintain the balance of a few colorfully-wrapped packages stacked together, which was keeping her hands occupied. Seeking out a flat surface, she settled for the coffee table in front of one of the couches, and unburdened herself as she explained. "On Earth, the advent of the winter solstice- the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere- has always been celebrated as a holiday. It's a time to give thanks, and give gifts to friends and loved ones, to show how much they mean to you. I generally struggle to get something for Sonak, but default to clothing when in doubt, or Vulcan relics if I can find them from traders and such. I commissioned a ship in a bottle kit for the Captain, as I suspect she'll enjoy working with her hands on something so precise."

"What brings me here today is that, well, we were on Mon Krun'chi when the holiday came this year. I might have presented gifts, but we were traveling light, we had bigger things on our minds, and frankly, I was so caught up in the diplomatic endeavors, the holiday kind of slipped my mind. We're past it now, but... well, I still got these gifts, and I still wanted to give them to you and Mona and the chicks. So, better than putting it off until next year, I decided." Picking up a small colorfully wrapped box, she offered it to the redheaded Romulan.

"Happy holidays, Mnhei'sahe. I know what you're going to say," Rita prognosticated, as she often did. "You're going to protest that you don't have anything for me and you are going to try to beat yourself up over it and make yourself feel badly about accepting a gift from me, so please, just skip all that. It's a tradition of MY homeworld, and it doesn't obligate you to reciprocate. So please, just accept the gift in the spirit it is offered and enjoy it, okay?"

Smiling, Mnhei'sahe took the small package as she chuckled lightly. "The Dox's... my adopted grandparents... made a very big deal out of Christmas. They made every effort to get me into it, but... well... you know how I was."

"Angry little Romulan girl that just wanted to sulk and never wanted to bother with such things." The curious pilot looked at the vibrant paper as she reminisced with a mildly wistful smile. "My mother always avoided us celebrating Romulan holidays, even though I knew when they were happening. Sometimes I'd sneak out of my room to talk with whatever group of refugees we were moving and they'd tell me. LOTS of harvest celebrations that are analogous to Thanksgiving on Earth. When I eventually was ON Earth, I would make a bigger deal out of those, but I think I was just going out of my way to be difficult and contrary."

"Mona's in the shower, but should be out any minute. And with the chicks boosting her sensitivity, I'm sure she knows you're here. She can apparently tell what I'm feeling from two systems away." Dox continued, tilting the box slightly, shooting a warm grin towards her bond-sister. "And since you know me well enough, I'll spare you me feeling bad for not remembering this and just invite you and Sonak over for dinner or something once the kitchen remodel is complete and everything is re-organized. Sound fair?"

"Sounds perfect. So long as Mona's up for it, we'd be happy to be hosted and share a meal," Rita replied with a genuine smile. She herself was surprisingly fond of such hospitality, offering it on a regular basis to her senior officers, and on most nights she and Sonak preferred a meal shared by preparation rather than replication. While the first officer was no chef by any stretch of the imagination, she could follow a recipe and she enjoyed sharing the foods and meals of the various cultures of her homeworld with her logical alien mate, and her shipmates.

"For now, go ahead and open your gift. It isn't anything earthshaking, just a little something," Rita offered, trying to diminish any potential anxiety over the present.

"Mona loves to cook and is excited to show the new quarters off once it's all put back together. I'm... learning how to help in the kitchen, but I promise to not poison either of you." The Romulan pilot joked, taking a sip of her coffee. Her tone and mood were a far cry from how nervous she used to be when she first arrived on the ship.

"Okay, let me see what this is." Mnhei'sahe said as she set the cup down and gently removed the paper, rather than ripping or tearing at it. After a short moment, she opened the top of the small box and pulled a small, golden device out. It stood on three small metal legs and had a number of hinged metal wings that she folded out to reveal the internal workings of an old, earth compass and astrolabe.

"Rita... this... this is beautiful." Mnhei'sahe said, taken aback slightly by the small but intensely thoughtful item.

"It's a reproduction, of course," Rita hastened to add, lest her friend think it was a priceless heirloom. "But it's a bit of a combination of things- a compass, which points to true north in Earth's magnetic field. A sundial, that let you tell time in the ancient world by the position of the sun, and part sundial, which used the position of the sun and measurement of time to determine course, heading and speed for ancient navigators. Part astrolabe, which they would use to navigate at night by the position of the stars relative to the horizon."

"It's just a bit of antiquity from Earth history that I thought might make a sentimental gift that doesn't serve any real purpose, save to remind us of how far we've come, and how we got here- those brave pioneers measuring the forces of the universe to determine their place within it." All smiles, Rita knew that despite- or perhaps because of- her upbringing, Mnhei'sahe Dox was sentimental to a fault, and the ancient navigation instrument was liable to be on a shelf in her home gathering dust a hundred years from now.

Sitting there, the young Romulan woman held the small gold instrument in her hands. She tilted it, watching the small metal needle wobble towards the position of the Hera's Warp Core, as it had it's own, quite strong magnetic field. As she studied the miniature metal arms with astronomical markings on them, her eyes began to tear up ever so slightly. 

Still looking at the device, she began to speak, her voice light, with its familiar raspy quality adding the slightest of warbles to her tone. "Thank you, Rita. This is... this is amazing. It's... when I was young, on the Forager, I had this little... gauge. I made it using a few pieces of plastisteel window paneling that I took from the repair pile. They were the same size as the window in my quarters, and I put these... dials on it that I etched the star charts of the system we were in most of the time. And if I turned the dials, and lined the etchings of the stars with what I could see out my window, it helped me learn to figure out where I was."

"It... grounded me." Mnhei'sahe said as she adjusted the setting of the small gift, running her fingers gently across the notched markings across its surfaces. A navigators tool from the Hera's Lost Navigator to her pilot, the woman who had struggled so long to fing her course in life. It's meaning was plain and appreciated. "Thank you so much. It's... wonderful"

"I'm glad you like it," Rita replied, obviously relieved. While she tended to be pretty good at gift-giving, navigating it with the same intuition that guided the rest of her life, still she worried over little things like this. "I spent quite a few summers sailing the Pacific around San Francisco Bay and the Gulf of the Farallones. It was something girls were supposed to be able to 'help out with', according to the Commander, so it really connected me to the sea and sailing, and it helped inspire me to join Starfleet. Seeing a crew all working together toward common goals, discipline, overcoming natural obstacles, learning to read the currents and the winds..." Lost in reverie herself there for a moment, Rita refocused on the present. "You get the idea. I'm just glad you like it. Who knows, knowing how this old antique works might just come in handy someday for you."

Saying so, Rita remembered showing the natives of Kathoom how to navigate, not by landmarks, but by magnetic north. The old ways were not always the best ways, but knowing the history of her profession had come in handy on more occasions than she would care to admit.

"Well..." Dox said, sniffing slightly, "Now, I definitely have to come up with something good to plan for dinner. So... until Mona comes out, what do you think so far? I think... I think Asa will like knowing that their quarters will be the rooms for the children in a few months."

"That would indeed warm their hearts," Rita replied. Then she snapped her fingers and pointed to the open space. "You could take a scanner tour of it, narrate, and send them the file. This is the future, Dox. We're not reduced to writing on actual pulped dead trees and waiting for someone to physically deliver the message. Show them- if they are too busy to line up a 2-way call, then just record it and send it. Show them what you did with the place, and I think that would mean the world to them. If nothing else to show that they will always be a part of your lives."

Setting down the golden gift from the golden girl from another time, Dox stood up and looked over at the newly expanded quarters with a light grin. Taking her empty cup of coffee over to the replicator to reclaim the cups molecules, she turned to Rita to reply, "I think once Mona's done decking it all out as planned, that would be a wonderful idea. Especially since 2 way calls are so hard to schedule as we never quite know where we're going to be from day to day."

"I admit, that I'm really glad that the expansion was approved. The family quarters on deck 14 are nice, but I would really have missed the windows and all the quarters that were the right size were interior spaces." Then, raising an eyebrow, Dox turned back to Rita, "Would you like anything? A coffee or tea? I should probably go check on Mona and make sure she doesn't come out of the bedroom in nothing but feathers."

"No, go, go- I've got reports," Rita Paris smirked as she fished inside the loose V-neck of her top, producing the fragile but omnipresent collapsible PaDD she favored. The snug and stiff neck of the modern collars had been claustrophobic to her- she greatly preferred the open blousy feel of her offset V-neck uniform. Waving in a shooing motion, she snapped it open and began pacing slowly toward the replicator. A fellow workaholic, they both spoke the same language in this instance. Rita had plenty of work she could be doing- thus was the life of the executive officer on a starship of 752 souls. Possibly 753 before 2400 tonight, according to Sickbay.

The polite request as she walked away from the portly pilot was a muttered, "Computer, please make me a cup of coffee?"

While Mnhei'sahe had slipped into the bedroom to check up on her wife, the computer chirped lightly and replied, =^=Coffee, Paris style, Commander=^=

On the small display screen over the replicator, Rita could see a short readout of names of notable crewmembers and sub-listings of their food and drink preferences that had been saved off and recorded by the young Romulan woman with a penchant for over-preparedness the golden-clad Commander was quite familiar with.

As she fetched her brushed aluminum mug with the old-fashioned Starfleet delta on it, Rita sipped her black Earth Hawaiian blend coffee and shook her head with a small smile. Leave it to Mnhei'sahe to over-prepare for someone just asking for a cup of morning coffee.

With a gentle woosh, the door to the bedchamber opened, and the newly promoted and extremely pregnant Lieutenant Mona Gonadie came out wearing her new, blue uniform top.

"Commander Paris, you sweet, sweet bird! I'm going to make sure we have the best meal possible tomorrow," Mona exclaimed as she came up and did her best to envelop the anachronistic officer in a heartfelt hug, which Rita managed by leaning down into a bit to make room for Mona’s swollen abdomen. "I'll make a bunch of Earth side dishes and since you and Commander Sonak are vegetarian and I can't exactly see myself cooking a turkey... Why don't I try making one of those tofu birds I've heard about?"

“That would be amazing, thank you,” Rita replied with a wide smile. “Look at you! That blue really does suit you, Mona. Plus I love what you’ve done with the place, really. So much better than the spartan empty quarters with the punching dummy,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper. “Meanwhile, I have a few gifts- it’s an Earth tradition I’m fond of, and I’m catching up after the holiday, but better late than never. One gift is for you, and one is for the chicks. Which one would you like to open first?”

"Well, the chicks are already excited, so let's open theirs first," Mona rubbed her belly as she spoke, the commotion inside of her just starting to become visible as the three chicks in her thrummed their hardest. "And I think it best if I did so sitting down." With that declaration, she made a bit of a deal of sitting down at the dining table in one of the extremely plush, Miradonian style, 'nesting' chairs they used.

“Of course, of course, sit. Sooooo, studies showed that children react to music, both in the womb and after they are born. So, with that in mind, classical music tends to work well to build stronger minds, aid in concentration and focus, that sort of thing. Plus in your case the little ones seem to be very reactive to vibration in general. So, I did a little shopping, and this is what I came up with.” Handing the colorfully wrapped box to Mona, Rita continued explaining as she unwrapped the gift. Inside was a small 15 cm by 30 cm column of white, along with what looked almost like a four-leafed clover.

“This will play a variety of Earth classics- you can make requests if you like and it will play them, or it will cycle somewhat randomly through the catalogue it has in memory. I tried to choose the ones that would be soothing or inspirational or inspiring, like Der Ring Das Nibelung, a lot of Mozart and Bach… you’ll get the idea. Now this,” Rita pointed to the odd clover. “These extend and retract as needed, and they curve as they do so. You can set it on your tummy and when turned on, instead of broadcasting to the room, it will broadcast the sonic vibrations through your tummy so that the little ones can hear it that much better. I’m told that it soothes them, and helps you get a bit easier rest, particularly in the last quarter of the pregnancy when they tend to get more restless.”

“I know it being Earth music is racist and narrow-minded, but it’s the music that I know, so… I stayed in my lane, so to speak,” Rita explained somewhat sheepishly. “But there is planet of memory for you to add whatever music you might like for them to hear and learn.”

"Oh my! This is perfect and amazing! Thank you so much!" Mona tinkered with it for a few moments, learning how it worked, a bright smile plastered across her face. "They're at that age where they'll start to become a bit of a nuisance too. And this may sound weird, but we never invented stringed instruments, so we kind of... Culturally appropriated those from other worlds. Mostly from Earth and Trill so we've been going through a bit of a renaissance of our own lately what with harps, pianos, violins..."

"Well, you come from a species of songbirds." Mnhei'sahe said as the door to the bedroom wooshed open and she stepped back out with a light smile as she fastened the stiff neck of her crimson tunic. "Most races don't have a specific language developed just for singing, so it balances out."

"At least now you've got more music for them to listen to since my taste in Earth music isn't probably the best for them at this point." It was well known among much of the command crew that the only real cultural affectation she picked up from her time on Earth was an appreciation for Heavy Metal music, which was decidedly too intense for the chicks, to be sure. Smiling, Mnhei'sahe stepped over as she finished getting dressed and gave Mona a soft kiss on the cheek.

"And I think the music I enjoyed the most on Earth is called something like techno or rave or something..." They'll need to be exposed to a lot so they can decide for themselves." Mona nodded and thought heavily on the subject. "Though if they decide on Klingon opera..."

"Well, I like Klingon Opera..." Mnhei'sahe said, letting herself trail off as she stepped over to the replicator and ordered up another cup of coffee for herself and a particularly soothing Moradonian purple tea that Mona liked that helped settle her stomach as the chicks were, in fact, getting more boisterous as the entered the final 4 months of her pregnancy.

Handing the tea to Mona and sitting down on the chair next to her, Mnhei'sahe smiled as she placed a hand on her bond-mate's belly. As she did, the audible thrumming shifted tone and perked up, seeming to sound more excited.

“On that note, there is your gift, Mona. Now, I went wayyyyy out on a limb for this one, but your folks were a big help.” Handing over the brightly colored package that had a surprising amount of weight to it, Rita explained. “Another tradition that exists on my world is what we call a ‘music box’ It is supposed to be primarily ornamental, but when you open it, it will play a specific tune. In olden days this was a mechanical marvel that one had to wind the gears for it to play. But in the modern-day, everything is battery powered, and besides, I don’t think a mechanism could reproduce this song.”

Inside the package was an ornately carved and jeweled egg, obviously a reproduction of a rarity Rita had dug up somewhere. A stand came with it to support the egg at its wide base, and a hinge was evident on the outside near the top that enabled the top of the egg to hinge open. When she did so, a reproduction of the two Starfleet officers, standing together and holding hands, turned slowly on a small pedestal, as a very familiar pair of voices sang from within the egg.

“It’s your parents- mammy and pappy. I asked them to record a Mirdonian lullaby for the chicks, and this way it stayed all in the family. There’s a recording feature as well, if you’d like to get Mrs. Dox to record a Romulan lullaby, so you can have one from both of the chick’s cultures. But this is a gift for you, Mona. I… had my mother’s when I was growing up, and I treasured it. I thought it might make for a nice heirloom for you, and it might help calm the chicks, now and later, if they could hear such a thing and know it as you do. A little bit of home and heritage for you, if you will. Ah, hopefully, the egg isn't in bad taste..."

As Mona took it in and listened to the song she'd heard literally thousands of times, she had to cover her mouth with one hand as tears began to form in her eyes. "No... I... It's perfect. Thank you." That was all she was able to get out before she completely broke down into happy tears. Clutching Mona's hand and squeezing it tightly, Mnhei'sahe was at a loss for words, but her skill and damp eyes expressed her feeling for Rita's gift to her wife perfectly.

“Awwww, you two lovebirds!” Rita said as she wrapped the two in an embrace, her own eyes misting over. “I’m just glad you like them. It’s important that we plan for the future, you know? And your chicks are arriving into lives that already have lots of history. I just want to make it a bit more accessible to them, that’s all.”

As Mona nodded and squeezed Rita and Dox as tight as she could, she did nothing to stop the flow of tears. "You both are so good to me. My Minay, you have to be at the birth, but Rita, will you be there as well? As my sister?"

There were a few seconds of hesitation at that, as Rita strove to say the right thing. "The universe... doesn't always let me make those sorts of promises, Mona. As you may have noticed, I sometimes end up not exactly where I'd planned. But I promise you, I'll do everything in my power to be there, no matter what it takes. Okay?"

Little did Rita Paris realize just how prophetic that statement would turn out to be for the Lost Navigator, but she made the promise all the same.