BEST VOY STORY, ROUND XVII ~~ BEST OVERALL STORY, ROUND XVII
Title: Holding On To The Earth
Author: R. Schultz ( cousindream@msn.com )
Series: VOYAGER
Code: J/7
Rating: G
Summary: Janeway - Commodore now - is once more in possession of the old family farm in Indiana. She is holding on.
Disclaimer: Paramount/Viaborgcom owns all. Especially all things connected to VOYAGER. Hail be to Moloch. Moloch is mighty. Moloch is greedy. I am not. No money is involved in this fiction, and forgiveness is begged from Moloch. This story is mine under Berne International Law. 800 words, May, 2005.
Archiving: Will be archived in the Femme Fuh-Q Fest -- http://www.svpress.us/femmefuhqfest/ -- then in ASCEM. All comments to: cousindream@msn.com
by R. Schultz
Indiana.
The skies are straggling torn white linen, nothing more. Clouds do not exist. Just those ragged whisps.
The cool is to my back and the summer heat is to my front. The quiet is overwhelming, but it is not quiet. There a million little noises, most felt with the ear rather than heard. The quiet is criss-crossed by a multiple of multiples of never-quite-heard noises.
It is so quiet here. I missed the busy quiet.
I open my eyes again and the sky is a limitless pit below me. If I don't hold on tight, I am going to fall into the blue, past the rags of white, out into the spinning round-and-round sky.
The air here smells. A thousand thousand smells, scents, flavors, fragrances, odors, hints and especially the hot close tang of the quiet of summer.
Noises are heard here, but they aren't part of things.
I am connected here, back here in Indiana. The scents, the air, the vague white, blue, red, gray noises of non-noise. I can smell the hot quietude of an Indiana summer. Noises are here but not a part of the essential me/us. Memories are strongest when they are being created.
Isn't it giddy and dangerous here? I must grasp tight the firmly rooted deep drying grass or I can fall face first into the sky. Fall and fall and fall and fall and never come back.
Do I want to come back?
Someone is coming, I can hear them, but I don't turn my head. How can they walk on the Earth without falling off into the sky?
"There is an animal here."
My eyes pop open and I incline my head to engage the neutrality of Seven's beautiful face. As seen so often back on VOYAGER, there is nothing to be seen on her face. Besides, she's upside down to me.
Slobber edged upon the scene.
"It's the neighbors dog," I explained. Though why I'm bothering to explain to an hallucination, I can't tell why. Seven is umpteen quadrillion kilometers away. With Chakotay.
Annika Hansen. But she'll always be my Seven, to me.
"It is an interesting name," the hallucination continued.
"Stick out your hand and let him sniff." I think she gave me one of her patented quizzical looks. I half-way hope she'll tell me it does not compute or it is irrelevant.
A moment.
"It has swallowed my hand," Seven noted in her classical dry tone. God, I loved to hear that tone of voice.
"But he's not biting, is he?"
"No, it is not."
"He is mouthing your hand. In a moment he'll withdraw, or you can pull it away now, he'll let you go. He's not dangerous."
"He has left my hand covered with dog saliva."
"Hence the name Slobber," I finished. "You'll probably want to clean it off. You can wash it off in the crick. It's my crick. I don't mind. Honest."
"Creek."
"Crick. You're in Indiana. Do as the Romans do."
She went away and I was devastated. So I went back to holding tight to the Earth so I wouldn't fall off. I didn't expect to ever see my hallucination return, but she did. I was vastly relieved.
"Thank you," I murmured.
"Why?" she asked.
"For returning. You're real, aren't you? You're not a fever dream and I'm not going to wake up back in the Delta Quadrant, am I?"
She stared down on me, her arms folded over that magnificent chest. Quite a sight upside down.
"I've been missing you so much, you know," I added. "That's because I love you and I never told you so and I should have fought Chakotay for you instead of letting you slide away."
One can be honest with hallucinations.
Pause.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm holding on to the Earth. I'm liable to fall of into the clear blue sky for ever and ever and ever and ever, for all of eternity, if I don't hold on tight."
She cocked her head at me.
"Lie down, and try to imagine."
She lay down. Alongside me.
I wanted to roll over and begin kissing and holding and hugging and lots and lots of other things. But then I might fall off into the sky and never come back. That'd mean I'd never see Seven again.
"You are correct," she startled me. "We are on the ceiling of an immense room, and if we don't hold tight we might fall off and fall forever."
My Seven being whimsical? Wonders shall never cease.
"Therefore I must hold tight or I shall fall away. I did that once already and it was an error."
She placed her human hand over mine and began to hold tight.
END