Chapter Text
An anchor of stone, holding the ship in place. That was how Tarima had imagined B’avi, the feeling of the touch of his mind against hers. The severed empathic connection lingered, a chain floating adrift in the water with nothing to hold it down. Panic filled her heart, dragging her into the darkness.
She fell toward the abyss that had ripped B’avi away. The eerie figures were like stars that had collapsed in upon themselves, crushing all that they were and could be under an unbearable gravity of self-loathing. Like silence that howled with pain, desperate to swallow everyone and everything around it.
Enough.
She opened her mouth and called forth the light. The field of gold, her sanctuary, began to swirl with petals. As they swirled, they began to spark: tiny fireflies inundating the dark. The beings, those howling vortices, screamed with a new pain.
Right before their heads burst apart, one of the shadowy figures coalesced into a face.
She recognized her father just before he exploded in crimson.
***
Tarima awoke, screaming, to see her father sitting next to her, his eyes closed. Sensing her alarm, he wakened.
Tarima, she heard his voice in her head. It’s okay. It’s okay, you’re safe. You’re awake. Thank the gods.
He reached for her hand. The nightmare still fresh in her mind, she recoiled in fear.
As she broke free from the darkness of her coma and its unsettling dreams, the first thing she noticed was the web of telepathic minds now gently enfolding hers. It was a peculiar feeling of being mentally swaddled- or stifled.
The thought dimly flickered through Tarima’s mind: I’m on Betazed again.
The familiarity, bewilderingly, caused a flash of anxiety. Before the darkness came, she had found refuge in a single mind. As she intermingled with that mind, she had felt safer, less alone, than she had ever felt in the constant dance of interweaving thoughts and feelings that was Betazoid society. Now, it was nowhere to be found.
Caleb, where did you go?