sixthiterationlogs | healing hands and meditation

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healing hands and meditation

WHO: Beverly Crusher
WHERE: around House #15, the hospital, wandering around town
WHEN: April 10th
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: TBD, will update as needed
STATUS: Open

Beverly has been a resident of this tiny little village for less than a month and she wouldn't be able to say that she has settled in by any stretch of the imagination. By now she has claimed an empty house and is starting to figure out a routine, the latter of which is by far the only real settling she's actually done since she got here. The last thing she wants to do is get complacent here. Not that she really thinks she can, given how much she misses the Enterprise's crew already.

So today starts out as normal. She hunts for herbs that might be around to stockpile or use. Naturally, she can't help muttering about wanting several others that don't grow here. The supply on Caldos had been much better than this one, even on Arvada III during that disaster. Still, it's better than nothing and she knows better than to complain too loudly. If Q really is involved, he might take that as a challenge.

About mid-morning sees her cleaning her new house as best she can. She might be from a very, very distant future than most of the people and equipment here, but that doesn't mean she can't get down and dirty. Every so often she takes a break outside, looking around the property for a good place to think about starting a garden.

After she's had enough cleaning, she takes to wandering the village. She pays a special visit to the hospital, to check up on which of her colleagues is around and catch up with them, as well as the fountain, too see if there's anyone who might need to get pulled out of the water.

Late in the day, closer towards evening, she can be found out by her house again practicing Mok'bara, which looks like some kind of intricate and very slow full-body dance. It's not much of a dance and if anyone tries to interrupt her physically, she may or may not slide into using the techniques she's practicing as they were intended: as martial arts.

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As always, the canyon seemed to have a way of listening, providing or thwarting the things they spoke aloud. Sometimes even the things they didn't, but it had only been several days since Moana had asked, not quite for advice, for ways to be more in touch with her surroundings. Meditation had seemed an obvious and glib answer, and he hadn't been any more serious when he wondered if a teacher might appear from the fountain--

But here he is, walking along the path and pausing to watch a woman stand one foot and pull her hand through the air as if underwater, like a staple of the park. Every morning on the way to school, the same leather-tan old man practicing tai chi at the top of a slope, under a tree. Not necessarily the same man through the years, but the same type.

At least there's some variation here, he thinks, head tilted at the same angle of Aurora's as they watch her. The growing puppy is heeled literally between his heels, his legs on either side of her core to prompt her to stay with him. "Are you some kind of yoga instructor," he asks--it looks like tai chi, but there's enough variation in her movements that he can't really place it.

Thankfully his mother hadn't made him learn the martial arts any more than she'd tried to force his lazy hands into proper calligraphy.

By the time someone else has wandered up, Beverly is at least focused enough on what she's doing that she doesn't fully notice right away. So to say she's a little startled at the sudden voice would not be wrong. She does manage not to jump at it, but she does stop mid-motion and turn to study the person. It would be nice to have people who would wait for someone in meditation to stop meditating, but she supposes she can forgive them for not recognizing that aspect of what she was doing.

She sighs and shakes her head, feeling disoriented from being interrupted. "No. I was practicing a meditative form of martial arts." There's more to it than that, of course, but she needs a moment or two before she'll be able to really focus on that. Even after all these days of living here, she's still uptight from her recent experience with the Borg.

"I could see that," he says, before reining himself in as well as he's reined in the dog--yoga might as well be another litmus test for new acquaintances, a start in determining the gaps between experience. "Sorry, where I'm from, it's related to meditation, and I'd mentioned it to someone at the gathering Peggy held earlier."

Now that the woman isn't carefully meditating, thanks to his interruption, he figures Aurora can do little harm, and lets her go to sniff her way up to the woman's feet in hopeful greeting. She's a friendly animal, not yet exposed to any reason not to be.

"I was just on my way to the inn, to see what's left in the kitchens. Did you need anything?" If she wasn't interested in company, he could just bring it on his return to the house.

Forcing herself to relax a bit, Beverly waves away his apology and decides that maybe now is a good time to call it quits anyway. She wasn't getting very far. Worf would have her working harder, but she's not sure that would go as well as intended. So she just runs a hand through her short blonde hair, which is slowly turning back to red at the roots by now, and tilts her head slightly.

"I hadn't thought about getting anything else to eat," she answers honestly, "but a cup of water might be nice." Or something else. Basically, she's not at all opposed to company this time around. She's usually pretty friendly and even with her recent Borg experiences she isn't going to change that part about herself anytime soon.

"What I was practicing was meant to clear the mind so that reflexes can take over," she explains next. "It's supposed to make the fighting style easier to enact in actual combat, but I haven't quite mastered that, yet." She offers a rueful sort of smile, thinking Worf would have a lot to say if he could see her now. But she does a lot of thinking on a normal day, so he should be used to that by now.

"The mind-clearing or the combat," he asks, curious and conversational. Aurora returns to his side, somewhat used to being given a pass by some of the villagers. She's almost shy now, walking on the other side of his legs, gently back-tracking to sniff at the woman's heels as they walk, returning to his side to gauge his own reaction to their new friend.

She really is like a kid, and he pauses to reach down and scruff the fur around her ears in reassurance. "I'm Kira," he adds, remembering himself near the midpoint of their journey. He's pretty bad at that part of introductions, and he's sure Kate or Credence have had to fill in the gaps for some of those he's met.

"And this is Aurora?" The question isn't of the dog's name, but rather: do you even introduce your pet? It's not like anyone's going to come calling for her at the house.

Now that she's got a moment to breathe, her attention falls on the dog. After a moment or two, she leans over a bit as Aurora sniffs at her while they walk so she can offer her hand. She's never exactly been a dog person, more a cat-lover, but she figures that's mostly due to a lack of initiation. Why not fix that now?

"The mind-clearing," she offers lightly, her lips twisting with mild amusement. "But I've never exactly liked combat by itself, either."

She can fight, of course. She just prefers not to need to. It's part of her idealism, something that has somehow survived despite all of her years in Starfleet and everything she's seen.

"Beverly," she responds, by way of introduction. "Aurora is a lovely lady. Did you find her here?"

Both sentiments are easily understood, easy to return a smile to, hanging back to give her a moment to greet the dog. "A friend got her as a gift, one of the boxes they leave people. She doesn't seem to know whose name was on her at the time, she follows me around as much as she doesn't."

It might just be the fact that he handles food more often than Casey, and Bodhi seems to get his afternoons with her by virtue of staying still the longest. "She's the first dog I've ever had, but she behaves, and that's all I really need."

"If you don't enjoy combat," he asks, heading around the front of the inn to the door that leads directly into the kitchen, "can I ask why you learned it? I'm...deciding if it's worth the time, I guess."

"Well, she's lovely and she looks well-trained, too," Beverly comments, watching as she stands again to keep walking. "I've always been better with cats, but a good dog can go a long way." Some days she even misses Data's cat Spot, for all that Spot could be a bit troublesome. Cats were just more her thing.

The question gets a slight tilt of her head in consideration. It's not entirely a hard question to answer. More that it's difficult to explain without saying too much. "Self-defense mostly," she admits. "Much as I don't like the necessity of it, I do think it's a good idea to know how to defend yourself. Besides, the organization I work for strongly suggests combat knowledge. It can't hurt when you don't know what you're going find."

"I am too," he says, glancing down at Aurora like she might hear him and take some offense. "Mostly because I'm lazy and I had a lot less time on my hands back home, but now that I don't live at the inn, I don't see them as much."

Aurora was certainly more hands on, but she also came when he called, and if he needed a companion, he never had to wait on the mood to strike her for it.

Her answer makes sense, and he isn't sure what else he expected. It's always made sense for others, for people like Ty and Nicky to be protectors, for people like Casey to at least watch their own backs. Without explaining his gifts, he isn't sure how to express why he struggles with it, even when his own life is on the line. "So far I can only think of one thing we've had a chance to actually fight," he says instead. "And it was the kind of monster you can't face with just your hands."

Beverly's expression turns a bit more sympathetic as he continues. She might not have a lot of personal demons, so to speak, but she's had more than her fair share of emotional turmoil. It's hard to fight oneself or past issues. It's hard to fight against grief. That one she knows on an almost intimate level. Some days she still misses Jack like she would miss air if she stopped breathing. Other times, she can go days, weeks, months, almost years without thinking of him. It's arbitrary. But then, grief and trauma of any kind are.

"What kind of monster was it?" she asks, equal parts caution and curiosity. If she's going to be stuck here, she may as well find out what she's in for as much as she possibly can.

"It's gone for now," he starts, hardly wishing to pull her from her meditation and set her watching her back, for all it might be a good idea to tread carefully at all times. "I've gone looking for signs, but they're all old. Which isn't to say it won't come back, or there won't be other things like it."

Lightning wasn't like it, except for how it struck quick and couldn't be fended off, even by the best of them physically and tactically. His grief wasn't for the woman lost to the wendigo, but there are plenty of people he would now miss if the thing struck again.

"It was called a Wendigo. It attacked livestock and people, before I arrived. They're--warped things, all claws and teeth. They eat flesh, most think they come about when people turn to cannibalism, and who knows what circumstances were in this village before it was abandoned."

The idea of the wendigo makes her shudder inwardly. That's almost more than her innate idealism can handle, so she files it away and hopes the beast never comes back. More interesting than the wendigo is what her companion continues on to say and Beverly tilts her head, glancing at him for a moment.

"'Before it was abandoned?'" she echoes with curious surprise. "You mean there was something more to it before all of this happened?" She waves her hand to indicate the village as it stands now. Was there another village before this with other people? Did something happen to it?

He nods, recalling what he's been told and the notes on the board at the inn, the map constructed and filled in before he even arrived. He's started to add to it himself, simple theories, caves, landmarks he's found on his walks.

"Apparently when the first round of people arrived, the place was just--empty. The buildings looked used, but no one was here. There are some ruins of other buildings north of here." Looking along the path, he points in what he's learned to be the appropriate direction. Aurora perks up and trots ahead, as if commanded, then circles back when she finds nothing in their path. "Maybe they found a way out that we haven't, yet."

"Maybe they did," she agrees thoughtfully. It certainly is the better theory of the ones she can come up with and she'll choose to believe that. Her idealism much prefers not imagining anything worse. "I guess it's mostly a matter of time before we find the same one, if it exists."

Whatever the case is, they apparently still have some time left to live here, for better or worse. And maybe she'll be taking a look at that board when she wanders in today.

"Still, the idea of people being here before us doesn't exactly make me feel better about this whole thing."

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healing hands and meditation

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