To Go Back One Day

Posted on Mon Feb 3rd, 2025 @ 8:58pm by Executive Officer Jake Ford & Teresa Forrest

Mission: Shackles
Location: Coterie
Timeline: Evening
1280 words - 2.6 OF Standard Post Measure

Jonalouie sat near a fire, keeping warm. It cooled down quick as the evening progressed - or so the lizardman would explain. Truth be told, he just didn't like the cold. Part of his genetics, none of his people liked the cold. Tip of his tail twitching lazily as the tall, strongly built man rubbed his hands. A flick of a forked tongue every few moments, sampling the air. A lot had happened of late, and he still wasn't quite sure what to think about it. Being kidnapped from his home, unsure whether his family was still around, the ship he and the other prisoners had been on crashing (he still had no idea how that happened) and now these highly advanced people had come to - ... save them and try to bring them home? That would be nice. He missed his family, and at least combustion racers were easy to comprehend.

"You mind if I...?" Jake motioned to the fire as he approached, rubbing his hands together to manage some of the warmth. "I guess it must get pretty cold in the evenings here. Is it like that where you're from?" he asked, taking a quick seat on his haunches and studying the unfamiliar lizard-like individual.

"Certainly," The lizardman motioned to an available space at the fire, a universal gesture of invitation. "My world is a bit warmer than this, but not by much. I miss the suns, though. Still trying to figure out what that is~" he added, pointing at the moon that now rose, starting its arc across the nighttime sky.

"You mean the moon?" Jake squinted upwards at the cool blue moon in the sky. "Not every world has them. It's...complicated." He furrowed his brow, trying not to sound condescending as he spoke. "Tell me about it - your world, I mean. There are so many out there. I always find it interesting to understand what makes them unique."

"Well, for one, we have no 'moon', as you call it. I expect it's a ball of rock, orbiting this world? That would make most sense," Jonalouie mused, looking up into the night sky. "We call our world Gode, I am a Godean. We have two suns. Moki, the blue one, and Reki, the red one, which orbit each other, with three worlds orbiting them in turn - Gode is the middle one. Days here are longer than on Gode. That took some getting used to, and even now I'm very tired when night falls. We have three major oceans, two minor ones. The rest of the world is mostly grassland and forests, with some scattered mountains. I think gravity is a bit higher on Gode than here, but not by much."

Jake nodded thoughtfully, grabbing a canteen of water from his landing party pack and taking a sip before offering it out to the Godean. "Where I come from - a planet called Vega - it sounds not far different; the grassland, the forests. A lot of green. We have these crystal tides...a kind of bright coral that forms not far from the shores. When the tide goes out, it's the most beautiful sight." He smiled at the mental image. "Anything like that from your home that you miss?"

"That sounds absolutely beautiful, makes me wish I could see it some time," The lizardman answered. "I think for Gode the nearest equivalent would be the kaleidoscopic fields of Gothrea. Massive, enormous fields of flowers on rolling hills as far as the eye can see. The flowers change colors based on the weather. Wind, air pressure, temperature, moisture. Sometimes before a storm rolls in you can see - ... waves, an ocean of colors rolling across the fields. Blue, green, red, yellow, purple, vithran. They are protected lands, as you can imagine. Forbidden to tread on foot or by landvehicle, forbidden for combustion vehicles. There are balloon tours, though."

Taking mental notes of the geographical elements, Jake gave another affirming nod of understanding. "All the hundreds of planets I've heard of, and yet still there are unique aspects to every world." He let out a light breath, the cooling air meaning it came out with the faintest puff of condensation. "You miss it? Your home?"

"I do," Jonalouie answered easily. "My home, my racecraft, my workshop, but most of all my wife and kid. I'd very much like to go back, if that's possible. But - " he glanced over in the direction of the crashed ship. "Well, your people are working on that, and there's nothing I can really do to help."

"Perhaps not right now," Jake noted, with a hopeful edge to his tone. "But anything you know, all the sights, the unique elements you mentioned, that could help us figure out where it is. It's possible, I mean." He glanced into the small campfire a second. "Sorry, I didn't mean to offer you hope if it ends up being a false one. I guess going through what you have, it must have been difficult to keep that alive."

"I'd already made peace with the idea that I'm never going home again before you and your people came and gave me hope that I might," the lizardman replied with a sad smile. "If that turns out to be false hope - I think I'd like to go with your people and learn about all the wondrous things you have invented."

Jake pondered that. The possibility of taking these people with them hadn't fully crossed his mind. At least, not beyond just ferrying them back home. "Well, that's not really my call..." he muttered, deflecting a little. "I suppose I assumed you would be a little happier here, where there are others more like yourself?"

"My family, my home, my workshop and my racecraft have been taken from me. If it's not possible to bring those back to me, at least don't condemn me to life on a strange world with strangers, scraping a living together while knowing that out there is technology beyond my wildest dreams," the lizardman replied, his expression grim. "That would be torture."

"Yeah." Jake fell silent again. He'd thought, up to this point, that he might have a handle on what it was these people were going through - what they needed. From Jonalouie's words, it was clear that he was wildly off base. Probably the reason why Starfleet had the Prime Directive; imposing anything on other species could be, as the lizardman had said, torture. "Look, I can't promise anything, but...well, if it helps, I'll speak to my Captain."

"I know," Jonalouie said, his voice quiet, as he reached a hand out to rest on Jake's for a fleeting moment - the abduction victim who's lost all he knew and loved offering a gesture of comfort to the starship ex-oh who was just passing through and living in comfort. "You're doing what you can. Your people are doing what they can. But you're bound by rules. I do understand that, and I am grateful for your efforts," he added, still his voice quiet. "If you don't mind, I would like to be alone with my thoughts for now."

"Yeah." Jake cleared his throat and nodded, rising to his feet. "Yes. Of course. Thank you for your insight. And for what it's worth, I hope one day I get to see Gothrea." It was a simple gesture, an acknowledgement of having heard the lizard-man. As he walked away, his own thoughts drifted to his homeworld, and the dreadful prospect of what it must be like to never see it again. Not a thought he wanted to linger on for long.

 

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