Temporary Home

Posted on Sun Jan 14th, 2024 @ 9:57pm by Lieutenant Calliope Ito

755 words; about a 4 minute read

ON:

Calliope carried her tea over to the table and gently lowered herself into the chair. She pulled out her leather-bound journal and a pen and after a small sip of tea she opened it to page one and began her daily journal practice.


Personal Log,

I just arrived but a few hours ago onto the station. My cats are exploring the temporary quarters we’ve been given and I … I find myself sitting by the view port in my quarters and staring out at the stars. Tomorrow I head back to the Sakura so there is no point in unpacking but I have mixed feelings about it. The Sakura is home but my year off in Japan…it was my grounding. It was where I finally started to see glimpses of myself reviving from a deep sleep.

I argued against counseling but Blake helped me to break through the shell that I had been locked in most, if not all, of my life. I started to see glimpses past the darkness and I started to feel like I could breathe and here I sit gasping for breath again.

Blake said that my surroundings don’t have to stop my development and yet I wonder if her words are true. In the short hours here, I have felt a bit of a regression. The dark mist of simply existing has returned or is floating awfully close by waiting to engulf me. I should call Blake, the old me would have sat, festered, tried to reason things out but … she’s helped so much that I wonder if I could maybe call her.


She put the pen down and took her cup of chamomile tea in her hand. Blowing gently, she took a sip and a moment to stare at the swirling stars around.


Part of me cannot wait to get to the Sakura, to see my engines again, to hermit in my old quarters but this brief glimpse of life that I had in my little apartment in Japan has made me somewhat curious. I can say for the first time that I understand my cats’ curiosity. They gracefully wind around our room looking, smelling, feeling. I have that yearning too but I have often wondered can my yearning be fulfilled on the Sakura?

To be honest I arrived here and was dazzled by the beauty of the Sakura. All tritanium and silvery glow with a slash of pink blossoms on the hull. I kept walking and then had my breath taken away by a constitution class ship. The hull said USS Arcadia. It was beautiful and my heart started to beat, nay, wildly thump in my chest. It is a class of ship that I dream of being on yet I don’t think my courage is yet strong enough to try.

Blake suggested I apply to one but…the Sakura is the safe option. There they know my…quirks and they accept them, the captain does anyway. On a new ship it would be another new start. I’m not sure I’m strong enough for that yet.


She put her pen down again taking a moment to sip her fast-cooling tea and get lost in her swirling thoughts.


She was beautiful to look at. I think I spent an hour just staring though. Maybe that’s enough. A glimpse of a dream. Besides the Sakura was small and there I did okay. I was considered a great engineer but a constitution class…well she’s special. There I would be a mere pebble in the ocean. Could I really handle it? I find that my mind goes back to words I’d heard a lot in my life. Questions and statements like, Why are you trying? You’ll never be good enough for that. You’re a klutz!

Blake called them my army of inner critics but they are screaming so loud now that where in Japan on my year of leave I could ignore them but now… they seem like they’re back with a vengeance.


She signed and slammed the notebook shut. “I’m not going down that road tonight,” she said as she stood and put her journal back in her bag. She wouldn’t solve all this tonight and her mind was far too busy to let her finish this entry. Another time then…

Maybe she would venture out to see if the station had a bookshop, she needed a distraction.


OFF:

 

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