Pathways - Jeri Taylor [229]
He turned his face toward the sky and felt the liquid plash of rainfall on his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids, a balm of wetness that soothed and healed. He opened his mouth as the rainfall became more intense, and gulped mouthful after mouthful of the sweet liquid.
He then turned to the sehlat, who had lifted his snout as though he, too, were trying to lick at the falling rain. Tuvok cupped his hands until they filled with water, then tilted them so the liquid ran down the animal’s throat. He repeated this over and over, until finally the animal rose shakily to its feet.
The rain had turned the desert sand to a caked mass; Tuvok began digging a series of bowl-like indentations, which quickly filled with water and made drinking much easier. The sehlat lapped at the puddles and Tuvok scooped handful after handful until he had drunk so much he felt ready to burst.
Another bounty was provided by the rainstorm: small, sand-burrowing animals came scrambling to the surface, lizards and voles and others Tuvok had never seen before, trying to escape the sudden flood of their burrows. Both he and the sehlat became ardent hunters, and ate rapaciously until their hunger was as slaked as their thirst.
And still the rains fell, not in a lashing, brutal attack, but in a steady torrent, a powerful cascade of water from above, cleansing, healing. When Tuvok had eaten and drunk his fill, he removed his robe and stood naked in the downpour, feeling the drenching caress of the deluge; something primal, something elemental stirred in him. His most ancient ancestors had lived in these deserts, unfettered by clothing, unabetted by technology, living a hardscrabble life of deprivation and thirst, occasionally indulging in an unexpected bounty of nature like this thunderstorm. He felt a palpable link to those ancient people, a connection that stretched over millennia, and with that joining came a sense of intensity and might, a tapping into elements of himself that he had never known existed, much less accessed.
Powerful, endowed, he turned like a dancer on the desert floor, lifting his arms to the skies in an impromptu paean to Vulcan’s past and the way in which it validated him. Nearby, the sehlat sat contentedly, wet coat matting around him, regarding the strange undulations of the naked man as he paid homage to the rain.
Four nights later, the euphoria of the rainstorm had evaporated like the moisture on the desert floor. He was not hungry or thirsty; there was still an abundance of small creatures who had not yet returned to their underground existence, and he and the sehlat fed well.
But T’Khut had returned to loom above him in the night sky, and with its portentous appearance Tuvok’s doubts returned. He had spent a great deal of time walking across the desert—exactly how much time he didn’t know, but he was sure it was at least several months—and he had yet to feel any genuine sense of accomplishment. Seleya was there, growing larger with each night’s walk, but he could only think of what he had said to the sehlat as it lay dying: what difference did it make if he got closer to it, if he got all the way to its base? He would see more of it, of course, and he could make the claim that he had endured long enough to bring his journey to completion. But what, ultimately, did that matter? Had all his effort, all this risk of his very life, been for no purpose other than to say he had completed what he started out to do?
It seemed a paltry reward.
Now that Seleya was within reach, his stomach full and thirst abated, he was more doubtful than he had been when he was near death from dehydration and starvation. This observation flew in the face of reason, and disturbed him more than he cared to acknowledge. It seemed that his expedition would end with no genuine resolution, no satisfaction, no enlightenment.
What, then, had it been for? He glanced down at the sehlat, trotting strongly at his side, and was struck again with the impossibility of explaining any of this. The answers will come when they will