The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [19]
But he found it difficult to extract any real, substantive joy from the raw, visceral sensation of cold air that flowed all about his body. For one thing, the tingling in his incompletely healed left antenna- it was still not quite three-quarters regrown after Jonathan Archer had cut it off in a ritual Ushaan-Tor battle- was a constant irritant, as were the headaches and feelings of vertigo the damaged sensory organ still caused on occasion. And despite the small crowd of quietly joyous people that now surrounded him- warm, welcoming folk who hadn’t hesitated to take him in after the Andorian military had summarily cashiered him for losing his command, the Kumari, to a Romulan sneak attack- he felt isolated, alone. However sightless the Aenar standing all around him might be, there was just enough tenebrous, microbe-generated light in the spacious chamber to spotlight Shran’s uniqueness here; Shran was the only blue-skinned mainline Andorian in the entire underground city of the Aenar.
Aside from their obviously unusual pigmentation- all of the perhaps five thousand Aenar who still dwelled beneath Andoria’s northern wastes were albinos- there was little to distinguish these people from their cerulean-hued cousins, at least visually. And like their far more common blue Andorian, the Aenar could not reproduce without the participation of four distinct sexes: shen, thaan, chan, and zhen. Also like Andorians, the Aenar possessed frost-white hair and prominent cranial antennae that not only provided EM-band sensory input but also swayed and danced in response to their emotions.
Watching the slow, stately approach of the shelthreth party, Shran considered the emotions that most distinguished Aenar from Andorian, perhaps even more than did the albino people’s unique and formidable telepathic abilities. For the Aenar were as gentle and pacifistic as Shran’s folk were passionate and contentious. Despite their diminishing numbers, an augury of imminent extinction in Shran’s estimation, the Aenar seemed to have made their peace with a hostile universe in a way that Shran had never managed to do, and probably never would. He often envied them their upbeat outlook and their gentle serenity.
But he also sometimes quietly raged at them for their entrenched belief in passivity.
Yet he couldn’t help but wonder just now if either Andorian or Aenar was destined to survive without the other.
Without any conscious volition he could recall, Shran had begun the morning by mentally composing a poem about what was to occur on this day. Or perhaps it would one day become a song, with lyrics set to dirge-like music, inspired by Shran’s own losses as much as by Jhamel’s poorly suppressed grief for her brother Gareb, whose death had closely coincided with that of Talas. However it came out in the end, he already knew with certainty that if he ever managed to see it to completion it would be a sad, morose thing indeed.
And why not? he thought. After all, he was about to bid farewell to a woman with whom he once, if only very briefly, had hoped he might build a future, a shelthreth bondgroup, and perhaps children. They might even have created a future together that would bridge the vast gulf that separated two very disparate Andorian peoples.
Jhamel.
In spite of all the mental discipline he had learned to marshal during the many months he had dwelled among the Aenar, he now found that he was utterly unable to keep a rising sense of desolate melancholy at bay. He supposed that it must have set up a keening wail that was telepathically audible to everyone else in the room, despite the ingrained aversion of Jhamel’s people to intruding upon the thoughts of others without first securing their express permission.
Get hold of yourself, Shran thought as he watched the crowd part to admit the shelthreth procession, in which Jhamel was radiant in her snow-white gown, despite the semidarkness. Just wish her well. She deserves all the happiness you can imagine, and more.
“Thank you for that, Shran,” Jhamel