shifted_logs | descensus in cuniculi cavum

Entry tags:

descensus in cuniculi cavum

Who: Captain Kirk (

kirk_it) and Lord Sebastian (

fruitbrandy)
Where: Gardens, at Oxford and Elsewhere
When: At no particular point in time, really.
What: A Starfleet Captain and an Oxford undergrad walk into a garden...
Warnings: None!

Summer gardens owned Sebastian's heart. Sebastian could find the joy of drunkenness without drinking if only he could walk these gardens endlessly, preserved in a perfect labyrinth of youth. Perhaps it was a trick of summer's gold light, but everything here seemed eternal and unified under one high-reaching hymn. This was Arcadia and Sebastian was its Lord. All sleep was easeful, all life was bliss, and skulls with warnings writ on them were jokes to be laughed at because this was the world of immortal youth.

In the pastoral heaven of Oxford's Botanical Gardens, Sebastian slipped between the variety of plantlife Oxford had granted him, taking in the smell of flowers, the feel of ivy, the look of all the trees. He was alone, because sometimes he wanted to be, but he had Aloysius with him and totted the bear around by the paw. Sebastian should have been attending a lecture right now, of course, but the water lilies had called to him, and then the ivy, and now he didn't feel inclined to leave the gardens. So he didn't.

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Sometimes Jim wonders if there's some kind of karmic being following the Enterprise around and giving them the oddest missions. Or maybe (she thinks with a moment of fierce pride), maybe her crew is just so damn good that, if there's any higher power playing with the universe, he or she or it just knows they can handle it.

Still, the day didn't end too badly and she had time off to stay on the planet for shore leave and do whatever she wanted with her time, because the Captain gets priority. (Especially after Bones appeared to die, and she doesn't want to think about that.) So far, in her walking, she's come across several old flames and several hypothetical new flames.

And... the drunkard with the teddy bar from the Plane. That stops her in her tracks, because she's pretty certain she wasn't thinking about him. "Hello?"

Sebastian looks away from the ivy. He is not unused to being accosted in the gardens, but people do tend to give him room here if nowhere else, perhaps to spare themselves from being dragged from wonder to wonder. His love of natural beauty does have something of a reputation. But Sebastian tries very hard to never be impolite, and as it is Captain Kirk (he recalls with little effort, remembering names being one of the few practical talents he has) he immediately walks over to her, swinging Aloysius by the paw.

"Hello, Captain! How do you do? I don't suppose there's any chance you're at the Botanic Gardens? Dorian wasn't. Poor man. It's his winter, and I can hardly tolerate fall! What season are you in?"

"-What?" she says, more than a little bewildered. "I'm not anywhere near anything called the Botanic Gardens." She thinks. It's possible, but the planet doesn't seem to have set names for its natural features.

"Yes, as I thought." Sebastian doesn't seem concerned with explaining what he meant. Instead, he carries on. "Where are you? I bet it's somewhere charmingly interesting. For Dorian, it was Hyde Park, but of course you're from a time measured by stars and he's just from twenty years ago."

-Ahah. Jim's only occasionally very stupid ~~more or less~~, and sometimes she has moments of genius where everything clicks into place.

"Does this happen a lot? Meeting other people from the Plane?" Luckily, the crew is giving each other a very wide berth to play out their innermost desires. Otherwise this could get very awkward, and probably not just because their Captain is talking to air.

"I don't know if it happens often, but it does happen more than occasionally. I've met Isaac and Oliver and Dorian all here in Oxford at one point, though all in different places."

He swings Aloysius up into his arms, content to believe that the technical matters are out of the way and happy to get onto the more interesting subjects. His eagerness is that of a child about to open a long-anticipated present. "You never said where you were. Somewhere beautiful, I'd hope. Is it on Earth or are you somewhere completely different?"

She's at least distracted enough from the interesting and the possible implications of this to answer his question. "Somewhere completely different - it doesn't exactly have a name yet."

It is beautiful, though, in that touch of Earth way. She suspects Sulu might have had something to do with some of the plantlife she's been encountering, but she has no objections. There's something to be said for a little nostalgia.

At that, Sebastian smiles. "There's something wonderful in that." Perhaps it is the imperialist in him, a belief that a nameless thing can be marked and shaped by a few mismatched syllables, but perhaps, too, it was simply a wondering love of the empty spaces in maps, of questions you have to find the answers to, of dreams with no meaning but those you create in the half-delirious moments before waking.

"One day, if it is at all possible, I'd like to travel beyond Earth. I'm not sure how, but now that I know it can be done, I would like to do it."

She smiles, briefly, at that. Humanity has always reached for the beauty of the unknown; it's one of the things she's proudest of in her species. They may be capable of bewildering horrors, but the good has always managed to make up for that.

"Maybe you will, sometime," she says. "Right now, it seems to me that anything might be possible."

"Perhaps there is some way the Plane might let me. It's been very generous in other respects. I say, Captain, Oliver could see it when I passed him the Brandy Alexander. Would you like to see the water lilies with me?"

If one asks him how he came to ask this, he will not have much of an answer, except perhaps that he must go to see the water lilies as he is just inclined that way presently. It is one of his inexplicable imperatives, and it is delivered with wide-eyed smiling honesty that has never been aware of its own foibles except through third-party reports.

And she finds herself smiling again. As... odd as Sebastian is, he's growing on her. "I don't see why not." Providing, of course, that it's possible - but he does seem to know more about how this works, after all.

A smile is approval, and that's the only thing that matters to Sebastian. He says, "This way, Captain," with a half-bow before heading off to one of the domes. He doesn't link his arms in hers, in part because he isn't inclined, in part, perhaps, because some trace of decorum tells him that he can't initiate it with someone whose ranking is higher than his, though that option is less likely.

He walks like he's about to show off a construction-paper castle, with a bounce in his step and a grin in his eyes.

She follows, picking her way past the obstacles in her reality - a tree here, a shrub there - but mostly the landscape obligingly settles itself out of her way. Though she isn't paying particular attention, a few land-based lilies of variant families pop up in her path, in accordance with her current focus of attention.

He walks through the gardens to the glasshouse, pausing at the entrance of the Tropical Lily House to glance back at the Captain. "Can you see it at all? I don't know if that matters to me showing you the lilies, but I don't even know if there's a door here for you to walk through or if it's open air."

To Sebastian, this was relevant because he was required to hold the door open for her. While he could remember this bit of chivalry, he had more or less forgotten that women weren't even supposed to be at the university normally. If he had remembered, he would have promptly forgotten it so he could enjoy this walk.

"I'm afraid I can't see any doors," she says, a little amused and bemused. "Should I be?"

"No. Only, it's in a glasshouse, so I do wonder how it is. Still, I'm sure it oughtn't be a problem."

And if it were, he'd just handle it then. Sebastian stepped into the glasshouse, squinting a bit at the change of light, then led the way towards one of his favourite bed of water lilies, now in the dark. It was Victoria cruziana, and, perhaps surprising some people, Sebastian did know its scientific name and all sorts about its history. He held one with both hands, careful not to set it off despite its size. This one blossomed beautifully, white petals in soft folds around the brilliant red star of a centre. Sebastian lifted it carefully, not snapping it off but elevating it just enough that the flower was out of the water.

"The legend behind it is beautiful. Where it's from, it was said that the moon used to travel across the sky to hide behind the hills with its favourite young ladies, and that if the moon ever loved one girl and just one girl, it would turn her into a star. It seems such an odd legend. I always the the moon was a woman. Regardless, a princess, I can't remember the name, wanted to be a star so she chased the moon across the hills, calling for it to hear her or see her or pay her any mind. But perhaps the moon was deaf and blind - which does beg the question as to why it likes young women so much - as it never seemed to notice her, and when the princess came across a lake she saw a reflection of the moon thought the moon had come down to be with her, which is something I find hard to believe. Not that the moon would come down. That isn't surprising at all. That someone would think that a reflection in water was the moon. But perhaps it was a very still lake, or perhaps she hadn't come across a lake before. Anyway, the princess jumped into the lake to be with the moon and was never seen again, and the moon was a bit upset about this. You would have thought it could have noticed before now. Now that it finally did notice, it decided to turn the princess into a star unlike any other, a star of the water. And so we get this beautiful flower. It's a lovely idea, isn't it? I think I'd like to believe it."

Sebastian had always had a certain fondness for stories, and that was where his faith was from.

A glass house of sorts obligingly grew on the planet around her as she listened, though nothing like the glass house he saw. Larger, for a start, and merely encompassing the foliage already naturally existant in the area. A few ponds in rivulates and then converging into a proper lake also take shape as Jim lets her mind wander.

"I'm afraid I was never very good with mythological history," she says, somewhat apologetic.

"It's my favourite kind of history," Sebastian says. "Do you want to hold the flower?" He can't lift it any further to offer it to her, but he does turn his head to the side so he can look at her.

"Will it work?"

Doubts aside, she still steps forward, hands cupped a bit, to accept the flower.

He can still see it as she takes it, and that does not seem unusual to him (what is, is) but he smiles still. He does have a particular fondness for the aesthetic, and 'Lady With Flower' has long been immortalized in the motif of art. "It's a bit slippery from the wetness," he says, "but at least if you drop it it will only fall into the water again. Isn't it lovely? A bit difficult to smuggle out, though. Not, of course, that I've ever borrowed flowers from the gardens for my buttonholes."

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