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There is only so much time Irian can spend in her quarters, doing what amounts to nothing. For several days now, she's been wasting time on a little amateur programming — getting a Rihannsu tricorder to interface with a Federation database, even a publicly accessible one, has been a little more work than she expected. If she wants to be able to access the Federation public database remotely, given she is likely to be trapped in Federation space for the foreseeable future and may someday be in need of information not stored in her own tricorder's database, then she would prefer to be able to use her own equipment to do it. But it's stubborn, and Starfleet remote-access protocols seem more byzantine than she remembers.

Eventually, she gets frustrated and puts it aside. Truth be told, she's bored — and a bored Romulan is never good. With the restrictions put in place on all of the involuntary passengers on board Enterprise, there are only so many places she can go. She considers the gym, where she could at least let off a bit of tension; there's the arboretum, which is no doubt a peaceful setting but which probably, in the end, would not provide her much benefit.

And then there's the holodeck. A Galaxy-class starship like this has several, she remembers that from the publicly available class specs and from what she's been told since she's been here. The Republic Fleet installs no such things aboard its ships; neither did the Empire, wishing to avoid distracting its soldiers. Yet she's familiar with the technology itself; it doesn't take much work to write a holoprogram, or edit an existing one — and she has, once or twice, been a little curious about one in particular.

An empty holodeck is simple enough to locate, and she spends the next couple of hours editing together a simple program using a combination of the Federation's own resources — paltry, where this subject is concerned, though it's no wonder — and the geographical and architectural data in her tricorder's tiny library computer. When she's satisfied with the results, she saves the program, then lets it run.

The moment the setting she's so carefully crafted materializes around her, she's almost certain she's made a mistake. It's too much like her homeworld — the world she knows, knew as ch'Rihan but which the Federation in its willful ignorance still prefers to call Romulus. She's standing on a cliffside, treacherous but for the trails and pathways some enterprising soul carved along its heights millennia ago. The Valley of the Firefalls is a well-known landmark, the only real passage by which to reach the Rihannsu capitol, Ra'tleihfi, on foot or by groundcar. The cliffside paths are not fenced or bounded; there's a matter of only several dozen paces between her and a sheer drop to the valley floor. The Firefalls themselves are a ways off; the glint of the yellow sun rising over the broad green-gold horizon catches and commingles with the bright flash of the fires spilling over the mountainside, visible even from this safe distance. Winding through the valley below is a broad river; as the valley opens up, the river does as well, its course flowing toward the sea. The city's towers and edifices are visible only faintly from here: some newer, some hundreds of years old or, in the case of the Senate Chamber, over a thousand.

It's hard to look on that vista and not feel something, especially knowing that in her own time, all of this has been reduced to so much dust. Irian has told herself time and again that it is long past time to stop grieving; twenty years is long enough to mourn a dead world. But, time and again, the feeling comes back to her as if it were fresh: anger over the loss of the homeworld her people built with their own hands. Sadness, and a longing so deep it's like pain. Rihannsu have a great and abiding love of place; as much as she has come to think of the colony the Republic has settled on Mol'Rihan as something like a home, it's not anywhere close to the same thing, not for someone who remembers when things were different.

She should end this program right now and leave; this is too personal, too close. But Irian is not always very good at doing what she should do. She sits down on the edge of the cliff, one leg hanging over the side, the other knee drawn up, arms crossed loosely over it, and watches the view a moment.

She'll go, when it's right. But not just yet.

[ ooc: Open to anyone who wants to stumble on Irian reminiscing over her home. Hope you're not afraid of heights. ]

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You might hear the doors open, but that would be the only indication that someone has joined you on the Holodeck.

Of course, the second you turn around, you'll see him. A man, human-looking in appearance, standing there. Simply standing, and looking around. His expression pleasantly neutral as he takes in the sights.

He won't say anything. Not until he's noticed, anyway...

It's odd. Because he looks human... but something about him seems... different.

Irian does hear the faint hiss of the holodeck doors opening, and her first instinct is to end the program immediately; whatever ridiculous sense of nostalgia has come over her, she really didn't intend for it to be shown to anyone else.

But she doesn't. She waits, watching the glint of the sunrise on the river and the distant towers of the city rising out of the early morning light, until she's aware of a presence just behind her. Finally she turns her head to glance back over her shoulder, appraising the person standing there — a human man, as far as she can tell, though... well. He wouldn't be the first person she's gotten that feeling from, the sense of being more than meets the eye.

Irian is usually fairly good at getting a read on people, after the manner of someone trained to sense deception or detect certain reactions she could exploit. Yet it's hard for her to tell what this man may be thinking for feeling; his expression gives nothing away except, perhaps, an appreciation for the landscape spread out in front of him.

She turns away from him again, standing up; when she finally speaks, though she doesn't turn back to face him, it's clear she's addressing him. "It is quite the view," she says softly, "is it not?"

"Yes." Comes the simple reply. A simple word, yet it speaks volumes in the man's tone. Orlin's voice is quiet, admiring the scenery. He may be of a higher plane of existence, but that doesn't stop him from being impressed by the mortals.

"I take it this is your homeworld?"

"Was," she corrects him softly. "Ch'Rihan as it is in my time is lost to us."

She sits back slightly on her heels, folding her arms across her chest, closing off her posture a little. Irian is wary of strangers on the best of days; aliens even more so. His presence in this place discomfits her. The feelings evoked by this view are not something a non-Rihanha could understand.

"I take it you are from this universe?" Orlin asks, softly, taking a few steps forward.

"It's a shame when such beauty is lost..." He comments. "I never saw my home world, since that was lost to us long ago."

"Yes and no. My 'present time' is the standard year 2409."

Don't get her started on talking temporal mechanics; just thinking about the vagaries of time travel makes her head hurt.

She turns to look at him as he continues speaking, tilting her head to regard him.

"You're not human." It's a question phrased as a statement.

Edited 2014-10-18 05:21 (UTC)

And he looks down from the view to his companion, offering her a slight smile.

"What makes you say that?"

"This is pretty," murmurs a young voice, belonging to a young human girl who is fearlessly venturing to the edge of that cliff Irian is sitting on. Her blunt-cut hair is getting a little shaggy, but it suits her no less as it swings over her cheek from where she keeps brushing it back.

"Where is it supposed to be?"

Irian looks up when she hears the voice from behind her, watching the girl approach. There might be a very slight frown in her expression, not disapproval so much as slight uncertainty; the look is odd on a woman who seems so self-assured. It's not Sinthia's fault; Irian simply has very little experience with children, though living with Henry may have taught her a thing or two.

The girl sounds and looks young, but there's a quality of intelligence and maturity to her manner of speaking that surprises Irian slightly. She considers, for a moment, then decides to answer the question straightforwardly.

"This was my homeworld," she says. "My people named it ch'Rihan; the Federation called it Romulus."

The past tense is certainly distinctive. In this time period, this reality, the planet is still there, a fact that is a little bitter to her because she cannot go there. It doesn't matter, in any case; it won't be the same. She knows just enough about temporal paradoxes and time travel to know that all sorts of small details might be different. This ch'Rihan, the one she's duplicated here, is long gone.

Irian doesn't really need to worry; Sinthia, though through no fault of her own, acts very little like a child. It happens when you're not treated like a person, much less age-appropriately, for most of your life. (Thankfully she rarely brings that up without reason.)

"What destroyed it?" she asks. This is worded such for two distinct reasons; the way Irian emphasizes the past tense implies something happened to it that could have been prevented, thus (in Sinthia's mind) exempting all natural occurrences. And the way her thoughts feel on it, though the girl makes no mention of having overheard them save for a slightly eerie feeling as Sinthia wathes the Romulan woman. "You were from there."

That one isn't a question.

Irian can't explain it if she tried, the chill that runs right down her spine just from the way the girl looks at her. She isn't fond of being caught off guard like this — though she does her best to hide it. Either this child is extremely intuitive, or... there are other possibilities, but they don't occur to her just at the moment.

The look she gives Sinthia is carefully assessing; she's obviously trying to figure something out. Evidently, she doesn't get whatever it was she was looking for; she exhales a breath, almost a sigh, and pushes herself up onto her feet, lingering a few steps away from the edge of the cliff.

"A star exploded in a nearby system," she explains, quiet-voiced, but steady. She doesn't really expect Sinthia to know much about astronomy, doesn't know whether supernova would mean anything to her. It isn't as if this particular supernova was typical, either. "The shockwave destroyed our worlds."

Irian doesn't feel the need or desire to go into more detail, partly because she isn't in the mood for a long-winded explanation, and partly because she doesn't like thinking about the supernova, knowing what — or rather, who — caused it. Thinking about what Taris did makes her feel almost physically sick.

"Was it an accident?" she asks, brows creasing as she follows Irian's motion to the edge of the cliff.

"Where does this valley go?"

"No."

Irian doesn't see any reason to dissemble about that answer. It wasn't an accident; she wishes she could say that it was. One of her own people intentionally caused the explosion of the Hobus star. To say Taris is a traitor is putting it more lightly than she deserves.

She watches Sinthia, carefully, as the girl follows her. Irian doesn't think she's been asked so many questions in a single conversation in quite some time, but they're not personal or private, and she's not uncomfortable with answering them. It is unusual to her to have a human so interested in her world, but that is hardly a bad thing.

"This is the Valley of the Firefalls," she says, and signs with a jerk of her chin — the Rihannsu equivalent of pointing — in the direction of the falls themselves. From here, they're visible only as a bright orange-yellow glow and a great billowing of smoke produced by the burning hydrocarbons. "Our capital city is on the far side, near the river."

"But fire has no weight, how can it fall?" she asks, more of herself than Irian, brows knitting and then lifting as she scoots closer to the edge of the cliff to look in the direction of the glow.

She's fascinated by the landscape, so different from her own. She's never seen anything like this, though then again she's never seen anything very different from trampled mud and monochrome steel and black, shot with bright unnatural blue--though exceedingly rarely, that--and blood red. "What's the capital called?"

She ignores that first question, because truly she hasn't studied the physics of it, and because what little she does know — well, she's still thinking of Sinthia as a child, albeit a very precocious one. She doesn't expect to be able to explain and have her understand.

The cliff they're standing on is all dark gray, shot through in places with deep green, patched in places with teal-colored moss. Farther down in the valley are trees like willows with long sweeping branches, but with bright red leaves that make them look like tongues of fire; the grass, spread through the valley's broad width, is more blue than green. And then there's the sky, not Earth's blue, but green-gold. If nothing else, it's certainly not lacking for variety.

"Ra'tleihfi," Irian answers. "It stood on the same spot for more than a thousand years. One of our rulers had it built as a show of her power and wealth." That's a longer story than she can tell here, although the tale of the Ruling Queen is common knowledge among her people. She was one of those women whom people hold in equal amounts of admiration and fear, even many centuries after her death.

Irian glances over at Sinthia, and there may be something almost like a smile starting to form on her lips. "Do you always ask so many questions?"

Edited 2014-10-19 23:20 (UTC)

"Yes," she answers flatly.

The colors are like nothing Sinthia has ever seen on-world, and she's entranced by them, but not surprised at it; why would another world have earth's colors? "It's pretty here. More colorful than where I come from."

Edited 2014-10-21 20:18 (UTC)

John can see that this holodeck is in use from the computer panel just outside the door, and were he a smarter man maybe he'd keep walking until he found an empty one. He was going to try his luck with replicating an empanada truck, just to see if a South Florida setting could improve on the mediocre ones he's managed to get the replicators to spit out. Food just tastes better from a truck. But John isn't always smart, and when he figures out what setting this holodeck is running he can't resist poking his head inside the door.

"Whoa," he mumbles, standing on the cliffside looking out on the view. The door hisses shut behind him, completing the circuit of panels and immersing him in the feeling of being on Romulus for real. "Trippy."

He hasn't noticed Irian yet. Uh, sorry Irian.

She hears the door hiss open from somewhere beyond her shoulder, but only when she hears the voice — a man's voice — does she bother to turn around. Irian hadn't really anticipated intruders. Most people would see that the holodeck is occupied and leave well enough alone, or at least that was what she had thought.

It wouldn't be the first time she's been wrong about something here.

Irian arches a brow; it almost makes her look Vulcan, if the whole set of her body wasn't completely off for that.

"I take it you have never seen a holoprogram before?"

John startles, rocking half a step back. He wasn't expecting whoever is running this program to be so close (hey, he did look, it's the art of knocking he needs to get better at). She really does look Vulcan, but the setting and John's frightening knowledge of the Trek universe corrects him before he makes that mistake out loud.

"Uh, hi," he answers sheepishly, giving her a little wave. "No, uh. I've used the holodeck before, I've just never seen Romulus before." Thaaaat's going to offend her, isn't it? He just doesn't remember what it's called in her language. Dialing up the sheepishness to ten, then. "Sorry, I'm probably intruding. Curiosity killed the astronaut."

He pockets his hands, and rocks on the balls of his feet.

To be honest, it wouldn't surprise her if he didn't know what it was called in the first place. Most of Irian's experience with humans tells her they're woefully ignorant when it comes to the importance of names; she expects it by now.

It's hard to read what she's thinking or feeling, looking at him; she can be as cool as a Vulcan when so inclined, although it's not precisely the same sort of cool. There's a moment, and then she pushes herself to her feet, stepping back from the cliffside.

"I would be surprised if you had," she says. She looks at him a little quizzically at the word astronaut — not a word she learned when she was studying Federation Standard, and her translator doesn't quite render it properly, although after a moment she seems to get the idea. A space explorer, from an older time perhaps.

"The Empire was not precisely welcoming to outsiders."

A normal guy would probably take this opportunity to look uncomfortable, maybe go ahead and sidle on out with an apology and a quick step. John never claimed to be a normal guy; he's got that Southern harmlessness that charms even some of the most aggressive ~~Peacekeepers~~ people who shall not be named. So he smiles, and lets off a quiet chuckle.

"Yeah, I got the impression your tourist industry isn't very big," he says, straightening a little when she steps forward. He's polite enough to do the same, holding out one of his hands. "John. Commander John Crichton. Uh, Earth, but I guess you probably figured that out already."

A quick intake of breath as the door shuts, and before Jim can realize his mistake he's marveling at the sight. And, truth be told, the technology. There have been some advances, certainly. The seeds are there in his time, but he hadn't imagined anything like this.

It's only after a moment that he realizes he's not alone, that he's intruded. There's a lone figure sitting on the cliff's edge, her posture indicating she's in no physical distress, but might not wish to be bothered.

"I'm sorry," he says softly. "I'm not familiar with these controls yet. I'll leave you alone."

Irian turns, and while she doesn't quite startle, there's certainly some evidence of surprise on her features before she manages to conceal it. Of all the people she had anticipated she might encounter on this ship, none of them had been James Kirk. Even in her time, this man and his reputation are still spoken of on occasion.

She has to wonder whether this Kirk and his crew have been as closely intertwined with the affairs of her own people as had the Kirk she recalls from study in her own world — but perhaps that's a question for some later time.

"You're here already, Captain," she says. Irian rises to her feet and steps back a little from the edge of the cliff in what looks almost like one movement; standing, she's nearly as tall as Spock. "Why not stay?"

Part of her would like to ask him to leave, but... perhaps that's a little too much like hiding something for her to be comfortable with it. She's watching him, a careful, nonthreatening examination: wary of him, perhaps, but not hostile. All the Vulcanoid features are there — the upswept brows, the ears, the coloration — but it should be obvious enough to Jim that she isn't Vulcan. She's self-contained, confident, but the coolly logical veneer isn't there.

Jim's met plenty of Romulans. All right, maybe not "plenty." Enough. Considering the amount of time the Romulans' true origins have been lost to the Federation, Jim might as well be an expert, relatively. So he has a pretty good idea this isn't a Vulcan.

It's intriguing, too, that she knows who he is. Or, at least, can read his rank. He hasn't met all that many people who have any idea who he is or where he comes from, and it's beyond him to walk away now.

"Maybe I will," he says, smiling slightly. "I didn't mean to intrude, but I must confess... the scenery is lovely." He takes a step forward. "Captain James T. Kirk. My friends call me Jim."

Irian is, among several other things, a student of history — not just her own people's, although that was her area of focus when she did her courses in the 'soft' sciences at the Imperial War College. Even if she didn't know who he was, she knows just enough about Starfleet as it was in the 23rd century to recognize his uniform and the rank braid on his sleeves.

"Captain Kirk," she says, and for once she actually has to work to suppress a smile. Jim is a Terran name, she knows that, but it also sounds like a rude word in her language. She manages, however, to have enough decorum to stifle her initial reaction and incline her head to him courteously.

"Commander Irian t'Aumne." She's out of uniform, for once, wearing only a soft dark tunic and trousers with no rank insignia, but she suspects that hardly matters at the moment.

She watches him, considering, before her glance turns back out toward the view.

"I take it you have never seen Romulus before."

Irian pauses slightly on the name; she's used to using it around humans, inaccurate as it is, but that doesn't make it sound any less strange.

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