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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. ]
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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"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.