Title: Remembered Dreams
Author: Istannor
Series: TOS
Part: 18
Rating: [PG13]
Codes:
Summary: Tr'al leads Spock on a voyage of discovery.

Disclaimer: These are the characters of Paramount and
Viacom, they own them, I only check 'em out from the
Library.

Feedback to Istannor@Aol.com

Spock left the cool darkness of the corridors of Gol and entered the
shaded outer gardens of his home for the last 1 year, 4 months, and 16
days. There had never been any doubt in his mind that he would find
her in this place.

"What shall you teach me, Tr'al that I do not already know?" The
memory of those words, spoken in ignorance, rose, unbidden to his
thoughts. They had come from a child, and now he was an adult, at
least, Tr'al and T'Par sometimes allowed him to believe he was close
to becoming an adult.

Tr'al, she of the old ways, sat at the edge of the inner garden,
looking out across the omnipresent desert. Her skin glowed a soft
brownish rust in the evening lights ringing the walls, which towered
over their heads. This was so on all sides except what stretched
directly in front of them. There, the wall was absent, destroyed many
years past and never rebuilt. There, the desert was the framed
portrait. Her hand trailed in the vines looping over the range rocks
at her feet, stirring up faint clouds of fine sandy dust. She was
beautiful and full of a gentle wisdom he had never touched before and
probably would never touch again in anyone else.

"Tr'al," he sat beside her on her favorite rock and looked out through
the wall opening. Many centuries before, an assault force had stormed
the walls of Gol, hoping to seize its riches and its wells. The breach
in the walls was allowed to remain as a reminder that walls were not
what protected Gol, and were as unnecessary as the corpses which were
all that had remained of the unwary warriors who had dared to breach
them. Their bodies had been returned to the desert at the front of the
wall they had ruptured. Occasionally, a desiccated bone still tumbled
across the landscape and it was allowed to do so. What was, was.

"Spock", she trailed her fingertip across his forearm, and he tingled
where she left her trail. It was so different than their first time of
touching. He had been all awkwardness and reluctance when they had met
in the darkened chambers below Gol. "You are bathed in memories." She
did not add any unnecessary word. Simplicity and efficiency were the
weapons she had wielded then and wielded now.

"Yes," he answered. He remembered her hands as they had stroked his
face gently on the day she had shattered his notions of self,
irrevocably altering his world. Then, he had tried to pull away, but
found he could not, or would not. Even now he was not certain which
had been the major deciding factor. Had it been his lack of strength,
or his lack of will she had exploited?

"It was your choice, the first time is never forced. I do not exploit
children; I encourage maturation" She always knew his thoughts. He had
no secrets at Gol anymore, and no illusions.

Then, in the time before, she had stroked his face softly, caressing
him, an intimacy he had never allowed anyone before; not since he had
forbade his own mother's touch. Amanda's touches, her desire for
emotions had assaulted him and confused his need to be Vulcan, so he
had stopped her, and forcefully ignored her pangs of pain and regret.

He had felt the tendrils of Tr'al's thoughts; her passion had pulled
him from his tunnel of desolation out onto a field of possibilities.
He had stood, transfixed by disbelief at her actions and his own. She
had softly massaged his face, his shoulders, his arms, his hands,
moving in the way of a small eddy of sand, which skips across the
formaji, stopping and then starting in unexpected directions.  When
she had taken his fingertips and rubbed them across her own face, he
had felt like water running through the rocks, out of control, only
able to follow the channel allowed. She had burned his barriers and
tunneled under his defensive weapons. He had lost his ability to
fight.

It may have taken minutes or hours before she had allowed him to lie
down next to her. His clothes were removed with a smooth rhythm and
subtle flow, and he was without resistance, without thought. Her voice
floated on the edge of his soul, darting in and out without heed to
his history of resistance to invasion. "In the elder days, before
Surak, when we were hurt and our souls were bleeding, we sought
cleansing in sharing. We sought joy in touching and giving joy." Her
voice had been a whisper in his brain, an echo of things past. "Our
minds traveled to the mindscape where all things are revealed in their
truest form. There, we knew our own strengths and weaknesses. We shed
that which we wanted and became that which we were. None could hide
the reality of self from the other and in that landscape, many learned
the meaning of shame, and fear."

He accepted the veracity of every word she uttered. He relaxed into
her tale, and her gentle strokes along his body. Her words had
continued, and his closed eyes and opened ears had wondered then if
she spoke to him with her lips or her mind. The memories threatened to
engulf him.

"I used speech." She whispered her answer into his mind.

"Is it impossible to understand that I wish my memories and my
thoughts to remain my own. I did not invite you in" He turned away and
touched her hand to push it away. He was unable to move it, in the
slightest.

"I did not invite you to Gol. You . . . how do the Humans put it? Ah
yes, you volunteered. Why begin and not continue to the inevitable
conclusion? We say the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the
few, or the one. You are one, and Gol is many. In this, you may give
me your thoughts now, or you will beg to give them to me later. Which
act preserves your dignity, which we Vulcan deny as a motivator?" Her
question sat in the air between and begged for an answer.

He stared at her silently. She only spoke the truth, he admitted to
himself reluctantly, and that admission within his own mind was
already seen in hers. Still she waited for his outward sign of
agreement. Finally, he nodded in acceptance and together they
journeyed back through his memories to the first lesson she taught
him.

"Spock, you deny yourself. You see your strengths as your weaknesses
and your weaknesses as your strengths. This confusion cannot continue;
and should not." She had said to him that day.

"I do not understand." His ghost, his reflection from out of time
answered her.

"Caring for another is not a weakness, Spock. Loving and fearing for
the ones you love does not destroy your essence; it gives your life
meaning."

"My caring will kill them, eventually, as it did already for the
Captain, but for the Doctor's intervention, and it has threatened to
do so again, on more than one occasion."

She had never paused in her slow, gentle, exploration of his body, and
he no longer wanted her to desist. How strange it had felt, how
wondrous. This was not the ponderous mating he had experienced in
Vulcan sexual relations classes, or the meaningless rutting he had
engaged in for curiosity's sake when he had gone on shoreleaves and
met those who had wished to claim a Vulcan on their tally of sexual
liaisons.  This was new to the point of clarity. This was
enlightening.

"Ah." He remembered wondering at the time, who had uttered that
exhalation of satisfaction. Now, he knew he had.

"He lives, as do you." She had used the length of her body to further
his delight. Her skin smelled like desert flowers after the suns rays
had heated their petals. Her breath blew on his cheek, and still he
could not move. She was air; she was breath, she was sunlight on his
face, and nighttime cool against his skin.

"Ah."

A voice in the present whispered on the winds, "That was I. We were
very good together."

"Were?" He raised his eyebrow.

She chuckled and the sound gave him satisfaction. He had not yet
learned to freely let himself seek joy, but to hear it from her gave
him some measure of satisfaction.

"Stubborn child," she murmured.

"Stubborn man," he responded, as he emphasized the difference.

She agreed with a slight shake of her hand. "You have learned much
since those days; even T'Par is pleased with your progress towards the
truth of yourself. Her own lips allowed these stones to drop into the
pool: "It was time he ceased that insufferable prattle about
unworthiness and such. It was making me wish to dip his head in warm
Sehlat dung. Now, plain sand will suffice. Perhaps he will not be a
complete waste of effort."

"I was insufferable," he agreed easily.

"You were?"

He raised his eyebrow at her sortie. She had, from the very beginning,
never failed to surprise him with her willingness to be counter-Sarek,
or at odds with his previous concepts of what constituted Vulcan
behavior. "When did you learn to jest, Tr'al?"

"When did I not know how to jest?" She shrugged her softly muscled
shoulders and he leaned across to run a finger across their ridges and
valleys, She gave a small shiver as he did so. He could not help but
marvel at her perfection in the still air. "In the open desert," she
continued "life is too harsh for serious conversation during rest or
times within the clan. Existence has always been too fragile to not
see the humor in it all. Our humor was dry, as the sands, but also
soft, like the nighttime breeze from the mountains. I would rather
know why you, who always had water, did not know joy?"

He raised his eyebrow at that sortie. It was such a simple question,
one that called for a multitude of complicated answers, or perhaps had
no possible answers.  "Joy seemed an ephemeral dream, one I do not
remember having, until recently. Sometimes, I seem to remember being
content, but then I awaken and know that I dreamed as a Human and not
as a Vulcan." She frowned and he wished to take away her concern for
him.  He finished his trail of swirling touches down her back as he
pushed aside the shifting ochre gauze that held his hands away from
her rich copper brown skin.

"Dreams are what make us reach, and become more than we would be
without them. It is part of what we are as Vulcans. Why do you think
they encourage the mind art of meditation from our earliest ages, if
not to help direct and control the dreams which would overtake our
senses?" She did not wait for his answer. They had had this discussion
before and she knew what he would say. "To dream is Vulcan, to forget
your dreams is Human."

"So you contend."

"I do."

"Dreams are illogical."

"Logic is not everything."

"On that, at least, we can agree." He said and they relaxed against
the large boulder, which time and the elements had fashioned into a
comfortable seat for two.

"You begin to burn with the small flame," she stated, already knowing
the answer.

"Yes."

"This does not cause you concern?"

"No, you are here and I am told from reliable sources that I will
enjoy my time with you."

She chuckled. It was a heady sound. "I have been willing to share in
the past, and I am more than willing to do so with you now, especially
since I have finally trained you in the way I would have you to go."

"Was I so hard to train?"

She laughed again and he barely resisted the urge to take her there,
on the rock, in the middle of the courtyards of Gol. How sweet this
was, how rich and arousing. "You were hard, and hard to train."

Memory flooded him, as he saw her lean down from above and take his
lips into her mouth. First the top lip, and then the bottom, all the
while her hands never ceased their motion and his body ached for more.
"Fear is illogical. To refuse to share is illogical. To continue in
pain is illogical. To be alone in death when togetherness in life is
offered is illogical. Accept all; refuse naught that is given freely.
Share with us, young one, and we will make you whole."

His body simmered, tendrils of flames licked at his mind, and he had
no way to beat them down. Without a mate to douse his flames, he
feared he would die this day. "Accept the flames. Share the flames.
Let me warm myself in them as you warm yourself in me."

She whispered and he knew he had gone mad as she traced an unerring
pathway down his face, to his chest and finally to. . . , "Ah."  So
hot, so wet, so. . . he had no words for what he was feeling. She took
him inside her self and rode him as if she owned his body. Perhaps she
did then, and did now.

In the present, his mind flared open and he saw her as she saw
herself, and saw himself as she saw him. He felt her needs, her
flames, and her desire to find completion for them both. He saw a hint
of her strength. "Sublime."

"Then or now." She rose and pulled him to his feet. He walked behind
her in a daze. The past mingled with present; flame surged against
flame.

"Both," he finally remembered to answer. "This is too soon for my Pon
Farr," he protested.

"This is not your time, this is a time I have set. We will learn to
control and bank your flames. But now we will learn to build them and
burn in them until we emerge unscathed from the other side."

He barely remembered her last words. Before he descended into the
fires she called forth, he struggled to ask her why?  "It is time to
face your fears. It is a monster only when we refuse to name it." She
whispered in a voice that sent shivers of pleasure through him. "Let
us tame your nightmares first, and then we will help you remember your
dreams."

Seas crashed against his red sand shores, ancient and rolling, and
gone from Vulcan's surface before the first city had been built or
writing discovered. The bonfire, which had flared in his mind, and
threatened to consume him, turned its flames towards the surging
waters. Something from its deepest reaches called out to him, the
flame, and he, the beast of flames, walked towards the water and the
death of fire.  On its shores he stood, indecisive at the edge,
fearful of annihilation. Yet it called him even more strongly.
Finally, in complete surrender, he stepped out and was carried away on
the tides. He rocked in its waves for an eternity, before they
released him gently out onto the red sands of another shore, where he
stood, naked and far from the remembered flames. It felt . . .sublime.

He awoke to the sounds of Gol and gentle breathing at his side.

"Ah." This time, he knew it was his voice and he had spoken.