Release

Disclaimer: Okay, ParaBorg owns NOTHING in this story, except the one mention of Spock. ;O) I own everything else. Constructive comments welcome to Roisin_Fraser@netzero.net, flames will be, well, ignored. All original content © 2001 by Roisin Fraser

Summary: An answer to the Mother's Day Challenge on TrekFest

Rating: PG, TOS

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The messenger came an hour after dawn, when all sounds were swallowed by Nevasa's rise. Rela did not look at him, for she knew the message he carried, had been expecting it for weeks. She covered her face in her hands and wondered why she could not weep. Caoileann, Eldest Mother of the Akaren, had parted the veil from this life into the next. Her mother was dead.

Caoileann's grandchildren, grown and with lives of their own, would be coming soon to return to Aliset and the Akaren lands and the timeless rituals of death and separation. Spock would not be there; he'd been detained on a cadet training cruise. But, Rela thought with a spark of her usual humor, Caoileann would hardly have felt honored had he shown up. Her mother's only bias was her mistrust of Vulcans in general and Spock in particular.

They had taken turns, she and Sorcha, watching over Caoileann. It was only in the past month that Sorcha had been able to return to Caoileann's side, and Rela had returned to ShiKahr and the empty house and her memories. But always, she had waited, knowing the day would come when Caoileann's aged body would pass from this life into the next. And the day had come.

Feeling a sudden desperate urge to be freed of things Vulcan, Rela changed from her healer's brown into the Akaren clothing of her past. As the woven fabric brushed her skin, Rela remembered the softness of her mother's hands as they soothed bruises and wounds less visible. But when Talir had become Caoileann, all that had stopped. The Eldest Mother must be one apart; everyone's children must be as special to her as her own. It was what the old ones said, when she or Sorcha had cried, not understanding why their mother was so suddenly unapproachable.

But there was more, and Rela, who'd survived her own lovings and losses, could look at Caoileann with a sort of understanding. Talir had done only what she had been bidden---the eldest daughter of the previous Caoileann could not avoid the summons, not when the gift of leading was in the blood. In that way, Rela thought, her mother and her husband were not unalike. Their destiny, one to lead and one to journey among the stars, seemed to have been set from the beginning.

"What is your memory of her?" Sorcha asked, and Rela jumped.

"You're here, now? The Release is tomorrow, Sorcha----"

He sighed wearily. "I know it well enough, Sister. I also know that any number of mother's esteemed relatives are even now jostling for the honor of watching over her prior to her Release." He rubbed his eyes, the pale violet so like their mother's that Rela was struck by it. "Forgive me sister, but with Father gone, this is our last chance to honor her, not as Caoileann, but as our mother. There's no one else who will remember her like that."

Rela nodded. "What do you remember?"

Sorcha chuckled. "I remember that loom of hers---do you remember?"

Rela laughed, surprised she could find the humor when grief clearly threatened. "We were---what? Four, maybe? Or five?"

Sorcha shook his head. "Three, if memory serves. I'm no Rememberer, but I'm pretty certain I couldn't sit down again until I was five." He glanced at the woven blankets on the wall, clearly remembering. "I watched her weaving the shuttle in and out of the yarn----the colors were so bright, and I only wanted to help."

Rela raised one eyebrow. "After she'd told you to stay away from it, that it was to be a gown for a bonding ceremony and that only the hands of the weaver could touch it...."

Her brother smiled. "You DO remember!"

Rela nodded. "How could I not? After she had to reweave the whole cloth because it wasn't sanctified by Dinal anymore, she showed you how to weave."

Sorcha looked away into the desert. "That was what I learned from her, you know. That every accident carries its lesson."

"What do you remember, Sister?" Sorcha asked,

Rela thought. The grief was still hard within her. What did she know of the woman who had been their mother? She had not learned the weaver's art from her, nor gained her gift of leadership---that had come to Sorcha's daughter Ceria. It seemed as though everything they said as mother and daughter had possessed two meanings, one spoken and obvious and one hidden and silent. How do you sum up a life by those terms? Rela wondered. But in memory, she heard Caoileann's crisp, no-nonsense tones, and knew what she would say.

"A'sral," she said clearly. "That was what I learned. Do you remember when Salet died?"

Sorcha breathed out once. "How could I not? There were so many dead and dying from the Wasting Death and you so close to it because you'd nursed him...."

Rela folded her hands. "When Salet died, I wanted to follow him. Our child was dead, he was dead---there didn't seem to be anything left to hold onto."

Sorcha turned from her then, and in his posture, tense and anguished, she read understanding. "We thought the epidemic would kill you, Rela, like it had killed so many others. But Mother went into your tent and you survived. What happened?"

"We fought," she said simply. "Like in so many other things. I told her that I wanted to follow him and our child. She dared me to keep living. I had survived, Mother told me, by my a'sral---who was I, to think I could give up now?"

Sorcha turned to face his sister. "That bruise she had, on her face? You didn't----"

Rela nodded ruefully. "Didn't I just? I was so angry that she could leave her family, and not let me join mine that I hit her."

Sorcha folded his arms. "I didn't know. What happened then?"

"Her arms were around me," Rela said distantly, remembering the strong arms that had gathered her in when the anger and the grief had threatened to close in on her. "She held me and she wouldn't let go. I remember thinking that this was the most she'd touched me since I was a child. And then I asked why, why Salet had died, why our son had died?" The tears were gathering now, hot and violent. Rela could feel them on the back of her throat. "And...and she told me that it was not my time to follow them."

Sorcha's hands, strong and weathered, rested on her shoulders. "And so you lived."

Rela nodded. "I did, but we didn't speak much after I left to live among Vulcans. I never got the chance to tell her----"

She could feel Sorcha breathe out. "Ah, Rela, do you not think that there was much our mother knew without asking? She knew why you left, although Sechal knows she wished it to be anywhere but among the ei'dat. But you couldn't have stayed and been healed."

The minimal contact between them intensified the family bond---there was something he wasn't saying. "What is it, Sorcha?" Rela asked.

"Our mother Talir charged me with a message for you," Sorcha said formally. "Eh-ehaen dhei'theid brevhat Rela Calienne A'Srai."

Rela drew in her breath. She who was cast from our shade is now returned as our daughter Rela Calienne A'Srai. After so many years....was it true? "She formally renounced the Severing of you, Rela."

The Severance had been a part of her life for so many years, since her bonding to Spock, that Rela had ceased to consider if it would ever be lifted. But the hot tears trickling down her face---waste of water, as Caoileann would have said---gave evidence enough that it had. "It was the only apology she could make, Rela," Sorcha told her.

"She knew," Rela whispered, thinking of all that had been unsaid between them. "She knew."

Sorcha nodded. "She knew." He glanced at the shadows on the wall. "Sister, let's have some of Mother's tea and tell stories of her memory."

Rela nodded, thinking of the Release to come, of the woman who had given her both life and the means to continue living it. "Sorcha, I think there's much else she taught us. Forgiveness, for one." I let you go, she said, to the memories that still burned.

Her brother nodded. "It's well enough that she did. That is what I'll remember most of all."

The End.