Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea by Star Trek Page A

universal.”
    Tuvok was silent for a time. Finally, he said, “How were you able to do it?”
    Keru blinked. “Do what?”
    “Let him go.”
    It was a while before he could decide what to say. “I just…let it happen. Eventually. I think…at first, when you lose someone, you don’t want to stop thinking about your last memories of them, no matter how much it hurts, because it’s all you have left of them. But there comes a time when you try to relive those moments and it starts to slip away. And you don’t want it to, you try to cling to it. But I think…” He swallowed, clearing his throat. “I think your mind knows when it’s ready to start healing. So when you try to dwell on those memories, it resists, because it needs to start moving on. If you fight that…if you keep on clinging to it…you end up getting stuck, not moving on with your life the way your loved one would want you to. But once you realize your mind is trying to let go, to move on…once you let it…it just sort of happens. Not quickly; the sadness doesn’t go away anytime soon. But…it doesn’t trap you anymore. You miss him…but you live your life, and start to feel normal again.”
    Tuvok took it in and thought about it for some time. Keru stood patiently, the gift of a security guard. “An interesting insight,” Tuvok finally said. “I do not know, however, if it is applicable to me. I do not believe I have yet reached that state of readiness—if I ever will.”
    “I think it takes longer for people like us.” A brow went up, inquiring. “People who never got to say good-bye. Who never got to prepare for the end, to say the things that went unsaid…there’s so much more we don’t want to let go of.”
    A heavy sigh. “It is illogical to cling to such regrets.” He said it not with chastisement, but with irony.
    Keru narrowed his eyes. “I’m not so sure. If the mind needs time to work through them, to come to terms with them, I’d say it’s illogical to force it along—just as illogical as refusing to let go when you’re ready.”
    “A surprisingly…intellect-based view of grief, Mister Keru.”
    “I guess it comes from my time tending the symbiont pools on Trill. Mind and memories…that’s all they are.” His gaze went unfocused. “And it’s hard to imagine how much loss they’ve known.”
    Tuvok nodded. “It is a universal.”
    Keru smiled. “But so is life, my friend. So is life.”

CHAPTER F IVE
    DROPLET, STARDATE 58525.3
    E viku nd’Ashelef sat atop the aquashuttle Holiday , having a picnic with his crewmates while watching the fish fly by.
    Many of Droplet’s chordates could pop out of the water, extend their long, cartilage-stiffened fins, and glide for great distances. Many had fins that could actually flap for propulsion. Eviku had catalogued a number of them today while the Holiday cruised a few dozen klicks behind Hurricane Spot (as the perpetual superhurricane had been nicknamed), studying the storm and its effects on the ocean in its wake. The surface cooling caused by the dense cloud cover and heavy rain caused a vertical displacement of the thermocline, promoting blooms of phytoplankton that in turn promoted a feeding frenzy. Some flying piscoids had taken to the air to avoid predators in the water, while others, predatory themselves, had come in from farther afield to pursue them or to dive after piscoids in the water. Earlier today, the crew had observed a fascinating event in whicha large school of piscoids had been caught in a pincer between two predatory species: below, cuttlefish-like creatures with tentacles keratin-stiffened into multiple scissorlike blades, and above, a flock of long-tentacled piscoids with dragonfly wings. Eviku had observed this pattern before on other worlds, but this had a twist. The piscoids in the targeted school could themselves take to the air for brief moments, using their fins purely for passive lift and flapping their wide tails at blurring speed to