Woldelaht

Posted on Thu Dec 25th, 2025 @ 8:46pm by Lieutenant Irynya

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Holodeck, Deck 5
Timeline: Mission Day 5 at 2030

[Holodeck, Deck 5]
[MD 5, 2030 Hours]

The regular shush and whumpf of the waves was almost rhythmic. Receding water drew a brush across a cymbal while the crest of incoming water sped small rocks to tumble like a drumroll into the djembe-like whumpf of the broken crest as it met wet sand before rushing forward, back into the quiet cymbal roll.

Irynya stood just beyond the reach of the water, eyes closed, as she measured her breathing against the waves. She hadn’t worn the full traditional dance garb that some of her crew mates had seen her in – some when meeting her for the very first time – that last night on Risa so many months ago.

Shush… exhale… hold.

Roll… inhale… hold.

And whumpf, the fast exhale, breath past full lips shaped into a small O to control the airflow.

Eyes still closed she raised one foot, no more than a handful of inches off the ground. Her feet were bare and though she had worn fitted pants that ended at her calves and a SOJO t-shirt, her wrists and ankles bore the shell bracelets that were traditional to so many Risian ceremonies. They rustled and clicked quietly together until, with the next crash of the wave, she brought her left foot down in a firm stomp into the sand. It was a quiet sound, but the shells twined around her ankles clicked together like percussive bells, accenting the movement.

Her opposite foot was already on the rise, following the motion of the water. She resisted the temptation to wobble on her left ankle, tightening the muscles in her calf and foot as she dug her toes into the sand to stabilize herself. Holodeck sand was good, but it was harder to guarantee a well packed spot. Instead she would have to make one.

The next crash brought her right food down with it, shells jingling and clacking. It was a simple motion; one of the most basic taught to children when they are first introduced to this style of dancing. Though her fingers twitched she kept her hands held slightly out to her sides, focusing only on the movement of her feet… her breathing… the rhythmic shush and whumpf of the waves. Had there been an onlooker they might have thought that her only intention was the timed shifting from one foot to the other.

And then, with some unheard cue, her arms came up in rapid precise motion. Her left arm curved across her body, hand held stiffly upright and parallel just to the right of her face. The motion stopped as her left hand met her right with a cracking clap of skin against skin a mere half beat after her left foot met the now packing sand. The motion repeated in reverse on the next cycle. She continued this way for several more rounds. Features, schooled into a smile that neither flinched nor faltered with each clap of her hands.

Once again it seemed as if this was all she might have planned to do. She’d been moving this way now, building from breath, to stomping, to clapping for about 10 minutes–each movement controlled and deliberate. Her muscles had begun to announce the awareness of the repetition. Arms held at particular angles trembled ever so slightly and she felt the muscles in her thighs ball and tense just before each move.

Where had she first heard the term muscle memory?

The concept made sense, but though the Risian language had a predilection toward the poetic, the connection of muscles and memory had never passed into their parlance. It was a uniquely human phrase.

Two more rounds of the structured movement went by and finally, she let all of the tension in her body release as her movement changed entirely. Practiced careful basics were replaced by twirling steps, each spin propelled by a stomping foot. Her hands shifted in the air, serpentine, to the sound of a song that was only in her head.

Whirling across the sand, she allowed herself only the motion. The swirling twisting dance that she knew by heart after years of repeated motion flowed out of her even as it consumed her wholly.

She ached for a partner. For the drums. For the raw calling voice of a singer.

But she asked the holodeck for none of these things.

Finally, sweaty and breathing fast, her movement slowed. She shifted toward longer, more languorous movement and finally, stopped entirely within an inch or two of where she had begun.

She loosed a deep sighing breath, puffing her cheeks and forcing the air through her teeth as she did.

With one final deep inhale she sat, crossing her legs lotus style and draping her arms in front of her, resting her wrists on her knees.

It had been five days since Subrek had abducted her along with six others–Noah among them.

Three days since she’d woken up with Noah tucked in front of her, her arm slung across his waist and her nose pressed into his neck. Three days since she’d replayed the message from Marteli after he left. Since she had listened–really listened–to what her closest friend was saying across weeks and light years.

Just like every other time she’d let her mind wander in this direction, turning the unknowns over like a rock turned in a river stream until it was perfectly smoothed, her mind conjured the memory of Noah, slumped against the blast doors as close to the Arboretum as he could get, murmuring the shock she assumed his brain was struggling to process.

Jyl-eel Tor was dead.

Jyl-eel who, Iry had to believe, had hoped that she and Noah… with time…

Her stomach twisted at the thought. At the what ifs that would never come to pass. At the ones that still might.

Was this just the natural response to shared trauma? The fall out of the high intensity and uncertainty that they would survive the ordeal of the First Maje and his augmented forces? Would it just… pass when they reached whatever new point would be considered normal again?

Her fingers found the sand and pressed down, wiggling until the tips were submerged and slightly damp. It wasn’t real. This beach. These waves. This sand. But it was as close as she could get.

She didn’t think it had begun with their experience on the Kordra-Lisrit. Even if that worry pressed at her.

No.

It had begun before that, growing slowly like a seed buried deep and waiting for water and light to call it forth. So slowly that she hadn’t noticed it; hadn’t consciously done anything to cultivate it.

A perfectly imperfect simulated wave crashed a few feet shy of her and this time when the water rushed upward with the cymbal brush the foamy surf dampened the legs of her pants. It was cool against her skin where the fabric clung and goosebumps lifted the small hairs along her arms despite the ambient Risian warmth. The skin between her eyebrows crimped slightly as she frowned down at the dampness just along the edge of her calves, but she didn’t shift any further away from the tide.

Of all of her childhood friends, Wrena was the only one who had experienced a sudden loss before Iry had left for the Academy. One of her cousins had gotten caught in a rip tide and never made it back out. Iry had been 12; Wrena newly 13 and her cousin… Timbrel… her memory grasped at the name with clinging fingers. Timbrel had been 10 and a strong swimmer. And rip tides, though not entirely absent, were rare.

The group of them–Marteli, Iry, Tal, Elwe, and Wrena–had all been clustered around a tablet in the small grotto clearing that Marteli had discovered the summer prior when a news alert broadcast over the game they’d been playing. She remembered that the game had something to do with mapping out their ideal partners as if at those ages they’d any clue. They’d been giggling over the way Elwe had described a detail of a pairing ceremony when the three long tones of a news alert broke through the camaraderie of their laughter.

The alert hadn’t given the boy’s name, but there was a photograph and location details. Wrena recognized him immediately. Some detail triggered in her brain a certainty that she couldn’t shake.

Tal had been the one to wrap Wrena in his long gangly teenage boy arms, settling her between his legs and letting her drench his chest with tears as the three girls looked on in grim dismay. They’d taken turns rubbing her back awkwardly from beside Tal and struggling to find the right words to say. Trying not to dismiss her grief even as they passed the obvious question between them in glances.

What if it wasn’t Timbrel?

Eventually they’d all trooped back to Wrena’s home together. As they’d left the confines of the trees Tal had wrapped Wrena’s hand in his as if he could anchor her to him right then and there. Marteli led their cluster and Iry carried the bag they’d brought. Elwe, carrying a bottle of water, made them pause every so often to ply Wrena with it as if she could undo the water lost to tears by pure determination. Iry could still remember the way they all stopped each time Elwe had insisted, seeming to hold their breath as if ready to dart off for whatever small thing their friend might need–tension strung brittle between them.

Wrena’s parents had met them at the door and the tears streaking her mother’s cheeks had banished any lingering doubts about the identity of the child in the alert.

As if her grief were their own and separation was intolerable, the four of them had each appeared at Wrena’s doorstep after breakfast the next morning, one by one asking if they could come in and stay a while. They’d spent hours together, doing nothing and everything. Talking. Eating. Taking turns tying back each other’s hair. Even Tal, who wore his shaggy back then, had deigned to let Wrena weave flowers into his locks when she’d asked.

Wrena had been an open wound to them. One that they could tend to, care for, and watch as she worked through her grief. The term, woldelat didn’t even exist in their vocabularies at the time, but they lived it all the same as witnesses and nurses and soft places to cultivate, process, and move through the grief.

Iry hadn’t realized it at the time, but something had shifted in the spaces between Tal and Wrena in the midst of the crisis. Or maybe had shifted beforehand and just been allowed out once Tal had wrapped Wrena in his arms that day.

A chime sounded through the air startling her out of her reverie and letting her know that the time allotted was nearing its end. She stood, brushing loose sand from the wet parts of her pants where it seemed determined to cling. She’d sat too long after dancing and her muscles protested movement sending shocks of annoyance along her nervous system. Both hands over her head she pressed up onto her toes and stretched, pulling herself long until her balance gave and she dropped back to the soles of her feet.

“Computer,” she spoke to the air, “end program.”

Beach and sunrise, warmth and damp, the shush and whumpf of the waves, all faded leaving behind the telltale grid and the sound of the engines at warp through the deck plating.

The arch doors sighed open and, without a glance back, Irynya left the holodeck.