TM: Describe the place where you grew up

Muse: Christine Chapel, PhD, RN, MD
Fandom: Star Trek: TOS
Prompt: Describe the place where you grew up
Word Count: 453 words


Davenport, California, Earth
Mail Drop NA/CA/DAV2377

That's the official address for the old house. I still spend much of my time there when I can, when Jan and I can get away from work long enough to take a few days off to relax. It's a great house, the old place, now that I've exorcised the many and varied ghosts from its floors and walls and corridors. My sister slips in and out like a humming wraith between her ambassadorial duties, sending the cats into a fit of ecstatic frenzy everytime she arrives.

It's a beautiful place, now.

I hated it growing up. It was old-fashioned; we didn't have a replicator, or really any modern conveniences. My mother, accomplished as she was, had a real idea that there was something to "roughing it" that balanced out the human soul. It wasn't on the main routes, so we didn't have a lot of neighbors, although we were about a ten minute walk from one of the most beautiful beaches in California, a private stretch owned by a colleague of my mom's who always let me swim there.

Shayla was gone by the time I started swimming in the ocean. We didn't grow up together. I grew up alone, just me and my step-father and Mom. I won't say that living in this big, old-fashioned house on the beach with two over-educated academics did much for my social skills in school, but it certainly prepared me for a life in Starfleet.

I spent a lot of time exploring, even then. The land around the house. The road down to the beach, and then the nooks and crannies created by the Pacific Ocean. There was this one stand of rocks I loved. I would climb them in my little padded shoes, even as young as seven or eight, and look out at the ocean from that vantage point. I remember once, after reading about the Greek gods in a big book my step-father brought home for me from a trip back east, I stood on the rocks and called out a prayer of thanks to Mighty Poseidon. In no more time than it took for the waves to swallow my prayers, an enormous wave rose over the rocks, drenching me in chilly water!

Oh, Poseidon, you heard my call that day, and I've never passed that stand of rocks again without thinking of you. The hug of a god means a lot to a lonely little girl.

When the whale probes came, and the sea erupted around us, I prayed to you. You heard me then, too, didn't you? And although I didn't get drenched, I knew you were wrapping me in your arms, then, too.