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" Stranger "
(Previous Post was Craig's "Confused Minds")
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Setting: VALLA ROYAL, Quarters
Stardate: 63076.0400

The young woman had travelled in her troubled sleep from one end of her bed to the other, tossing to the floor anything that had been in her way… how she had managed not to find herself on the floor alongside her pillows and sheets would likely remain one of this universe's great mysteries.

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Dreamscape
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The young woman gazed with mixed interest at what appeared to be an endless black void… no stars… no shapes… nothing stood from the smooth blackness to help her figure out where she was… but the strangest part of it all was that as curious as she might have been, she knew, deep inside of her, that it really didn't matter.

~Who… are… you?~ An eerie, gentle and ancient voice, coming from no particular location, asked.

"Am I dead?" Rikar questioned in return, her voice carrying no hints of fear or concern to her own surprise.

~What is the last thing you remember?~ The voice countered, sounding like it held the wisdom of the universe in each of the syllable spoken.

The young woman thought for a moment… she clearly remembered the stinging coldness biting at every extremity of her body, yet now she felt nothing… no numbing cold… no pain… not even the loneliness that had saddened her very soul.  Actually, the more she tried to remember where the cold had originated from, the more the memory seemed to slip between her fingers as if she had been trying to hold on to water with her bare hands.

"I… I can't remember… I was cold… very cold… and alone… I think… but I can't remember why."

~Then maybe you are dead.~

"But I am here… wherever here is," Rikar said with more mental clarity than she had felt in a long while.

~Clever girl,~ The voice joyfully said as a single light, as faint as a distant star, emerged from the absolute darkness that surrounded her.

Instinctively, Rikar headed for the light, and as unreachable as it had first appeared to be she knew that with each step she grew closer to something… something that she had no reason to fear.

"Where am I?" She asked, as the light grew larger… closer… even if her feet didn't move at all.  The simple idea of 'wanting' to be closer to the light seemed enough to bring her to it… or it to her… without any other point of reference she couldn't tell.

~*Where* is a good question… but I think *who* is a better one.~

"Who?"

"Yes… Who are you?" For the first time, the young woman could see the form to which the voice belonged.  An elderly humanoid man who appeared well in the later days of his time yet radiated an energy that hinted to him being much… much older.

Puzzlement swept over Rikar as she once again tried to answer this simplistic question to no avail.  Like the memory of the cold that had enveloped her, her own identity seemed to slip right through her fingers in spite of her efforts to remember.

"Why can't I remember?" The young woman asked, more out of sadness than frustration.

"You are trying to remember the wrong thing… I am asking you *who* you are." The aged man lovingly said, sounding as if he had been talking to one of his children.

"That's what I am trying to remember… isn't it?"

"You are trying to remember a name… not the person who *had* that name." The man explained echoing the wisdom of the universe in his every word.

The young woman thought for a moment at what had been said, trying as best she could to understand the meaning of it all.  Her name *was* her… wasn't it?  Didn't it represent all that she was?

"What do you remember?" He asked, his gentle voice embracing the young woman like a warm blanket.

"Friends… people… smiles and tears… it's all so vague now…"

"That's alright… those are the important things."

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Sabrina Jones

Samantha Rikar
Dabo Girl
VALLA ROYAL

Once known as…
Captain Sabrina Rikar
Commanding Officer
USS ANUBIS, NCC-18501