"Eyes Unclouded"
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Setting: Holosuite, Starbase Han'shir
Stardate 29365.1900

"You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two." Hayao Miyazaki

Seska had been seated low on the floor, with her body in a natural, relaxed position, adopting the forms from her own philosophy, openly displaying reverence to the Bajoran philosophy which connected her to the Prophets. She thought of Ka'len, who had accepted her, and became her mentor of a sort in matters of how to focus ones thoughts, master ones mind, and control the mental chaos of her memories both her own and those she was given. 

The only visible light from the flickering illumination of a single flame that burned from the Vulcan meditation lamp. The atmosphere of silence that so completely surrounded Seska felt as if she were separated by great distances, or worlds apart from anything or anyone, the sensation was only intensified even more so by the smoke burning off the incense around her, displacing Seska's sight. Moments passed before she found herself speaking Ka'len's words that usually initiated the meditation by reciting an appropriate mantra.

“Think of how your mind is working, how it plans for the future, visits the past. Notice those thoughts and set them aside. Turn your attention to the light that is your breath, your pagh.”

Everything around her seemed to fade, as each word she spoke lingered in the air, and resounded in her consciousness, gripping at the very center of her being. Her eyes slowly started to close, and everything had become transient, her will, her thoughts, both pleasure and pain, even herself.

She envisioned herself centuries far into where the future might take her, as aged and wizened woman, having accomplished things she had never even imagined possible or logical. Then her mind conjured some obscure memory from her past, little Seska at thirteen years, surrounded by frost touched blue iris', the snow falling gently on to the flowers and earth around her. She could not figure why she would remember this of all the many other experiences that she carried, or why this one memory was significant.

Again, another image coalesced into her conscious, causing her to heave forward, gasping deep for air. It almost shattered her concentration, seizing at her focus, she struggled for dominance. If she were to lose control now, it would break her both mentally and emotionally, as well as annihilate her resolve in similar situations.

Seska, nearly seventeen, the song of war echoed around her, carried on the winds, while everything cast in shades of red as blood stained her eyes. Seska knew it as the skirmish at Sahving Valley, that turned into a massacre, It was here, where she lost a good friend, Rika. This was a dark place of her own personal history she did not want to witness again, as she tried to force it from mind, started to feel like a recurring reality, with a vengeance as if every detail that happened had an unequivocal clarity. The shear force against her sanity would only recede when the entire conflict had played out and taken its course.

There was the point where the intensity would gradually diminish into nothing, an endless black and empty void. Seska only now started to reflect on herself and inward. Who was she exactly and what was she, really? A fatherless little Bajoran girl. A cunning and motivated young member of the resistance rebelling against tyranny, genocide, and cultural annihilation, A space faring ethical gypsy in a uniform. 

Seska began to let go of everything she firmly believed about who she was or had been, forgetting everything she thought she knew to be undeniably true, little by little, simply let the entire process take her. Before her, far in the distance, a tiny blue shimmer of light sparkled to life, an apparition in the form of a sapphire tinted sun. An instance soon after, three more white wisps emerged twinkling out of the darkness, each resembling lunar moons, significantly smaller than the blue sun, as these danced into existence adapting a sort of triple helix orbit formation around the original body. 

Ever remaining just out of reach, never moving, Seska always unable to touch the lights. The more distance covered the more it seemed to evade or elude her advances, forever fixated in an eternally static position farther from her. When she abandoned such attempts, her intent no longer sought or desired to caress the light in her hand, it drew nearer. Rather than her feeling it, instead it began to press against her fingertips, embraced her.

Her eyes crept open, to find herself surrounded by the holographically rendered Bajoran temple walls of the holosuite. The incense haze began to vanish after having long since ceased their use or function, yet the lamp alone before her, still alit as if to be some guiding point during the entire matter. All of these aspects assimilated into familiar setting, each and every detail specifically recreated to be both conductive and divine in its purpose and function. A place where none but Seska would only feel at ease, deeply connected with her mind and grounded in her faith. Then and there she knew, as the sudden realization came, that she now possessed the answers to who and what she was.

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Gwen Spellblade
Ensign Mizore Seska
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS ANUBIS