Stardate 957846729342.39: Hummer.
She didn't intend to do it. No one would have. It was just one of those things. You start doing something and before you know it, you've got a tiger by the tail and he's swinging you into things you're not supposed to touch cause they're dangerous or fragile or thick with thorns. And this was definitely thorny.
It started innocently enough. She just liked to walk on the beach, like any other Bobling from any other Bobling town. While others did their walking and fishing on DP, she liked to walk every day of the nine day week, early in the morning, between sunrise and sunrise, when the sky was a sparkling mix of almost over the horizon gold and still under the horizon red, orange, pink, and yes, gold. The air by the water was usually chill, but she didn't mind. She'd walk languidly along the shore, humming softly, occasionally opening her lips and trilling... waves nearly lapping at her feet.
She'd probably done this for years.. and Bobling years are not your short sort of Terran years, not at all. Fifteen months and five seasons. Or six, as some liked to argue. Because when the leaves grow coloured and leave the trees at the same time as the early wildflowers bloom, that has to be different than summer or fall or winter or spring.
But there was a year that things started to change and she hardly noticed it at first. Sometimes, when she was humming, she thought she heard something but when she stopped, there was nothing there. She thought she must be imagining it, and most of the time the waves were shoaling on the shore and the wind was in her ears, and the charms on her choker tinkled, so it took some weeks and some really quiet weather for her to realize that someone was humming along with her.
This was a conundrum because she would look the length and breadth of the beach, which was very long and rather wide. The sand eventually met up with a few logs and rocks and then long grass started to sprout up and eventually, some distance away, small outcroppings appeared, and beyond them were hills.
So someone couldn't just be strolling along nearby and joining in, not without Barisha seeing them. And she had keen eyes. She could see a snow bird on the snow in the far distance.
And there was something else. Whoever was humming, wasn't just humming their own song, or her song. They were humming in harmonic intervals. She knew because she tested them. She'd start a song and the hummer would join in and then she'd suddenly change to a new song, and within a few moments, the hummer would be singing the same song but not the same melody.
At first the whole thing made her a bit nervous. She debated telling her parents but she was afraid they would forbid her to go walking on non-DP days and she did not want that to happen.
After awhile, she started to enjoy it. She'd begin a song and this beautiful counterpoint would begin. As her voice rose and fell, the hummer would fall and rise in tandem. She walked and searched and pried and looked but no where could she see who it was.
But after a few months she rose every morning with eagerness. She'd fallen in love with harmony.
~
It started innocently enough. She just liked to walk on the beach, like any other Bobling from any other Bobling town. While others did their walking and fishing on DP, she liked to walk every day of the nine day week, early in the morning, between sunrise and sunrise, when the sky was a sparkling mix of almost over the horizon gold and still under the horizon red, orange, pink, and yes, gold. The air by the water was usually chill, but she didn't mind. She'd walk languidly along the shore, humming softly, occasionally opening her lips and trilling... waves nearly lapping at her feet.
She'd probably done this for years.. and Bobling years are not your short sort of Terran years, not at all. Fifteen months and five seasons. Or six, as some liked to argue. Because when the leaves grow coloured and leave the trees at the same time as the early wildflowers bloom, that has to be different than summer or fall or winter or spring.
But there was a year that things started to change and she hardly noticed it at first. Sometimes, when she was humming, she thought she heard something but when she stopped, there was nothing there. She thought she must be imagining it, and most of the time the waves were shoaling on the shore and the wind was in her ears, and the charms on her choker tinkled, so it took some weeks and some really quiet weather for her to realize that someone was humming along with her.
This was a conundrum because she would look the length and breadth of the beach, which was very long and rather wide. The sand eventually met up with a few logs and rocks and then long grass started to sprout up and eventually, some distance away, small outcroppings appeared, and beyond them were hills.
So someone couldn't just be strolling along nearby and joining in, not without Barisha seeing them. And she had keen eyes. She could see a snow bird on the snow in the far distance.
And there was something else. Whoever was humming, wasn't just humming their own song, or her song. They were humming in harmonic intervals. She knew because she tested them. She'd start a song and the hummer would join in and then she'd suddenly change to a new song, and within a few moments, the hummer would be singing the same song but not the same melody.
At first the whole thing made her a bit nervous. She debated telling her parents but she was afraid they would forbid her to go walking on non-DP days and she did not want that to happen.
After awhile, she started to enjoy it. She'd begin a song and this beautiful counterpoint would begin. As her voice rose and fell, the hummer would fall and rise in tandem. She walked and searched and pried and looked but no where could she see who it was.
But after a few months she rose every morning with eagerness. She'd fallen in love with harmony.
~