Last of the Stew

Posted on Wed Apr 15th, 2026 @ 9:45am by Science Officer Lindsy

590 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Acquisitions & Contracts
Location: Lindsy's Quarters, Deck 3
Timeline: Date 2380-01-07 at 0700

The Dutchman's lighting cycled up slowly the way she had set it, a gradual amber rise that gave her a few minutes to come around before it hit full brightness. Lindsy lay still for a moment with her eyes open, listening to the ship. The low hum of the systems, the faint vibration through the hull that meant the core was idling comfortably, the distant sound of someone moving on another deck. She had spent enough nights on enough ships that she could read a vessel's mood from her bunk and this one felt settled.

She sat up and put her feet on the deck and sat there for a second with her hands on her knees.
Zedd crossed her mind the way he had been doing since dinner two nights ago, not intrusively, just present, the way a problem sits at the edge of your thinking when you haven't resolved it yet. She wasn't sure it was a problem exactly.

That was part of what she hadn't resolved.

She stood and pulled her hair back and crossed to the small bathroom and ran the water cold the way she preferred it and splashed her face and looked at herself in the mirror for a moment.

It wasn't anything she could point to cleanly. It was the way he had laughed at something she said, short and genuine and not performed for anyone. The way his eyes shifted between easy and sharp so fast that she had almost missed it the first time. The way he had reached over for her bowl at the end of the meal without asking, just looked at her and she had slid it across without a word, and somehow that small unremarkable moment had stayed with her longer than

it had any reason to.

She was thirty nine years old and had navigated Dominion trade corridors and Antican frontier runs and more complicated situations than she could count and she was standing in her quarters on Deck 3 thinking about a pirate captain who had stolen the last of her stew.

She dried her face and pulled on her tunic and reached for the bead string on the small shelf by the viewport, settling cross legged on the mat she had unrolled the night before. The morning Keth-Vael session was non negotiable regardless of what else was going on and she set her hands in the Vaelor Seal and began to breathe.

Observe. Don't attach.

The thought came back anyway. The easy grin, the quieter version of it that showed up when he wasn't performing anything for anyone, the way he had said her name when she was leaving. Just Lindsy, like it was already familiar.
She noted it and let it drift and brought her attention back to the breath.

It drifted back.

She noted it again. Let it go again. That was the practice, you didn't force anything out, you just kept returning to where you were supposed to be. She had done it with harder things than this.

By the time she finished and put everything away where it was before, the feeling had remained and settled into something quieter. She picked up her PADD from the desk and pulled up the morning route projections and sat down by the viewport with her tea.

New Ferenginar turned slowly below, marsh clouds catching the early light.

She had work to do. That part was straightforward enough.

The rest she would observe and not attach to and see what it did on its own.

 

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