Crochet and Chlorophyll

Posted on Thu Jul 24th, 2025 @ 10:02am by Petty Officer 1st Class Alina Tevaris & Lieutenant JG Elen Rell

2,937 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: Arboretum, USS Guninevere
Timeline: Late 2387

The arboretum happened to be quiet. Not empty, Starfleet ships were rarely truly still, but quiet in the way that let Elen Rell exhale all the way to her boots.

She stepped inside with the sort of gentle focus usually reserved for working inside a panel of finicky plasma relays. Aware of the air, the faint hum of environmentals, the earthy scent of living things that hadn’t come from a replicator. The quiet here wasn’t empty...it was full of green.

Her boots moved lightly along the path, never crunching, never straying where roots wandered. She noticed the trailing leaves of a low-slung vine and arched a careful step around it, but her fingers still reached out as she walked, brushing stems and blossoms with the kind of light touch that never meant harm. Just contact. Just curiosity.

She crouched beside one of the beds, eyeing a patch of leafy growth that looked promising....but Elen never trusted her eyes for plants. She pinched a leaf gently, rubbed it between finger and thumb, then lifted it to her nose.

Sniff. Head tilt. Wrinkle of nose.

“Mint,” she said, quietly disappointed. “You liar.”

She tried the next clump. Another sniff.

And then...there it was. Her face lit up, a slow, bright smile that reached all the way to her eyes. “Lemon balm,” she breathed.

She didn’t pick any. Just stayed crouched there for a moment, breathing it in, rocking lightly on her heels like she could absorb the scent into her bones. The motion soothed her. Like a tuning fork coming into resonance.

“Gotcha,” she whispered, pleased. Like it was a small win on a long day.

To her credit, the intruder had been silent. But there were a small number of people who spent a large amount of time in this arboretum, and one of them happened to be on duty.

Alina Tevaris was no stealthy rogue herself, but she knew where to avoid stepping. She ended up in front of and above the newcomer and listened for just a second or two.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who talks to them!”

Elen didn’t startle so much as bounce: a soft jolt upward from her crouch, like a spring that hadn’t been tensioned properly. Her head tipped back, curls shifting, eyes catching on the unexpected presence now above her.

“Oh!” she said, blinking at the woman with a grin that was immediate and real. “Hi. Sorry. I wasn’t...I mean, I was, but I didn’t think anyone was on shift, like...next to me. Wow, you walk quietly.” She brushed her hands together, not to clean them but to ground herself, still half-crouched, still swaying slightly on the balls of her feet.

Then, a beat. Her grin tilted sideways. “Wait. You talk to them too?”

She looked at the lemon balm, then back up. “I was convinced this patch was mint. Which is fine, mint is lovely. But it lied to me about being lemon balm. And then this one?” She gestured at the correct plant. “Didn’t lie. Very honest. Citrus and calm, right to the core.”

There was a softness in her voice now, not shy but unguarded. “I like things that don’t pretend to be something else. Even plants.”

She shifted her weight, rose to standing, then added lightly: “You the keeper of all this? It’s kind of… perfect in here. Quiet, but not like, void-of-sound quiet. Like... humming.” She mimicked the noise under her breath, a half-sung vibration, amused at herself but not mocking it.

“I’m Elen,” she offered, extending a hand with a fingerless glove still on. “Engineering. Here for tea ingredients and general emotional triage.”

“This is the perfect place for both of those things!” Alina said cheerfully, taking Elen’s hand. “Ooh this is soft. You made it, I’m guessing? I’m Alina, and technically Commander Tyris runs the show here, but I’ve become something of a delegated den mother.”

She crouched down to be with the plants and gently pulled Elen down with her. “Lemon balm tea is great for insomnia, and some people say it helps with digestion. It does look a lot like the mint, doesn’t it? I don’t think that was intentional mimicry, though I did plant them together, in part to keep the most vigorous spreaders together. Plus the combinations smells lovely. Mimicry in nature can be beautiful though when it does happen? Do you know about Orchid Mantises?” It felt good to be talking with someone whose mind worked on multiple channels at the same time. Intellectually stimulating in a way that was uncommon.

Elen’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh! That’s clever, putting the pushy plants together. Like giving them their own corner to bounce off each other instead of steamrolling the shy ones. Kind of like putting two extroverts in charge of a party so the introverts can breathe.”

She tilted her head, grinning. “And yeah, they do look alike, don’t they? Like lemon balm’s trying on mint’s outfit and hoping no one notices. But without the sharpness. It’s got a softer edge. Feels...truer. Less zing, more mmm.”

Then the word mantises registered. Properly.

“Wait a parsec, orchid mantises?” Her whole face lit up. “Like the bug? That pretends to be a flower? Are you kidding me, that’s amazing. That’s like...predatory camouflage and fancy dress. Nature’s out here doing drag shows and tactical infiltration at the same time.”

Alina beamed at someone wanting to engage her on nature trivia. “We don’t keep any here, at least not yet, I might see about getting a few to keep the bee population stable. But yeah! They look like beautiful orchids, even in the UV light! Then when the bee goes in for some yummy nectar… Snap!” She quickly clasped her hands shut around a pretend insect. “Delicious bees for dinner. All while looking fabulous.”

Elen made a delighted noise as she watched Alina’s hands snap shut. “That’s mental! I mean, not for the bee, poor thing, but like... you’re telling me there’s a flower that’s also a tiny ambush predator?” She rocked forward onto her toes as she spoke, animated and wide-eyed, curls bouncing with the motion. “That’s brilliant. Tactical glam. I didn’t even know bugs did that. That’s such an Earth thing.” She paused, blinking. “Actually, is it an Earth thing? I mean I grew up in a dome on Mars, we didn’t have bugs. Not the proper kind. Just... hydroponics gnats and the occasional maintenance drone that panicked the plumbing.” Her nose wrinkled affectionately. “So I never really learned the real difference between ‘bug’ and ‘insect’ and ‘please evacuate this section immediately.’”

She crouched again next to the lemon balm, pressing her hand gently to the soil near its base. “No ambush flowers in our gardens. Just nutrient feed and timed lighting. Nothing smelled like this. You had to imagine the rest.”

Her voice softened, laced with awe. “I love that Earth just... grew weird little assassins that pretend to be blossoms. That’s such a flex. Imagine evolving like: ‘I’m gonna be pretty and terrifying.’” She glanced sideways at Alina, grin curling again. “Honestly? Kind of goals.”

“So most people use the word ‘bug’ to mean any small crawling animal, but it does have a technical definition, so a true ‘bug’ is an insect of a specific group that has sucking mouthparts including things like assassin bugs, cicadas, aphids, and bedbugs, but excluding mosquitoes.” Alina was falling into an explanatory hole again. “‘Insect’ is any Earth animal from the arthropod group with a head, thorax, and abdomen, has a hard exoskeleton, and exactly six legs attached to the thorax. One or two pairs of wings are common but not necessary. They’re among the most common lifeform on Earth, filling so many niches, including glam ambush predators. Glambush predators? You’re right that most dome cities don’t have insect biodiversity but flowering plants really do reproduce better with natural pollinators so we keep a small beehive here. They make good honey; Williams and I are going to bottle some soon.”

Deep breath. “Anyway, did you want some lemon balm? To grow or just to have a bit of right now?”

"Oh, just right now," Elen said, smiling at Alina with an unmistakable curiosity. What she was saying, and how she was saying it, painted a picture as clear as poetry in the warp core. There, if you looked for it. She briefly, very briefly, thought about the insects on Mars. The ones curated for pollination, the way butterflies had adapted, quiet little pollinators just looking pretty...and then those hover-bugs, whatever they were called. Not bees, she was certain there weren't bees on Mars. Her brain, naturally, zoomed off in a new direction for a second before she dragged it back to the conversation: like going from warp 9 to impulse. "I can't keep plants alive," she admitted, looking at the plants with a faint chuckle. "I forget about them and then they die...I wouldn’t do that to them. But if you let me come here and pick some leaves, like, every day or so... I can keep up with that. Routine and all." Her eyes lit up at the thought. "Oh! And lavender! I want to dry some, I love the scent. You’ve got any around here?"

“Not yet,” Alina said, cocking her head sadly. “I should try growing some though. As for lemon balm…I don’t think we do every day. That won’t be sustainable. But!” She snapped her fingers, eyes lit brightly as an idea came in. “You say you can’t keep plants alive, but you said you’re an engineer? I can give you instructions on the things these plants need, and you can maybe engineer a life support system? Something like lemon balm needs water, occasional nutrient boosts, lots of light. It’s either that or harvest less frequently.”

“Oh. Oh!” Elen’s eyes went wide as the realisation hit....plants weren’t like replicators. Of course they weren’t. You couldn’t just ask them nicely to reconstitute themselves forever, not like energy fed into a matter cycle, broken down and remade in the neat little loop that’d made spacefaring life possible since some bright spark figured out you could purify pee back into drinking water.

“Of course it would deplete the supply if I had some every day!” she said, half to herself, half to Alina. “I could come back once a week, make the lemon balm hit really count...” Her fingers tapped lightly against her thigh as her thoughts skipped ahead. “Life support system for plants...”

That bit took a second longer. Not because it didn’t make sense, but because her brain was already halfway down the schematic. It unrolled slowly, like a coiled-up blueprint finally hung across a bulkhead where you could see the whole plan.

“I could...yeah. I mean, it’s no different than a life support system for us, when you think about it. Except plants make oxygen, and we don’t. We just make... all the stuff that’ll kill us eventually.” Her nose wrinkled, fondly annoyed at humanoids in general. “So the setup wouldn’t need oxygen input, just water cycling and a solid power source. Not a replicator build either, that’d be cheating-- no, I’d want it to last, like....if everything else failed, this little box of green would still be ticking along.”

She stopped, blinked, and turned to Alina properly, catching her eyes this time.

“Oh! Okay. Yeah, I could give it a go. Might take me a bit to scavenge what I need. It’s not like I can just replicate half of it...I’m a bit fussy when it comes to materials, and, y’know...” She trailed off with a grin, energy still buzzing, hands already miming the shape of something not yet built. “It’ll be a right little project.”

"Just remember," Alina said, a finger in the air to draw attention, "a plant like lemon balm needs water and refreshed soil, but it also needs love. When you harvest, a quick thank-you is all you need. A little goes a long way." She gestured to the trees and flowers and everything else in the arboretum. "Each of these has its biometrics carefully monitored, but they also have what the computer can't give them: affection and care."

Elen smiled, shifting her weight a little as she looked out across the greenery, hands already making quiet shapes in the air as though sketching out the start of something unseen. “The system’ll take me a bit to build, if I want to do it properly. I’ve got love enough...it’s the plumbing I worry about. The forgetting. You know, the part where I get elbow-deep in warp coil recalibration and don’t notice the poor thing’s gone crispy ‘cause I’ve somehow lived off crackers and adrenaline again.” She gave a soft laugh, fond but self-deprecating, and brushed her palm down her thigh as if to tidy the thought away. “But if I can rig something steady...soil cycling, slow hydration, a bit of gentle light, a proper quiet corner that doesn’t need me to remember every day... that might just do.”

Then she looked back at Alina, her expression open, quietly lit in the green-filtered light. “And I’ll remember to say thank you. Out loud. I promise. Might even crochet it a jumper.”

“That’s the spirit!” Alina held out to Elen a small pair of handheld pruning shears. “Feel free to take a bit for today. Call it, inspiration for your creative process.”

Elen looked at the pruning shears like they were a gift made of hold before she took them, meeting Alina's eyes with a smile. "Thank you," she said, meaning it. "Because you know, if not I might cry. Got a real hankering, maybe it's a weird homesickness that's gripped me. Or just...you know...time for some tea!"

Elen looked at the pruning shears like they were a holy relic; not just an object, but an invitation, a symbol, a tiny miracle with handles. She took them reverently, like they might vanish if she blinked too hard. “Oh, thank you,” she breathed, her voice going up a little at the edges, like the gratitude couldn’t quite be contained.

Then, words started tumbling out before she could stop them.

“Because genuinely, if you hadn’t...I mean, I didn’t want to just start tearing leaves like some wild forager in a panic, but my brain is very attached to the idea of lemon balm right now and I think if I hadn’t had this exact moment of gentle, consensual clipping, I might’ve cried? Not dramatically, just like...quiet, confused sobbing in a corner with a cup of water and no tea.” She inhaled, then exhaled through her nose, still cradling the shears like they needed a name.

“I was literally just planning a whole microenvironment for one of these little guys, you know? Like, water cycling and nutrient delivery and artificial light spectrum tuning and everything, and now I get to clip one? Properly? It’s honestly a bit of a spiritual whiplash. But in a good way! A grounding whiplash. Is that a thing?” She paused only briefly, then added with sudden clarity, “You’re brilliant. Has anyone told you that today? Because you are. You’re like...if kindness and photosynthesis made a person.”

“Well, that’s going on my door plaque now!” Alina said, beaming at the compliment. “We get our fair share of people coming in for specific plant requests, but not everyone is as thoughtful about the process. Not everyone takes this seriously. So thank you, Elen. I made a friend today that isn’t green and answers when I talk. At a similar pace, no less!”

Elen grinned at that before she gave a small smile. Shy, perhaps. Warmer, without doubt. "Well, us people whose minds can go to warp have to stick together...although I think your problem is more with your root system..." her eyes shone with warmth. "We should do something! I mean, not like...random...like, figure out something to do together." And looking at Alina, Elen already had ideas.

Crochet cardigan. Greens and browns. No. Flowers. Sunflowers. Obviously.

"I like doing things! We have so much in common already!" Alina said cheerily. "I can see the wheels turning behind those eyes, so why don't you pick the first thing and message me with a time and place. I'll do the next one. Fair warning, it'll be when we loop back to Bak'u because that planet loves me and the feeling is mutual."

“Deal!” Elen grinned, the word bright as a flare. She nodded once, firm and eager, eyes crinkling with warmth. There was something settling in her shoulders now...a soft, quiet hope that maybe this was someone who didn’t see her as too much. Just enough.

As for what they’d do?

She’d figure it out. She always did.

END

Petty Officer 2nd Class Alina Tevaris
Botanist, USS Guinevere

&

Lt. jg Elen Rell
Acting Chief Engineer
USS Guinevere

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