"One can learn much from their own life,
and one can learn even more from their own death..."
-Unknown
==/\==Miranda's Office, Or What's Left Of It, Deck 3==/\==
Miranda gave a heavy sigh as she walked into what was left of her once grand office. The scene was deplorable to say the least. The smaller office had been completely destroyed save for a few things here and there, luckily she had moved everything into the larger office she was supposed to use a few days before the incident that had taken the Charon through hell and back, raided by Gai'shan, and to top it off trying to prevent genocide. "All in all a day's work." She muttered to her self as she sat down at her ruined desk with a rather casual look. Pony-tail, long sleeve tee under the half opened suit she continued to wear, and then there was the look that she had been through hell and back.
"Indeed, yes I have been through hell and back." She mocked to her self. "I've taken out Gai'shan, I've killed young Romulan Men no older then my nephews and I did happen to run into a former lover. Seems that wouldn't happen too often at my age, but hey Miranda! You've lived for over five and a half centuries! You've dated all kinds of scum! That Cardassian Gul, that hot Klingon you met at a bar." Miranda paused after the last item on the list and pondered over it. "He actually wasn't half bad of a guy." She muttered quietly, thinking about it for a little while longer she then continued on her rampage. "And then there were a few Romulans here and there, add a few Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and the occasional Betazoid and you have Miranda Xavier's sex life for the last five centuries!" She said as she raised her arms in conclusion.
Moving over the porthole of a window Miranda sighed and nodded her head at her statements. "Not to mention you've been running for the last four hundred years." She whispered. Past actions were hard to ignore when you lived for as long as El-Aurians did, and while aging and life span varied among the certain racial and ethnic groups of the people, Miranda happened to have some of the best genes of Old El-Auria. The Northern archipelagoes, not that dissimilar to the British and Low Countries of Europe back on Earth, were home to some of the longest lived of her race. "Not that mortality is something you should be concerned about Miranda." She said to her self. "Memento Mori Miranda, you're a mortal who will watch Empires rise and fall for years to come, but remember you're just as fragile as the lot of them." She said with a snap of her fingers.
Indeed Memento Mori's weren't whispered so much in this day in age, so many young people ready to push off to war feeling like it will be a glorious rage of passion, thinking they have a health bar instead of a body. Thinking just because they're themselves that spares them injuries and wounds. The simple whisper in someone's ear everyday might make all the difference, reminding them they are finite, while time lives forever.
==/\==Vulcan Surface==/\==
Miranda looked at the sands beneath her feet. The winds of the Vulcan deserts swept the sand against her attire, blowing the soft mineral filled material across her bare face.
It had been more then a century since she had set foot on this founding world of the Federation, not even her recent and past political careers took her here, and for good reason in the last decade and a half. Last time she had been here it was a happier time, before her second career and almost forty years before she retired for the first time. No wars had happened, well Klingon and Tholian skirmishes on Vanguard Station but nothing major. In fact she had liked it here once....... once...
But for the longest time, the real reason why Miranda never ventured to Vulcan was unknown. She had never gotten around to it, she hadn't enough time, the poor Vulcan bastards made her skin crawl at certain points..... the usual. But for the last fourteen, or fifteen years the reason had been more personal. Ever since she had a kid with a Vulcan she would rather not be named, she had carefully avoided 40 Eridani and Vulcan it's self.
As she continued her climb up the mesa that would provide her with a spectacular view of the place she wanted to see, and the wonderful vista of Vulcan's legendary deserts, she continued to ponder what she would say to him, that is assuming he was still alive.
Reaching the top of the mesa, Miranda continued walking towards the cliff at the other end that would allow her to see the town of V'shat, and the beautiful three star sun set.
Arriving at the cliff Miranda removed her hood and allowed the suns free access to her face, and allowed her to take in the image before her. Near where V'shat should have been, was a downed D'deridex warbird, one of the refitted kind, wrecked across the desert plains, with most of the hull structure intact, though doubtfully anyone still alive. The wreck was aligned so that the port side was completely imbedded into the rockbed, and the rest of the Warbird leaning on it's port side. The bottom neck had snapped and in the middle the two halves pointed upwards towards the top neck that connected the superstructure to the head of the warbird.
Fires still rippled through the ship and most of the outer layers of armor and most of the hull had collapsed by the time the sun had set. Damage control teams from nearby Shi'kahr fought relentlessly to fight the small, trivial fires next to the surface, and what possibly remained of the town.
As darkness pulled it's covers over the desert, Miranda made a graceful move to throw one end of the shawl she was wearing over her right shoulder and gave a heavy, but near silent sigh at the sight of destruction.
As the suns set over the desert Miranda began to walk away, simply walking away from what may or may not have happened. Possibly leaving her daughter and one time lover for dead.
Though it was not such a cold action in her mind, hours earlier she had ranted that people were only mortal, and mortality is what defined life and what gave it meaning. Though she wondered if senseless death gave meaning to anyone's life at all.....
"Memento Vivere................"
==/\==TBC==/\==
Miranda Xavier
JAG Afloat
USS Charon
