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Side Sim: Friends and good food -what else does one need?

Posted April 14, 2021, 2:48 p.m. by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) (Lindsay B)

Posted by Lieutenant Kiama Naim (Chief Science Officer) in Side Sim: Friends and good food -what else does one need?

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Side Sim: Friends and good food -what else does one need?

Posted by Lieutenant Kiama Naim (Chief Science Officer) in Side Sim: Friends and good food -what else does one need?
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Kiama laughed softly and said, “I can imagine. I imagine that it must be … satisfying.” She searched for the right word and wasn’t sure if ‘satisfying’ was the one she was looking for. But it seemed close enough. “What do you prefer to put into salads and hasperat you make?” she asked without knowing that there was a very personal story behind the hasperat Faye makes.

~Lt. Naim, CSO

Focusing on the food on her plate, Faye knew she couldn’t hide from Kiama, nor did she care to, but at the same time she wasn’t sure she was ready to go there just yet. “Um, well, salads can be various. I like dumping vegetables, raw or sauteed onto greens a lot and if I add a lentil or meat, it’s a full meal. But hasperat is… different. It’s often regionally based and many Bajorans make it the way their family has for generations. So it depends on where you lived and where you got the recipe. The one I have uses common vegetables from Bajor, so I’m going to grow some of those and has a seed pod that is extremely spicy as the heat component.” Faye shrugged nonchalantly and ate more of her curry.

~Faye Calloway

While eating another forkful of curry, Kiama nodded thoughtfully. She had a feeling that there was more to it than Faye was telling, but she didn’t want to pry. For while she was very curious by nature, she also valued privacy and tried to give it to everyone as much as was possible. Maybe one day Faye would be ready to tell her more about it, but for now she’d let it rest. Instead she asked, “What are your favourite vegetables?”

~Lt. Naim, CSO

It was an innocuous question but not one Faye had given much thought to. Did she have a favourite? She had a favourite food because of the memory associated with it, but she wasn’t sure if she could think of a favourite vegetable. She shook her head slowly as she dragged her fork slowly through the curry. “I don’t think I have one? I mean… I suppose on the fruit side I love perfectly ripe homegrown strawberries but that’s a rare thing to have in space. Especially since the growing method does affect flavour. But honestly, I guess I just had enough times in my life where any food, regardless of quality was appreciated because…, well, otherwise I would have starved.” She shrugged her shoulders. “And after the Romulans, I lost a lot of my tasebuds and it’s taking a long time to get them fully back. But it’s happening. So I think the answer will be one that will change in the near future.” Faye frowned. She wasn’t sure if she had mentioned her stint with the Romulans to Naim or not. That was the problem lately with her ‘spells’- they confused her memory slightly.

~Faye Calloway

“After the Romulans?” Kiama asked before she could think better of it. Her fork hovering in mid-air above her plate, her head tilted slightly to the side. Her brows pulled together in a deep frown. She had no idea what Faye was talking about, but it didn’t sound good at all. What little she had just said already had a wave of concern wash over her, though she tried her best to keep most of that off her face. She knew that Faye wouldn’t want her pity. And while she wasn’t pitying her, she also didn’t want her to misinterpret her concern.

~Lt. Naim, CSO

Everything inside Faye went suddenly still. It would be different to talk about this with Kiama. Her experience had so far been one where she glossed over things and people just sort of nodded and moved on. Except for Alex, who had his own unique brand of conveying understanding (as maddening as that sometimes was).

Holding the fork in her fingers still, Calloway exhaled. “Very long story short, before I came to the Manhattan I had been on special assignment with Intelligence. I did a covert mission on the other side of the border… in Romulan space. I can’t talk about all the details, but it ended when I was caught in an explosion and being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, the Romulans arrested me. I was tried, convicted and sentenced for the deaths of the Romulans in that explosion even though I had nothing to do with it.” Faye pushed the emotions attached to those visceral memories aside, but she knew all too well that Kiama was aware of them. “I spent nine months as a prisoner of the Tal Shair. You can imagine how much fun that was. As it turns out my mother was undercover there and it was her who helped me escape.” She set the fork down with a shake of her head. “Still processing that one. But suffice to say when I dragged myself back over the Federation border I was nearly dead and it took me a year to recover enough to be back on duty full time. I stayed on the ship where I had bene recovering but this has been my first real assignment since then.”

~Faye Calloway


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