Finding the Quiet

Posted on Mon Dec 22nd, 2025 @ 6:33pm by Lieutenant Elsen Rava

1,020 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Episode 1: A New Sheriff in Town
Location: El's Quarters, Mojave Station
Timeline: Shortly after USS Achilles Arrival

The door slid shut behind her with a soft, final sound, and for a moment Elsen just stood there.

Her quarters were… fine. That was the first, honest assessment. Clean, functional, faintly impersonal in the way all new spaces were before someone decided to live in them. The lighting was set a little too bright, the air a little too still, but nothing she couldn’t fix with a few small adjustments and time. She exhaled slowly, letting the quiet settle, listening not for noise so much as absence.

She set her bag down near the wall and rolled one shoulder, easing the strap’s imprint from muscle that had carried it longer than necessary. Crossing to the environmental controls, Elsen tapped through the defaults without much thought, lowering the temperature a few degrees and nudging the humidity upward until the air felt closer to what her body expected. The change was subtle, but immediate. Her shoulders loosened a fraction, breath evening out as the room adjusted around her rather than the other way round.

That felt better.

She stood there for another moment, letting the system finish its quiet work, then glanced back at the room with fresh eyes. It hadn’t changed much, not really, but it already felt less like a place she’d been assigned and more like one she could inhabit. One corner at a time, she’d make it hers.

Elsen moved back to her bag and unfastened it properly this time, crouching beside it rather than lifting it onto the bed. She preferred unpacking from the ground. It kept her from spreading out too quickly, from pretending this was anything other than a beginning.

The first things out were practical. A change of clothes folded tight, boots she favoured for fieldwork, a worn jacket she hadn’t been able to part with despite its age. She set those aside without much thought, stacking them neatly in the small wardrobe, hands moving on instinct.

Then she slowed.

A slim data-slate came out next, its casing scuffed at the corners, older than most of the technology she worked with now. It wasn’t especially valuable, but it was familiar. She set it on the desk, angled just so, and only realised afterward that she’d placed it exactly where she always did, even though this desk was new to her.

A small stone followed, wrapped carefully in cloth. Smooth, grey, unremarkable unless you knew where it had come from. She unwrapped it and set it near the viewport, fingertips lingering a moment longer than necessary. Elsen couldn’t remember why she’d started carrying stones from dig sites. She only knew she’d felt wrong leaving this one behind.

From the bottom of the bag came a narrow case she didn’t consciously remember packing. Inside was a simple wrist band, dark and flexible, the sort used for physical training metrics. She frowned faintly at it, then shrugged and placed it beside the bed anyway. It might come in handy. That felt like reason enough.

There were other small things too. A folded strip of fabric she used as a bookmark. A set of old-fashioned earplugs she never remembered buying. A habit of lining objects up before choosing where they actually belonged. None of it felt intrusive. Just… present. Background noise she’d learned not to interrogate too closely.

Once the bag was empty, she zipped it shut and slid it beneath the bed, standing again and taking stock of the room. It still wasn’t finished. Probably never would be. But there were traces of her in it now, and traces of lives that had taught her how to settle into places without demanding they bend to her immediately.

Elsen sat on the edge of the bed, hands resting loosely in her lap, and let herself be still.

Mojave would fill in the rest soon enough.

Elsen remained seated for a few moments longer, then shifted her weight and rose, moving to the small open space near the viewport. She toed her boots off and set them aside, feet finding the deck plating with bare familiarity, feeling for temperature and texture the way she always did.

She closed her eyes.

It wasn’t meditation in the way Humans often meant it. There were no mantras, no attempt to empty her mind. Instead, Elsen rested one hand lightly against her abdomen and the other at her side, shoulders relaxed, posture easy rather than formal. She focused on her breathing, slow and deliberate, counting the cadence the way she’d been taught long before the joining ever became real.

With each breath, she let her awareness settle inward, not searching, just acknowledging. The faint, steady presence beneath her own thoughts. The quiet sense of continuity that never quite went away anymore. Not voices. Not memories. Just… weight, balanced and familiar.

The station’s gravity felt different than Trill’s. Slightly tighter. Slightly less forgiving. She adjusted her stance by instinct, breathing through the change until her body accepted it. When she exhaled, the tension eased, the room feeling more proportioned around her than it had a few minutes earlier.

That was the point of it.

El opened her eyes again, the practice complete without ceremony. She rolled her shoulders once, grounding herself back in the present, and glanced around the quarters. Nothing had changed, but the space felt quieter now, as if it had stopped waiting to see how she would behave.

She retrieved the stone from the desk and turned it once in her palm before setting it back down, a small, unconscious punctuation mark at the end of the ritual.

“All right,” she murmured softly, more to herself than anyone else.

Settling back onto the bed, El stretched out and let the station continue on around her. She didn’t feel entirely at home yet. That would take time. But she felt aligned, and for a Trill, that mattered more.

Elsen lay back and listened to the station for a while longer, content to let Mojave learn her at its own pace.

 

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