To Physician K’Lynxyl@USS_Freedom

Starfleet mail service

From: Lieutenant Milton Dammers@USS_Freedom

Starfleet mail service

My Dear Lynx,

May the Goddess guide and keep you.

I am of two minds about the letters you sent me, and apparently you mother as well. You do know we both got the full text of both letters and part of your log? First I'm full of pride that you are pleased in our night together. I too haven't had a lover in many a year, and you were beyond my wildest expectations. And I agree that the Goddesses do seem to have a wicked sense of humor, both yours and mine in the highs and lows of this day.

<<Life is choosing paths.

Will you find your way to me?

Come inside my Lord.

Oh Great Goddess I'm utterly speechless. She has indeed quite the sense of humour in granting Her gifts. Tonight was the most horrible and the most wonderful night of my life. Milton finally stated his intent towards me and I now know how I am expected to behave if I am to be a part of his household. He and I will have to discuss this in detail as I do not wish my cubs to get the impression that it is always the female's duty to be subservient to the male. Not just for T'Saal's sake but also for K'Torr's. In no way must he learn to view females as property to possess.>>

I look at this bit above, and it answers questions, and causes even more. I will be discussing this, and other things with you in detail, but I want to say first, I do like you calling me "My Lord", but I don’t want you doing this around others. Consider this something to be shared between just our selves. I also don't see any problem with T'Saal and K'Torr continuing to see you as the strong independent person you are. In fact I would prefer this. Life will not be easy for them as they grow and they will need all the inner strength that they have and more. We have both been through the grinder and know what life can hold.

<<I will not fly in the face of my brother's dream of equal opportunity between the sexes by making my own cubs little mirrors of the old order. I will serve Milton as I now serve my slumbering mother lying in my own bed, quietly and in my own fashion. The Goddess made me what I am for Her purpose and although I am at my most content when serving and dancing for my heart's desire my most intimate displays of servitude must remain behind closed doors. Worry not my Lord, the tassels will cross your palm again but even when they are not in spirit there I still remain bound by the wrists to you.>>

And now for the hard part, the choosing of paths.

Lynx, you and I are going to sit down and discuss your brother and his hold over you, and any others that hold sway in your life for that matter. I expect truth out of you, and in return I will give you truth about myself. Can we each handle that? I don't know, but it must be. Consider this well before we go deeper into a relationship that could hurt both of us, and before the tassels cross my palm again drawing us both not only closer together, but possibly closer to destruction. We cannot be strong together if there are shadows between us, and I feel that it is time we vanished those shadows to find our way.

You speak of being bound to me by the wrists even when the sprit is not there, but with out spirit what is life Lynx? Why should I want to hold you if your heart isn’t in it? A mere shade would not hold my interest for long my little Orion dancer, nor would it be a good example to the children.

Now on to your letter, to which I will now reply, and yes, I too find it a help to collect my thoughts this way too.

<<First I must thank you for a delightful evening even if the Goddess has been whimsical of late with Her brand of humour. I kept my mother's pending arrival a secret at first because I did not know you well enough to make a decision on whether or not to tell you. Then after your most blessed gift of the holographs the other night and your unswerving regard for my virtue I decided it would be most appropriate to save her arrival as a surprise to show you just how much better she is now.

Come to think of it, if it were not for you she would not be here today, and…>>

And thank you for bringing me pleasure and fulfillment that I could only dream of.

I understand about your mother, but it was quite the shock to find her looking down at us like that. At first I thought it was one of my flashbacks, but her age was a dead giveaway. The M'Rander of my nightmares is the lady you saw in the pics, just haggard and wild-eyed from rough treatment and delirium. I just hope she is not serious about flushing me out an airlock. She can be harsh in that way when she takes a notion.

<<My Lord, this is very difficult for me to say and no doubt it will be difficult to hear but it must be said.

I, K'Lynxyl-Physician, daughter of M'Rander and Chaal Riit feel I owe Milton Dammers my life.

Why do I find you so irresistibly attractive? Is it a gratitude thing? No. Looking out for one another is what you do in a pride. Is it your good looks? Hardly, I've turned down better looks than yours. Is it that you, alone, evaded a war fleet of Kzintosh? Well, maybe. That sort of cunning and prowess is hopelessly sexy.>>

To that, I have much to say.

Lynx, I am glad that you two, or perhaps I should say three, though I’ll reserve judgment on that for after our talk, survived that ghastly ordeal. I am also glad to meet the fine young lady that somehow emerged from that horror, but you owe me noting for that. I did what I did because of two things. First I did it because your mother was my commanding officer, and one of the few people in the universe I could call friend. For her kindness in helping me recover my life after my time in Romulan space, I owed her my best effort as an honor debt. The second was a bit more selfish, but you need to know it to perhaps understand me a bit better. That second reason I had to try was because I honestly was afraid to be alone in that floating tomb. You can have no idea what it was like on that ship after the Kzin set us adrift, and for that I am thankful to the Goddess.

You are right on another count, I know I am no prize. It hurts, but I know I never have been what women call a chick magnate. I have survived some really bad situations, like the Tang, and when I was taken captive by the Gorn, and then Romulans, but what I did, I did to survive. If that makes me "hopelessly sexy" to you, then by the Goddess I will take it! And thank you for the compliment. Coming from such a fine looking lady that is a tremendous compliment indeed!

<<Is it that despite all your trials you still found it in your heart to care for my mother despite the risk of her succumbing to the hunger madness? Definitely. You sheltered her immediately and without question. You thought I was going to harm Demian in sickbay, and you moved to protect him immediately and without question. You took a stand in New California against the evil regime immediately and without question. You sheltered me from the police at the bus stop immediately and without question. When I needed to know about my mother and from where I came you showed me immediately and without question. When I needed your caress and your love you gave it immediately and without question.>>

Lynx, there was more to it than that. I never told M'Rander, but she was like the Mom I wish I'd had as a kid, and it broke my heart to see what they had done to her in trying to break her mind and spirit. I had to give it my best effort to save her. When it started, I really didn't believe Chaal Riit was right and that she would loose it and actually end up trying to eat me, but he was right and she reverted to survival mode. I feel sure that wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been so horribly mistreated and abandoned to die carrying his children. I truly despise him for what he did to her, to you, and my friends. However he died it was by far to fast and easy.

As to the other things you mentioned, I protect those that I feel are part of my extended family, and the crew of the Freedom are now that family. I would do my best to help and protect those that deserve it and I am sorry to say that because of what I had gone through, I saw you as a possible threat to them. Now that I understand you, if only slightly better, I realize that was not even a possibility. There is nothing of the pure sadistic cruelty of Chaal Riit in you. You are prone to rage and anger but not cruelty for the sake of enjoying another’s pain. You are much more like your mother in that regard.

As to the other incidents like New California, I am a servant of the Federation, and I saw the evil there as a threat to our ship, crew, and Federation at large. It simply needed to be stopped for the good of us all, and the people of that blighted world.

Finally, I too have needs, and well, I really enjoyed the caresses and tenderness that we shared. I now truly am beginning to hope that it will become more. But Lynx, I know that to call passion love is to deny the truth that we may, when we finally come to know each others hearts, find that we are not going to be able to be more than friends. I have thrown myself into a relationship before only to find that I have had my passion and heart crushed to dust because I was blind to the future. Blind to the truth under the words of love and passion she spoke, and it sounds as if you have had the same problems in your life. Do we take that next step to finding out if we are able to be together? That will be in your hands when we sit down to talk. If you are willing to take that first step, I will take it with you because I want this to work.

<<I see in you the potential to be a Heroic male, so you must understand why it hurt and confused me to see you not willing to care for Demian's cubs immediately and without question.>>

Demian's kids? There is something heroic about holding a kid? Then again, when I think about it perhaps there is.

Why was I reluctant to take one of the kids you ask? Well, the answer to that is simple. I am able to cope with older children like yours, I can talk to them and relate a bit. But infants, I have no experience with them, and to be quite frank I am frightened of hurting one without understand what I was doing. The only reason I offered to help you with them at all was that you seemed to need it, and they were a friend's children. I figured I could at least hold on to one of them without hurting it by watching your example.

As to heroic, tell me this. Is it not heroic to reach out beyond your perceived limits for another, particularly when you are frightened and uncomfortable with what you are doing? I tried, and for that I can find no fault in myself. If you do, please tell me how.

<<Then there is the matter of coincidence. Is it coincidence that the Goddess put me through the crucible of idiot males? Is it coincidence She forged in me the spirit of protector, healer and caregiver? Is it coincidence that as soon as I was ready it was I who opened your cryo tank? I think not, we talked about karma, and here it is. I feel She formed me in that darkened ship for you, to provide, to care for, to serve, and to love… you. So here I am Milton. All you have to do is fulfill the promise you bit into my neck me before the end of June.>>

I don't know Lynx. I do believe in karma as part of my worship of the Goddess. Sometimes I wonder if I am paying for some wrong done in a previous life, or if I just need to pay for my sins in the here and now.

I too wonder if you are right in this assumption that we were put together for a higher purpose. The suspicion has been growing in my mind over the last weeks as my understanding of you has grown. Have we been put together to do something? Are our destinies twined together in such a way that we must become one to survive what is to come? Or is it fated that one of us should support the other in some grand endeavor for a brief time before parting. I just don’t know, and I have spent many hours pondering just this question.

As to fulfilling the promise I made to you. I made the promise of passion, of a beginning to what may become more. The passion we gave to one another, the rest is not yet written, but why the end of June? Why rush into something so dramatic as marriage? When you get to know me Lynx, you may find that I am not who you want in your life. Unless you can give me a compelling reason to rush into a lifelong commitment, I don't see why we should set such a close date. I have just over two more years on my current term of service, and you have at least four, unless you intend to break that commitment and go AWOL. Let us know one another first as friends and lovers before we make that commitment, and let me recover what I lost on the Tang so I would be able to make more than just a paupers life for us. You deserve better.

<<That said, if I might borrow from the philosopher Mark Twain, on my honour as daughter of M'Rander of Cait and Chaal Riit of Kzin I vow to you my Lord that I will dance for you like no one is watching. I will live for you like I'll never die. I will love you like I've never been hurt.>>

That is one hell of a commitment Lynx, are you sure you can live up to it? If being with me were to make you or your children sad, could you do it? Would I be willing to make you live under those circumstances? While my heart cries out that I should say yes to this as I may never have another chance as such potential happiness, my head tells me that I should make sure of the future for all of us, the children included. To borrow another old saying, let's not marry in haste and repent in leisure. Our Goddesses may have other plans than marriage for us.

This is really something that we need to talk about in person, and I do mean talk. If I say something to upset you, don't hold it in as you did with Demian's kids. How am I to know what is going on if you do? Talk to me, and I will try to listen and understand, and try to make you understand how I see things too. We have the compounded problem of not only seeing things as a man and a woman, but also from the point of two different species. This is going to take a lot of work on the parts of both of us.

<<Now I've gone and gotten all sniffly. But back to the subject of my mother. It comes as great surprise to me that she has been granted command of the Freedom, especially after the glowing report I submitted on Captain Lee's performance and the fact that the last I was aware she was a psychiatric patient assigned to my care. I will review all the documents and regulations pertaining to this as soon as possible. On the one hand this disturbs me greatly and unless I find the paperwork to be in order I will still be a bit nervous. On the other hand, she has been in treatment for over twenty-eight years and with the care provided to Starfleet personnel who fall in the line of duty it does not surprise me that she could possibly be found fit for duty. Just because someone is old does not mean they should be cast aside and perhaps this is the support for Captain Lee I requested in a form I did not expect. You spoke so highly of my mother's ability as Captain, perhaps she was assigned command to act as a role model for aspiring command officers. If your high praise of her is any indication I suspect this could be a very good thing. Time will tell, but would you do me the honour of helping me assemble and analyse the paperwork regarding her assignment? I am most interested in her most recent psychiatric assessment.>>

I would be happy to help. I think Captain Lee is trying to determine that now as well, but it looks like from what I have been overhearing from my post here that the orders have been confirmed by Admiral Ironbottom's office! We will talk about that too, but I'd say that our concerns will come first Lynx.

<<On a happier and more intimate note I'll have you know I'm having trouble sitting down properly right now thank you very much. It's been such a long time since I've had the pleasure of a male's company I feel as though I've very nearly been torn in two. =~.o= And a pleasure it was indeed my Lord.>>

Thank you, and I must tell you, I am having muscles I didn't even know I had complain now, and the worst of it is I'm stuck on the bridge and cant do anything about it! I wish I could just go and lounge in that hot tub again, but that is six hours away!

<<I am divided on my mother's forced entry to my quarters. It was terribly rude but if I were she I would have done the very same thing. They wouldn't even let me touch her fur as a little girl but instead put us on opposite sides of a piece of glass where I could not even smell her scent. Please forgive her, I forgive her, and please understand that I will be spending as much time with her as our duties allow. But for you my Lord I will make time even if I must hurl myself around a sun to be with you. I close with the suggestion that you may wish to study the Japanese tea ceremony for I will hold one for you in the near future. I love you my Lord, and we have much to discuss.>>

I will do that, and I can understand how much she must have wanted to see you, and how much it took for you to ask her to go to spend that bit of time with me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for that. It did mean a lot to me.

As for the following attached letter, I will not comment on it as it is not my place. I will say that M'Rander may frighten me, but she is still my Captain, and was once my friend. To know that she was harmed in her first few minutes on this ship does anger me. Should you need me in this matter, just let me know.

Your friend and hopefully more,

Milton