A sea of wheat twisted and turned in the pleasantly warm breeze rolling across the vast open landscape that surrounded the humble tan stone walls of Prophet’s Rest. Light golden ears danced pleasently in the air currents, lazily lolling lengths that hummed with the warmth of the late afternoon sun as it sagged, wearily, beneath the horizon.

Seated on a wide swinging bench, Varen enjoyed the last of the warm breeze as he mindlessly ran his fingers across the knots and notches of the timber armrest.

A curl of dark wood that nodded to a now long departed branch, its dark, rough surface never quite giving way to the sanding and varnishing. At the curving tip, a pale divot that scarred the otherwise dark stain, a pale memory of some forgotten impact.

And nestled on the underside, hidden from all but the most adventurous fingers, four square inscriptions, hastily carved under the moonlight by the dull edge of a pocketknife. Whispers of affections, unnoticed and unobtrusive, but now eternally set into the bones of the old farmhouse.

“Enjoying yourself?”

Captain Harrison appeared from the nearby doorway, the rolls and twists of its gnarled and worn arch framing her sharp chalky face as it emerged from the darkened interior. Like some harpy figure, she clung to the doorway’s edge with sharp, needle-like fingers, hovering beyond the gentle reach of the sunshine.

“Actually, I am. I’d forgotten what it’s like to sit under your own sun.” Varen smiled, his eyes still resting on the horizon where the golden orb continued its slow descent.

“Has it been a long?”

“Almost a decade,” Varen hummed with a slight regret. “I haven’t seen Bajor since I got assigned to the Westminster.”

“You’ve come a long way since then.” Harrison’s tone was weary but warm as she thought back to the scruffy bookworm she had met aboard the old cruiser, so obsessed with the order of things.

“And yet not so far. DS-47 is only a few days away from Bajor at most. I don’t know why I don’t visit more often.”

“Perhaps all those galactic threats?” Harrison smirked slightly, an unusual and uncommon feature on the woman’s face that drew her sharp lips into thin lines.

“Maybe it’s all those captains who keep blowing up their ships?” Varen retorted with a teasing smile as he patted the empty space on the bench.

Harrison shuffled from the safety of the shadowed doorway with a small step, dipping her toe into the waning sunlight. Satisfied it had abated into a twilight, she slipped herself onto the bench and began swaying it with gentle flexes of her knees.

“Are you ever going to forgive me for that? Britannia will be back in action soon,” she sighed.

“Hey, I gave you a whole division.” Varen raised a dark eyebrow, sending it climbing over the frames of his glasses. “Not everyone can say that.”

“I shall count myself lucky to have benefited from your grace.” Her words were blunt needles, gently poking at the man’s side.

“I should think so.”

A sudden breeze whipped across the wide porch, the nearby stalks of grain bending frantically against the sudden blast of air. Above their heads, the familiar grey shape of a shuttle craft passed over the farmstead, pushing aside the thin stalks as it turned to land. Another dinner guest touching down.

“Do you think this will work, Anyanka?” Varen whispered, allowing a secret concern to dance across his lips in the presence of an old friend.

“Dinner? As long as MacColgan doesn’t try and feed us some blasted sheep’s stomach, I’m sure we’ll make it out the other side.”

“It’s about more than that, more than just a slap-up meal.” Varen’s face turned dark, deep wrinkles around the edges of his eyes forming canyons of sudden ageing. “It’s a reset, a chance to take stock.”

“It’s been a tough couple of years,” Harrison nodded.

“And the galaxy is a different place than it was before.”

“We’ve weathered changes before.” Harrison’s normally stern face softened in the dying light as she took in the man. The young wide wide-eyed officer was somewhere deep in there still, but the shell was bruised and weary, burnished and worn by the stress of recent years. The dinner was as much for him as it was for the officers of forty-seven, a chance to reignite the spark.

Deep inside her chest, she felt a sudden sympathy for the man.

“Did I ever tell you about what we did after the Dominion War?” She ran her finger idly along the grain of the wooden seat.

Varen shook his head slightly. The days after the war had seen many things, celebrations and funerals in equal measure, but he had only been a child. He remembered the sounds of dancing in the streets and the seemingly endless prayers laid out in the temple, all just noise to an ignorant child.

“Nothing.” Harrison let a weary sigh escape her lips. “There were memorials and eulogies and dances, but there was never the chance to just be. We dived right into rebuilding, picked up the broken parts and started sticking them back together.”

Harrison offered a resigned shrug to the man.

“We never got a chance to look forward; we were too busy looking at where our feet were going next.” She brushed a white curl from her forehead with one slender finger.

“Do you think that was wrong?”

“Not wrong. Perhaps a little unfair, but no one ever really explains what you’re meant to do after that. How to lift your eyes upwards after they’ve been so focused on what’s in front of you.”

A silence slipped between the two, carried on the gentle warming breeze as the whine of the nearby shuttle diminished into nothingness. It carried wounds old and new, etched as deeply as the marks on the wooden bench, now set into the bones of Starfleet.

“Perhaps that’s why you picked Bajor?” Harrison mused idly in the silence. “Home is as good a place as any to start looking upwards.”

“So you think the dinner is a good idea?”

“It’s a good idea, Wyll. As good as any other I could think of. And I for one appreciate it.”

“You know, you’re not nearly as cold as your reputation. What would your fellow captains think of the great Anyanka Harrison if they knew she mused on philosophy?”

“If you tell any of them, I will blow up another ship.”

Varen let out a performative sigh as he laid a hand on top of hers.

“I am begging you, please don’t.”

“Then you better make sure I don’t lose at charades.” Harrison laughed sharply.

“I don’t have that much sway with the prophets.”

Laughter echoed out into the fields as the last of the sun eased beyond the curving horizon, leaving a gentle orange glow that raced across the horizon and through the still lolling heads of grain.

Home is as good a place as any to start.