Postscript Elizabeth’s Question

Location: Mountain Summit Seleya
Year 2450

“One last thing, mother?” T’Pol looked at her daughter, “Do your questions never end, child, or is this your father’s curiosity, burned into your being.” Elizabeth gently laughed, “You knew this would come to pass: he would die and you would go on?” T’Pol walked slowly toward the Gong picked up the mallet and struck the note of ‘Ending.’

She moved to the torch, took the burning briar and lit the kindle beneath the body of her bonded mate. She turned to her daughter. “Remember, my daughter, what I have shared comes from both of us. His body may lie here but his soul, his Khatra, resides with me. It is the Vulcan way and it can be your way.”

She stepped back as the burning took hold. The two of them stood together as the flames leapt in to the night sky and the smoke passed up into the high airs. “He was a wonderful father. He knew so much and yet was still that simple man you met all those years ago.” T’Pol turned to look at her daughter, tears coming fast now. “When I met him I was hardly alive, but overflowing with knowledge. He taught me so much. But most of all, he showed me how to be fully alive.” The flames raged on. Elizabeth looked at her mother and out at the sky, the universe beyond. “You found your place in all of this.”

Elizabeth walked up the final steps and led her mother by the hand. “What is so comforting is to know, that more than anyone, he knew where you came from.” They reached the highest point and looked far below to the ‘Place of Connection’, “and he understood its mysteries.” “Indeed. He did.”

T’Pol turned to Elizabeth, “and now, so do you.”T’Pol reached up with both her hands to her daughters face and cupped it in a gentle embrace. No ritual was needed, merely concentration to bring her to the Space with him…

“Darlin’ daughter, I think you probably know everything now… Maybe too much… ” A slight chuckle. “But promise me one thing: in among all the great things you are going to do in and with your life, you look after your mother now. And don’t forget: argue with her, often.” “I always do as you ask, Daddy.”

She laughed amid the tears, came away from the Space and looked at her mother, who gave her that customary ‘old fashioned” raised eyebrow look. Elizabeth, taller than her mother, hugged her tight, pressing her mother’s head into her body. Her mother lifted her hands gingerly, in response and pressed against her.

Faraway, those looking on from The City of Vulcan stood in thought, watching the Pyre lit atop Mount Seleya, as it burned brightly in the night sky.

A beacon of hope.