Elizabeth Scott
"Talk?" Kirk asked.
At Spock's nod, they sauntered into the fading sunlight. In silent companionship they walked down to the perimeter and looked out on the copse of trees where the Einsteincrew had been found ghastly impaled.
"Do you think we'll ever know what happened here?" Kirk asked.
"It is obvious the skeuft had no part in the destruction," Spock answered. "We must look further. Perhaps our creature is in hibernation or has migrated to the other side of the planet.
And yet...."
Kirk looked up at the tall figure and finished his sentence. "And yet sometimes I feel the answer is already here just waiting to be unveiled."
"Yes," Spock agreed.
Kirk shuddered involuntarily and slipped his hand into Spock's. "Let's go over to the other side of the complex. There's a special lady there I want to tell about us."
"You seem to have a penchant for forming intimate relationships with non-sentient objects...to which you unfailingly attribute a female personality."
By the time they reached the trees outside the western perimeter, full darkness had come.
The leaves, rolled tightly as though to clutch the final drops of sunlight, stood like spikes against the framing moonlight.
"Magnificent, isn't she?" Kirk murmured.
The sudden emergence of the moon from behind clouds bathed the land in muted light.
And, as if to acknowledge Kirk's compliment, the tree unfurled and puffed its leaves, surrounding the two officers with a circle of limbs and leaves that nearly swept the ground.
Kirk laughed with pure abandon and pulled his friend into his arms. "This is my Spock, my love," he whispered upward and heard the breath of his words dance through the sheltering
green canopy.
COVER by DEW.
ART by Dragon,
June 1993
