Coy Sessions - The Beginning
Posted on Wed Jan 7th, 2026 @ 6:58pm by Commander Rosa Coy & Remal Kajun
829 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire - Trill
Rosa didn’t fall backward into the memory so much as lean, slow, reluctant, like a pilot easing a ship into a turbulent current they already knew by heart.
Her eyes lost focus. The counseling room dimmed around the edges, walls and chairs blurring, folding into the soft tang of something older, wind-carved and tangled. Trill rose to fill the space.
“Trill’s equatorial forests…” Her voice thinned, not weaker, just further away, carried on the resonance of something intimate and alive. “They hum at night. Not metaphorically. The insects, the heat, the riverbeds… all of it vibrating together. Like the planet is rehearsing a song only the locals can hear.”
She drew in a breath that carried the scent of wet soil, tangled roots, and moss. Shoulders shifted, shedding years she hadn’t known she carried.
“I was thirteen. Too young to think in straight lines, too old to pretend the world didn’t see me.” A brittle smile teased the corner of her mouth. “My parents had a habit of letting me run wild. Papaiya encouraged it, said a pilot needed chaos as much as discipline. My mother… Zinnia wanted a daughter made of quiet rooms and respectable boundaries.” Her laugh was dry, small. “She lost that battle early.”
Remal didn’t move. He let the story settle around him, breathing with it without trying to own it.
“The day it happened,” she said, voice narrowing, fragile as glass, “the air… it had weight. Not just hot. Pressing. A thick hand over the heart. Storm season was late, so humidity made its own weather.”
Wind whispered through her phrasing, felt, not heard.
“I went down to the waterway behind Prilyen Valley. Kids would leap from rocks, pretending we were skimmers. Hands slicing through spray, calling out imaginary maneuvers. Just stupid games, full of reckless joy.”
Her throat clicked, a subtle, telling hesitation “That’s where I saw her.”
Remal didn’t ask who. He didn’t need to. Silence carried the question.
“She was… small. Too small. Curled in the reeds where the riverbank sloped. I thought she was sleeping. I thought...”
And I hated that I even hesitated, Coy stirred through her, a ripple of warmth, unbidden but familiar.
Rosa exhaled the kind of tremor that spoke of bare feet on glass. “She was dead,” she whispered. “Drowned. But it was not the drowning that stayed with me, it was the stillness. The water moving around her like it didn’t know what to do with a body that wouldn’t rise.”
Edges of the room dissolved. Forest, river, terrible quiet, they were the lights now.
“I didn’t scream. I didn’t run. Just froze. The world tilted, gravity slipping ten degrees sideways. Something inside me cracked, and every instinct, fast hands, fast mind, fast mouth, went silent.”
Her breath shivered. Heat and memory coiled beneath her words.
“I remember thinking someone needed to hold her. To lift her out. My feet moved without asking. The current hit my legs like a warning, sharp and sudden. But I reached her. I… pulled her up.”
She swallowed, as though forcing a lock of the memory into place.
“Her skin was cold. And I knew, right then, that something in me had shifted. The river had taken a piece, and left me hollow where it went.”
Silence, thick, reverent.
Remal’s gaze held her, steady, grounding but not tethering.
“That’s the moment,” Rosa murmured, voice cracked at the edges. “The moment I realized control is a myth. Life doesn’t check your flight plan. It drops things in your path and watches how you land.”
Coy’s presence slid through her, soft, reflective, not pushing, just remembering.
She blinked, drawing herself back toward the room, inch by inch.
“That’s… the first time I felt the universe get bigger than me. And I hated it.”
Palms pressed into knees, grounding herself against the tremor of the memory.
“The beginning,” Remal said gently, voice like water on stone, “is often where the weight first chooses us.”
Storm-bright eyes met his. Jaw set against the rising tide of emotion.
“That’s enough for now,” she breathed, though the river still hummed behind her words. Wind, water, stone… waiting for its story to continue when she next dared to step back into it.
Remal’s voice was quiet, a steady ribbon in the air. “We can pause here,” he said gently. “We’ll pick this up next week… or whenever you’re ready. No rush.”
Rosa nodded, shoulders loosening just a fraction. She stood, moving toward the door with the weight of the memory still clinging, but lighter for having given it voice.
The door slid closed behind her with a soft hiss. Outside, the hum of the ship felt muted, yet somehow warmer. And for the first time in days, she felt the trace of a choice, her own flight path, waiting to be charted.
TBC
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