Coy Sessions - Rebellion Has a Pulse
Posted on Wed Feb 4th, 2026 @ 2:58pm by Commander Rosa Coy & Remal Kajun
1,101 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire
Time slid by, not silently, not peacefully, but with a kind of uneasy truce woven through Rosa’s days. Coy had returned to his usual rhythm, humming in the background of her thoughts like a mischievous engine idling just below idle.
His lewd commentary resurfaced in flashes, never malicious, just inconveniently timed and annoyingly confident, but she held the reins with a firmer hand than she had in months.
Their dance had a cadence again. Push and pull. Spark and restraint.
When she stepped into Remal’s office for the next session, she felt steadier, though there was a tautness behind her eyes, the look of someone who knows the past is about to ask for its overdue conversation.
Remal didn’t greet her loudly. He merely nodded toward her chair, a soft permission.
She sat and exhaled. Her fingers tapped once against her knee, a pilot’s nervous tic.
“Where do you want to begin today?” he asked.
Rosa’s smile was a thin, crooked thing. “Adolescence, right? The era of terrible decisions and excellent excuses.”
“Wherever the pulse of that time lives, for you,” Remal replied.
Rosa leaned her head back, eyes half-lidded, as if staring at old constellations only she could see. The air went still in that way memory creates, quiet but charged, waiting for ignition.
“The pulse?” she repeated softly. “That’s a generous word. Mine was more of a… riot.” Her mind tilted, and the room dissolved.
Trill again, but not the quiet forest. Not the river with its heavy omen. This was sharper, brighter, louder. A world vibrating with youth that didn’t yet understand consequences.
“Somewhere between fourteen and seventeen,” she murmured, voice drifting into the recollection. “That was the window. The years where adulthood felt like a dare, and I kept taking it.”
She smirked at something unseen. “Everyone said I had ‘potential.’ You know what a terrible word that is for a teenager? It’s a weapon. It means you’re not enough yet, but you could be, if you behave.”
Remal waited. The silence worked like an open door.
“I didn’t behave,” she announced. “I did everything else.”
The memory cracked open like a sun baked stone. “Are you aware I stole my first shuttle at fifteen? No? Well, I did.”
Remal’s brows lifted a fraction, but he said nothing.
Rosa huffed a laugh. “It wasn’t a big shuttle. Just a training pod. Barely larger than a cargo sled. Good thrusters. Terrible stabilizers. It shook like it was allergic to flight.”
Wind rippled through her tone, nostalgic, reckless.
“Most kids were sneaking out to meet lovers. I was sneaking out to meet atmospheric turbulence. The feeling of kicking off the ground? Nothing compares. The gravitational stutter. The first second your stomach floats. It was the closest thing I’d ever found to religion.”
Coy stirred in her, a warm, approving purr.
“I wasn’t alone,” she continued. “A boy from my cohort, Selen. Nervous laugh, brilliant eyes. He followed me into trouble more often than he followed his own homework.” A pause. “He liked me. I knew. I pretended not to.”
Her voice softened for a moment, then sharpened again.
“We’d take the pod up over the training reserve. Fly low over the canopy. Feel the leaves reach up like they wanted to slap us for our stupidity. The sensors were never quiet. I always pushed them past safety margins. Always.”
A long breath slid from her chest, part memory, part regret. “The instructors caught us one night. We were grounded for a month. My mother was furious. She wanted me confined to the house. Papaiya laughed in the next room. He said, ‘If she’s breaking rules to fly, at least she’s breaking the right ones.’”
Her smile flickered. “He meant it as praise. My mother heard it as permission for disaster.”
The memory shifted, colors darkening. “But rebellion wasn’t just flight. It was… everything. My temper was wildfire. My mouth moved faster than my judgment. I got into fights. I chased adrenaline. I wanted the world to move as fast as I did, because if it slowed down, I had to feel things I wasn’t ready for.”
Coy’s presence fluttered again, quieter now, like a ghost brushing the inside of her ribs.
“And there was something else,” she said. “Something I didn’t understand then. I always felt like I was waiting for someone. Waiting for a presence I couldn’t name. Like some part of me was incomplete, or unfinished. Most Trill kids don’t just think about being joined. They dream about it, sure, but it’s… abstract.”
Her eyes darkened with memory. “For me, it was like a shadow on the horizon. A pull. A gravity. I didn’t want it, but I didn’t not want it. I didn’t know what to do with that feeling, so I outran it. Or tried.”
Her jaw tightened. “Selen once told me I flew like someone chasing, not someone fleeing. I didn’t answer him. Because he had it backwards. I was running from the river. From the girl in the reeds. From the way life could tip sideways without warning.”
The atmosphere around her thickened. Teenage Rosa hovered in the space like a wild, half-tamed creature. “Rebellion had a pulse,” she whispered, “and it beat right behind my ribs.”
Remal leaned in slightly, a calm center inside the storm. “What did that pulse protect you from?”
Rosa blinked, the question striking something tender. “Stillness,” she admitted. “Silence. Moments when I couldn’t hide behind motion.”
A shiver threaded her voice. “When you stop moving, the past catches up.” Her breathing steadied slowly, like an engine winding down.
Remal gave a gentle nod. “We can explore that more next time. For today… let’s let the memory settle.”
Rosa rubbed her palms together, grounding herself. “Yeah,” she murmured. “Yeah, that’s enough.”
She didn’t stand immediately. She let the present return in stages, the room, the seat beneath her, the faint, amused hum of Coy drifting through her thoughts once again.
As she rose to go, Remal spoke softly behind her. “We’ll continue next week. Or whenever you feel the pulse shift again.”
She paused at the doorway, just long enough for the smallest smile to form. “Rebellion may not be done with me,” she said. “But at least now it knocks.” And then she stepped out, the ship lights greeting her like the first glimmer of a familiar starfield, waiting for her next maneuver.
TBC
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