Once again, I delve into my memories. Again, I am back at the home we managed to carve for ourselves during that idyll, the calm after the storm.

Our time on the unknown planet is largely one of milestones. We manage to construct a log dwelling, then another two, once our technique is worked out in the first few months. They are heated by
fireplaces made of stone, cemented by river clay. This proves adequate for shelter once the structures' gaps are daubed. This is a task I am able to do by mixing more of the river clay with some of the reed-like plants from the river's edge. T'Pel and T'Pau harvest edible plants from the forest, scanning for suitability, and we save some of the seeds to start a garden. We have successes and failures. I manage to complete the device to render the collars inert; T'Pau refines it and makes it smaller than the prototype. We secure a hiding place under the flooring of our second cabin, shielded in case of our discovery by some of the same materials Hiroko had used to create hiding places within Hope.

T'Amanda grows and we teach her openly, but we also teach her to know how to hide this knowledge in case we are discovered.  When the rainy season comes here- luckily, the coldest our area of the planet gets-- the river floods, but not hugely. We are fortunate in that we built in a good place. It is sheerly by accident; it did not occur to me to have any of us check for evidence of river floods in the area. We have set up a sanitation station to treat river water for potability, and dug privies, so as not to have to rely on ship's power, conserving it for emergencies.

We pass the year in tranquility. We discover the rotation of this planet is almost the same as Terra. A few days longer. After years of living on Enterprise, my Enterprise, it is easy to adjust.

By the second year, our food garden is going well. The Andorians have discovered some edible creatures in abundance in the river, and snare small furred animals to supplement their diet. We are no longer relying on the food replicators. T'Pau has discovered a plant which resembles an earth one used for clothing with puffs of fiber, which she is experimenting with twisting into threads. I remember a skill taught me by my mother when I was very young, once long ago, and have Tes carve some knitting needles to my specifications. I am constructing garments.

My early attempts are somewhat clumsy, but I soon regain the skill and it is one suited to a blind man. Deezen has started manufacturing vessels from clay and Tes has built her a kiln of sorts. He has trouble getting the fire hot enough until I remember that it must be fed by a more concentrated form of fuel. I tell him how to make charcoal out of wood, and he spends time manufacturing a supply. It becomes one of the tasks of any of us save T'Amanda, whose intelligence quickly grasps many skills before her body is grown enough to accomplish them.

I impress on her the need to be careful around hazards that an adult has no trouble with, and she does worry me in that she is fearless.

I ask T'Pel and T'Pau to begin taking her with them and teaching her the value and use of the beneficial plants around us with the help of the tricorder. And daily, I power the computer up and search for possible Imperial vessels. We must not grow complacent. Each day in freedom is a gift.

And when we render the collars the adults wear inert, I reiterate that if we are found, we must simulate the effects. The humans must not learn that we have this skill nor this technology.

By the third year we are wearing garments made by our hands. T'Amanda has grown, and I have learned to braid and weave the reeds, dried carefully in the sun, into sandals for all of us. One afternoon, I am sitting with T'Pel under the shade of a tree, T'Pel watching our daughter construct a play garden. For I do not discount the value of play, I who got so little of freeform play in my own childhood. It is, after all, a training of sorts for adulthood, as well as purely recreational.

T'Pel is describing the layout and how she is making mounds for planting the vinelike plants that produce a savory fruit not unlike yumur-savas. Suddenly I squint, something bright flashes in my
eye; can it be? I cautiously blink, then open my eyes wide again. There. A momentary flash. In back, an *itching* as if from behind my eyes in the interior of my skull. I must have made a sound and I
briefly close my eyes again. When I open them, there is nothing, again, but the itching remains.

And it starts being accompanied by a throbbing headache.
Alarmed, T'Pel calls for T'Pau to bring the medikit. T'Pau scans my head, but says nothing beyond telling me the readings are cryptic. There is something going on, but she says she cannot tell what. She prescribes rest and a compress of some herbs she has been cultivating on my head and eyes. I capitulate; there is no use arguing with her when she adopts that tone. McCoy himself would be proud of her. Though she is not primarily a healer, she has the ability to outstubborn me. Perhaps it is her resemblance in manner to her counterpart, my grandmother.

But I let her  lead me to my bed. T'Pel builds up the fire, kept banked during the day, and takes the tongs she has made and drops some stones in one of the pots of water kept for heating by the hearth. When the water boils from the heated stones, she laves a cloth in the water and wrings it out and lays it on my forehead, covering my eyes.

The throbbing recedes and I attempt to enter a light healing trance. As my awareness sinks deeper, I allow myself to sleep.

When I wake, my internal clock tells me it is late afternoon here, and I sit up, cautiously, laying the now cold cloth aside. I blink again and my eyes register light. I can see again. No shapes yet, but there is a definite difference between the blackness I am used to and what I am now perceiving.

But when I try to walk, I stumble, and when I reach the doorway and push open the door on its homemade hinges, the light outside *hurts*. I retreat within and sit on my bed. T'Pel hears me moving and rushes in, T'Amanda in her arms.

I can *see* them. Oh, not clearly, they are but shadows, yet, but somehow, I am seeing. And my sight grows more clear by the passing minims. I must be careful. The bright light outside *hurts*, if I am healing, I am not yet done, it seems. T'Pau confirms it by scanning me again. My optic nerve seems to be regenerating.

I have heard of this happening to Vulcans before, but never seen it. I thought it was rumor. Apparently it is not. I wonder if that first
master knew it was a possibility? Is that why he chose blindness of all the possible ways to maim a recalcitrant slave? I may never know.

But by morning, I can see my daughter's face for the first time. I look at my wife. She is as I remembered her. And T'Pau, so like, yet unlike my own grandmother, whose eyes were always cold and forbidding. This T'Pau's gaze is warm and accepting.

I greedily look around me. I wish to see everything again. When Tes and Deezen come to see me, I can look back on their gaze and it is difficult to keep from smiling, unseemly as such might be.

T'Pau thinks I should stay in for another day, in the relative darkness of the interior of our cabin, and reluctantly, I agree. T'Amanda wishes to help, and I tell her she can read to me. So we nestle comfortably in the bed which she seldom climbs into, having her own in a curtained off corner, and she reads.

Apparently one of Hiroko's books was a translation of Sappho's poetry. T'Amanda's clear, bell-like voice reads, "Some an army of horsemen/ some an army on foot /and some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest sight/on this dark earth; but I say it is what-ever you desire". She stops.

"Father, what is she saying? I am learning metaphor, but this is beyond what I've found."

I touch my daughter's face gently, marveling at the resemblance to her paternal grandmother, her namesake. "She is saying that the object of one's desire is the sight one sees as most beautiful. For instance, for me, seeing your face was the most gratifying. For another, it may be sunsets. Or nebulae. But it is clear Sappho is
speaking of that human emotion called 'love'. I am not certain I understand that or any other emotion fully, but it is at the center of most species' poetry."

T'Amanda nods. "I understand, I think. Tes and Deezen, they love each other. Even without the presence of the other two, they love."

I am bemused. She is a most perceptive child. "T'Amanda, how did you learn of Andorian bonding?"

"I asked, father. No one hides anything from me. I *hear* them. In here." And she taps her head.

"I see. T'Amanda, you used the mind-touch?"

"Not on purpose, Father. You have taught me that is wrong, and I know that. But I couldn't help but hear it. It was clear when they touched me."

This is going to be difficult, I think. "T'Amanda, indeed, you have done nothing wrong, on purpose. But I now must do something very difficult. I must teach you why Vulcans seldom touch, even in the family. I must ask you to understand. We can no longer sit like this. T'Pau must teach you the mind-disciplines and how to shield even from that unasked for level of thought. And you must apologize to Tes and Deezen for your unwarranted intrusion."

I feared an explosion. Our daughter liked to cuddle and to give and receive embraces. And I was commanding her to give them up, even from her parents, at an earlier age than most Vulcan children had to. To my surprise, she nodded her head and immediately moved away.

"Father, I regret behaving in a way that was not honorable. It is not pleasant to give up this comfort. But it is part of my growing, is it not?"

"Indeed, T'Amanda-kam." She astonishes me, my small daughter. I was not so curtailed until I was a year older than she is now. And I had my sehlat to comfort me. There was no rule about not hugging a non-sentient. I crossed my wrists and held my palms out to her."This is the family embrace. No, not touching. Touching we reserve for our bondmates alone, and then in private only. And that will be a long way off for you." She mimics my movements. So mature. "Yes, T'Amanda-kam. Now go seek out T'Pau. She will be better able to teach you to shield against stray thoughts, from beings who have not invited you to share mind to mind."

She goes out, replacing the book on the shelf as she goes. I am humbled.

And that is the year of seeing. The year I cannot get enough of the cacophony of colors which riot in the summer of this world. This is yet another thing I will not ever take for granted again.

By the fifth year, I am able to participate in expeditions. I no longer have to rely on sound to interpret the data I am still able to squeeze from StarNet, when the background noise of this area of space fades out subspace transmissions. And for the first time I see the night sky, filled with color and light. At least it is esthetically pleasing here. And I begin looking behind the circuitry panels of the Hope, which we are still using for food storage, against a small mammal which once voraciously ate through one carelessly left out pot of grain one night.

As I had surmised, however, there was nothing that could be done for the circuitry. And though the antimatter containment field was still intact, the dilithium crystals were fused and inert. So I content myself with monitoring the subspace waves for news. The war with the Rihannsu continues; we may be safe enough, though I am afraid to trust that.

Hiroko's family may just declare her dead, but if Ryu is persistent, he may want a search done. He could conceivably pay for one done privately. And there is no way to be any safer than we are now. If Imperial vessels arrive, we are sitting ducks, as I understand the Terran term. We can only hope they never look. I am not optimistic.

In the sixth year I decide that whatever else ensues, T'Amanda should undergo her own Kahs'wan. If she is ever taken, she must be adult enough to understand her choices, to live or die by her own hand, and she does not become adult by our peoples' traditions and laws until or unless she undergoes the Kahs'wan ordeal.

And so it is arranged. I escort her to a nearby valley, give her a bottle of water, and with no little trepidation, leave her. T'Pel sees the necessity for this, she who has never been through it herself. Almost, I expected her to argue as my own mother had argued with my father about my Kahs'wan, the argument which impressed me so much that I went out early and got attacked by a le-matya for my trouble. This action had made me directly responsible for the death of I-Chaya, he who had been the only being allowed to show me love in my childhood.

But T'Pel makes no argument. And I worry. Here there are no large predators such as in Vulcan's Forge. The worst that can happen is T'Amanda will suffer from exposure. It gets cold at night. But she has learned how to make fire and how to build a shelter. She has learned how to gather the edible wild plants. I do not think she will fail. But there is always that possibility.

But at the end of the tenday, she comes into our settlement. Tired, dirty, and a few grams lighter, she walks in, and raises her hand in the ta'al. "Father, mother, I greet thee as one worthy of the clan. I ask admission."

I step forward. "Thee are welcomed into the clan of Surak, T'Amanda. Our shelter is thy shelter, our shields are thine, and our traditions held in thy hand. Carry them forward and be welcomed always, daughter." Behind me stands T'Pau. She has readied herself to give her the clan marking, and she makes the cuts and rubs in the charcoal, sieved and saved from the fires. T'Amanda does not even grimace, and bears her mark proudly.

I think she can be forgiven that emotion, as the first Vulcan in this
universe to undergo that ordeal since before T'Khasi was conquered.

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