The sun was setting in a red haze over the distant buttes, framing the horizon in a black band that rimmed the orange desert. Heat radiated from the ground, but with the sand socks protecting T’Kirr’s feet, there was no discomfort while tracking across the baked plain beyond Surkanar city. The arid air sucked what little moisture it could from her body, and she breathed in deeply. It had been some time, and the embrace of Vulcan’s climate was like a cleansing balm.

Stopping suddenly, T’Kirr turned to look behind her at the distant hints of civilization. Stars were visible, as was Vulcan’s sister planet. It was as if the years had never passed as she stood in the place where she had been raised.

Except years had passed. T’Kirr looked to her companion, her husband, who had stopped beside her and gazed into his eyes, searching for the emotion she knew she would find there—emotions that would tell her his first impressions of a place not just on Vulcan, but of a place of importance in her memory.

Ian found the desolation starkly beautiful, and had endeavored to commit the eerie desert scenes to memory since their arrival. Of course, he had been to Vulcan before in an official capacity, but he had never gotten the chance to leave the capital and its urban trappings. Now, in this specific place, he doubled his efforts to take in everything around him, and although she hadn’t said anything, Ian could sense the importance this area held to his wife.

As her eyes searched his, Ian’s reverent words conveyed the awe and respect that he held for their surroundings, that she undoubtedly could already feel through their bond. “Magnificent desolation.”

T’Kirr took his words and gazed out into the distance, applying them to their surroundings. “That it is. I took it for granted most of my childhood, I suspect.” She dropped her eyes to look down between them. “Are your socks adequate?”

Up until she asked, Ian hadn’t really noticed the special footwear, or even the lack of normal shoes, so it must have been doing a fine job. Clenching his toes against the ground, he answered, “Amazingly so.”

Simply nodding in satisfaction, the Vulcan fixed her eyes on a spot in the distance, the sun on her face. Squinting, she felt her second eyelids subconsciously slide into place as she remembered what lay in a hidden cleft between those buttes. She glanced at Ian. “Are you up for a run?”

Ian tried to run every morning, as time and workload allowed, but that was always on the ship’s track or in the holodeck’s representation of a place that wasn’t a desert. Sand beneath their feet also offered a challenge to stable footing, but he figured that the specialized socks would help with that. A grin spread across his face, lines of mirth framing his mouth as he squinted a bit against the glare in the direction of her gaze. Ian lowered the aviator-framed sunglasses from atop his head and answered, “I’ll try to keep up.”

At his confirmation, T’Kirr looked back towards the sun, and without further hesitation, she set off towards the point in the distance at a jog, guided by memory. A second later, Ian was at her side, matching her pace, but before they could settle into it, T’Kirr picked it up until they were all but sprinting across the desert, two tiny specks of life chasing the sun in a hostile wilderness only the courageous dared explore.

The buttes drew steadily nearer, and by the time their shadows sheltered them and their path ahead, both were panting heavily with their exertion. T’Kirr threw Ian a questioning glance. Okay?

He was sweating profusely, and damn was it bloody hot, but his stamina was holding up. Don’t count me out just yet.

The terrain grew harder at the base of the buttes, and they were able to cover ground more efficiently, which was fortunate as both were nearing their limits. Sand gave way in places to dusty red clay, and the ground began to slope upwards. A small reptile skittered from their path into a crevice, and Ian spotted what looked like yellow crystal in the clump of broken rock, but he couldn’t be sure as they sped past. As they approached larger boulders, their way forward narrowed into the faintest of hillside footpaths. The sunset’s brilliant light glowed from around a bend in the trail, and T’Kirr slowed to a jog, then finally a walking pace as they neared the corner.

Piercing rays of sunset burst from places Ian wasn’t expecting as they rounded the boulder. Yellow light winked from a curtain of crystal across the entirety of the rock face ahead of them like a shower of diamonds, a breathtaking and sudden change from the desert just behind them. As they moved a few steps further, they could see the opposite wall was studded with just as many crystals. Not only were the dull places between embedded yellow gems illuminated by spots of reflected light like a disco ball, but the effect passed over Ian and T’Kirr as they moved. The sinking sun shone through every crystal, making them glow as if Eridani were seeding a million tiny suns and T’Kirr and Ian had stumbled upon its secret nursery.

Ian took a moment to catch his breath, bending forward to lean on his knees with both hands, but his eyes never left the dazzling display. After a few seconds he stood, wiped his brow, and raised his sunglasses back onto his head to spend some time properly appreciating the sight before him. “This place is fantastic! Definitely worth the run. What are the gems?”

“Just sulfur, but heated to unusual clarity by volcanic activity.” T’Kirr removed a flask of water from the small pack on Ian’s back and handed it to him. “Popular theory is these two buttes were one, pushed up from the lower crust and separated to create this cleft. I imagine these hills are filled with them inside.”

He took a long pull from the flask and offered it back to her. “Geology aside, they’re simply beautiful. The alignment with the sun couldn’t have been better placed if someone had set out to do it intentionally.”

T’Kirr drank from the flask herself before replying. “If this were most any other planet, I’m sure this location would be noted in the travel brochures, but as you know, its native populace doesn’t put a high priority on tourism.”

“Right, well, then I’m fortunate to have a local guide.” Ian recalled the sense he had picked up from her earlier, of a special significance she attached to this area. “You grew up in Surkanar, so I imagine you came here as a child. What does this place mean to you?”

Having caught her breath, T’Kirr stepped over to a somewhat flat rock near the more distant wall that was obviously meant to be used as a bench and seated herself as she let her eyes wander over the sparkling crystals and her mind through past memories. Ian sat down beside her, and she spoke. “Vulcan has a long history as a space-faring culture. As a child, I had always assumed I would travel offworld someday, but I spent so many of my early years planetside. I fell into a trade I seemed proficient at and made no attempts to move beyond it for a long time.” She turned to squint towards the setting sun. “Eridani symbolizes home. When Surkanar turns its back on it and faces the visible stars…” T’Kirr trailed off, somewhat uncharacteristically, Ian thought, and turned away from the sun to face the coming night. She pointed towards the planet in the sky, her demeanor changing. Ian was pleasantly surprised to see an actual look of wonder on her face. “I could imagine as a child the planet was actually alien, and the crystals were stars, guiding me away from the sun and towards unknown space.” The spell across her features and in her voice seemed to break, then, and she glanced at Ian. “Silly child fantasies. Not logical at all.”

“And yet you brought me here. You shared it with me because it still has significance to you.”

T’Kirr brought a hand up to lightly finger one of the crystals. “I recreated the desert around Surkanar in a holodeck program many years ago. I never got this far, though. It seemed I wouldn’t be able to do it justice and I would rather not try lest I spoil the memory of the real place.”

“Even if you got it perfect, I imagine some wouldn’t believe that this is what it actually looks like. It’s almost too beautiful to be real.” He followed the line of her arm to the crystal at her fingertips. “It’s not so illogical, you know, to imagine. Without thinking of what could be, or what might be, society would be bereft of both art and science.”

“Vulcan culture does not promote exploration without a specific purpose, or creativity for the sake of creating.” T’Kirr lowered her hand to her lap and looked into Ian’s eyes. “I suppose it’s seen as a way of thinking to be schooled out of our youth.”

“Yet you still have artists.”

“With specific goals in their crafts. The purpose of most of our art is to symbolize particular aspects of our culture. Aids to meditation, complements to supporting our beliefs. Visual representations of logic. There is always a goal in the artist’s mind.”

“Did Michelangelo not have a goal in mind? Leonardo? Orrixx? Monet? Seurat? Krang? Of course they did, even if it was only to show their world in a different way. Some of them believed that the subconscious perceived the world differently than the eyes and endeavored to show their interpretation of that. Some aimed to preserve images of beauty in an age before photography, and others painted to show their religious beliefs. I don’t see it as so different.”

T’Kirr perked an eyebrow. “I admit, you make a fascinating point. Perhaps I should study alien art more thoroughly.”

The glow from the crystals suddenly dimmed as the sun dipped below the horizon. Ian and T’Kirr both turned to watch the haze slowly recede in comfortable silence. The desert was noticeably cooler, but still warmer than the carefully controlled climate aboard Atlantis. The wind that was continually channeled through the rock cleft dried Ian’s skin of the sheen of sweat that he’d worn all day, and he now found himself quite comfortable, despite the temperature still being higher than he was accustomed to. “You know,” he mused, “if it would make you more comfortable at home, I could manage with our quarters being a few degrees warmer.”

Although subtle, the surprise on T’Kirr’s face was clearly evident to Ian. “I… would appreciate that. As long as it’s not inconvenient for you.”

Ian put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “I’ll be fine, just fine.”

T’Kirr leaned a little further into Ian’s embrace as they watched the last vestiges of light fade from the sky. The brilliance from the crystals disappeared, replaced by tiny reflections from the stars, and the walls glittered in a different sort of beauty. “Thank you. For being here, with me.” She breathed in deeply of the dry air. “This place has always been special to me, but now it’s even more so.”

“I’ve never seen such a place, or even imagined anything like it, but now it’s quite significant to me as well. Does it have a name?”

She tilted her head to look at him, their faces now quite close. “Naming it served no purpose. It’s known as Surkanar’s Canyon Eight.” She paused, as if debating something, then continued softly, “But to myself, I called it ‘Explorer’s Haven.’”

His voice lowered to match the volume of hers. “That has a much nicer ring to it.” Ian noticed the tiny reflections from the crystals had returned, but now they were much more subtle, coming from the light off Vulcan’s sister planet. A few of them danced across T’Kirr’s cheeks, and he raised a hand to touch one.

Unaware of the reflective spot, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against Ian’s shoulder. “Now I travel the stars, exploring space with you. A childhood dream come true.” T’Kirr paused again. “Although I can’t say I expected to marry one of the most emotional species of the galaxy.”

“Nor I one of the most stoic. Although I know that isn’t true; there’s a human expression that Harper would probably mangle, ‘Still waters run deep.’ Your emotions run strong and pure, rarely surfacing, and I’m the one fortunate enough to experience them.” His fingers followed the spot of light to its new location on her face after she had moved. “You know you have something on your face?”

A frown knitted between her brows as she looked at him curiously. The expression passed and she poked him on the nose. “The same something on yours?”

Ian grinned and nodded. “Yeah, imagine that,” came his soft reply as he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.