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Memorial

Copyright (c) FarmWolf's player

"We are gathered to remember and celebrate the life of Felix Otto Steiger. His recent contribution to the space program was great, but that wasn't the largest part of his life. Since many of you knew him better than I did, I will be inviting you to relate stories about the parts Felix played in your lives."

Captain Aurora Sitka sat on a stone outcrop in Felix and Kisara's favorite rec park. Her black eyes shone in contrast to her flat black coat as she related Felix's accomplishments. Kisara, with their closest friends, sat at the base commander's paws, the rest of the crowd fanning out behind them.

"I'll begin, by telling about the first time I met Felix," Aurora said. "He'd hardly seen a feral in the Fleet before, and never in a command position. Didn't know what to make of me. He asked why I wasn't wearing a proper uniform, just this knife harness. Kisara told him, 'her rank insignia is on it, isn't it?'"

A knowing chuckle came from the crowd. Aurora Sitka's attire, or lack of it, was legendary in the Fleet by this time.

"Would you like to go next, Kisara?"

When Kisara nodded, Aurora reached out and helped her up. Kisara surveyed the sea of faces, which was at once reassuring and slightly intimidating, took a measured breath, and began.

"I'll never forget when Felix and I found out we were in love. Yes, it was a surprise. We didn't know it right away like it seems we did. We'd gone out on the lake like dozens of times before, and, I don't know what was different about that night, but we finally realized what should have been obvious to us long before. I'll always treasure that memory. It'll help warm my heart until I see him on the other side."

* * *

As Kelvin and Andrea tried to relax in her den after the memorial service, they realized they both were more shaken by Felix's sudden death than either cared to admit.

"We've been friends for years, Andrea," he said as he locked his gaze on hers. "There have always been random, inexplicable deaths, you hear about them from time to time, but--"

"But it's never been anyone nearly this close to us," she finished.

"Yes. It's made me realize how fragile life can be. And I realized something else, as well. We've been best friends, oh, it seems like forever. But now, I--I don't want to be just friends anymore."

Kelvin leaned toward Andrea and she saw something new in his eyes and she realized that she felt the same way and just before their muzzles pressed together she whispered, "Me neither."

* * *

That evening, Kisara's thoughts kept coming back to a single sentence Felix had said to her as they enjoyed their celebratory dinner after he had first breached the transwarp barrier. She had told him her hopes for stabilizing the injector on future flights and he had responded with confidence in her as always. "'If anyone can fix that injector, it's you,'" he had said.

The sentence drifted around in her mind for hours that night. It kept her company as she got ready for bed, then it lulled her to sleep and returned to her in a couple of disjointed dreams. And when she awoke the next morning, refreshed and aware of herself as she had not been in a week, the sentence played one final time. Kisara heard its words as though they were the most important message in the Universe and she realized at that moment that her work was far from over.

"Hey, Kisara, see Koy over there?"

Lieutenant Andrea Sitka pointed to Commander Albus Koy, just beginning his morning bath under one of the taller waterfalls in the Transwarp sector's rec park.

"Yes, Andrea, I see him. What's your point, he takes a bath every morning."

"Well, there's something I always wanted to try."

Andrea pulled an engineering control hologram from a subspace pocket and brought up the rec park's water system. "Watch this," she said, sliding a particular control all the way to one end of its scale.

A moment later, Koy paused in his ablutions and cocked his head in confusion. Then he shrugged, stepped away from the fall, lathered up his fur and got back under and rinsed. When he got out again, he noticed Kisara and Andrea looking at him in confusion, guessed what had happened and walked over to them, dripping. When he was in range, he dropped to all fours and shook himself violently, spraying them with a broadside of icy water. The two females instantly dashed away, shaking in an attempt to get the water off them. Chuckling to himself, Koy followed them to a nearby clearing, where he stretched out in a simulated sunbeam. Kisara and Andrea had gotten the water off them--it had only splashed their outer coats--and stood glaring at Koy.

"Well, what did you expect?" he asked. "Did you really think it would bother me if you set the waterfall on Supercool? You both know I'm from the Antarctic. I've swum in seawater colder than that regularly. The looks on your faces, however, were priceless!"