#and he sighs - content. Rotating Mount Seleya in his mind.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Tuvok, what do your parents tell you?

[Text 1: "Could you explain, Mother?" he asked in as calm a voice as he could muster. "I had never contemplated going off-world." Something he'd never seen and couldn't identify flickered in his mother's eyes, and then was gone. "You have been accepted to Starfleet Academy, on Terra," she said quietly. Tuvok pressed his fingers as hard as he could against the solidity of the marble; it held. There was stability in the universe. In his belly, the fish darted this way and that, careening into each other, colliding with his stomach wall. A faint taste of bile rose in his throat. "I have no need of science. The Disciplines will cleanse my mind. I am well on the way to achieving mastery of my volatile elements and believe I should be allowed to continue on my present course." "The decision has been made, Tuvok." Something hot and unpleasant burned in him. He realized the tiny fish had disappeared from his stomach, only to be replaced by a scalding ember. He drew a breath as though in physical pain, and felt his heart hammering against his ribs. Desperately, he repeated a prayer in his mind, striving for control. Heya...heya...heya... The image of Seleya, the sacred mountain, cooled his mind and his breathing became more regular.]

[Text 2: "I do not know...what you mean," he said with effort. She sighed. He discerned then that she was extremely uncomfortable, and this realization struck at him like an asp. He felt unaccountably fearful. "Thee hast lapsed into the Pon farr," she continued, using the formal mode as a kind of shelter from her embarrassment. "What the ancients called the plak-tow, The blood fever." "I still...do not know what you mean." [...] Confusion swam in his brain, and he worked despeately to quell it. "What is 'it'? What comes every seven years? I don't understand..." [...] She seemed pleased that he could focus on the matter. "Go to thy parents. They will have chosen." This struck him as monumentally odd. His parents - would have chosen a mate for him? When? And why had they never mentioned...]

[Text 3: Later, they were alone, standing apart from each other in a room that had been prepared for them with candles and incense, with wine and fruit. They gazed at one another, Tuvok hearing the beating of his heart in his ears, thundering, insisting, louder and more demanding every second until all he could hear was a roraring that propelled him forward. His last thought before he touched her was What if I don't know what to do? But he soon realized he needn't have worried.] Source: Pathways by Jeri Taylor