This story is a dramatization that takes place during Episode 11 of the Star Trek Adventures campaign, “Constellation.”
You can watch that episode here.
“Our time here is short, so may our nights be long!”
The bar cheered in response to Roy’s fifth toast of the evening, each delivered from atop another piece of furniture, much to Katar’s dismay, though she did little to stop the old man. The evening took a boisterous turn with the arrival of the miners, and within an hour it felt as though the entire town had filled the bar. Laughter and music filled the air as a handful of musicians among the ranks of the miners congregated on the stage, bringing out instruments they had brought with them or found stored away beneath the raised platform. A few feigned reluctance for a moment or two before joining the ensemble to hearty applause.
People shouted requests, all of which the impromptu band seemed to know, improvising snatches of melodies and musical phrases in between so that each song flowed into the next. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding that some songs would have a dance as well, as the crowd would part to clear a space while people, in groups, in pairs, and even solo dancers would take to the floor and stomp, clap, kick, turn, dip, leap, and sway to the varying rhythms.
I stayed glued to my stool for most of the evening, several Bajoran settlers coming up as word spread about who I was, to shake my hand, offer to buy me a drink, or just ask about family back on Bajor. Ana dragged me out onto the floor a couple of times when she saw me getting overwhelmed, her shawl and frailty abandoned completely, and tried to teach me how to do something called a “jig” with little success.
I limped back to my seat, breathless and laughing, finishing off what I hoped was my fourth pint of Bajoran ale but strongly suspected might be my fifth. I leaned over the bar to see if I could catch Katar’s eye for another refill (or possibly water, I hadn’t fully decided yet) when Roy strode up beside me, reaching over to pull out two of the bottles he had brought in from the trough full of ice Katar had placed them in.
“Cade, my friend! You have not yet had any of our Denevan Brew! You come to our world, you must drink our beer! Join me in a drink, before we are too tired, too old, or too dead!”
“I fear we may already have two out of three covered! But I will join you, yes!”
“Nonsense! The night is still young, and so am I!” He popped the tops off of the dark brown bottles and handed me one, clinking his bottle against mine. “Drink deep! Na zdravi!”
He pulled the bottle to his lips and nearly turned it upside down, draining a third of its contents in one pull. I followed his lead, my mouth filling with the amber gold liquid, the strong rich flavor sending a mild chill through me.
“Ahhhhh…good!” He stared at the bottle lovingly. “We brew it ourselves, with ingredients grown on Deneva! Nothing replicated! Nothing shuttled in! We mix it, bottle it, and then…” he looked around, as if no one else in the bar knew the secret he was about to impart upon me, then leaned in. “Then, we take the bottles down into the grottos with us and bury them, down deep in the soil, near the geothermal vents, and let them ferment there. The soil is very cool, you see. But the air near the vents gets very warm. We dig it up when it’s ready, and hello Denevan Brew!”
“It’s quite good, and…” I tried to think of a word strong enough as my head began to swim. “Potent!” He stared at me for a moment, and then, for no reason either of us could properly describe, we laughed.
“It’s damn good is what it is,” he said, taking another sip. “We know how to make beer where I come from! Like Katar, and your Bajoran ale! That is one of many things I think our peoples have in common, Cade!”
“What, Terrans?”
He snorted at this, a bit of beer he hadn’t fully swallowed yet spraying from his lips in a fine mist.
“HA! Terrans! We make this word up when we come to the stars so we don’t have to call ourselves ‘Earthlings’, like something out of an old movie! But no, my people on Earth. Bohemians!” He stood up higher then, rising up on the middle rung of his stool as he raised his beer in the air. “BOHEMIANS!” A number of other patrons in the bar shouted it back, or simply shouted.
“I was born in a city called Prague, in a little country in the European Alliance called Czechia. My family has lived there for many years, centuries! In that time, the country was not always called this. But always, we have been Bohemians! I was not the first in my family to leave our country, but I was the first to leave our world. When I left, my mother, she says to me, ‘Roy, whether or not you are Czech, whether or not you are Earthling, you will ALWAYS be Bohemian!’ And I did not know what she meant.
“And then…your people arrived here! The Bajorans! They told us their stories. About these Cardassians you invited in as friends who betrayed and enslaved you! I think of the Communists and sectarians who did the same to my people! How they drove your people away, tortured and killed others, threw you into camps! And I think of the Nazis who marched through our land and put their boots to our throats! About brave Bajoran men and women like you who fought back against all odds, against superior firepower, against an empire! And I think of the stories my grandparents told of how our ancestors resisted these tyrants and bullies, even when it was a losing battle, even when victory would not come for decades!
And I think, THIS! This is what it means to be Bohemian! We are a passionate and proud people, like you! We are warriors and fighters, like you! You are Bohemian! We are Bajoran!” His smile widened, his hand clasped on my shoulder.
“And from across the stars, we all come here! To Deneva! We put our fighting aside, and find something to live for! My Ana, her family is here for generations, some of the first to colonize, but they come from only a few kilometers from my home, and so I arrive to discover the love of my life is waiting for me on this new world! And so we build, and dig, and plant, and brew! This is our home, but we are still Bohemian! We are still Bajoran! But now we are Denevan, too! And so we sing, and dance, and laugh…”
“And drink!” I cut him off, finishing his thought, and his wide smile turned warm and kind.
“And drink! To Bajor!”
“To Bohemia!”
We raised our bottles, clinking them once more, and calling out in unison.
“To Deneva!”
I finished the bottle. My thoughts turned to Commander Neumann…Walter…and his words to me on the turbolift after I’d just resigned. Words about duty and striving to be something more, something better. Being of service to those we know and those we have yet to meet alike. How close I was to turning around in that moment, swallowing my pride, and rejoining, just because of his support and belief in me. How much I genuinely thought he would enjoy a bottle of Denevan Brew.
“Hey, Roy…you think I could grab one of those for the road?”
He reached into the ice and handed me the bottle. I took it with a nod of gratitude and wiped some moisture off of the homemade label detailing the process of its creation in more eloquent but less gregarious terms than my new friend had described it to me. From the wording and penmanship I suspected that Ana was responsible. I opened my go bag, wrapped the bottle in another of my shirts, placed it next to the crystal, and returned to my seat to find Katar had already poured me another pint of ale.
By that point, the crowd was thinning out and headed home. A few isolated groups conversed quietly at their tables while a group of stragglers traded folk songs at the bar, teaching them to one another. Songs from their homeworlds, songs from Deneva.
Bajorans would sing something familiar, and I would correct them with the version I knew, and we would argue about which words were actually right, and whose grandmother knew it better, and laugh, and sing another song. I remembered, then, a song my parents sang to us as children, my father laughing through it as he chased mother around the den, my mother slyly evading him. He loved to sing. He taught me so many songs while we worked out in the fields, gifted me with a love of music. But it was the only time I could remember my mother singing.
“Does anyone know The Farmer and the Vole?” I asked. They seemed amused by the question. A few feigned ignorance or confusion, while I noticed one or two glancing behind the bar with a knowing grin. Katar came out from behind the bar without acknowledging any of us, but playfully ran her finger along the back of my shoulders as she passed. I watched as she walked up to the stage and spoke with the few remaining musicians: a human male with a hand drum, a human female with a wooden flute, and a Bajoran male who appeared to have made his own klavion. Roy and Ana sidled up beside me, the old man leaning in close.
“I hope you are ready for this, my friend!” Excitedly catching on, I dug out the device I normally used for medical dictation, pressed the record button, and prayed the microphone was strong enough. The drum started, a jaunty rhythm setting the tempo. The flute followed, playful and airy. The klavion player waited a few measures, allowing his fellows a few extra moments to dance around each other in this prelude, before joining in and plucking out the main melody, the flute joining him in harmonious trills.
It washed over me in a wave of nostalgia. A song I had not heard since my youth but would find myself humming in absent minded moments. Then Katar stepped up to the lip of the stage, swaying in time to the music.
Her voice filled the room, a powerful gorgeous alto that silenced all other speech as all eyes and ears turned to her. She sang in the original Bajoran, her accent lilting and flawless, introducing herself as the Vole who entered the garden in search of sweet fruit, and how clever and brave she was. She approached the end of the Vole’s first verse and locked eyes with me, her eyebrows raised as she beckoned me forward, and suddenly I understood Roy’s warning to me before. I wasn’t ready, but I also felt compelled to follow her. Her verse ended as I was still walking up and her gesture turned from one of beckoning to one of presentation, her eyes still locked with mine, her smile a challenge.
I sang as the Farmer, proud but foolish, determined to catch the Vole and protect his crops. I sang the first two lines still looking at her, a bit timidly as I found my proper baritone, then turned to the tables and sang to them as I passed. Surprisingly, the words readily returned to my mind, and where I could not remember I made something up, or repeated what I’d just said.
I reached the stage and climbed up in time for the refrain, a reeling counterpoint as the Vole escapes the Farmer’s grasp, and the Farmer curses the clever, brave Vole. Each verse followed the same pattern: the Farmer sets a trap, or tries to lure the Vole away, or towards the end brazenly attacks it with a number of farming implements. But always the Vole is too fast and too smart, and then the refrain, the escape, the curse.
The song ends with the Vole finally getting the fruit and running away, promising to return to his “friend” the Farmer in the next harvest season to resume their “game” once more. My father always finished with a clownish final curse from the Farmer, his voice becoming a beastly mockery of a roar punctuated by high pitched cracks. My brother Rajine once compared it to the yawn of a pubescent wildcat. I did my best imitation of it there, dropping to my knees as the band reached their finale. The crowd erupted into laughter and applause, and I rose to my feet, sheepishly bowing, as Katar threw her arms around my neck, breathlessly chuckling. As the noise died down, Katar stepped back to the lip.
“And with that, dear friends, the Prophet’s Tear is now closed! Thank you all for coming! I’m sure I’ll see most of you tomorrow! Head on home while you’ve still got someone there to worry about you!” There were some good natured boos mixed in with a few more claps. The band played something slow and sweet I didn’t recognize but I hoped would stay with me as folks filed out. Katar grabbed my hand before returning to the bar. “Wait for me outside, yeah?”
So I did.
Check back soon for Part 6. Don’t forget to catch up with Part 4 right here.