New: Title: Cinnamon Sugar

New: Author: Jin Katkin

Ratings and codes: PG-13, h/c, implied K/S

Disclaimer: The world, the Multiverse, and all of the stars belong to the Powers That Be, who rule everything in their sight with a tritanium fist. Fortunately, they are hyperoptic, and have
a happy tendency to ignore Iowa and, in fact, the universe before 2273.

Notes: Zen handshakes are welcome, as is constructive criticism. This piece operates on the assumptions that: 1) there is a very good reason why Kirk's hunches are reliable and 2) as Ms. McKintyre informed us in 'Enterprise,' Kirk is of Sioux ancestry. I assume also that the Federation is smarter than the US Government and gave the various tribes who survived the Eugenics wars their lands back. I am also assuming that those same wars changed many, many
cultures, so please remember that no offense was intended. More on this later if anyone seems interested. While reading, please keep in mind that this is being spoken aloud, and that it's his
grammar, not mine.

Cinnamon Sugar
by Jin Katkin

A story? I'm not telling any stories! I haven't told a story since I was ten! No, I wouldn't prefer to sing, thank you very much-unless you'd prefer it? I thought not. Yeah, I know what they say about my voice. Fine, then. A story. How 'bout Ruth and Naomi? No? Maybe The Various Exploits of Saul Before Conversion? That was always a favorite, back home.

No! I will not tell a story about myself! That's ridiculous. Forget it. I'm going to go sit over there, now... Okay, so it's an ice cube, so what? Ohh, no, no you don't. Get your hands off my shirt! Okay! Fine! A story about me. But don't blame me if it's all disjointed and you can't understand anything. Dammit, Nyota, I'm a starship captain, not a storyteller! Yeah, I just bet you'll enjoy it. Okay, here goes.

So picture this: I'm ten. Never been away from home before. Never met an extraterrestrial-thought they were scientific fairy tales my father conspired with his captain to make up stories about.

Now, it's winter-okay, not winter, exactly. It's late March, but tell that to the blizzard! I'm miserable, because not only have I had one of those days, but my mother and brother are off
visiting my grandmother, I'm playing innkeeper to an empty house, my father's supposed to have come back from space already and we haven't even heard from him, and this is shaping up to be the worst birthday of my life. So I'm sitting there in dark blue plaid cotton and jeans, poking at the fire, reading David Copperfield, and getting too depressed for chocolate to fix.

So the door opens, and in walks my father, with a woman and a kid, neither of whom have I ever set eyes on before. Although I thought at the time that it was possible that I knew the kid; it was so wrapped up that I couldn't tell its gender, let alone its identity. Well, my dad gives me a hug, tells me happy eleventh, and for a moment I'm feeling so much better that I actually smile. I'll give him this: he never talked down to me. He told me that he'd be home for about a week, but it was a working vacation and he'd be gone in the afternoon and evenings. This was new, and I figured that he must really, really want to be home, even if Mom and Sam weren't there. Then he said that the woman and I were going to trade off looking after things while he was out. I knew what that meant, all right; I was in charge of the house and running things, but she was in charge of me. I thought that was a little strange until I looked at her more closely and saw the Rosenthal eyes and the Randall nose and the Grey smile and knew her for a cousin. This made the arrangement plausible, even if I'd never met her.

By the time I'd finished working this out, Dad was gone. I looked up at her, somewhat at a loss. She said she was my father's cousin Mandy, and this was her son, Ben. I took her wraps and
waited for him to shed his. He didn't.

My new cousin, Mandy, asked if I'd let her make dinner that night, and if she didn't poison us all we could work out an arrangement, because she loved to cook. So did I, but I didn't want to make an issue out of it. Besides, I was a sucker for flattery at that point-the subtler, the better. I
was that depressed.

I went in to show her where everything was, and pointed her in the direction of the Montefiore's indoor berry patches and the vegetable gardens. I thought she was going to faint with joy when she heard the words 'carrot' and 'strawberry.' I was quickly left alone in the house with a gift-
wrapped cousin shivering in front of the fire. When I asked if he was sick, he just said, "K-cold." I didn't think that he was accusing me of having an unfaithful mate, and figured that if he were contagious he would've told me to keep away, so I just piled more wood on the fire and went into the kitchen to make him some hot chocolate. He seemed to like it, but I thought that the room was already warm enough and getting hotter fast, so I put mine, and me, on the windowsill that it might cool down a bit.

Pressing my face against the windowpane wasn't enough. I was charbroiling in there. I'd been fairly warm all evening, and I figured my new cousin Ben for an Israeli or something, because I was roasting. See, I'd lived entirely in the Dakotas before I came to Iowa, and had zero heat tolerance, and I was looking forward to summer with a sort of horrified dread. Nor was I used to people being skin-shy. And I was much less disciplined, then, so I forgot all the reasons I had been wearing long sleeves in the first place, and what can I say? Ben took off his parka, so I took off my shirt.

Well, he gasped, and spilled what was left of his chocolate. By the time I'd given him mine and cleaned up the mess, he'd come out of shock and started stammering. By this time, of course, I wanted to put my shirt back on, but the damage had been done, and it was still an oven in there. Besides, I kinda wanted to torture him a little. So I simply didn't say anything, and behaved as though not only was I perfectly normal, but that people spilled hot chocolate into the fire every day. I didn't even ask what the matter was, so innocent I was acting.

So there we are, in front of the fire, me topless and roasting with my cinnamon cider and ice, him all bundled up and miserable with my hot chocolate, neither one of us willing to speak. He won't start because I'm not making a fuss; I won't start because I'm feeling stubborn and sadistic. Apparently I was the most stubborn, because he screws his courage to the sticking place and hesitantly asks how much of 'that' is religious. I mustn't be insulted, but he has heard things about some of Earth's more primitive religions, and he is aware of my background... I guess he realized that he was digging himself into a hole there, because he trailed off and shut up. I didn't answer, but I suppose that he was truly curious, because he started to ask again. He got maybe three words out before I cut him off with a curt, "None, and if one more person insults my religion I may start hitting back."

He saw. At least, he said he saw. He asked what, then, had happened, had I been in an accident?

Well, what can I say? I was just technically eleven years old, and I had no patience at all with people who had working eyes and refused to see what would be clear to a blind baby. I told him that I wasn't quite clumsy enough to fall of a cliff, which was the only other way I could think of that might get one into this kind of condition-and that if he would look closer, I would
conclusively prove that nothing so random as falling off a cliff could produce marks such as these.

Oh, yes I did. That's almost exactly what I said. I was mad enough to talk in Dictionary English, even though that kind of language had almost gotten me expelled for plagiarism less than six months before. I was even mad enough to spell the whole situation out for him, if necessary, although I didn't want to think about it or let anyone else know.

He said he didn't need it proven to him, he simply wanted to know why.

I hadn't yet learned to bear a grudge. I'd had my flash of anger, andnow all I felt was dead. My voice showed it. "Because they can," I explained.

Maybe it was just that he wasn't Iowan, but he wasn't going to accept that. "They can also go to the hospital in the city when they are injured or sick," he argued, "but if my mother is correct, they would rather die. Why you? Why this?"

I made my braid strike at him like a cobra. I mean, hey, a boy with a braid in Christian Scientist Iowa? America's Heartland of the Midwest? Riverside, Riverside, heavenly Riverside, the buckle on the Bible belt. Should have been obvious, right, even to an Israeli? -No, I don't still have the braid, Fleet made me cut it off. So much for freedom of religion, right? Anyway, he still didn't get it, so I explained by calling myself every pejorative I had ever heard directed at me. I think I must have gotten hysterical, because the next thing I knew he was behind me with his hand over my mouth and his arm around my waist, quieting me. Not because I was too loud or his mother was coming, but simply because I needed it-which, of course, is why it worked. So. There I was in this oven of a room, with my shirt off, being hugged from behind by this total stranger who was tall and solid and wearing soft armor, and as hot as the room through the clothes, and telling me to look at the situation logically. Well, I've always been a sucker for rational people-and let me tell you, if I hadn't been eleven...

What? Yes, thanks so much for asking, I'm quite sure I'm male. Yes, this is me... so what? Yeah, so? Look, keep your questions for the end, please-I'm telling a story here!

So he starts sifting through the insults, making them into groups of true but irrelevant, like 'SOB,' cultural viewpoint, like 'savage,' 'heathen' and 'barbarian,' things that could perhaps be more properly applied to my 'tormenters,' like 'brat,' things that were true but misapplied, like 'red injun,' and things that were patently untrue, like 'bitch.'

By this time I had calmed down some, and I was just about to turn around and hug him back when I remembered not to trust. I tried to twist out, but he was stronger than I, which scared me, so I attacked his argument. I said, what did he know about my people, for all he knew they were vampires, took scalps, made human sacrifices... I continued in this vein for a little while, hoping he'd turn green and let go, but the only one I sickened was myself, apparently. He said that if my hypotheticals had a base in reality I would not be trembling, for they would be matter of course to me.

So I said, well, what did he know about me? For all he knew, I was the worst brat he'd ever seen. He said that he was quite familiar both with outright brats, and with brats hiding their brattiness, and that he judged that I was neither. Further, I was not to question his judgement, for he was my elder, and objective by temperament besides.

If I could've managed to turn, I would have laughed in his face. I said, "Nobody's objective by temperament. Sentience, thy name is bias."

"That," he chastised evenly, not releasing me, "is a very Terran-chauvinistic remark."

I snorted. "Oh, c'mon," sez I. "I've heard all the stories. My dad's a spacer, and so are my godparents. Now, this is admittedly hearsay, but Andorians are beserkers, Tellarites aren't
objective enough to greet you politely, don't even get me started on Orions, and that's just within the Federation."

I guess he didn't want to argue with me, because all he said was, "Have you not heard of Vulcans?"

"Oh, please. List, coz, I've heard those stories too-this is why I admit so readily to the other stuff being hearsay-but then my dad met one and the stories did a one-eighty degree turn. He may not act all that emotional, but he's just as biased as any Terran and passionate as anything. I'm told that an angry Vulcan is enough to make our Mayor apologize for something that can't be proven."

"This Vulcan is either fictional or renegade. If your description is accurate, then he has forfeited the right to be called Vulcan," I was solemnly informed as he forbore to call me on the 'list, coz.' "What is his name?"

"Kilyle t'Cael."

"That is not a Vulcan name."

At that point in my life I would have preferred to be accused of murder than lying, so I start fighting him again. "What do you know about it?" I snarled.

"I am one."

"Yeah? So how come you're touching me? And I won't even go into your mother!"

"Please, don't. And your shielding is excellent; I need not fear coming into accidental telepathic contact with you. And it is my father, not my mother, who is Vulcan."

"Ben isn't exactly a Vulcan name, either-it's Jewish."

"My mother is Jewish," he agreed mildly. "She wanted me to seem as normal as possible, here. My real name is Spock. Vulcan males usually have names that are six letters in length, start with S, and end with K. It is in honor to Surak, the father of our philosophy."

"Yeah, sure, whatever." I gave up, completely out of patience.

"Yes," he said inflexibly, and let me go. "Look at me."

I got out of there, glared at him. He doffed his hat and scarf. I stared, said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry, forgive me for this," and darted forward to tweak at his ears and eyebrows. I fell back, and breathed, "Spirits-they're real!" He lifted an eyebrow at me, and I stared some more. I stammered out, "Um, would you mind if I lowered my shields a bit? I'll just get surface impressions. I won't touch you." He looked uncomfortable, but told me to proceed.

Now, my grandfather is a Pleaser. Sulu might call him a geisha, you'd probably call him an unpleasant name, and what I have inherited from him gives me some very nasty nicknames around the fleet. Yes, I've heard them. My grandmother, though, she is shaman, and from her I learned discretion. I would never tell what was going on in anyone's head for the sake of a story, but I can say that what I felt from my cousin has saved my life time and again. I can't even count how many times I'd look at Becca, my suicidal cousin, and think she had the right idea, and then think, No! There are people like that out there-all I have to do is figure out how to leave, and find where they are concentrated.

And so I am here, in this poorly put together shirt of a dreadful cut and ridiculous material whose color doesn't suit me at all-alive. And so I would say that that is the best present I have ever been given by a member of my crew. Even if he was only thirteen at the time. I wondered though, afterwards, what he would have done if he hadn't been inebriated from all the sugar.

END