Star Trek: Starbase 777

The sections of the aquarium already romantically dimmed made a perfect place for the date, blue light from the large tanks that line the walls the main source of light in the room. Colorful creatures darted around within, all shapes and sizes, different tanks dedicated to different homeworlds and habitats. Each display had a small information plaque about the types of fish, where they came from, predators and prey, and other neat information for Syrax and Saeihr to get lost in.

Saeihr had in her search for something to wear had tried on her entire wardrobe only to end up wearing one of her favourite blouses with a semi formal pair of trousers. She’d really wanted to wear something nice, but after being unhappy with one too many combinations she had just returned to what she was comfortable with. The blouse had a pattern of blue and red birds and some flower adjacent looking things and her grandmother would probably say it looked cheap. Having stepped into the aquarium she was now standing in front of one of the tanks slightly distracted by the way the light fell on the rocks inside. For the past few hours she had dreaded being late and imagined quite a few ways in which she might mess this up spectacularly. She had originally signed up for this because she needed… wanted to meet people on the starbase and had foolishly not expected how nervous she would be about it. The fish were pretty.

Meeting people was one of Syrax's favorite past-time activities - the man was social, and harboured genuine love for just... existing in a community! He couldn't really explain it - and to his credit he tried to, multiple times, to his cousin and some friends, but every next attempt was worse than the one before. In the end, Saren just told him that Sy didn't need to explain everything about his habits to others, and the helmsman decided to listen. Well, whatever. The thing was, these sorts of events were always fun for him. So, today he was dressed in a light blue shirt with a watercolor-like effect to it, the large splotches of darker blue looking like shapes in the water, but upon closer inspection revealed themselves to be swimming fish. "Hey, we're sort of matching!" he laughed upon approaching Saeihr, offering her a little wave with his hand. "Syrax tr'Morvar, but you can just call me Syrax, I'm pretty sure that will get my attention quick, with the lack of people here and all. Nice to meet you!"

She blinked a few times and sort of just… looked at him for a moment. There was nothing to be perplexed about here. This was a perfectly normal greeting and she really ought to respond in kind. After a small wave back she managed to fined some words at last. “I guess we are, yes… sort of.” Only after saying this did she actually take a closer look at the shirt and realise with horror that maybe he hadn’t meant her at all, maybe he’d been talking to the fish. Probably not? Hopefully. “You are matching the theme.” She waved her hand in what she hoped could be seen as a general gesture at their surroundings. “I like the pattern.” Her grandmother would hate that shirt, but Saeihr had always been a little spiteful. For a few moments she let silence return, before remembering that she also ought to return the introduction. “Saeihr t’Llairne, although yes, the setting does call for first names, so just Saeihr… not ‘just Saeihr’, just, you know, Saeihr.” Her eyes, now fixed on one of the fish behind him out of embarrassment, widened almost comically as it changed colour. “Oh, look!” She almost reached out to him, but stopped herself and pointed at the fish instead. After a while once the fish had returned to its previous colour and swam away she remembered they were still in the middle of an introduction. “Sorry. It is an… nice to meet you too. Does your name not get your attention quickly in more crowded areas?”

Ah, not the immediately outgoing type? Syrax took a metaphorical step back, dialing his excitement a notch or two down, but kept the easygoing attitude: "Thank you, that's very kind of you to say! I was worried that I would be too on the nose with this, but at the same time, themeing it up is kind of fun, I think." She was considerably shorter than him, so Sy shifted a bit, now standing ever so slightly to the side of the ensign, just so that the helmsman didn't have to directly loom over her like some sort of... overgrown tree. A baobab, maybe. Those were huge, right? "Just Saeihr," he couldn't help but poke at that, just a bit, harmlessly enough, evident in the lilt of Sy's voice and a smile. He would've added something to that, but Saeihr's exclamation made him turn towards the fish she was pointing at, a small noise of curiosity escaping out of his throat after spotting the finned critter: "Oh?.. ooh! No idea what this one is called, but it's so pretty! I wonder why it changes colors like this..." Syrax did have some fish knowledge - but mostly about Mol'Rihan and some of the Earth critters. He was quite content to watch it for a moment, before returning his attention back to Saeihr: "Hey, that's okay - we are in the aquarium, after all, there are distractions swimming everywhere. As for my name... well, the drydock and shuttlebay are both pretty huge and busy places, so sometimes hollering for each other is kinda useless, even if you can see the other guy, like, right there... so commbadges come in handy very often, as a result. Hey, speaking of distractions - I think there's a shark coming our way to your left?"

She was uncertain whether thanks were truly warranted. It was not kindness that had caused her to admit to liking the shirt, but rather the wish to start this interaction off on a positive note combined with her genuine but questionable fondness of colourful patterns. “It is a good idea… I think. It’s not like you showed up in one of those blow up shark costumes. That might have been a bit much.” Saeihr was not entirely sure, but she most likely could have found something sea creature themed as well had she tried. “I did not think of matching the surroundings, it would have made looking for something to wear easier.” ’Just Saeihr’ was haunting her, she’d have to come up with a better way to offer people her first name. She wanted to roll her eyes, irritated both with herself and the situation, but the fish proved an apt distraction. Her knowledge on fish was incredibly limited. She knew a handful of the fish species living on Rator and a few of those that were common pets at the academy. There was nothing much she could add to his musings on the fish besides humming in agreement. “We can try to find its species on one of the information plaques, maybe it says why it does that?” Yes, there was definitely something coming up, she could see something large from the corner of her eye. It made her tense up, before she took a deep breath and stepped away a little before turning to look at it. Her eyes followed its movements for a while, after a while she glanced over to Syrax to access his expression, before returning her attention to the shark again. She was not scared, just glad for the barrier. “So what you are saying is that when I want to get your attention, if in doubt I should comm you?” That was a sorry excuse at being amusing. “Sorry. We can… well we can look at some of the informative texts?”

"Reminds me of a guy in a blow-up rooster costume during one of the past New Year celebrations," granted, that one was a charged joke. Syrax decided not to test his luck with an explanation of said charged joke. "The New Years thing doesn't have a dress code nor is it, like, an official thing, but... yeah! I guess what I am trying to say is... while I wouldn't do that, you can never know with this station." Syrax wasn't a hundred percent sure, but Saeihr at the very least gave him the vibe of a person that hasn't been on this station for too long. He knew the feeling, albeit it was half forgotten at this point; and he certainly didn't want to intrude and ask. But at the very least, he could try to make her feel in place right here, in this current moment. "Oh you're right, we could..." Plaques, right! Before that though, there was a shark swimming past them and needed to be appreciated. He did enjoy these big carnivores of the sea - and this one's head shape made the identification process quite simple: "Hammerhead! I like it when animals are named for something recognizable. Can't say the same thing for the Blue shark, considering that... all sharks look blue in the water. Sorry, I tend to go into random rambling sometimes." Hey, Saeihr should give herself at least some credit - her attempt did get a chuckle out of the man! "Well, if you ever need to - sure! And I mean it. Let's go look at those plaques, then."

She did not get the joke, but luckily got saved from blankly staring at him by the explanation. “That sounds… interesting. Are such costumes common here? I was here last New Years, but I did not want… Well, I came here in the middle of December.” It was never bad to figure out how things were done in a place before giving yourself a chance to embarrass yourself in front of a great number of people. She had felt prepared for neither the winter ball nor the new years celebration, even if in principle they might have been good places to make new acquaintances. Well, that was definitely a descriptive name for the animal. She had no idea what planet it might be from, but it certainly looked rather fantastical. She had no idea what a blue shark looked like either, but if all sharks looked blue underwater at least the name was not wrong, even if it was unhelpful. “I don’t mind.” If anything she was glad that he was saying something. She liked listening and in principle enjoyed new information so long as it was not delivered in some sort of legal jargon. “And yes, Hammerhead is a good name for this one… I think.” While they looked at some of the plaques she did her very best to be comfortable reading them silently, although that did not stop her from excitedly pointing at the text about the colour changing fish when she found it or occasionally quietly commenting on what she read. Every now and then she looked up to Syrax, both to know what he was doing and to check that he did not seem unhappy. Doing this she caught eye of a fish that was so translucent that you could barely see anything but its organs in the water behind him. Raising her hand to her commbadge as if she were about use it and doing her very best to ignore the part of her that told her she was being childish, she said: “Saeihr to Syrax, there is a see-through fish over your right shoulder.”

Saeihr and Syrax spent a lovely rest of their time at the aquarium together, looking at the different fish and chatting all the while.