# Babylon 5 and its characters and their words were created by J. Michael Straczynski, and belong to Joe and Warner Bros., and are used without permission. The rest belongs to Cathy Faye Rudolph.)

1__________

He'd passed the point of the roiling dust clouds, clouds from the heartrock of the planet, but still there were drifts and whorls of stonedust in the corridor. And the air pulsed with the vibrations of the drilling equipment. Even the cross-blowers, which dislodged most of the clinging dust from his clothes, did nothing to mitigate the dance of the dust in the throbbing air.

As he entered the first vapor-lock, that changed. The combination of the saturated poly-tarp barrier and the ultrasonically produced mist settled the dust and tamed the drilling noise. He pushed aside the poly-tarp flap for the next vapor-lock, and then the next, and the next; as each closed back into place behind him, the drilling noise was slowly replaced by the intimate caress of moisture sounds, like rain, like surf lapping on stones. At last there was only the sound of water on rock, dribbling, dripping, running down walls and over ledges, leaking from the feeder system pipes along the ceiling of the passageway.

He pushed aside the next poly-tarp to see a long corridor stretching ahead. It was adequately lit, but not overly bright. The sound of dripping water was still there, like a soft love song, playing itself for his soul's amusement. He walked along the corridor, occasionally stretching out his fingers to brush the smooth cold walls as he walked past.

Here the corridor split to two passageways. The directions he'd been given to the meditation center failed him now. Only the smoothness of stone and the mesmeric drip of water were his companions in this lonely corridor that served as the connection between the meditation center and the construction site. He peered again at his choices ahead. One passageway continued to dim lights further on. The other seemed to hold what promised to be the first poly-tarp in another sequence of vapor-locks.

He pushed aside the poly-tarp, and passed through the familiar mist. As he pulled open the second poly-tarp, bright light flooded through. He paused, blinking while his eyes adjusted to the light, to the continued sound of water, running water, splashing water.

Her back was to him. That stopped him from leaving -- that, and the quiet certainty that he had come upon a gift of beauty, the sort of beauty that he wanted to drink in with his eyes, to capture in his heart. The water sprayed down lazily from an outlet in the feeder pipes along the ceiling, and she tilted her head from side to side in the water stream. The water, carrying away the last of the day's stone dust, ran in little streams over her skin and splashed down into a slight hollow in the stone and drained away to a channeled catch basin.

She turned, her eyes closed against the sting of water and soap. Her long hair lay on her skin like wet rivers of dark moonlight.

The beauty he saw was not vested in some sort of proportional ideal. She was alluringly and completely female, but she was even more beautiful because of her bearing. Here was a woman who knew and accepted herself, who bore herself with courage and contentment. He could read fatigue in her stance, but it was tempered with satisfaction and resolve.

She rested her hand on the wall as if to steady herself, and at once the water shower stopped. Her eyes opened. Her eyes widened a fraction in surprise.

As he watched, she stepped from the hollow in the stone, and walked slowly to him. The rhythm of her body, the outline of her steps as wet prints on stone, water droplets falling around her like jewels, the ragged beating of his heart, each gasped breath that escaped his lips, all of it and more filled each moment as she approached. She stood before him, and lightly rested her damp hands on his chest. Her scent was stone, and water, and her eyes were the green of the treasure-laden seas of Earth.

She spoke his name, in a soft contralto that instantly transmuted his fascination into desire. He covered her hands with his, willing her to know what he felt. He wanted to drown in the sea of her eyes.

She spoke again. "Michael." He could feel her pulse in her hands, and his own trembling only barely restrained. She leaned even closer, close enough for him to feel the moisture in her breath, to feel the brush of her body against his -- it's always the quiet ones, he thought, always the ones you least suspect of being able to capture your soul.

Her voice softened even more. "Make yourself useful, Michael." He asked the question with his eyes. She stood on tiptoe, and whispered as drops of water from her hair rained on his shirt.

"My towel. It's behind you."

He colored in embarrassment, and turned his face away. As he did so, he noticed a small bag on a low stone shelf near the poly-tarp at the entrance. Atop the bag was a blue towel, neatly folded. He grabbed the towel with frustrated energy, and turned back to her. She accepted the towel graciously.

"Now, Michael--" she began, and she completed the sentence by twirling her finger in a pirouette motion. For a moment he simply stared at her uncomprehendingly, until she took him by the shoulders and with an amused but loving smile turned him around to face away. Defeated, he moved her bag to the floor and sat on the table-like shelf.

It was several minutes later that he could finally bring himself to speak. "Seren, look, I'm really sorry about....It wasn't intentional. I mean, well, yes, I was looking at you, but...Look, I'm sorry."

He didn't expect her reaction. The contralto voice, first chuckling, broke finally into a deep appreciative laugh. "It's alright, really, Michael. I should count myself lucky...after all, you didn't run screaming from the room, or solidify into marble --"

"Or turn to salt?"

He could hear the smile on her lips. "I don't know, did you?" He was unprepared for the touch of her lips on his cheek. He sat motionless, afraid to do anything to change the moment. "Not very salty. I must be losing my touch. Hand me my bag, would you?"

He began to turn to face her, but she was directly behind him, and the pressure of her index finger on his cheek turned his face back toward the poly-tarp door. Instead, he reached down, and pushed her bag along the floor back toward her.

"Thanks." He heard her sorting through her belongings, removing the change of clothes and a brush for her hair. "It isn't your fault. The shower is new, a gift from the Drazi. They wanted to do something for the 'Vorlon Deity teacher-caregiver' -- "

Garibaldi translated the phrase into Drazi and back again. "They call you 'Mother of Boogie'?" A second later, he was wearing the soggy towel over his head for his trouble.

"--they wanted to do something for me," she continued with chiding but jovial notes in her voice, "and I was rash enough to blurt out that what I really wanted was a hot shower. The next thing I knew, they'd carved out this short corridor and had run the feeder system in here." She removed the towel from over his head, and he saw that she was wearing a loose tunic over close-fitting jeans. Her hair, now combed and drying, was curling into long ringlets on its own.

She retrieved her discarded dust-laden work clothes from their undistinguished heap on the floor, and used the wet towel to wrap them. Then she tucked the damp bundle into her bag.

"Care for some tea? And some conversation?" she asked. Garibaldi nodded, then on impulse, rested his hands gently on her shoulders, kissed her cheek, and whispered a sentence of seven words in her ear. Those seven words brought incredulous surprise and incongruous delight to her face, and a rose glow to her cheeks. She finally relaxed, and smiled. "Come on, then, my quarters are this way." She picked up her bag, and Garibaldi and she left through the poly-tarp lock.

...

[to Chapter 2]