Moon 514 || Blaze and the White Griffon

31 || the New Captain

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Last revision: 3/30/2013 

As Aria removed the covering of the ballot box, no one could have been more surprised than Blaze.  It would have been one thing had the strips of paper been heavily speckled but the clear box revealed a sea of white with only a very few grey strips of peppering.  Initially, Blaze couldn’t discern a single black strip but as the votes were counted, Aria did announce guilty verdicts from a half dozen anonymous individuals.  Votes for further investigation were relatively minimal as well.

Initially, the votes puzzled Blaze.  However, as he sat nearly dumbfounded behind the podium and listened to the overwhelming majority of votes exonerate him from any wrongdoing, he began to remember the very different life he had been living only a very few weeks ago – a life where he trusted the people around him, a life where he believed that people were mostly good and trustworthy, a life where he could predict what was going to happen next, a life void of treachery and violence.  These were people dedicated to a good cause and who wanted to strengthen people around them.  Everything they had heard that morning was completely foreign to them and undoubtedly shocked them to their heart’s core.

As Aria announced the last vote, she gave the formal, final tally, thanked everyone for their participation, and asked Blaze if there was anything further that he wanted to say. 

Of course, he inwardly answered but really had no idea what he should say.  He was elated.  He felt relieved.  But he also felt a little heavy with a new burden of overseeing the activities of the entire ship.  And he felt another new feeling as well: as he walked up to the podium where Aria was stepping down, he felt a very strong urge to give her a big hug.  Following this instinctual urge was nearly compulsory but he resisted the internal suggestion that he do so.  In the midst of these proceedings, giving Aria a hug might have seemed a rather normal thing for someone in Blaze’s position to do – after all, this was going to be a celebratory occasion.  However –somehow, he discerned that his motivation was not founded in spontaneous elation; it was founded in primeval attraction.  So, despite his good excuse to give her an innocent-appearing embrace, he resisted the temptation and merely gave her a customarily bow.  Still, his continual and inexplicably strong attraction towards this relative stranger left him feeling somewhat uncomfortable – if not somewhat excited at the same time.

Even after speaking most of the day, Blaze still felt like he had a lot to express to his fellow crewmen.  Then again, he felt no small urge to go work out especially hard, fight some abnormally scary beast in the simulator, and then celebrate with a sumptuous, perhaps excessive meal.  Perhaps he too was a creature of habit – a simple man who was not used to the extreme circumstances he had been experiencing – even though he had spent most of his life training for these very types of problems.  As he stepped up to the podium, he instinctively controlled his breathing and waited until he felt more relaxed before speaking.  Once again, the crew saw into his heart as he failed to summon a flashy smile or some other mark of a true statesman who was accustomed to playing the emotions of a crowd.

“Part of me feels relieved,” he began, searching for words.  “You have restored some of my confidence in our people, the people I have grown to love since I was a small boy.  During the past few weeks, my life has been turned upside down so much I can barely recount what has happened.  I have never seen treachery up close – these things have always rested in the pages of history, in the files on the database.  To unravel a conspiracy, to see your loved ones killed, to see comrades killed in battle, and then to be thrown into the middle of another treasonous plot to take over this ship has been … in some ways, nearly unbearable.  I think you all understand and I have great empathy for you who are only now learning what I have known for a seemingly very long time.”