Log tugged at the collar of his undershirt, pulling the sodden fabric away from his neck in a vain attempt to ventilate the skin trapped beneath, as the tall Cardassian visitor paraded through their temporary accommodations, long black linen cuffs rippling behind her in the minute breeze of warm air produced by the atmospheric re-cyclers. The visiting artist had arrived with a list of requirements in her manicured hand, making demands before she had even stepped off the transporter pad; it had taken the diplomatic team almost an hour to convince her she didn’t need a whole deck of rooms to herself. 

“Well, I suppose it will be sufficient.” Iska cast another eye across the room, comparatively expansive and luxurious as only quarters aboard a major Starbase could be. “It’s a shame it isn’t warmer…”

“… warmer?” Log hadn’t managed to catch the word before it had tumbled from his parched lips. The visitor caught it with a sideways look. 

“Yes. Warmer.” She looked the young man up and down, taking in his long limbs as they hung at his side, barely restrained from fanning himself with the padd he still held in his hand. “I always thought Tellar Prime was quite warm, I thought Tellarite’s enjoyed the warmth. I remember when I was painting Frox Thivan for his award portrait…” She paused, eyeing the Ensign, “Another two degrees I think.” she instructed cooly before returning to her story, her long fingers jangling with beads and rings as she spoke. “He’s such a lovely, dear Frox. Do you know of him?”

‘Of course I do, he’s only the creator of New Wave Tellar Rock.’ Log thought to himself, entering a string of commands to increase both the room’s temperature and his own discomfort. “I think I’ve heard one or two of his songs Ma’am.”

As the hum of the wall heaters increased in pitch, the woman stretched like a cat having found a particularly warm patch of sunlight, flexing her long feline arms behind her back at an inexplicable angle as she rubbed her opposite shoulders. “Well Frox booked out the entire Telltan Mud baths and we just lounged for the whole day.” She smiled taking pleasure in the warmth of the memory as much as the growing sweatbox of her temporary quarters. 

Log waited for the next instruction, wondering whether it would be rude to recuse himself from the arid air that was beginning to bother his nose. As he licked his lips, preparing to make his polite excuses the woman walked briskly past him toward the in-built replicator, seemingly satisfied that she had stretched all the necessary muscles. 

“Tell me…” she glanced to his neck, where a single gold pip was awash with sweat “…Ensign. Has there been much interest in my showing do you know?” She pressed a sequence of buttons, causing the replicator to produce a tall glass of milky brown liquid filled with clinking ice-cubes. “I expect even down amongst the junior officers there must be some discussions about the upcoming exhibitions.”

“There has been some talk, yes Ma’am.” the young Tellerite’s mind raced, in truth most of the discussion in the mess last night had been about the Betazoid University’s general boycott of Cardassian displays; a political comment on the Union’s involvement on the war, during which Betazed had suffered terribly. In their pain they refused to validate Cardassia’s involvement in the exploration of the future, they were unwelcome as far as the staff of Enaran University were concerned. He scrabbled through his morning briefing, trying to recollect any information about the woman’s so called showing. He could feel her eyes boring into him from across the room as she sipped her cold drink, daring him to make a comment, daring him to risk the insult. Beneath her gaze, what had simply been a hot room was beginning to feel like the surface of the sun. 

“Don’t keep me in suspense Ensign. Do people like it?”

He could see the paragraph on the morning notes, his eyes still heavy with sleep as the operations team had been given their assignments. Something about dirt paintings, or possibly dirt portraits? “Sand Portraits!” he exclaimed, the words racing from his lips as he found a nugget of information. 

“No just any sand young man.” Iska reached into a long tan bag that had been placed on the table in the centre of the room. “Cardassian sand.” she whispered reverentially as she drew a wooden box from the bag, its dark oak like exterior etched with characters and symbols Log did not understand. “I mix it with the sand of my sitter’s home world before I draw their portrait. A singular instant where my home is mixed with theirs.”

“That sounds very poetic.” Log could feel it becoming easier to breathe in the dry air as his body became acclimatised, or perhaps it was easier to breathe without the woman’s overwhelming aloofness. “Is the sand from your home?”

“It is all that is left of it.”

“I don’t understand.” Log furrowed his  brows in confusion. “Cardassia is…”

“…changed.” Her hand hovered over the dark wooden box reverentially. “I was raised in a town amongst the Kelden mountains, miners mostly, we produced a variety of alloys for use throughout the Union.” Her eyes remained transfixed on the box, as though it held a great relic. “When the Dominion bombed Cardassia Prime in retaliation for Central Command’s perceived treachery, they erased my home from the surface of the planet.”

A long breath of silence hovered between the two of them, the artist lost in her memories. Eventually Log took a gasp for air. “They destroyed it all?”

She nodded slowly. “The bombs burned so fiercely the whole valley turned to glass.”

“So that is?” Log nodded to the box, “That’s everything that’s left?”

“I was off-world when the final battle happened. My mother had given me the box as a keep sake. Silly and sentimental.” she looked back to young Ensign, her eyes somewhere between regret and sorrow. “Still, it is all that remains of my home and all that it ever was.”

“Then why use it in your paintings?” Log crossed the gap between them, sitting at the seat next to her; if she deemed it presumptive she didn’t acknowledge it to him. “Why use it up like that? Why, give it away?”

“Because it is important to remember our past as we take the next step forward, without the lessons of the past we will inevitably repeat out mistakes in the future.” She sat back in the chair, taking a sip from the icy drink, a ring of condensation left on the table that rapidly dried in the warm room. “I’m not saying the Cardassians are blameless. But neither are the Klingons, the Romulans, the Tholians, the Gorn or even your blesséd Federation.” 

Log sat in contemplative silence, his mind reaching back to his own childhood on Tellar Prime; warm evenings sat at his father’s knee listening to him practice rhetoric whilst his mother whistled over the dinner pot. How would they be remembered? “How much do you have left?”

“This will be my last piece, after that it will all be gone.” she sighed. “Then I shall have to find another media to work with. And at my age too.” Golding the glass to eye level she tugged at the imaginary wrinkles in her reflection.

“Who will you paint with it?”

“I do not know yet Ensign.” She eyed Log with a mischievous grin. “Maybe I’ll paint you. The future of Starfleet?”

“I don’t think I’d be that interesting to look at.”

“Don’t be so sure. You’ve got a long career ahead of you, we may yet be hanging your portraits amongst the greats in the halls of Starfleet Command.” Her grin grew even wider as she leaned into the young man, the musky scent of wood and dirt, of earthy comfort reaching out on through the dry air. “Somewhere between Kirk and Picard possibly?”

Log felt his face blush. “I doubt I’ll ever be hanging up there.”

“Well if you do, I shall be glad to paint you, in sand or otherwise Ensign.” she stood from the table, causing Log to follow suit out of habit. “I think I can sort the room on my own now . You may tell your superiors it is sufficient.”

With a nod Log turned and left, the cool air of the nearby corridor calling to his body. As the doors swung shut behind him, securing the hot box from dilution by the bases Human centric ambient temperature he intended to turn right, to take the turbolift and return to his quarters, his assigned list of jobs thankfully finished for the day. Instead he found himself walking left, towards the complex where several of the Betazoid University representatives were staying, he had a review for them to hear.