Nimi mi li Mila. Sina ale li nasa.

[Mila]

Commander Vilar is, under normal circumstances, a rather serene man...at least for a Bolian. The chief medical officer of the Xavier would great people who entered his sickbay with a smile and an understanding bedside manner, but he didn't have the sheer...joie de vivre that kept the hospitality industry drowning in a sea of blue. Calm, collected, compassionate, amiable and dedicated. A pioneering researcher in the fields of xenobiology; one who has received multiple accolades throughout the greater medical community. A credit to the ship.

That serenity was being pushed to it's limits at the moment. Mila, the strange woman who Beta Shift had encountered on the Jefferson, had been brought into Sickbay for a routine examination. The examination itself, however, seemed to be anything but routine. Mila was standing up, arms crossed, snapping at Dr. Vilar.

"Sina pana e mi lon ni. Mi wile toki tawa ona lon tenpo ni taso? Taso sina wile sona e ni taso!"

"Again, miss, if you would just sit down, I'm sure we could figure out exactly what's going on..." Vilar replied, approaching the end of his proverbial rope.

[Lt. Solia Vex]

Solia's not on shift (otherwise she'd be on the bridge, you know, flying the ship) but is taking some of her precious personal time to check in on their strange passenger. It's not every day that you encounter an unknown species in a part as well mapped out as the border with the former Romulan Empire and she's curious. Plus she feels weirdly responsible as the person who managed to at least kind of communicate with the woman, even if it mostly just amounted to exchanging names. And Trill naming conventions being what they are, she's amused at the name 'Solia Starfleet'.

"Something tells me she's not following." she chimes in before either side can get too agitated. Where's a xeno-linguist when you need one? "I feel like we might have to do this the old-fashioned way so we can at least tell her what's going on and she doesn't feel like she was just abducted by a bunch of aliens who are now trying to poke and prod her."

"Mila." she says to make it clear she's trying to talk to the woman as she walks over and goes to sit down on the biobed across from her. She has to assume she knows she's in a medbay but probably not why seeing how she seems uninjured. The question is how to communicate to her that they're trying to figure out why the universal translator isn't working when Engineering already assured them it's functioning as it should. She puts her closed hand against her mouth and thinks for a moment.

Then she has an idea. She grabs a datapad and holds it up between herself and Commander Vilar. She says "I am talking now." and holds her hand to her mouth, throwing her fingers out towards the datapad. Then she hold sup the pad and wriggles her fingers in horizontal lines to mimic code running across it. Then she holds her hand up to the pad and makes the same 'throwing her fingers out' motion towards Commander Vilar. Then she nods and smiles very slowly and deliberately. She repeats the whole process with the pad between herself and Mila and shakes her head, frowning. Finally she points at the pad and shrugs, then at herself, nods, at Commander Vilar, nods again, then at Mila and shakes her head.

Finally she sets the datapad down and looks at Mila and mimes them talking without the datapad between them, back and forth, to try and convey them trying to establish a communications.

She taps herself. "Solia-Vex."

She takes the badge off of her uniform and holds it up. "Starfleet."

She points at the Commander. "Vilar."

She mimes speaking again. "Talk."

She nods. "Yes."

Shakes her head. "No."

[Mila]

Mila frowns a bit as Solia gestures at the PADD, pursing her lips in frustration. She seems to understand the problem, but communicating through it is...well, obviously difficult.

She taps herself. "Mila. Mee-lah."

She gestures at her right shoulder. "Ka'yun. Kah-yooon," she says, drawing out the syllables.

Pointing at her mouth, and gesturing forward, trying to match Solia's motions, she continues. "Toki. O toki."

Nodding: "Lon."

Shaking her head: "Ala." Now we were getting somewhere!

"Meli Starfleet, mi lon ni tan seme?"

Or not...

[Lt. Solia Vex]

"Slow down, slow down!" she says, moving her hands down towards the ground in what she hopes is universal enough of a gesture.

"Meli? Seme?" she asks slowly. She assumes she's asking about Starfleet but it's hard to tell. "Ah." she says and holds one finger up before grabbing the datapad again and pulling up a couple of images for Mila to look at. First up, a map of the quadrant, pointing at the various areas. "Starfleet." she adds a gesture of her hand moving through the air like a spaceship. "Federation." she pulls up a picture of the founding of the Federation with a Human, a Vulcan, a Tellarite and an Andorian obviously posing for the camera and shaking hands.

From there it gets trickier. She mimes holding a phaser, then shakes her head. "No." She makes the gesture for talking again and nods, ending on holding out her hand for Mira to shake.

[Mila]

Mila shakes her head at that last bit. "Ala. Ala! Federation. Ona li pali e ilo utala."

She paused, biting her lower lip. "Pali," she said, taking her two fists and pounding one on the other, as if she was hammering something. "Ilo," she said, pointing at the PADD Solia was holding. "Utala," she finished, mimicking the phaser mime Solia had made.

"Fascinating," Dr. Velar said, observing the two communicate.

[Lt. Solia Vex]

"Fighting? Conflict?" she tries to guess at the first gesture. The second and third make it clear enough though.

"The weapon! Utala Starfleet? It's old..." she starts, then abandons trying to explain verbally. She takes the PADD and pulls up something she imagines any spacefaring civilization would recognize as the passing of time. A generic solar system. She let's it spin normally for a moment, then drags the timeline of the simulation backwards. "Past. Lon Utala." she says and nods. Then she winds the spinning sun and planets forwards again. "Present. Ala utala."

She pauses for a second and glances at the ceiling as she thinks. "Past utala big." she says and puts her palms together before moving them apart. "Present utala small." she adds and brings her hands back together until they almost touch. "It was an accident. A mistake." How do you mime that? "Oh!"

She hops off the bio bed and says "Past Federation small. Scared." and kind of cowers a little, shoulders hunched, glancing left and right and putting on bit of an angry face towards the end of it. Then she takes a step to the side, straightens up along with tugging on the hem of her uniform. She looks over to where she'd previously stood and pulls one side of her mouth into kind of a frown and slowly shakes her head. "Present Federation. We fix the past mistake." she says with a determined nod. "Ala big utala. One big utala." she says holding up one finger, then points at Commander Velar, then Mila. "Scared. Two big utala. Three." she says adding another two fingers to her counting and shakes her head before putting all her fingers down. "Zero big utala."

[Mila]

"Nnnn..." Mila said, trying to figure out how to communicate.

"Ilo utala li sin ala?" she said. "Sin," she said, pointing to the current picture on the PADD, the present timeline. "Sin ala," she then said, sliding the timeline back towards the past.

"Taso ilo utala li awen pali a!" she said, firmly. "Pali," she repeated, holding her lower fist steady, and slapping it with her other open palm, over and over. "Awen," she said, continuing to do the motion. "Awwwennnnnnn," she said, drawing out the syllables. "Pini," she said, stopping the motion. "Awen," she repeated, starting again. "Pini. Awen. Pini. Awen," she said, stopping and starting to emphasize the difference.

[Lt. Solia Vex]

"Okay, okay, yes I think I get it!" she cheers a little.

"Ilo utala sin pini." she nods emphatically. "Pini..." she pauses to bring up the insignia of the former Romulan Empire up on the PADD "...ilo utala sin." She looks around and hurries to grab a mug from Commander Velar's desk. "Ilo utala..." she leaves the sentence hanging and throws the mug on the floor to break it. "Pini ilo utala. Ala Starfleet. Ala Romulans. Ala ilo utala."

"Romulans sin ilo Starfleet. Lon? Ala?" she tries with a bit of uncertainty on the second word, hoping it means technology or data and waffling between yes and no to indicate maybe. She finishes with a kind of disgruntled and concerned look on her face.

[Mila]

Her brow furrowed at the words Romulan, but she nodded. Maybe Solia hadn't gotten quite all the nuances of her point across, but the gist of it seemed to be headed Mila's way, at the very least.

She pointed at the Romulan Star Empire insignia before continuing.

"Jan Romulan li toki e ni: Starfleet pimeja li pakala e suno." She sounded... halfway through accusative and questioning; like she was unsure herself about what she was saying.

She paused for a moment, trying to figure out where the two were on the translations.

"Jan. Nnnnn. Jan Kaa'yun. Jan Mila," she said, pointing at herself. "Jan Starfleet," she added, pointing at Solia.

"Pimeja..." she said, looking around. "Pimeja...." After thinking for a moment, she walked over to Solia, and suddenly clamped her hand over her eyes. "Pimeja." She then removed her hand. "Suno. Pimeja. Suno," she said, repeatedly placing and removing her hand from Solia's face.

"Pakala," she finished, bending over to pick up some of the shattered mug. "Pakala e suno. Jan Romulan li toki e ni: Starfleet pimeja li pakale e suno. Starfleet li pakala e mun ona. Starfleet li pakala e tomo ona. Ni li toki pi lon ala?"

[Lt. Solia Vex]

Solia looks puzzled for a moment, picking up the PADD to actually take some notes and muttering to herself. "Broken? Fragment? Blind? Hidden? The Romulans are saying something. Starfleet broken? Oh! Verbs!" she slaps her forehead. Starfleet destroyed the seeing? Blind. See. Darkness. Light. The Romulans say Starfleet destroyed their sun!" it clicks together in her head. "The Romulans have been telling you that Starfleet destroyed their home system!"

She breaks up her rambling to look at Mila, parsing through what she said one more time. "Yes! Uh, lon! Starfleet ala pakala. Jan Romulan toki pi lon ala. Jan Starfleet li utala jan Ka'yun. Jan Romulan li pali..." she pulls the PADD out again and points at the insignia of the Romulan Star Empire and motions her hands as coming together to form one big sphere. "Jan Romulan Star Empire li utala..." she gestures at all three of them. "Everyone. Star Empire li toki pi lon ala e Utala." she tries, hoping that the 'speak lies as a weapon' survives her cobbled together translation.

[Mila]

Mila bit her lower lip, again -- something Solia would probably be associating with her deep in thought once more.

"Sina kama tawa ni tan seme? Starfleet kama tawa ni tan seme? Stafleet wile pali e seme?"

She paused again, flexing her hands in a bit of agitation -- communication being difficult?

"Tawa...tawa...." she muttered. "Tawa," she said, coming up and pacing around the sickbay, taking exaggerated steps. "Mi tawa. Solia Starfleet tawa ala. Tawa."

"Kama....nnn. Mila li kama tawa ma Solia Starfleet," she said, pausing, and then walking right up to Solia, stopping maybe three inches from her. "Kama."

"Starfleet kama tawa ni," she said, stomping one foot for emphasis. "Seme? Starfleet kama tawa ni seme?"

[Lt. Solia Vex]

"Tawa... walking. Moving. You want to know something about us moving. Where we're going? Why we're so close?" she takes a couple guesses. There's too many unfamiliar words but she can tell it's a question. She grabs Mila by the shoulders and pushes her back a little bit because she's invading her personal space more than a little bit. "I get it. Yes. Why did Starfleet come here. Or something along those lines." She runs her hand through her hair. This would take a while to explain but maybe she can get the very basics across and reassure Mila enough they can sit down and hash out a more extensive vocabulary than just bits and pieces.

"Starfleet toki." she gestures between the two. Then mimes her hand as a ship flying through space, followed by placing her hand flat above her eyes and looking around. She grabs Commander Vilar's hand by the wrist to pull him into a handshake with a quiet "Sorry, sir." Then she does the same to Mila. Finally she holds out her arm and makes a slashing motion across it along with fingers splaying out from it to mime bleeding, then moves her hand back and forth across it and ends on a determined nod. Talk, explore, meet and help.

[Mila]

Mila seemed to have a very different definition of 'personal space' than Solia did, and frowned as she was pushed away. She did seem to get the general gist of Solia's meaning, though, and slowly nodded.

"Ni li sona sin. Sina sona ala e nimi sina," she said, sitting down on the biobed, deep in thought.

"Lieutenant, a word?" Dr. Vilar said, calling Solia over.

[Lt. Solia Vex]

"Yes, sir?" she says, stepping over to Commander Vilar and leaving Mila to mull over the new information.

[Narrator]

"Good work, establishing a rapport with the patient," Vilar said, with a smile. "Solid first contact-type procedures.

"Do you think you have enough yet to ask her about this?" he asked, pulling up one of Mila's charts on the biobed screen. It was...surprisingly blank, missing a lot of the normal vital signs you would scan for. There was, however, one display that Vilar pointed out. "See this line? She's emitting a low-level form of radiation, at a frequency that's disrupting our sensors. That might explain why we didn't know she was on the Jefferson. And I have no idea if she has some sort of tech doing this, or if this is a natural phenomenon; some sort of chameleon effect. And since the universal translator isn't picking up on her, and she doesn't trust me..."" he said, with a shrug and a smile.

[Lt. Solia Vex]

"Thank you, sir. I can try... That might take a little longer to establish enough of a vocabulary for though. Not a lot of good charades for scanner-disrupting radiowaves." she jokes a little. "Is she otherwise okay? No danger of accidentally disrupting any vital systems? It'd help a lot if I could take her to one of the briefing rooms and have more screens to work with."

[Narrator]

"Well, the problem is, we don't know. Whatever this radiation is is blocking my scans almost entirely. Unless I go with maximum sensitivity, she may as well not be there as far as my tricorder is concerned."

"She looks healthy enough, though we have no baseline to compare her to. And I don't think she's being actively disruptive. Maybe don't stand next to the warp core, just to be on the safe side," he joked.

[Lt. Solia Vex]

"Noted. Maybe it is just natural camouflage and her planet has animals that hunt by EM waves..."

"Mila. Tawa e Solia. Toki... big." she says, adding the gesture for 'large' just in case. "Solia li pali e toki Ka'yun. Mila li pali e toki Starfleet."

[Mila]

For some reason, Mila looked away a little bit at Solia, her skin turning maybe a slightly darker shade of blue?

"Lon. Mi o tawa. Mi kama sona e toki Starfleet," she said, agreeing, gathering herself. She straightened her...uniform? Clothing? Pilot suit? ... and followed Solia, nodding, as the two headed towards a brief time skip.