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Amanda tends her garden in the morning, before the Vulcan sun burns away the night’s coolness.
She stands in the dappled shade of the trellis, humming to herself as she slowly makes her way down the row of blooming roses. She does not hurry, though the sun is past the top of the hill behind the garden, and soon even the shadows will be overtaken by its dry, searing heat. She works deliberately, tying a cane here, trimming a leaf there. At intervals she pauses, buries her nose in the masses of blooms, and inhales their delicate fragrance.
Spock sometimes helps her, but today he has wandered away in pursuit of a family of lizards. He has followed them to the end of the garden, to where the green of Terran plants gives way to spiny native foliage and orange dust. He crouches motionless to avoid frightening the small creatures, and watches in fascination as one by one their bodies change pattern, taking on the appearance of the stone or sand or leaf upon which they sit.
He is so engrossed he doesn't notice his mother looking for him. "Spock," she calls, "please come and hold this for me."
With a glance of regret toward the lizards, Spock stands up and hurries back to where Amanda is waiting. She hands him her basket, already half-filled with green leaves and prickly stems. ”Thank you, my love. I'll just be a few minutes."
She takes her scissors and carefully cuts the roses, piling them in the basket that he holds out with both hands. When she has enough, she slips off her blue gloves and takes the basket from him. With her free hand she strokes the top of his head, a human gesture he permits only when they are alone. Spock has recently started school, and the distinction between what is Vulcan and what is human is never far from his mind.
He looks back toward where he left the lizard family, and Amanda smiles. "Go," she says. "But don't get too dirty. And please, no live animals in your pockets today."
Spock searches the garden but he does not find the lizards again. He fills his pockets with botanical specimens instead, spiny fruits and seeds arrayed with translucent wings. He will ask his father about them when they go over his lessons this evening.
By now the sun is overhead, and hunger reminds him it is time for the midday meal. He dusts off his tunic as best he can, taking care to make sure there are no insects hiding in the folds. He recently brought a kidik-mathra into the house, stowed away in his painting box, and he does not wish to have to explain a second incident.
Inside the house, Spock pauses for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dim. The stone floor of the passage is cool through the soles of his boots. Standing there, he listens for Amanda.
A faint noise tells him she is to his left. He follows the sound until at the bend of the passage he sees her in the sitting room, arranging the roses in a vase on the table.
Framed by the doorway, she resembles a painting from a Terran museum—a figure in a white dress, the table with its embroidered cloth, glowing sunlight, roses. Perhaps he should mention this observation to her. It may please her, as it shows he has paid attention to her lessons in Earth history.
Spock is about to start toward her when his mother makes a sound, a gasp of pain and surprise, and he stops. Amanda has pulled her hand away from the flowers and is examining it, frowning.
A thorn. That is what has injured her. Amanda shakes her wounded finger, then touches it to her lips, as if to suck away the blood from the tiny puncture.
Spock takes a breath to speak, but a different sound now stops him: His father's voice. Spock did not hear Sarek arrive home. Until this moment he believed him to be far away, at the Vulcan Science Academy. Now, he realizes Sarek is here, in the room with Amanda.
Sarek moves into view, then. The same doorway that made his mother appear as a painting now frames his father as well. Sarek stands before Amanda, tall and imposing, the vase of roses glowing pink in the space between them.
Spock waits in silence for his father to turn and see him, to reprimand him for playing in the garden when his schoolwork is unfinished. But Sarek does not acknowledge him. Neither of his parents, in fact, seems aware of his presence.
"Sarek," his mother says, and holds out her injured hand.
"Amanda. Let me see," Sarek replies, in a voice from which his normal stern tones are strangely absent. He takes his wife's hand in both of his, holding it palm upward, using his thumbs to gently spread her fingers apart.
It is an odd gesture, one Spock has not seen his father make before. He is still puzzling over the meaning of this action when Sarek makes another, even more strange: He lifts Amanda’s hand to his mouth, and gently presses his lips to her palm.
"Sarek," his mother says again, softly this time—and somehow Spock knows he should not be here, that he is witnessing something private, even secret.
He knows his parents have things between them that do not involve him. He knows they are bonded, and that this connects them in ways he does not perceive. But it has never occurred to him that their private conduct might be so—illogical. Seeing his father make this secret gesture is like seeing a planetary body abandon its stable orbit and fling itself at a different sun.
Spock slips out the way he came, moving quietly out of the house and into the garden. He does not stop until he reaches the desert’s edge, and there he sits on a rock, turning over in his mind what he saw. It was strange, and yet he feels no strangeness from his parents through their familial bond.
Perhaps he will ask his father later to explain it. Then again, perhaps he will not.
He does not go inside again until his mother calls him.