The gathering was called the Sonic Fellowship Tribute by the Akaru. For anyone stepping into the vast chamber for the first time, it felt less like a festival and more like being swallowed by living sound. The oval room framed by a towering ceiling appeared to be carved from pale marble. The floor, walls and ceiling were veined with a network of fluorescent crystals. They radiated gentle pulses of light that sank into the floor and bloomed outward in shimmering ripples of color. Each wave carried the resonance of the three stages arranged in a loose triangle around the hall. The sound was not ear-achingly loud in the way the attending Starfleet officers expected. Yet the sound was all-encompassing, as if the air itself carried the music throughout every surface.

Every breath felt like it was a part of the song.

Most of the crowd moved with the sound. Some swayed or tapped their feet to the rhythm. The Akaru were tall, bronze-skinned Vulcanoids with ears curved backward in graceful arcs rather than pointy like their distant kin. Brows were thinly ridged in patterns unique to clan and settlement. Many wore dirty blond or pale honey-brown hair that caught the shifting light of their crystal jewelry. The garments they favored shimmered as they danced. Revelers wore loose-cut arachnoid-silk in colors of champagne gold, red-bronze, or copper-apricot. Strands of neon crystal lined their clothing. The men bared their midriffs beneath billowing shirts and wide pants that swirled like banners as they spun. The women revealed their abdomen beneath angled tops that hid their chests under billowy, loose fabric. Everyone glittered with glowing adornments of glowing amplification crystals. Sound flowed directly from the instruments to jewelry like ear cuffs, cheek-piercing ornaments or brooches with tassels of light that flickered in time with the music. Even the older and more portly Akaru wore the same torso-revealing cuts of fabric. Their joy seemed as unrestrained as that of their younger companions.

The USS Cardinal’s officers were invited to observe and participate in the celebration aboard the Akaru vessel B’elle VI. They found themselves swept immediately into a tide of scent, color, and sound. The Akaru loved sharing their culture.

As a group of officers entered the wide doorway, Akaru pressed crystal jewelry into their hands. Vendors circulated through the crowd. They shouted poetic descriptions of their wares. Many items were free, with the sponsor of each item announced repeatedly. Food stalls erupted with steaming, sweet-hot pastries or long strands of bioluminescent noodles twirled around elongated eating utensils like glowing ribbons. Meat coated in jewel-bright spices filled the air with sharp, faintly floral aromas.

A rotating cast of bands defined the festival. Sonic melodies spiraled outward from five-stringed instruments called strums. On each stage, a unique trio performed songs that complemented each other. Each stum was carved from local hardwoods, then shaped into triangular silhouettes or curled forms suggestive of wings or waves. Crystals implanted along the fretboards glowed when touched. They acted as both pickup and amplifier in a Terran guitar’s signal chain. Each note was amplified by these crystals before being transmitted across every crystal in the room. Musicians played patterns and scales arranged differently than human guitars. Intervals were laid diagonally in ways where guitar scales would be played linearly. Every scale tone started from one of the crystalline nodes. When a musician traced a run, light darted ahead of their fingers like a living thing. Double-tapping a fret crystal could change all the root notes of the crystal.

Each note triggered sympathetic vibrations of light across everything from walls to the jewelry worn by festival-goers. A lead line could be felt at the sternum. Sound traveled through one’s bones. One type of strum sent bright chords that rippled across the walls in soft silver light. A thicker, deeper instrument gave off a resonant pulse that hummed in the feet and hips. The sound of its triplet pulses called dancers into motion with galloping bass.

Akaru melodies swept, fell and rose in vaulting jumps of pitch. Many pieces used the Akaru version of dropped tuning. This allowed single-finger arpeggios where notes descended into a dark waterfall of tone. Bands played fast, but precise. Fingers flew in blistering runs of finger plucking, tapping or strumming. The songs were thrash-like in speed but melodic and like a siren’s call in the upper registers. The crystals provided natural distortion, reverb and delay.

A band called Star of the Red Hills took the center stage as the crowd cheered. Crystal tassels lifted around them like a field of fireflies. Destza, their lead, wore a crown of crystals woven into her pale blond braids. It amplified her voice as she sung. As she passed her hands across the fretboard of her strum, the crystals lit a storm of gold and violet radiance. Her voice rose above the chord pattern. Her smooth, resonant call told the same story the festival told every year. She sung of the end of harvest, the shared work of the past twelve months and gratitude for the pleasant season before winter set in. It was a ritual older than their written history. Most Akaru sang with her. Others shouted with laughter when the rhythm shifted into a celebratory chant.

On another stage, a band of maritime scientists played their set. Their singer bore a crystalline implant above his brow. Tattoos swirled around it like speckled constellations. His strum sent patterns of blue and sea-green light weaving through the room. They sang of the deep-ocean migrations between the world’s continents. Their verses honored the great seasonal cycles that fed their coastal communities.

Each band represented a profession, neighborhood, or region of their world. Vendors sold tiny amplification crystals shaped like local animals, plants, or celestial bodies of the Setu system. Each one represented the year’s story. Children ran and shouted as they compared them. Each one glowed according to one of the strums on stage.

Throughout it all, Starfleet uniforms drifted like islands in the sea of Akaru color. The officers were greeted with delighted waves and ushered into circles of dancers whether they wished it or not. A few Akaru mimed exaggerated shock when they spotted officers in uniform. Clothing that hid the midriff was considered a symbol of stiffness, or spiritual sleep, during this festival. It was all meant in good humor and jest.

A person who refused to celebrate was called the sleeping prince or sleeping sister. This represented someone who had not yet opened themselves to the communal spirit of the celebration. Their inner light was seen as dimmed and in need of waking.

A whisper of sleeping prince began circling one of the stages as Lt. Cmdr. M’kath stood glowering near a vendor stall. His muscular arms were crossed as he ignored the music entirely. His long sandy-brown ponytail hung motionless while everyone else moved with the rhythm. The Akaru around him noticed quickly. They looked from him to one another, expressions amused and conspiratorial.

A woman wearing glowing cheek-piercings gasped loud enough to turn heads. “A sleeper!”

Another pointed at him. “A sleeping prince! Wake him!”

It started as a joke shouted between a few dancers. As the words carried, more Akaru began streaming in, delighted. They surrounded the mahogany Klingon. They urged him to join them while clapping and laughing. Crystals on their jewelry flared in bright pulses in tune with the all-encompassing audio waves.

The stream of people intensified until M’kath found himself trying to move away from the stage.

The crowd tightened around the Klingon as he braced his shoulders into a rigid posture. Akaru voices rose in playful alarm and encouragement. Someone banged a fork against a glowing noodle bowl and pointed. Another shook a tasseled brooch above her head and shouted, “Waken, prince! Awaken!”

M’kath growled under his breath and huffed. The sound only made the Akaru laugh harder.

A hand clapped against his upper arm. “Sir!” A breathless voice cut through the din. “We should probably relocate before they carry you off.” Ensign Trell Dirov squeezed through the ring of chanting Akaru. His gold eyes widened as his cobalt features softened in helpless amusement. The youthful-looking Bolian clutched a half-eaten bioluminescent pastry that glowed green against his palm.

M’kath frowned. “Dirov! Why are you not assisting in dispersing this crowd?”

“Oh, I tried,” Trell admitted. “They think I’m encouraging them.”

A stocky Akaru man leapt behind M’kath and tapped on an adhesive-backed crystal that bonded to the black fabric of the Klingon’s tunic. The crowd erupted in approval. Music began to course through the bones of the Klingon who had previously refused to wear an amplification crystal.

Ensign Kim weaved between dancers with a tactical officer’s precision. She stepped between M’kath and a particularly enthusiastic Akaru. The reveler had dropped to one knee and was leaning forward in an attempt to drape a glowing sash around M’kath’s hips.

“Commander,” Kim Jung-Soo said as she held back a grin, “they don’t seem convinced you’re awake.”

“I am perfectly alert,” M’kath said defensively. “I am merely distracted. It has been a busy work day.”

“Busy?” Trell gestured with the glowing pastry. “Sir, I changed nearly seven hundred isolinear chips just to get our 2360s system to handshake properly with modern Akaru partitioning. My fingers still feel like jelly.” His voice rose comically high as he added, “But I’m ready to party!” The Bolian ended his sentence with an overly enthusiastic wiggle of his shoulders that made two nearby Akaru cheer loudly.

Jung-Soo elbowed him gently. “Please never do that again.”

“No promises”, Trell said as he bopped.

Ensign Kian Harol emerged from the crowd with a smile so unguarded it startled M’kath. The Trill usually carried a distant, half-faded look behind his cornflower blue eyes. His scruffy beard made him appear older than he was.

Those who knew him noticed he now seemed lit from within. Kian had been traumatized since the loss of his friend Ensign Rho during the first strike of the Vaadwaur attack. As the Jovian Mind Flu swept through the Cardinal, Kian used techniques from ongoing therapy to process the psychological effects of the illness.

Two Akaru women hooked glowing tassels onto M’kath’s belt before they tugged him toward a circle with others. He resisted before they left with a smile, still watching from the circle.

Kim blinked at the Trill. “Harol. are you okay?”

“Better than okay.” He pushed a glowing inflatable gently away. “Therapy. Time off. New perspectives.” His smile softened. “I lost someone. She should’ve lived. Instead I did.” He shrugged, the movement small but firm. “So I’m trying to live in a way she would’ve wanted. She loved festivals and loud, ridiculous music. So…” He gestured at the nearest musicians with both arms. “This is exactly right.”

The closest Akaru whooped in approval and slapped a glowing brooch onto his shoulder. Kian laughed heartily.

M’kath turned to stare at the young Trill. He saw the glow within his expression. He moved freely through the dense, noisy crowd unburdened. Kian began to dance with the two women from the circle.

The Klingon’s jaw tightened.

Kim nudged him. “Sir. You should join them.”

“I do not dance,” M’kath said immediately.

Trell tilted his head. “You also said you didn’t do karaoke on Gamma Eridon, and we all know how that went.”

“That was a strategic vocal demonstration”, M’kath said proudly.

Kian stepped closer. “Commander. No one here cares how you look. They just want you to share the moment.”

Around them the Akaru resumed their chants, softer now.

“Wake, wake, wake…”

The Klingon exhaled through his nose. He studied the newfound warmth behind Kian’s eyes. The Ensign’s joy was hard-earned.

M’kath looked away before he reluctantly stepped into the open space the Akaru eagerly cleared for him.

A voracious cheer exploded across the room.

M’kath lifted his arms in what might generously be called a dance posture. His shoulders locked and popped. His hips refused any fluidity as they shifted. He moved as if the inertial dampeners were malfunctioning. His motions were awkward, square and painfully Klingon.

But he moved.

And the Akaru exalted him for it.