The Passage of Rhin

{unfinished}

Rhin walked alone down the hallway of the ship, lost in her own thoughts as she treaded over the well-worn carpet. Not really paying attention to where she was headed, she turned right at the next junction and pressed her palm to the small pad outside the door that served to open it.
As always, her roaming had brought her here. To the well.
It was not ordinary well, for indeed, it was rather impossible to have such a thing in the middle of a ship in the middle of space, but it was what provided the ship's inhabitants with water for drink and bathing, and so that was what it had been come to be called. but unlike the wells her long-dead ancestors had dug into the rock in search of water, this source was alive.
It was a <i>chinera</i> tree, first discovered on an uninhabited planet almost six thousand years ago, and brought to the Colony in hopes that it would flourish there too. And indeed it did. When they had first brought the first sapling to their planet, it had been just a frail stick with no more than three leaves on it, and two of those brown at that. But the minister of the gardens had taken over the care of the ailing tree, and nurtured that sapling into what it was now: A giant expanse of tree, standing in the center of the prime city, now over a hundred meters tall, its branches stretching to cover several blocks, shading the residents from the sun's evil glare. And it produced XXXX tons of water a day.
Rhin's thoughts shifted away from the tree, its history was so old and often repeated, and her mind found it could manage other thoughts even as it retold this one.
She felt alone.
She had always wanted to travel on a ship such as this one, to venture out into the great unknown, to learn of new races and help cultivate peace between their two nations, to experience new things. And so she had join the Explorations Corps, for that was what they professed to do. But that was not reality. In reality, the Explorations Corps were a rather uninteresting people, who had long ago let beaureacratic rules dictate how there explorations were to proceed. If they were even given any at all. With the mysterious death of the Head of Council, all explorations had ceased, and the Corps where planet-bound. He had been on a routine mission to the Sulphia to check up on their current state of affairs; he was found dead upon arrival, lying quietly on his stasis bed as he normally would until the ship had landed safely.
And so there had to be an Inquisition, to make sure that foul play was not the cause. Personally, Rhin thought his death was likely the result of simply old age: the Head was 1007, after all, the average lifespan was still only 997, and he had outlived that. But still, it meant that no travel was permitted until the physicians were consulted and the Council's fears were satisfied. Rhin did suppose they had a reason to be worried, as many of them could still remember the Rheastic Wars, when diplomatic murders were commonplace and the Council lost many good men, but she still felt they were being a little paranoid about the entire thing. She just wanted to travel again, to be able to see the stars at night again.
To be able to see Avery again.
She had met him on one of her excursions to Leita, on one of the Corps. routine missions to deliver food to the ailing country.