Family Background
Zeylinn was born to four Aenar bondmates in the Anear city of Laibok. She has very little memory of her other parents, not even knowing their names. All she can recall is their telepathic presence in her mind. She is only familiar with her zhavey, Iseva. Iseva was an Aenar zoologist born on stardate 232304.11. Iseva was one of the few Aenar to regularly journey to the surface of the Northern Wastes that they lived below. Her love of exploring the tunnels and the surface above would be the eventual cause of her and her child’s separation from the other Aenar. Despite her future visits to the Aenar settlements in the north, Zeylinn has never made an effort to reach out to her birth family, and her zhavey is hesitant to speak about them.
Early Childhood
Like all Aenar, Zeylinn developed strong telepathic and empathic senses shortly after her birth. This was the primary way that she learned to navigate her environment. While the Aenar do have advanced hearing and other senses to compensate for a lack of eyesight, she used empathic signatures and empathic and telepathic residue to get around her world. Most of her early years are only hazy memories. She spent most of her time in the comfortable underground city of Laibok, surrounded by the collective mind of the Aenar community. For the first five years of her life, Zeylinn spoke aloud no more than a dozen times. When Zeylinn was five, she and Iseva journeyed through some of the lesser-used side tunnels up to the surface to collect migration data on packs of icebats. A large colony of ice bores surprised them, causing severe burns to both zhavey and child and causing the poorly-maintained tunnel to collapse with their heat. Iseva and Zeylinn got lost in the Northern Wastes and tried to get help. However, without the ability to precisely locate them, the Aenar decided it was too dangerous to risk more of their kind in a “fruitless” rescue mission.
Rescue by the Andorians
The pair would have died if not for Andorian Park Ranger Kohl th'Ava. He was patrolling the Northern Wastes and came across the near-frozen Aenar. He evacuated them to the ranger station on the coast of the La’Len Ocean and called for rescue. Iseva, disgusted by being written off so easily, requested her rescuer’s help finding a place in Andorian society rather than going back to the Aenar. Kohl offered to allow them to stay in his family’s guest room for a few weeks at their home in Lar’vela while he helped them make arrangements. This temporary living arrangement became more permanent as the Ava family and their Aenar guests began to make connections. Iseva had always been fascinated by her Andorian cousins and took little time to adjust to speaking aloud and living in a world built for those with conventional sight and no telepathy. After a year, Kohl and his spouses asked Iseva to join their bond. She accepted, and became an official member of the family along with Zeylinn.
Unlike Iseva, Zeylinn had much more trouble adapting to Andorian life. She had grown used to the Aenar collective mind and communicating telepathically. Zeylinn rarely spoke aloud, something that hampered some relationships with her new family for years. Zeylinn’s new charan and shi were the most open to her unique way of communicating, while other members of the family were less receptive. While she always kept one foot both in the world of the Aenar and the Andorians, Zeylinn did learn how to make friends and eventually live a relatively normal life in most aspects.
Aenar, Andorian, Telepath, Trailblazer
As a teenager, Zeylinn’s parents decided to allow her to visit Laibok and meet the Aenar. Zeylinn had only fuzzy memories of her people and the frequently-repeated story of how they had left them to die. Still, she endeavored to enter the reunion with an open mind. Among the Aenar, she found a sense of belonging and community that she had been sorely lacking in Andorian society. She found the Aenar way of communication much more natural. While she didn’t fully forgive the lack of a rescue for her and her mother, she came to understand just how perilous a situation the Aenar were in.
Back home, Zeylinn’s appraisal of the Aenar had a mixed reception. Not all of her parents were happy with her coming away from the experience more interested in her Aenar heritage. However, none of them would stand in the way of her regularly visiting the Aenar underground cities to discover who she really was. During one of these visits, she met a team of doctors who specialized in Aenar telepathy and treating ailments related to it. She learned about a form of telepathic therapy where seasoned telepaths could link with a distressed subject and help guide their recovery through the link between their minds.
Zeylinn was already considering a potential career in mental health. She applied to the University of Sheras to study mental health and behavioral therapy. While not engaged in coursework, she would split her time between Lar’vela with her family and the north pole with the Aenar. She studied with Aenar telepaths and learned that she had potent telepathic abilities, even by the standards of the Aenar. She practiced this ability regularly. After earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in behavioral health, she entered a doctoral program in mental health. Her dissertation discussed the potential benefits of telepathic therapy and was well-received. Looking for a venue where she could research her approach, she brought the idea to her charan, a commodore at Starfleet Medical. He saw great promise in the idea and encouraged her to become a researcher with Starfleet.
Joining Starfleet
Zeylinn applied to Starfleet Academy and was accepted, entering the counseling program. After graduation, her charan ensured that she became a researcher at Starfleet Medical, working with the Psychological Health department. After proving her worth as a researcher, she was able to pitch her idea to Starfleet Medical. While hesitant, the higher-ups believed the idea had potential. Zeylinn worked with a team of researchers from other worlds where telepathy was common, including Vulcan, Betazed, and Ullia. The research was mostly conducted from the Starfleet Medical Research Annex on Andoria.
In addition to her work as a cadet and a researcher, Zeylinn served as a surrogate for both Andorian and Aenar families without a zhen. She knew all about the steep decline in both the Andorian and especially the Aenar population. She even partially blamed the desperate state of the Aenar population for the decision to leave her and Iseva to die rather than risk more lives to launch a rescue. Between 2372 and 2383 she carried five children. This did cause some slow-downs in the pace of research, but she continued with her work throughout.
After a decade of research and trials, Starfleet Medical gave its blessing to Aenar telepathic therapy to be used with patients. However, Zeylinn remained assigned to Starfleet Medical and mainly worked with patients who had specific issues with telepathy. She worked on cases of Bendii Syndrome and Pa’nar Syndrome with Dr. T’Kel. She also worked with a science officer from the USS Blackwell who had difficulty recovering from a virus that caused telepathic sufferers to lose control of their abilities. During this time, she continued her work with Dr. T’Kel to supplement her own abilities with Vulcan techniques and teaching him Aenar techniques that he could utilize through mind melds.
Field-Testing Telepathic Therapy
In late 2400, Zeylinn was allowed to test the effectiveness of telepathic therapy in the field aboard a starship outside of specific afflictions related to telepaths. After much discussion the USS Constitution-B was chosen as the ship where Zeylinn would first be assigned to supplement the ship’s counseling department. She boarded a transport headed for the Marchlands, eager for the next step in her career.
