Author's Note: I've had so many Sarek/Amanda origins stories in my head for years now. Some of them have been fully fleshed out into novel-length fan fictions, but I still have nearly a dozen more ideas. The problem is, I'm pretty sure I lack the stamina and creativity to write ten more fully unique slow burn, 100,000+ word stories.

Then it occurred to me…why not just make a compendium of one-shots revolving around Amanda telling the unlikely story of how they met to nosy inquirers, fancifully changing it up each time just to keep her audience on their toes?

I can't promise this story will be updated with any regularity due to three other open stories and a life I occasionally have to live, but each of the chapters are designed to be standalone stories so there won't be any cliffhangers. :)

I'm also willing to make project somewhat interactive. I have ten very different basic plot lines in mind, but if you're absolutely dying to see a small personal head canon woven into one of these tales, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I'll be happy to give credit where it's due, of course.

Spock's hands tucked back into the soil, turning over granular debris. The soft sand mixed with the rough pebbles brushing his skin was a delightful sensory symphony.

"Spock, can you hand me another flavinit bulb?"

Without saying a word, he lifted his hands from the dusty dirt, collected one of the palm-sized rhizomes, and placed it in his mother's outstretched hand.

"You're very quiet," she remarked as she plopped the bulb into the flower bed with unusual gusto.

He dismissed the impulse to make a remark about her affinity for describing plainly evident facts and returned to tilling the soil with his bare hands. He loved gardening and he especially loved having this private time with her, but he did not love her probing questions.

"Is something wrong, Spock?"

And there it was. He clenched his jaw and began to dig. Several years ago she might have chosen a nonsensical term of endearment such as baby or honey instead of his given name, but he sensed his father's protests had finally cured her of this human habit.

"Spock?"

"Nothing is wrong."

"I don't believe you."

That forced him to look at her. Her eyes were riddled with concern and apprehension. She was so easy to read. Sometimes he loved that about her, but other times it was such an embarrassment.

"Does it have anything to do with meeting T'Pring yesterday?"

He sucked in a slow breath and tried to remember his training. Emotions were to be controlled, swallowed, pressed so far into the back of the mind they became irrelevant. Too bad his heart began racing and his jaw began to quiver. He pushed his hands still further into the dirt so she wouldn't notice the shaking.

"Do you not like her?"

"I do not know her," he said, doing a very poor job of modulating the hostility in his tone.

"But you will get to know each other."

What Spock didn't say, what he would never say, was that he did not wish to know her. He didn't need to. She wasn't any different than any other Vulcan child. Most of his peers looked upon his half-human form with curiosity at best and contempt at worst, but T'Pring's eyes had held a unique sort of disgust he hadn't anticipated.

Her father had to force her to touch his hands during the bonding ceremony but in the end, they had gone through with it. He was now bonded and betrothed to a girl who hated him. What did it even mean to feel bonded? He thought he would feel different but all he felt was shame and isolation.

"She does not like me," he whispered.

"Spock—"

"Why do I have to be bonded to anyone?" he interjected, no longer bothering to conceal his frustration.

"I know your father talked to you about things that are going to happen when you start growing up," she said in that soft tone that she always used whenever she was preparing to defend Vulcan logic even though she clearly didn't believe in it herself. "You're going to want to find a partner."

Spock cringed. He had a rudimentary understanding of sexual reproduction from his elementary biology classes, but discussing such things with his mother was as appealing as bonding with T'Pring had been.

"I do not like her and she does not like me," he insisted. "We do not need to be familiar with each other for me to know that."

"Your perspective might change when you grow up," she replied. "And so might hers. You're both only seven. If would probably be surprising if you did like each other."

"Why can I not choose my own mate?"

"There's nothing that says you can't." She dropped the spade into the flower bed, dusted her dirt from her gloves, and tossed them to the ground. "Lots of people don't end up marrying the people they were bonded to as children. Your own father didn't."

"If bonds can be so easily broken, then why make them?" He had wanted to ask his father this, but he secretly feared his father would have no good answer.

"We arranged this match for you just in case."

"And what if T'Pring finds someone else she likes more than me? What if I do not find anyone? Then what will I do?"

"Oh, Spock," she sighed, leaning toward him to pull him into a hug.

His human instinct to accept his mother's affection battled his Vulcan training to reject it. He decided to allow her motherly touch—his father and Michael were out of the house and there would be no one there to witness their rather emotional exchange.

"Listen to me," she said, pulling away from the embrace and grabbing him by the shoulders. "There's someone out there for everyone. Sometimes you find them in the most unexpected places."

"Like how you and father found each other?"

Her lips curved into a smile. "Something like that."

"You were a schoolteacher," he mused. "How did you ever come to meet a Vulcan ambassador?"

Her eyes began to twinkle. "A lot of people have asked me that question over the years."

He deliberated whether he ought to have asked. It was a very personal question, but she was his mother.

"The story's changed a bit over time," she continued, glancing upward to observe a fire hawk circling overhead.

"How can it change?" he asked. "The truth is the truth."

"Sure it is," she agreed. "But there can be different versions of the truth, depending on who wants to know."

Spock furrowed his brow and stuffed his fingertips back into the flower bed. "You do not make sense."

"Well, there was the time I met your father while I was staying in his house as an exchange student," she said, touching her index finger to her mouth. "That was a good one. Then for a while, I told people he was my neighbor on Earth. The stories get a little wilder with each telling. I think my favorite was the time we switched bodies in a transporter accident."

His abject shock overrode his logic. "What?"

"Oh! Or maybe the time we met when he crashed landed on Earth in the year 1969."

Spock froze and turned his head to stare at his mother. "Those stories are true?"

"Maybe," she winked. "Maybe not."

"How can they all be true when they are so markedly different?"

"There's always a little kernel of truth in every fiction. Besides, sometimes the real truth is stranger than fiction."

"The truth is the truth," he reasserted. "It is illogical to lie."

"That's a very Vulcan answer," she admitted, offering him her spade and a particularly fat flavinit bulb.

"How many versions of the truth have you told?" he asked, plunging the gardening tool into the dirt with renewed focus.

"I can't even remember," she laughed. "I just know it all started when…"