[ Nyota knows that Spock doesn't hold the same appreciation or care for specific days as she does, as Vulcan's place little emphasis on them. But their anniversary is important to her, something she wants to celebrate, and she appreciates the fact that Spock has been agreeable to her suggestion to spend the evening together and gone along with her whims. She knows he can't have enjoyed standing out in the hall. ]

Surprise would happen at a surprise birthday party. Not now. [ She'll get his birthday out of him one day, but until then, she can celebrate these little days with him.

There are times when she wished Amanda was still alive, or that she had been able to talk to the woman before the destruction of Vulcan. As the only known woman who had a long-term, lasting relationship with a Vulcan, there are questions Nyota wants to ask. Not only for tips in dealing with Spock, or Vulcans in general, but in handling a relationship with someone from a different species altogether. There's more than one reason why Nyota's one of the best linguists in Starfleet, and it's not simply because she can has a keen ear and an adept tongue. She knows people, and studies them closely, and being able to talk to Amanda, who made a life in a place completely foreign from her own and loved someone from a culture just as foreign would have been amazing. There are others she can talk to, but Amanda holds a special place in her heart, even unknown.

Nyota steps away from him, reaching for a scroll case she had stashed away in the rec room earlier, carefully wrapped and labeled. ] It's not a traditional gift for an anniversary, but I wanted you to have this. Couldn't pass it up when I found it.

[ She passes it to him. Inside the case, he'll find a handcrafted scroll depicting a scene from Vulcan's reform. Much of the art on Vulcan had been destroyed, and while a simple scroll does little to make up for the loss - and not that art is as important as the cultural tenets or knowledge lost - it's... something. ]