deuceoftears | TLV IC Inbox

"Ah! You tease!" she laughs, righting herself and clinging desperately to her little hold. But as she pushes hair from her face, she gives him a genuine smile.

"Thank you, Jedao. This has been a wonderful experience."

"The most common mistake beginners make is pushing off too gently, and ending up drifting short of their target with nothing else to push on," he explains.

For all her wild imperfect aim, she is doing better than most dirtside-raised cadets, who had far more thorough instructions before hand.

"When falling and flying are the same, better to be fearless than cautious." And it seems that is very much her style.

"There is nothing to fear here. There is nothing to fret about. The only thing I feared at home was - "

She pauses, pulling herself atop the hold so she can push her skirts down.

"Not knowing, I suppose. What do you fear?"

"Oh, the boring sorts of things. Making mistakes I can't fix. Being lied to, being unwanted. I fear hurting people when I didn't mean to," he says honestly.

She rests her cheek against her hand, letting her feet float behind her. "I fear that, too. Being unwanted. Were you unwanted once?"

"For most of my life, before the barge." It's an old ache, but no longer such a sharp one. "And the person who did want me...I didn't want to serve."

He sounds wistful, more than anything, a gentle melancholy.

She pushes off slower this time, drifting over to him. "Did you have to serve him?"

"For a little while. I needed to wait for the right moment to kill him."

Somber, rather than victorious. He orients himself to face her and lets go, trusting in his own inertia not to drift out of range of the post.

"I see. And you were successful in that? What did you do when you were free?"

She reaches out for the post, or for him, whichever she drifts closer to.

When she grips him, she gives him a little of her own momentum; they rotate slowly in place.

"Ah, yes and no. I did kill him, but someone else took me prisoner after. I was...quiet, for some time. And then the Admiral offered me a place here."

She holds fast to him, but there isn't the frantic excitement of before. She's simply existing here with him. Calm.

"So you weren't able to escape that time? Have you ever been free?"

They turn, slowly, together. Jedao doesn't mind it.

"To be fair, I did not try very hard," he admits wryly. "I was tired, and - somewhat infamous, and I wasn't treated badly, overall. It was easier to stay where I was put than go on the run somewhere. I consider myself free here. I can go, if I want. But I like the work, and the people, and the place."

"I like the work and the people and the place, too," she admits.

"I am more - free here than I ever was at home. I don't want to go home after this," she admits. "When I graduate, I want to - to explore. To know everything. To learn everything. To meet people and learn how they are, how they think, how they feel."

"I won't go back to the place I came from, either. I think your plan sounds wonderful."

She pulls back and gestures out to the expanse of the Enclosure. "This is what I want, Jedao. Now I have something new to learn and research and discover."

"I'll teach you the program names, you can do all the exercises, if you want. But you have to show me somewhere I haven't been, too," he suggests.

She nods once, then pauses. "How do I know what you haven't seen?" she wonders, frowning. "You have so much."

He waves at the dark sky outside the bubble.

"I've always lived in places like this. It was in port, while living on the barge, that I saw rain in person for the first time. The world you know is as strange to me as mine is for you."

"Hm, then I shall think of something very lovely for you," she tells him, pushing away so she can float freely back the way she came.

"The best part about rain is not being in it, but staying inside and listening to it."

"I was in a jungle, when I first saw it. I had to chase my inmate all over the island."

He's smiling, though, wistfully fond. "That sounds very nice."

A jungle. She's never been to one, but she has seen pictures. What an adventure.

"Next time, I will show you. But - how do we get back now?"

He's made sure they haven't drifted out of range of their post, despite the little angular turns.

"I think the most efficient path back to the door would be off that bouncer -" he waves to a dark blue crenelated shape. "Which is going to need a little angle adjustment at the moment of contact. If you're ready to be done now, you can hold onto me and I'll get us out. But if you want to just stick around and play, we have plenty of time."

"We can simply - play?" she wonders and then pushes away from him, intending on using that momentum to drift over to another post.

"Play is one of the best ways to learn," he says brightly. "It's what this place is for. If you can find all nine golden bells and bring them back to the landing stage, you get ten points."

She reaches the post and holds onto it desperately, still not getting landings right. But she's gets better.

"Ten points? And what do you get with these points?"

(no subject)

deuceoftears - 2024-09-04 03:31 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

todayiwas - 2024-09-04 14:38 (UTC) - Expand