A lazy half-day with June and Luna, where not much happens

The sun is already up when June wakes. But that doesn't mean too much in orbit; the sun comes up every half hour or hour, depending on what they're going 'round. Prin is presently circling the waist of a blue jewel called Numina, seas and whorled clouds fill the diamond window above the bed; sunrise was about 10 minutes ago, and sunset will be in another 30. Luna's side is a rumpled mess of covers; she's somehow managed to wake and slip out already without waking June.

June gets up, puts on a pair of bright floral shorts and shrugs a hoodie on (cozy one, hot pink, bright yellow, big hood) over short frame, sweeps dark bangs back over her ears - the gesture brushes a fine chain that runs from earlobe to hair clasp; as the chain shivers, her talismans wake a bit and then settle back into slumber. She ambles out toward the galley, following the wafting smell of coffee. Luna has left a half-full vacuum carafe - still warm - atop a hand-written note on the low central table that says:

downwell. back by lunch. -L

June smiles as she plops on a floor pillow; it's charming that Luna leaves hand-written notes, more charming still that Luna initials them since it is only the two of them on board. Sitting at the low table, she pours coffee and sips, contemplating something... or maybe just still half asleep, occasionally craning to watch the planet through what feels like - with this particular gravity field orientation - the galley skylight. She pulls out her phone, checks some messages, pets her various online contacts, and then sends Luna a message:

where are you?

Waits one coffee sip and the response comes in:

It is a looping photo from atop a hill; there are beautiful trees swaying in a breeze, a low wall of stone, and the deep blue Numina sea, rippled by a set of long rollers stretching to the horizon; it looks like morning light, so she must be someplace where the day is early. Resting against the stone parapet is her bicycle. Luna used to fab a version of it every time they found a gravity-well that she could possibly ride (even if it meant riding suited, and only for a few minutes before the components started to corrode, dissolve, boil, or sublimate), but this iteration she's had for a while now, doing maintenance on it instead of recycling and re-fabbing it. It's probably helped that their current rotation has been through a string of ports with lovely atmospheres and good riding.

June sends her back an intricate series of colored heart glyphs, their internal heart-code, then pours herself another cup of coffee - finishing the carafe - and wanders off toward her lair, the messy machine lab corner of Prin.

She settles at the workbench and picks up what she wants to work on -- it is a memory substrate, a block of dense carbon, ceramic, and other trace metals. She plucked it out of the debris littering the L4 point on spacewalk yesterday, and it was cold, only a few degrees above ambient, which made it quite hard to find. It's internal power has mostly decayed away, and she's pretty sure it's legal salvage at this point. It has warmed over night, is running off the ambient temperature in the lab, and now the inhabitants should be more awake.

She quiets her mind, relaxing, empathing, resonating with it until she can pick up the chatter from the substrate. It's an old one; the personalities inhabiting it have long since fragmented, recombined, reformed (probably many times). They've lost language, but they emote in bright bursts of sizzling static, images, sounds, feelings. It is the base stuff of thought and feeling, but not cohesive enough to be thought and feeling.

Probably copper, then, she thinks.

If they had been able to express a preference, she'd try to adhere to it (thoughtforms in a preferred home generally being more content), but hammered copper is almost always a safe bet when one doesn't know, so she draws out a sheaf of copper the size of her thumb with a small hole at one end, card thin. She warms it between her palms while letting the emoting substrate bathe her mind.

The next bit is tricky, and June has never been very good at being able to explain how or even what she really does but... there's a ... resonance to the thoughtform(s) in the substrate, she can feel it. And match it. There's also resonance in the copper sheaf. She slips further into trance, trying to bridge the two. Time passes, her awareness of reality fades, the planet rolls silently below, the sun rises and sets three times.

When she comes out of it she has the substrate in one hand (now an inanimate lump) - and the copper sheaf in the other (now a talisman). She can hear/feel the emoting thoughtform(s), reborn to their new copper home, murmuring around her mind. They are still unable to form any words, but the emotive bursts seem to be more content. She unhitches the fine chain looping from earlobe to hair clasp and strings the new talisman on it next to a series of like ornaments, some copper, some in other metals, one the interlocking geometry of iron-nickel widmanstatten, and one the most delicately lased, fine-grained golden wood. The other talismans rouse and murmur at the newcomer.

"Ivy, Viola, Bismuth," she says, addressing three of the more cohesive ones by names, "...make the new kid welcome." She hopes especially that Viola - who was in much the same state when they were found - will be able to help. The three start chittering in soft, reasurring, warm tones. June pays attention long enough to follow the interactions between her murmuring talismans for another minute, approving, and then brings her conscousness back to the present.

Where she realizes she is famished, and heads back toward the galley and the hope of a sandwhich.

* * *

Luna glows on the long-tail of endorphins that's her reward for hours of cardiovascular exertion. Well, one of her rewards; the ride itself was glorious, cycling is like flying under her own power. And it helps that Numina is sufficiently developed with things that make for good biking such as smoothly paved roads with bridges looping around beautiful island chains, friendly locals, numerous stops for quick snacks, amenable climate, and, heck even (or perhaps especially) delightfully breathable atmosphere (riding suited through atmosphereless rocky wastelands has it's own kind of charm, but the sensation of wind-on-the-first-sheen-of-sweat-on-skin is magic for her).

She's since cooled down, dried, stretched, and is on her way back to Prin from planetside. It's not the most comfortable ride; she's lanky and long-limbed, and does not fit that well into the tiny pod with the bike (it has to ride on her, on the way back), but it's still totally worth it.

Back aboard, Luna wipes down the bicycle and stows it in a locker until the next outing. She calls for June but gets no answer (not terribly surprising, actually fairly common) and wanders back aft, looking for her. Luna slows as she approaches the machine lab and takes quiet steps; she reaches the hatchway and peers inside; June is sitting unmoving in a trance, a dark lump of some crafted matter in one hand, a thin piece of copper in another. Luna smiles, leaves her to it, and wanders toward a shower.

Once bathed and in clean shorts and a tshirt she swings by the bunk and pockets a bottle of nail polish, then heads to the galley, where she makes two sandwiches with the last of the crowberry jam - shame that, but then again it's a good excuse to swing their course back to include a stopover in Sudavik III to pick up more, she'll remember to adjust the schedule accordingly. She scoops up the empty coffee carafe, places it in the sink, and plates one of the sandwhiches, leaving it for June. The other she takes with her and heads for the cockpit.

Two seats, display screens, readout consoles, it is fronted by clear domed diamond that gives a view of the slowly-rotating planet down below, blue and cloud-streaked. Sunlight streams in through the dome, and Prin helpfully banks the opacity of that portion just a bit to render the light soft and golden, like evening on a late summer's day. The feeds gently pulse, a quick scan shows everything is nominal, which gives Luna a small pulse of pride and satisfaction.

The cockpit is... cozy. There are images, photovids, tacked up all over it, and small trinkets and mementos of travels, places, and experiences. Effigies - not really gods or goddesses, but more beloved characters of stories told and remembered from travels - stand where space permits, keeping comforting eye. Luna wakes a console with a touch and taps her way through menus, then turns a knob and sound emerges from speakers; it is repetitive but slowly mutating in timbre and composition. It's both jagged and jewel-like in tone. It's beautiful and she loves it, another thing she's discovered on her travels.

She lounges comfortably back in the pilot's chair, puts her bare feet on the nav console, and pulls out the bottle of nail polish - it is an electric, bright yellow. She shakes the polish vigorously while keying up Prin's course plan with her toes. The cycling isn't all pleasure - she's picked up some new tidbits of interest from the locals downwell that might make for fun additions to their current rotation, and it will only require a bit of adjustment to their present course. And there's the stock of crowberry to replenish. She runs some of the calcs in her head while doing the first coat of polish, bathed in blinking cockpit lights, softly pulsing beats, and the feint smell of organic solvent.

She's on the second coat, and keying in the new course with her toes, when June steps into the cockpit, sandwhich in hand, and pauses. Luna is singing softly, or perhaps more chanting, in a language the June does not know, although she's heard Luna use it before; she uses it often like this, to talk to Prin. Although June doesn't know the words, the tone is soft, comforting, reassuring. Luna realizes she's there and breaks off, looking back over her shoulder, blond hair flopping over the edge of the pilot's seat. June, she sees, is wearing her bright floral shorts and eye-bending pink-and-yellow hoodie, and it makes her smile.

"Very June outfit," Luna says.

June smiles back, takes a bite of the sandwhich, looks at the speakers for a couple seconds, listening. "This is really good," she says. She could mean the sandwhich, the music, or both.

June squeezes into the cockpit, sits in the copilot's chair. Then notices Luna's yellow nails, open polish bottle, and says, "that's like the same color as the dorsal hull stripe."

"I think it's the same stuff" says Luna, looking at it more closely and then taking a very tiny experimental sniff. "I think it's hull enamel."

June smiles easily and settles comfortably, scanning the feeds. Another bite of sandwhich. "Anything new?" she asks. Feeds are all nominal, sleepy, good.

"Just programming in a little change in course," answers Luna.

"Where to?"

"It's a surprise. Folks downwell had some suggestions that sounded interesting. And we're out of the crowberry. How about your end?"

June lifts two fingers, lays them lightly under the new copper talisman, and lifts it from it's sibs, displaying it for Luna to see. "Nothing right now," she says. "They were out in the cold a long time, they've lost language and a lot of coherence. I've got the others helping them, but not sure what they'll turn out to be, if anything, or when." Luna nods understanding, screwing the cap on the nail polish.

"How's the ... the ... the whatsit?" Luna asks, not quite able to remember the actual term for the gizmo, the thingie, the whatsit that June said needed fixing when they reached parking orbit.

"Oh!" says June, "Yeah, let me look at it." She looks around blankly for a moment, scanning various consoles and surfaces, then - sort of surprised to find them there - she snags a set of micro screwdrivers off the arm of her own seat, extracts one, and crouches down at a panel. Within 10 minutes, she's finished the last of the sandwhich, she's got the panel off, and a bewildering array of internals -- circuitry, wiring, conduit, tubes, photonics, and other oddities for which Luna does not know the words -- have spilled out onto the floor. Meanwhile, Luna continues to key in their course adjustments, checking other systems as she goes.

Eventually, June has the internals repaired, sorted, and back in their panel, and Luna has their new course programmed in. The local star is once again setting behind the curve of the planet. "I'm exhausted," says Luna, arching her back, fingers splayed, stretching like a cat.

"Same," says June.

Luna smirks a bit; "You've only been up for half a day."

"Yeah but I spacewalked yesterday, that takes it out of you."

"Fair," says Luna. "Let's take a nap. We can skim away after."

June stands, offers a hand, and Luna takes it and stands as well. She makes one last scan around the cockpit feeds -- all good -- and then follows June back into the ship, toward sleeping quarters.

This is followed by tooth brushing and face-cleaning, and then they jostle for a minute at the hatch to the bunk as Luna, taller and lankier of the two, climbs in first and nestles in the back. June, shorter, crawls in after her, and into the welcoming arms and enfolding nest Luna's body makes for her. The room is quiet, and their breath is steady, even. The planet rotates below them, Prin hums, soft and strange around them, and they sleep.

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