if you build it, they will come. hopefully.

[abyssum_invocat]

So. Replicators.

They take some getting used to for a child who's never come across technology even remotely similar before, but after a few wrong turns and a bit of confusion over how what it spat out at her was supposed to be decent clothing Sinthia got the hang of it. Enough, anyway, to order food and drink, and a modest bunch of parts to make something.

A something which, if the instructions are anything to go by--thankfully they're pictograms as well as words, in case the passersby like the mun don't read German--will be a quite pretty little mechanical tellurion.

She's totally interruptable while building this, yes. Periodically she needs breaks.

Comments

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"Oh that's a cool device," Gaila says, pausing in her journey towards a table near the windows. She's dressed in perfectly ordinary clothes - a dark gold tunic over some wide khaki pants, a black armband around her left arm for mourning - and is carrying a perfectly normal cup of coffee.

But, well.

Green.

[abyssum_invocat]

"Thank you," she murmurs, looking up and promptly stilling. The alien lady is green. Honestly green, as Sinthia discovers after blinking at her. And she's wearing...something interesting that Sinthia has never seen before. (Given the child is wearing a black jumper-dress and a grey shirt with black shoes, you'd be entirely correct in thinking color is not an overly familiar thing with her. Everything around her is black, grey, or red. And few things are red.)

"...Is it paint?"

[writes_with_digital_ink]

Gaila blinks at her, honestly confused for a moment. Then she takes in the child's clothing style a little more, and all the other 'guests' on this ship, and her expression turns rueful.

"My skin? No. I'm a different species to you."

[abyssum_invocat]

"You look awfully like me," she says slowly. "Except for being green." Which is strange to Sinthia, though in a way she can't really place. But she's trying to be good and not read thoughts, so the long conversation is her only option.

"If you want to sit down, you can. It's not done yet but I can show you how it works."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"I do, don't I? But a lot of species are like that, it's not until you get us under a medical scanner that we all start to look different."

She smiles.

"I'd really like it if you did," she says, taking a seat and peering at the device.

[abyssum_invocat]

"It's a tellurion," she says, still eyeing Gaila, though this time it's for her clothes rather than her green-ness. "It's a model that tells you the date and position of the earth and moon around the sun. It's not accurately paced, but it will give you an idea."

She wants to keep a diary. With earth dates so she knows how long she's been here. Stardates...she isn't really sure she can handle a long time of using them.

"Why are you wearing those clothes?"

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"Oh! I've never seen a small one before, and I guess might mean Sol? The Terran Solar System? I live-"

Gaila pauses, which considering how fast she can speak, can sometimes seem like a miracle.

"These clothes? Well I'm not on duty, so I can wear normal clothes. The armband is...to show that I am mourning."

[abyssum_invocat]

"The...T--well, yes," she says eyebrows drawing together. "It's the only world we know about when I'm from. We've never contacted outside species yet."

She lays another gear on carefully with a metal spacer, and looks back up once she fits it on. "This one here, the central one is the sun, our star. In relation to earth it's stationary, so it is here in the model."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"So, when everything is spinning, it'll...show you where the positions of all Earth system at various points in the year?"

She ducks her head and tilts it, peering at the device.

[abyssum_invocat]

"Just the earth and the moon. I want to mark where my home is, so I know what season it is." Not that she'd be able to accurately describe what goes on in more than about a five-hundred-square-foot patch of Austria, but still. It's the principle.

And the rhythmic circular sweep of the little machine makes her feel calm, which is something Sinthia desperately needs.

[writes_with_digital_ink]

Gaila's smile is a little wistful.

"It sounds like a nice idea. It's the trouble with being on starships, you lose track of what's going on planetside.

My parents live in New York, you know? But it might be a different time of year to when you're from."

[abyssum_invocat]

"My father lives in Austria?" she says, making it a question by the way her eyebrows lift.

"It's winter when I'm from." Beat. "Were you born on Earth?"

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"Mmm, never been there. But it sounds very nice. And, uh, no I was born on what the Federation calls Orion II. I...left."

[abyssum_invocat]

"But you said your parents live in New York," she confirms, still layering gears and spacers. Once the plans are made and the gear teeth sanded it all comes together fairly quickly, though she still needs to put the planets themselves on, circling the central star.

"Why did you leave?" Sinthia asks.

[writes_with_digital_ink]

Gaila regards her for a moment, her bright blue eyes grave.

"Because it wasn't safe," she says finally. "And the Federation is."

[abyssum_invocat]

"Is your home at war, too?" she asks, the gentleness tempered with a strange, desperate and disparate sort of hope that maybe another person will understand how things work in her world and might stop frowning when she answers with an unexpected emotion. She hates having to guess how she should respond because she was told not to read anyone's mind.

Everyone seems to hate it when she does, anyway, even if it makes things so much easier.

[writes_with_digital_ink]

She knows that expression, even if the wearer now is a small child. So she chooses her words carefully.

"The Orion Union had a small civil war I guess is the simplest way of putting it. So I ran away, and made a new home in the Federation.

Is your home at war?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"Yes," she answers placidly, though somewhat tiredly, and sadly--though that's a new one. "My whole world is."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"It's awful, isn't it?," Gaila says softly. "I am sorry that you have to live through that. At least here you can rest a little."

[abyssum_invocat]

"It's...not that bad for me," she says after a moment. "It's normal for me. I wasn't born very long before the war started."

Sinthia sighs as she fits the wood balls for planets on, picturing her home in a little subterranean base drilled into the planet. "I talked to someone here who knows about it. My future is his past, so he knows how it ends. He told me."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

Pause.

Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaause.

"Did he."

[abyssum_invocat]

"Yes," she answers smoothly. "I asked him to."

She wanted to know. And it's unlikely she'll be able to affect anything at home from here.

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"Well, that was," stupid, "nice of him. Do you think you'd...stay here, or go back?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"I don't know yet," she confesses. "I don't know if I would do something bad if I went back."

It's a complicated situation, and it won't get any simpler as the years go by, though none of them aboard the ship know that. "I was created to be a weapon," she says, hesitant to explain again. "A powerful one. But I think I'm on the wrong side of the war."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"Ohhhh. Well. Good luck, little cousin." Her first impulse is to ask the girl to stay, be stay and keep others safe - after all, she has no reason to doubt her.

But she thinks it might be safer to tread softly.

"So, where are you up to on your device?"