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]

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?"

[abyssum_invocat]

Immediately her brows crease as she looks up at Gaila. "Little...cousin?" she asks, needing clarification. "I have to put on the moon. And glue the sun and earth onto their axis poles."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"As you'd call an adult you didn't know 'aunt', or 'uncle'," she explains. Then, "may I join in? Or do you want to build it by yourself?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"No, you can come help," she says, moving out a chair--without moving her hands to do it.

"I'm just following the instructions. And once I get it dry-fitted I have to sand down the marked gear teeth, and then screw in all the pieces."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

Gaila grins.

"Sounds fun."

She means it, too. Building a complicated toy is a much, much better prospect than brooding.

[abyssum_invocat]

That makes Sinthia actually smile, and she reaches for the last few pieces to put them on and mark them, and scoots a little piece of sandpaper over toward Gaila. "All the ones with the red markings need to be sanded down. I want to keep them sharp, but they need some wiggle room."

[writes_with_digital_ink]

"Sure thing, boss," she says cheerfully, and gets to work.

Much, much better prospect than brooding.