ten_fwd | Touch the moon up in the sky

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Touch the moon up in the sky – Open To All

Zoey was ensconced in a chair at one of the tables by the windows; being in space still hadn’t lost its novelty, and if she had the option, she always sat so she could watch the stars pass. Although she wasn’t doing much watching at the moment. There was so much to LEARN. On top of all the classes she was taking.

So she sat at her table, PADD in hand, an open notebook off to one side (her notes were in a hodgepodge of all the languages she spoke and included the ones she was learning on the Enterprise, as well as doodles and drawings), a small plate of bougatsa, and another steaming mug of tea in front of her. Study food. Chewing absently on the end of her pen, she continued reading. She was focusing on the mythologies of other planets at the moment; the ones the computer had available, anyway.

Although she was liable to switch subjects at any time.

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If she glanced up, she would find that another person who should have been studying had moved to practical applications of some of his knowledge. A model of the Enterprise was flying, albeit slowly, just under the ceiling of Ten Forward, moving at a steady and cafreul pace.

Above her head, the model's sensors spotted the wall, and it hove to for a moment. After that moment, it beeped, then kept going, doing a circuit around her position, and turning from the wall behind her to proceed back the way it had come.

If she followed it's course, or it, it would lead her to the man who was wielding the controls and shifting his view between watching it directly and watching a monitor on his PADD showing the view from cameras incorporated into the model's structure.

Zoey raised an eyebrow at the model flying slowly above her head, watching it travel back the way it came for a moment before turning her attention back to the matter at hand. There was so much to read. And having shifted her schedule to keep Helena company during the times she couldn’t sleep meant she had plenty of time on her hands for reading.

Not that she was making anywhere near of a dent on what was available, but it didn’t much matter to her. It was the journey that was important, after all. Not the destination.

"Pardon me, miss. May I ask what you're studying?" Alex was enjoying his model, but the chance to talk to someone who seemed to study as hard as he did was invaluable. He rarely encountered people like that. Not these days anyway.

Alex was a bouncy youngish-middle-aged guy, with a baby face and lots of enthusiasm. There was a reason one of his nicknames back home had been Commander Puppy.

“Currently? Mythologies of the worlds in this particular corner of the universe.” Zoey replied with a grin. “At least, the ones available in the ship’s computer, anyway.” There was a ridiculous amount of reading material available to her; she was lucky she left her quarters, some days, with how much she could read. And all of it was new to her.

She was a kid in a fucking candy shop.

"That's cool! I didn't know they had that!" Alex bounced, grinning. "Of course, I've been concentrating on piloting and engineering manuals and trying to understand warp drive, fractal space, and dilithium crystals, and I get lost in that stuff a lot."

Alex loved science. A bit.

Okay, maybe a lot.

That was, oddly enough, not something Zoey had thought about; the piloting. She could learn how to fly a bloody spaceship. The thought filled her with no small amount of glee. “I’ll probably get to that eventually. My girlfriend is an inventor, and she’s been reading everything she can get her hands on about engineering and the science of this particular corner of the multiverse. But I have a lot of history to catch up on; and a lot of literature.” Her eyes were lighting up; those were her loves. Some of them, anyway.

Alex nodded. "I'm mostly just a engineer and pilot. I don't have the stuff for most other subjects." Though he was getting a very high grasp of temporal, dimensional, and energy physics, thanks to Checkov's and Lal's assistances at different times.

he still wasn't very good at anything outside those, though.

"History is pretty cool, though. Have you learned a lot about the post 21st century timelines?"

“Some.” Zoey laughed. “But then I got distracted by the sheer amount of mythologies from other planets, from alien races that I could study. Sort of derailed my history studies.”

Alex nodded ruefully. "Yeah... there's a lot to learn, and a lot to know. Even just the basics of society here are amazing." He had found it fascinating, anyway, how things had evolved from a warp flight and a war into a galaxy spanning Federation of planets.

"So I take it you like it here?"

Coming from a space faring universe, the stars had always been there to explore and traverse through. Even so, even though all that she needed to do was to get in to a ship, they had never lost their beauty. The universe was a big place, and being here had only proven how much larger it was.

She still came to settle in places where she could view the world passing by outside. It was strange to be stuck on a ship for so long, but stranger still was the fact that she was somewhere at all. No explanation had ever come, although Master Yoda seemed to be in the same predicament, although Padmé was still making her mind up on that.

She didn't require food, although Padmé could still partake in it. Regular routines did bring a level of comfort, and with a cup of her own tea in one hand, Padmé moved to find a shop to sit. She did pause though, and curious since it did look rather good, had to ask. "Excuse me, but what is it that you are eating?"

Zoey looked up, surprised; it was difficult to surprise her a lot of the time, given the way her gift worked. But she’d always been able to lose herself so utterly in reading that someone could catch her off-guard. And then she was surprised in another way. Padmé. The shock of recognition was easily hidden; this wasn’t the first version of Padmé Naberrie Amidala that she’d met since her adventures of being yanked across the multiverse had begun, and the likelihood of it being the same was... incredibly negligible.

She gave her a bright smile. “It’s called bougatsa.” Impulsively, she slid the plate across the table towards the other woman. “Care to give it a try?

If Padmé did catch anything that flickered across her features, she couldn't place was it was, aside from the generic startled look. That did seem to indicate that she had interrupted her and for that Padmé would have given an apology, although her smile was genuine and warm, which did seem to reflect that fact that she wasn't bothering her.

Her brows did furrow, lightly, mentally rolling the pronunciation of that over in her head. Strange words weren't anything new to her, nor was learning them. The galaxy was a very wide place and held many different lifeforms. But there was a soft laugh. "I wouldn't wish to steal a nibble from you. I just couldn't go over and state I would like what she is having, as I doubt the machines would know what it was that I was talking about."

Zoey laughed. “It’s not stealing if I’m offering, is it? Besides, better to try it first and find out whether or not you like it, before having an entire plate of your own. Especially when trying food from another universe.”

She was more than glad to share her bougatsa. And would gladly suggest other things for Padme to try, if she ended up liking the pastry.

A part of her did wonder if one could specify the size of the food that one was asking for. Padmé hadn't, as the thought hadn't crossed her mind, but with a small smile, she shook her head, laughing. "Valid points all around."

You probably could; Zoey hadn’t tried, but considering everything ELSE you could request of the replicators and the computers, it stood to reason. She grinned, unable to stop herself from adopting a fake arch air. “I’m FULL of valid points,” she replied, before letting arch air fade, just leaving her looking amused. “Sometimes, anyway.” She pushed the plate across the table towards her, and held out her still-unused fork. She hadn’t quite gotten around to taking a bite, yet. She’d been distracting by all the reading.

Her lips did twitch, before a soft laugh did come with the latter part of that sentence. Sometimes. Sometimes everyone was something, and sometimes, they were something else. Accepting the fork, Padmé did use it rather like a knife, trying to take a small corner off. And, still attempting the keep the fork for her own use, she did use her own fingers to pick up the piece, and chewed thoughtfully. "Oh. That is rather nice."

Oliver walked by and glanced over noticing the Russian written in the book. "Your translation is a little off on this one." he says in perfect Russian as he taps the book, "the i should be an R."

Zoey looked up in surprise, both at his voice and the fact that he was speaking Russian. Then she noticed what he was pointing out. “Fuckstockings,” she replies, in equally perfect Russian as she quickly scribbles the correction in. “Not sure how I missed that.” She was more tired than she thought, she realised with some surprise; she always tended to stop thinking completely in English when she was tired, but she’d somehow managed to think in both Russian and Czech at once and end up with a mess of the both of them; she was seeing more mistakes now that she was looking for them.

Damn.

She needed more tea. Maybe coffee.

Oliver chuckled at the swear word more charmed then he thinks he should be. "It's okay," he says with a smile, "I struggled with Russian when I first started learning it. It's actually an easy mistake to make."

Zoey laughed softly, carding a hand through her hair. Gods she was tired. More coffee was definitely a must. “That’s just it. I’m NOT just starting out. Haven’t been starting out in a long time. I really should know better.” She was just a little irritated at herself, even though she shouldn’t have been. She wasn’t firing on all cylinders, considering she hadn’t slept in who knew how long and was more coffee than woman most of the time anymore. Mistakes were bound to happen.

But she was still irritated at herself.

"Don't beat yourself up," Oliver says, "mistakes happen when you are tried and you look really tired." He smiles at her."Wanna take a break? I need someone to cheer me on while I choke down the worst protein shake ever."

The look Zoey gives him looks thoroughly, utterly amused. “You certainly know how to talk to a lady,” she replies, teasing. “But you’re right.” She makes the admission easily, maybe because Helena isn’t here, and she doesn’t know him from Adam. “A break is probably a good idea. And I think I can do a decent bit of protein shake cheerleading.”

"Smooth and easy that's me," Oliver joked with a chuckle, "thought I was beginning to wonder if my playboy skills had gone south on me like everything else."

Zoey let out a thoroughly amused little laugh, ice blue eyes sparkling. “Oh yes, εὔγλωσσος, they’re alive and well.” She couldn’t help but tease him a little more, the nickname falling easily from her lips in Greek.

Oliver laughs. "I have no idea what you just said, but I can only hope you weren't insulting me."

Zoey smirks at him, blue eyes sparkling. So he doesn't know Greek. "No. Not an insult. Nickname, maybe. But not an insult."

Oliver laughed warmly. "Okay good I was worried there for a second. How many languages do you speak anyway?"

Zoey thought a moment. “Five, give or take. Although with the languages I’m learning on the Enterprise it’s more likely ‘give’, now.”

"I only speak three and I'm being kind when I say that," Oliver says with a laugh, "because my Chinese is terrible still."

Zoey grins up at him. “How terrible are we talking? The occasional awkward sentence and misunderstandings terrible, or international incident terrible?”

"Terrible as in I'm always afraid of insulting someone,' Oliver says with another smile, "I'm even afraid of showing you for fear of saying something about your mother."

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Touch the moon up in the sky – Open To All

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