* HOPE / LIGHT

   The conversation shifts – moves from the other’s childhood to hers – and though she does not quite outwardly bristle from the slide, she may as well have, for all the empty blinking she does while trying to follow along. “Different from… ah, what?” After all, it was all she ever knew. She had not had a childhood anywhere else. 

   Half-hour. Okay. She can do a half-hour. She has a half-hour to burn. Just a half-hour of no sky, and then she’ll be gone. “Okay. Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” Those words somehow substitute all the other ones, boiling and shuddering in her brain. “Uh. Uh, uh, uh. Do you… do you have, uh… a board game?” 

      “ do i have a --- no! do i LOOK like i have a board game? ”  her words come out more bewildered than angry or anything else. her brow is furrowed in confusion. this stranger makes her feel as though a spinning wind has picked her up & thrown her into a never-ending loop.

“Lets get going then, pretty boy.” She grinned at him and put a hand on his back, gently leading him into her shop. “Do you have any particular preferences, or is this your first massage?” The way she said it made it sound like an innuendo, but it was hard to figure out exactly where it was. However, the way she looked at him made it no secret. 

   “It… is.” Though funny is not quite the word Aella would have used to describe it. Tragic, perhaps. Somber. That something could only be truly appreciated once it was gone, fully. ( Words she had heard in her youth that never quite made sense until va’pak. ) “I offer sympathy.” Uneasily spoken, as though not sure those were the right words. 

   “Oh, stellar! Love it!” She doesn’t. She’s on a ship. She’s on a ship. A ship, a ship– “How soon? D’you– d’you think. Like, soon… soon’s a big, big word, y’know? Soon can mean, like. A minute. Or an hour. Or a day, or two. There’s lotsa soons.” Which is true, if not pedantic, especially for her. 

      so many QUESTIONS. this stranger has one after another, & another, & another. & each question only makes half as much sense as one would expect. it’s really throwing her for a loop.

“I think I can manage a walk in if you’d like to do that right now.” And even if she couldn’t, she certainly wouldn’t mind squeezing him in. That warm, teasing smile still on her lips. Just waiting for him to either step in or stammer out how he needed to make an appointment. He seemed like the type to have a stutter. 

@seengalaxies​

   “Inside. Good! Great. We love inside. It isn’t frightening. I’m not afrightened. Not even a little! Who said it was?” No one did, of course. Except now she kinda is, with her babbling. 

   “S– s– so. Like. Uh. Haha… where, like… where is the sky, and, like, shit?” 

   That part of my life is over now. It’s in the past. 

   Just like Vulcan was. Just like everyone Aella had once known was. 

   And yet – the grasp they still seemed to hold on her! Who knew that ghosts could be more tangible and stronger than the living? 

   “I understand.” In a manner of speaking, at least. It did no good, she supposed, on dwelling on the past, in that case. “Then, instead, I suppose… I wish you peace.” As ever, humanoids continued to simply be confusing.