Snippet #2260263

Saein

Saein grabbed a higher branch and pulled herself up. Suddenly she could feel the hard borders of her shoes on the forks she had locked her feet into. What was this? A tree with feelings?

A web made by a small animal stuck to her hand. She tried to shake it off, and accidentally punched Ann, who had appeared beside her. For a split second she watched her four year old sister fall. Without thinking, Saein jumped down after Ann. The air that rushed over her face was time, they aged as they fell.

Ann complained “It’s dark. Why is it dark?”

Saein gave Ann the web, which had changed into a little device she had hacked together from a camera and fabric made by the materials prototyper she got for her twentieth birthday. “Here, use this.”

“Is this supposed to do anything, apart from giving me a bizarre feeling?” Even when falling, Ann liked using long sentences.

“That’s odd, it worked fine when I tried it with my eyes closed!” Saein was disappointed.

The ground appeared. It was big, and soft, and ...pink?

Ann stood next to her, giggling and unharmed. Her own heart was racing, she was embarrassed to have run, no, fallen into...

“I dropped my strawberry shortcake!” Minn cried. “I worked on that all day!” The cook’s face was full of tears, adding water and salt to the mess on the floor, which made her work even less edible.

Eddie stood by, blushing a deep red that was darker than the strawberries and looking very helpless and embarrassed. He held his hands in front of his crotch. Was he trying to hide something? Saein tried to look...

She woke up with a shock. Her datapad fell to the floor, just like the last time she had thought about human anatomy. A screwdriver followed. Saein cursed, stuffed her tools back into her pocket, and shook the sleep out of her head.

What was Ann’s jacket doing in front of her? On the other side of the room, Ann was talking with the captain. Saein figured that her sister had given her a pillow. Without caring about interrupting the conversation, Saein wrapped the jacket around Ann’s shoulders, gave her sister a big hug, and walked out of the inn.

She had some shopping to do. Apart from repair supplies for the Nightwing, she needed to look for some things that she would pay for herself: electronics parts, various monomer solutions, and a book about alien neurology. The last was easiest, she could simply order it online and receive it on her datapad. The other things weren’t hard to find either, and the shops too boring to describe.

Sitting next to the land speeder with nothing left to do, Saein took the bags of nuts and bolts she had accidentally stolen from her last employer and started on some precision welding. Dark goggles protected her eyes, her gun was the torch, and gloves she didn’t need. She was good at this.

It was nice to do something she was really good at. Almost as nice as sleeping, which she planned to do very soon, back on the ship.