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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 0:41:34 GMT -5
Six hours out from Ferrum and Silas was still standing strong, busying herself with all sorts of things. She already dominated the computer opponent on several different video games, though she got last place every time she tried her hand at the racing games. Those motion controls always seemed to trip her up. By now, she was feeling the boredom set in, like there was nothing really left to do, not since everyone else buddied up or went to bed. Some for the second time.
Spying Keani out of the corner of her eye, Silas sat straight up and hailed her down. "Hey, doc! Come sit with me for a bit!" she called out, grinning from ear to ear as she folded her legs into a criss-cross position, sitting on the couch in the Paragon's large lounge. She was dressed in her sleepware, though few rarely ever got to see her sleep. Maybe she just liked to wear it to feel comfortable. Black pajama pants with white stars and crescent moons, with a white tank top to give her that very casual and cozy sort of look.
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Post by Keani Evans-Pritchard on Apr 17, 2014 0:48:10 GMT -5
After a visit with Cate and the lunch that followed on its heels, Keani moved through the ship rather aimlessly, one hand trailing along the bulkheads as she almost glided down the corridors. Her gaze flitted nervously to the entrance to the medbay before Silas caught her attention. "You seem like you're doing better than earlier," she offered the tech, returning Silas' grin as she made her way into the lounge.
The counselor slipped onto the couch, legs bent as she hugged her knees against her chest while reclining against the couch's plush back. "Been up for a while already? I was thinking about a nap soon, but... something's just kept me from sleeping."
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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 2:28:29 GMT -5
"Bad dreams?" she asked, leaning back into her seat and expressing a very relaxed, comfortable sort of state. She always was like this around Keani, given how soft-spoken she usually came across as. Calming. "I get them too, sometimes. Probably why I don't sleep much." She laughed at that, as if it was supposed to be some sort of joke.
"But yeah, feeling much better since the whole . . . I'unno, I don't have a witty response in me right now. The Murmur thing, I guess," she huffed, that noise betraying the false front she had been putting up for hours. "Just a bit bored is all, I guess."
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Post by Keani Evans-Pritchard on Apr 17, 2014 2:38:36 GMT -5
Keani gave a shrug of her shoulders, the mug in hand with steam rising from it. "More like no dreams yet. Haven't managed to get any sleep." She took a sip, balancing the mug over her knees. She ran a finger along the rim of the mug, offering Silas an idle glance. "Bored's at least better than insensate thanks to the Murmur. We're all lucky we dodged a bullet on that one."
The counselor glanced to the monitor, watching the info crawl along the screen. "I'd offer a bit of competition on your games, but never really got into the knack of them." She turned her attention back to Silas, looking at the woman over the rim of her mug. "What kind of grub did you want to fetch dirtside once we're down?"
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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 2:51:42 GMT -5
Silas blinked. Oh right, dirtside yums. "I uh, actually forgot about that until just now," she admitted, looking a little sheepish to say it. "I don't rightly know, doc. I was actually making plans to head down to the Wound while everyone else did their shopping and fun stuff with Captain Anders. I've got friends down there to meet up with." Those friends likely being related to gangs, the interstellar mafia, drugs, or black market dealings.
"Shouldn't take too long, though? We'll play it by ear, I guess. Anywhere you want to go, we'll go. Question is whose treat is it?" she asked, no small amount of grin on her face.
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Post by Keani Evans-Pritchard on Apr 17, 2014 3:06:45 GMT -5
"Now that you mention it, the boss would probably want a couple with her to treat with Anders. Just in case things get... tense." Keani shook her head, looking down into her mug. "And it's fine. You've had a lot on your mind since you brought it up. Spacing junk, near-death experience, hallucinatory psychotic episode... all in a day's work for us, right?" She tried to take the edge off with a smile playing over the rim of her mug. "You're made of tough stuff, Silas. It's good having you with us."
Keani slipped into a more relaxed posture, her elbows braced against the table while she curled her legs underneath her rear. "By ear, then. It's my recommendation that some time dirtside is exactly what you need to help brush it off." She took another sip, tapping her fingers against the mug. "My treat, if we find some time for it. C'mon, you just earned a new lease on life. It'd be shitty of me to make you pay for grub that quick in your prime recovery."
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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 3:19:17 GMT -5
Again she blinked, tilting her head this time to accentuate the bewilderment. "Don't make it sound like I was in any real danger or nothing, or make me seem any tougher than I actually am. Finch and Dom were both there, and I trust them with my life. Shouldn't, but I do." She shrugged a bit. "Besides, the thing was more after Finn than it was me. He's lucky he found the strength to scream, luckier that he found the intercom before sharing his lunch."
She stretched out a bit more, folding one leg over the other at the ankles, resting her feet on the table in front of them. "But yeah, we'll play it by ear and see what happens. Get some tasty food. Share some jokes and some laughs . . . though whose to say we can't get a head start on that now, mm?" She nudged Keani's shoulder a small bit. "Go on then, doc. Entertain the bored alien technician."
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Post by Keani Evans-Pritchard on Apr 17, 2014 17:57:00 GMT -5
Keani offered a shrug over her mug, her gaze wandering down to the table in front of the couch. "Well, Finn might've been in more danger, but you weren't free of it, Silas. That was pretty brave doing what you needed to help him out. And lucky for both of you, him getting to the comm in time and you getting to him to distract it." She shrugged again before taking another sip. "We talk like we don't act like heroes, but that was pretty heroic of you for Finnie."
She blinked at Silas' nudge, leaning back against the couch. "Entertainment? I don't even know where to start. I'm pretty boring compared to the bugs you've been with before." She finished off her tea, setting the mug on the table while hugging her knees again. "What stories you want to swap? I figure that'll keep us talking for a bit longer." A grin snaked across the counselor's face while looking at the Narid tech. "Unless you think that's too old-fashioned for your kinds of entertainment."
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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 18:05:27 GMT -5
Silas returned the shrug. What a total shrugfest. "I'm no hero. Just a fool playing god," she muttered, her tone shifting to a deeper sort of voice, as if she was quoting someone. "What's important is that everyone is alive, and no one got seriously hurt. Lord knows I certainly don't need anymore scars," she laughed, winking with her right eye at Keani, the same side of her face that suffered the acid burns.
"I'm up for story time, if you want to start us off. But you start though . . . the Narid are hardly entertaining. They have a very strange sense of humour that I just . . . never caught or could understand," she huffed.
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Post by Keani Evans-Pritchard on Apr 17, 2014 18:27:42 GMT -5
Keani slipped to a more comfortable position, her eyes half-closing in relaxation. "It almost feels like we should be swapping them over a campfire..." She leaned forward to rest her chin on her knees, her gaze leaping over to the empty mug. "Something I picked up in childhood and uni classes is that mythology never really dies out. It just... shifts, taking on other forms. Or updated ones."
Closing her eyes, Keani continued. "Old Earth tales had lots of tricksters. Raven and Coyote, Hanuman, Sun Wukong, Loki. Us Tykkers told stories of a shining being we called the Golden Lord. Not too long after the first colonists touched dirtside on Tychus, they were digging the first hives for the ore processors and mines. Piaojiang was just a hovel in the ground at that point, but they'd build it up to something good." Keani closed her eyes, reminiscing at the thought. "Now see, the first settlers and miners would trade stories of some great luminous being who haunted the earliest mines, giving the workers visions of limitless riched just under the surface."
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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 18:42:37 GMT -5
Silas blinked as Keani told her story, unsure of where she might be able to slip in with her own quips and responses. "I can't say Tartarus VII had anything like that. We're all . . . uh, no offense, but we're all pretty faithless. No gods or things that go bump in the night. We fear the real dangers. People and things that can swallow us in one bite."
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Post by Keani Evans-Pritchard on Apr 17, 2014 19:08:13 GMT -5
"Well, who knows if he was real or not? Some say the Golden Lord was just a hallucination brought on by mine vapors or some kind of parasite living down in the rocks. Others think it's more like your Narid friends as an early sign that something else is up in space with us." The counselor went quiet for a moment, a ghostly smile on her lips. "I'd say it's just more like we need stories. They're like blood in a way, serving as the fuel for our imaginations. Who or what the Golden Lord actually is isn't as important as the tales simply being told over and over."
Keani looked over to Silas, grinning again. "The bogeymen of outer space? Well, your folk named it pretty well, then. The impenetrable caverns where the shades of mortals are kept for eternities of torment and want, forever forbidden their simplest pleasures. The fruit and the river, and all that."
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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 19:43:15 GMT -5
Again Silas blinked, this time as Keani went on and on about a topic she would never understand. " . . . you're from, what, Tychus? Wasn't that planet founded well after first contact with the Narid?" she asked, raising a brow at the counselor. "Of course there's stuff out there beyond just humanity. We found out about the Admiar even before the Narid," she ended with a huff.
"You lost me on that last point, though. Like I said, we . . . believe in people and what people can do. Any good or evil power play is based off of that. No . . . bogeymen or cosmic creatures. I don't know what you're ranting on about, doc. Torments and pleasures . . . " she muttered.
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Post by Keani Evans-Pritchard on Apr 17, 2014 20:09:06 GMT -5
Keani offered a shrug at the end of her tale, tugging at the sleeve of her jumpsuit. "Well, it's one thing for miners in the hives to hear about intelligent bugs and know they're out there. It's another thing to see something six meters away in a tunnel glowing with the light of the sun." The counselor's hand went to her empty mug, her thumb curled inside the handle as she clinked it lightly against the table's edge. "I'm not too good a storyteller, Silas. Or at least not the right stories. Most of the time I put people to sleep the way I tell things."
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Post by Silas Sedgewick on Apr 17, 2014 20:17:47 GMT -5
"My advice? Leave the fancy words for fancy people. Half of the shit I hear you say just goes in one ear and out the other, honestly." She sat up from her seat, only to bend one leg at the knee and fold it underneath herself as she sat again. "I don't mind your stories. I just don't understand them half the time," she explained, chuckling at the end.
"Think of it this way. You and Finch? Smart cookies. Finn is brilliant im his own rustic way, too. Me? Never seen the inside of a school except for that time where I broke in to steal some beakers and lab equipment for a friend." She smiled at the thought, but it was a brief, passing smile. "We weren't friends for much longer after that. There's only one kind of cook I like to associate with anymore, and you're one of 'em."
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