Hangs Upon Air [2430-1-4 Mon 12:30pm]

[Sonya]

“Pre-sliced bread? That’s ridiculous! What if the pieces are to small, or to big? I’d rather cut my own bread.” Not that she’d had much bread, considering that in addition to floating it practically disintegrated in water. But Sonya had had enough to understand Blu’s point. She also understood that he really liked eggs. No matter what they were discussing, Blu seemed to bring eggs into it somehow. She’d have to cook some soon. In fact, why not now? She was a settled as she could get in her new room, having deposited her sack of belongings on the floor.

Sonya turned away from the window and took a few steps towards the door. “Yes. Spaceships are much, much better than sliced bread. And so are scrambled eggs. I enjoy cooking those. I could make some now, if you’re hungry?” She was pretty sure she already knew what his answer would be. She had to be careful though. If she dropped her pretense or polite manner, she might start to sound as though she was bossing Blu around. Considering that he was her captain, Sonya knew that wouldn’t turn out well.

[Blu]

"You can buy them in different widths. So like, there's regular bread, that's like this-" He appropriately measured it out between his palms. "-and then there's like, fat bread-" Blu widened his hands, "-and like, thin bread too. And it's good if you're like, really really tired, or if you're lazy. Then everything's the same size and you don't accidentally cut your hand off."

"Eggs!" He beamed, having totally forgotten that he brought them up. "I am so hungry, I'd love some! Let's do that!" Blu headed to the door, getting it open and stepping into the corridor. The air canisters were where Blu had rather unceremoniously dropped them. They will still over half full, and would be enough to get them around.

[Sonya]

The answer to Sonya’s first question came as a surprise. It seemed to her that it was more work to make sure that bread was packaged having first been cut into individual pieces and to a specific thickness, than to just cut it yourself. She couldn’t imagine anyone lazy or distracted enough to cut their own hand off while slicing bread. But Sonya decided to let it go, because she now had an answer to her second question, and it came as no surprise at all. Besides, she didn’t really feel like getting into a full-blown argument about bread with her new captain, or anyone for that matter. There were much more important things in life. Like finding the kitchen and showing Blu that she’d been worth hiring.

She followed him out the door of her new room, stooping to pick up a can of compressed air. “Off we go then!” she announced, straightening up and striding to the door at the end of the hall. She stepped back into the main part of the ship, where she had first come in, holding the door for Blu. Although truthfully she wanted to close it as fast as she could. Not to shut Blu out, but because she suspected that once the door was sealed the gravity would once again be off in this room. She was eager to prove that theory as soon as possible, as well as to regain the wonderful feeling of weightlessness a zero gravity environment provided.

[Blu]

Blu quickly followed Sonya, jumping into the the hall. The anti-grav kicked in as soon as the door shut, and his momentum turned into a glide down the corridor. The junction wasn't too far away from this angle, though it was always further from the other angle (the 'up' angle, or 'side' angle, depending on how you looked at it). He ended up having to puff air away from him to slow him down before he went too far down and got stuck in the passenger quarters. That would be no good!

He reached the junction and headed to the kitchen, not going too fast so Sonya could follow. This end of the ship was labelled as COMMON, which Blu thought was a stupid name since there was nothing common about what was inside. And anyway, everybody could go wherever they wanted on the ship, mostly. He turned upside down, staring down at the planet through the clear tunnels. Even though Blu knew it was covered in salt water, and not actually that tasty, it looked really refreshing from up here. "Your planet looks drinkable! Like a juice box!"

Blu bumped into the main door. He turned himself upright, since bonking his head wouldn't be very fun.

[Sonya]

The door clicked shut behind Blu, and the anti-gravity switched on once again, confirming Sonya’s suspicions. She grinned and spread out her arms, simply hanging for a moment, her whole body relaxed. Then she felt Blu move past her and raised her head. She reached her arms forward and then pulled them back, bringing herself into a vertical position. Pointing the can of compressed air away from her, Sonya pulled the trigger with careful, almost exaggerated slowness, until she was moving at a reasonable speed down the hall.

In only a few minutes she had caught up to him, hanging upside down in one of the clear tunnels, gazing at Corus. His comment about the planet made her giggle, even though she wasn’t quite sure what a juice box was. “Maybe someday, there will be a space giant, and he will come right up to Corus and drink the whole thing away!” And I won’t care. She thought savagely though deep down she knew it wasn’t true. She could deny it till the day she died, and likely would, but somewhere, in the bottom of her heart, Sonya loved her planet. It was and would always be her home.

[Blu]

The thought of a space giant drinking the planet was blowing Blu's mind. "Woah." Was all he could manage to say, and since that wasn't enough, he followed it up with another, even longer, "Woooooooaaaah." He couldn't decide if a space giant was terrifying or awesome or some amazing combination of both.

Now he was thirsty. Blu opened up the door, stepping through into the corridor. To the left was storage, and it's plain, boring unmarked door. To the right was the med bay, which was pretty interesting at least, though a mess since Blu had been trying to treat his own wounds and he wasn't so great at putting things back into their proper places. Straight ahead was the best place on the ship, the lounge and kitchen. He headed for that, leaving his air canister on the floor.

There were couches and beanbags and all sorts of odd-shaped-but-comfortable chairs here and there. And all along the wall shared with the med-bay were the the kitchen appliances and fridge and freezer. They were put there so they wouldn't interfere with the view. The glass wrapped all the way around, giving a great view of the stars, and, if you looked far right and far left, the underside of the umbrella. This was less of a mess than his room, since Blu did make an attempt to keep the Common tidy, but there were still blankets, pillows, padds, and half-finished paintings leaning against the glass because he hadn't figured out where he wanted to hang them.

Blu ignored all of it and headed for the fridge. He opened it up, lock unlocking once his fingers closed on the doorhandle, and he peered in at the eggs. Five dozen of them were sitting on the middle self, looking delicious and oh-so eggy. Sometimes he talked to them, since he found food was always more delicious if you talked to it while you were making it, but since Sonya was making it, he didn't have to talk to them. This was good because eggs made terrible conversationalists.

He glanced around the fridge, looking for Sonya. It occured to him that maybe he should stop rushing around and expecting her to follow. But she was really good at following without him having to slow down. Blu liked that in a person. He wasn't terribly good at doing what others wanted of him. Things went smoother if they did things his way.

[Sonya]

Apparently Blu was rather impressed with what Sonya said about a space giant. She hadn’t really given much thought to it when she said it, the words just sort of came out of her mouth. Blu seemed like the kind of person who was always having deep thoughts about everything. Sonya usually hated those kinds of people, because she was far from being one of them, but Blu was different. His thoughts were different. They might sound entirely ludicrous, like a child’s stories, but they were creative, inventive, interesting. And he wasn’t stuck up like most deep thinkers, who thought they knew everything.

Sonya had followed Blu into the kitchen-lounge and now stood looking around her, wide-eyed, drinking in all that she saw. The room looked comfortable and well lived-in. There were chairs all around and windows that gave a beautiful view of the stars. They glimmered tantalizingly, almost as if calling to Sonya, the same way they had done when she was living on Corus. She wondered vaguely if they would ever become a mundane sight to her, but she doubted it. A sudden sound made her turn, and Sonya saw Blu bending down next to an object she’d only seen once before, a refrigerator. She walked over and peered interestedly inside. “Wow, you do have a lot of eggs.” She reached down and picked up a carton. “How many do I make?”

[Blu]

"They were on sale!" Blu happily told her, running a hand through his hair. It stuck up at an odd angle, ignoring gravity (as it usually did). "I bought them from a person with butterfly wings! They had a bunch of albatrosses who laid them, and I believe her because I'm pretty sure butterflies lay different looking eggs. If they'd come from somebody with bird wings, I would have been suspicious! I don't want to eat anybody children! At least, not if they're human-shaped. I'm okay with the others as long as I don't have to look at their eyes."

He pulled out one carton and popped it open, glancing inside at the off-white eggs. Blu set them down on the counter and glanced at Sonya, "Five or six please! More if you're hungry too!" Blu poked around in the cupboards and eventually came up with a frying pan for her, beaming proudly that he'd managed to find it without much trouble.

[Sonya]

Sonya couldn’t quite follow everything Blu was saying, but she understood that he had bought the eggs from one of the winged people, and that he wanted her to make six of them, unless she was hungry too. Was she? She stepped forward and took the frying pan from Blu, unsure of the reason for his smile but returning it all the same. Yes, she decided, she was hungry. She would make nine of the eggs.

Because the eggs came in packages of twelve, Sonya wanted to cook them in multiples of three. She liked to do things that way, everything with its own simple system. Those sort of guidelines drove some people crazy, but Sonya liked the sense of order they gave her. She knew exactly how and when and why she did things. At the same time, Sonya liked chaos. Or at least, she liked the idea of liking chaos. Rebels liked chaos. They fought control and fed on spontaneity. Sonya liked chaos, but she wanted to feel she could control the chaos.

[Blu]

Blu sat up on the counter, liking the way it let him dangle his legs. That was something a lot of people didn't think about when building kitchens. They put the cupboards right over the counters, and made the counters as wide as the cupboards, and then the only way you could fit in was by squishing yourself in, and that was hardly comfortable. Blu made sure to put enough room, and to leave an nice big gap so you could fit comfortably.

Blu wondered exactly how a mermaid decided she wanted to cook for humans. It was probably hard to cook with fire underwater. "How did you learn to cook human-food?" He asked, quite curious. "Did you go to a school or teach yourself?"

[Sonya]

Smiles were becoming more and more familiar to Sonya's face, so she smiled again as she cracked eggs into the pan. Her grin was reminiscent as she answered Blu's question. This was the only part of the last few years that hadn't been boring for her. "I suppose you could say I went to school. I took classes at the spaceport. Nothing fancy really, just me and a couple of human kids." Sonya stepped over to the sink and washed the raw egg off her hands. It felt oh so good for even that small part of her skin to be wet, though strange that it was indeed only a small part.

Laughing, she moved back over to the pan and began to stir the eggs, continuing her story. "Actually, the teacher was the only one who knew I wasn't human." She shook her head. "I got the strangest looks sometimes, kids asking why a grown up was so bad at cooking that she needed to take classes with them. I told them my mother was a terrible cook, and she taught me all wrong which is more or less true I suppose. I'm just glad none of them figured out what was really going on." She added that last sentence to make it sound as if she'd been in danger, though really she had been quite safe. Sonya just hated having groups of eight year-old kids ogling her tail.

[Blu]

He laughed at the idea of all these kids looking at Sonya and not knowing why she couldn't cook. She seemed to like the idea of hiding that she was a mermaid. Blu couldn't imagine why you'd want to hide being a mermaid, but he still understood the concept of hiding. There was a reason he didn't go by Royce anymore, even though legally that was still his name. Sometimes you just had to be somebody else, even if that somebody wasn't even your species.

"Maybe they thought you were a secret agent!" He told her, thinking of a series of movies he'd watched a couple of weeks ago. "You came here to learn all our Human secrets and when you've got them all, you'll report back to your superiors underwater! Except you're not wearing a tux, so you're probably not a secret agent, and I don't know how useful cooking would be underwater, since you'd end up boiling yourself when you tried to make spaghetti! That could be pretty awkward!"

[Sonya]

It was hard to laugh and frown at the same time, yet that was exactly what Sonya felt like doing. Blu had the strangest, silliest, most entertaining ideas, but she didn’t like the thought of spying on humans for the merpeople. So she shook her head, though she couldn’t help but grin at the same time. “Maybe I am a secret agent, but I’d rather work for the humans. After all, who’d ever suspect a mermaid of working against her own species?”

As soon as the words left her mouth however, Sonya regretted them, and she returned to cooking the eggs in an uncomfortable silence. As much as she hated being a mermaid sometimes, and found herself wishing she was human, or a winged, or anything really, Sonya wasn’t ready to betray her own kind. There were still those she loved among the merpeople. Her father, her sister, and as much as she hated to admit it, she still loved her mother deep down.

[Blu]

Blu had totally said something wrong. He felt like smacking himself in the forehead, but that wouldn't help anything. And he wasn't even entirely sure what he had said, only that awkward silences were always the #1 sign that Blu had gone ahead and failed to realize that maybe he was being dumb.

He popped his eyeglasses off, cleaning them off with one side of his untucked shirt. Then Blu popped them back onto his face, world coming back into view. Time for a subject change, before it got even more awkward and weird. Music? Nah, not yet. Maybe his last cook? No, probably not. Family? Blu was not ready to go there. His own past was awkward enough to explain to other humans who already kinda understood him. Other species found it totally mystifying that anybody would do to their kids what had been done to Blu.

"You know what's fun?" He said, finally lighting on a topic he felt was safe. "Drinking in zero-g. Like, all the liquids turn into balls, and you can just eat them, or stick a straw in them and drink them down! And the food just floats around! The only thing is that you end up burping a lot because you swallow so much air by accident!"

[Sonya]

As it turned out, Blu was rather good at dispelling awkward silences. It was a skill that Sonya had never possessed, and thus she greatly valued it in others. After all, someone needed to get rid of those uncomfortable moments in a conversation, and it couldn’t be her. Perhaps it was partially from this need to feel comfortable again that the laughter came so easily, but for whatever reason Sonya found herself giggling uncontrollably at the thought of anyone floating around drinking small orbs of liquid.

Quite apart from anything else it sounded like fun, and she was eager to try it. However, she wasn’t quite sure what Blu meant by burping a lot. She could tell from the rest of his sentence that it had something to do with swallowing air, but wouldn’t that just be the same thing as breathing? She didn’t want to seem ignorant by asking, but she was curious, and if she never asked the questions, she’d never get them answered. In the end all she said was, “What do you mean by that?”