Scene #9694: You Weren't Home

Owner	Pose
Metamorph One	Out of all the insane firsts that have occurred to Petra, clustered together in recent memory, nowhere in any predictive algorithm, nor in any of the portents, or any bingo sheet in any betting pool anywhere, was the text that Petra got two hours ago, with no elucidating followup afterwards. > Are you in Grand Dorado today? > I looked, but I didn't know where to find you. > Dianna is staying overnight. > Come by the seaside lounge near the ferry station after it closes. The instructions are imprecise, and require guessing, as if given by someone familiar with street names as a form of TV technobabble. There is no name given, though it comes through the city's secure VIP line, Concord Elite Partner verification icon and all. There's really no need for either, though. There's one ferry line that doesn't go to a Warpgate, the number of lounges that ever close in Grand Dorado aren't high, and the name that is mentioned is all that Petra really needs. On the eastern side of Grand Dorado, so late into the sunset that the purple-ambergold light bleeds through the curtain of glittering buildings at their middle-height, surrounding everything to the west in a lingering glow-haze of reflected gas-flame shades, Petra has ample spare time to stare at the edge of the ocean while the last ferry lights gradually vanish into the distance and the service staff come out to sweep and put up chairs. She'd be forgiven for thinking it was a prank, or that they had second thoughts, and for ignoring her first and only interruption of the night; a car coming in from by the scenic little side road and smoothly pulling into the crescent drop-off curb isn't something that she would naturally have any reason to consider having anything to do with her here. "Oh. You were actually here." Elara, sans Dianna, says the words as if she were remarking on a barely interesting coincidence. Behind the wheel of a slick little luxury car with tinted windows and a pedigree that can be traced exclusively to the Concord transport commission rather than any company on Earth, it could almost be believed. The fact that she doesn't actually put it in park even adds to it. "Hey. Let's go for a drive. Okay?" sounds much less neutral than the unassuming words suggest, though. She doesn't wait for Petra to actually reply before hitting the door release from her side, indicating that Petra has the lofty honour, or perhaps the weighty obligation, of sitting in the passenger seat and not the back. The vertical hinge closes behind her automatically, in a way reminiscent of the few times she's had occasion to be ferried around between the Elysium Apex and 'work'; mostly to meet new Partners in occasion need of orientation. The inside isn't actually a 'company car' though; even outside of being a different model in the same line, none of the amenities for dazzling new hires or visiting VIPs are installed. The first thing that stands out is that Elara put considerable effort into stickering the dashboard with everything from company logos to random packing and operation instructions, all from IF, nostalgic at first glance, until the minor mod-job makes it look strangely chunky and retrofuturist. The second is that this didn't actually deter her from hanging keycards from AO lanyards. The space for a drink cabinet is taken up by an aluminium trunk with bright plastic clasps. The back seats are pulled up for the lack of a cabin divider and the space behind them visibly hosts camping gear instead. One would naturally conclude that the jacket folded up on a back seat must belong to Dianna. Petra would conclude the seatbelt buckle isn't street legal, because it's taken off an EVA tether she vaguely remembers seeing once before.
Metamorph One	All in all, none of it really changes the posh interior or the obvious Concord stylings of the car. All in all, these two must have used this car for at least a couple of years, tinging it toyetic-lived-in. Elara's perfume is still on the shift. She herself is wearing white and sky blue with an honest to god open-knit tunic and jeans, making it the least dressed up Petra has ever seen her. Somehow, it makes that navy and silver hat still on her head fit in 'differently'. She doesn't even say to anything to Petra before she starts driving again. Being behind the wheel is the perfect excuse to not look for eye contact too. "You've been doing well." says Elara, then awkwardly adds "I hear." as if she didn't really want to. "Not since the program. Since I last saw you." makes the tone of the drive more clear. She pulls out of the drop-off lane and merges onto a road that doesn't point towards anything Petra knows is out there, vaguely in the direction of the eastern horizon, where the stars are coming out. "Val talks about you." says all the rest that's needed.
Petra Soroka	The communication device is a sort of holy thing to Petra, but so rarely does that ever mean her actual phone. She carries not one, but two Nintendo DS's with which she talks to one girl, a flip phone with the number that she put on Ash's phone originally and has just never actually updated, the radio that connects her to nearly her entire social circle outside of college, but her phone is used for Lilian, or things of secondary importance. Confirming that it's not Lilian at a glance (unnecessary, due to having a custom tone for her anyways), and not even seeing a contact ID, Petra comfortably ignores the text she receives for ten minutes and forgets about it entirely. Then, out of nowhere, the words jump back into her mind with a blaring warning on the one identifying piece of information in them, and Petra's life flashes before her eyes as she scrambles to hurry out the door. Lacking both the time to go home and the guitar case that her quick swap wardrobe is contained in, Petra zips by the storage-unit-turned-workshop that she has in Grand Dorado. 'What the fuck does she wear to meet Elara' is a question that becomes possible to answer only because she has limited time and choice to make. There's still a damp spot that smells a little like soap and a little like motor oil on her pants when she runs out of both, and she rushes over to where she can only hope she's meant to meet her as soon as she can. It's a choice that's suited to the late night atmosphere and the oceanside, where she waits on a bench with her knees tucked up to her chest. Breezy green culottes that she wore in her workshop to survive the heat put off by some of her wretched machines, as well as an oversized iridescent grey silk top reined in by rolled-up sleeves and the excess length being knotted at her right hip with teal high tops, could fit in anywhere from San Franciso to Grand Dorado, clubbing or business casual. She has no clue at all what to expect, besides that she knows better than to brace for anything she's done wrong, even if she has. The ocean breeze tugs at her hair and musses it up over her face as she sits curled up on the bench. The entire time she's waiting, Petra watches the sun set with an unreadable expression, lost in thought to the point that if it were a prank, she might not think to check for hours after the sun had already vanished. %
Petra Soroka	"Oh. You were actually here." Petra jumps up like she's been electrified, springing to her feet and wheeling around. It's a voice she's heard four times in as many years, gaps dissociating longer from what's happened in between, but still one she recognizes on instinct. "Ah-- hi. Hello. Y-yes." "Hey. Let's go for a drive. Okay?" Waiting to be given context, Petra fidgets with her hair to try and sort it out away from falling in front of her face, only to jump right back into motion when instructed. "O-okay. Sure." Petra sits in the car as if she's a little afraid of touching it at all. Her back stays away from the seat, knees sharply bent to tuck her feet under the seat, hands in her lap until they anxiously wander back to trying to sort out her hair. A year of overgrowth from her previously comfortable bob, and the curse of longer bangs still haunts her. Not that her drawn-in nervousness keeps her from drinking in the details of the car around her. The stickers, of course, the smell, the little modifications, the undeniable reality that this is 'their car', and not just a car Elara picked up while going around the Dorado-- something that queues up to Petra's mouth to comment on, as small talk, but fails to come out. Suddenly, sitting here, it feels like she's never driven a car at all, much less a mech. She feels fourteen years old, sitting in a friend's beloved little car after they got their learner's permit, knowing that she could never learn to drive or own or love anything at all like that, like the entire mundane process was something she could only observe distantly. "You've been doing well." Petra takes a deep breath and nods silently, inflating the physical pressure in her chest until it matches the psychosomatic. Realizing that Elara can't look at her while driving, after Petra nods again at her clarification, she bravely musters up the ability to speak. "I-I'd like to think so." "Val talks about you." What Petra had been worried about when it came to Val, was that her secondhand presence through Val thinking about her existence would become a thorn buried in Io again. She tried to promise a clean break, and was denied, and so the invasive echoes of Petra still linger in the place that should be home. Or, so she catastrophizes, but the reality is that despite the distance and awkwardness, it's been incredibly nice to be talking to Val again, and Angkasa did make her promise to nurture whatever was left of the child that once lived there. So she shivers a bit, but the valve slowly eases open on being able to talk. "I didn't know you two talked." Is it narcissistic to assume it's her own fault? That the unignorable infection of Petra would demand their attention, them specifically, like Dianna said it always would? Oh god. She has to get her brain on a better track than that. "Um-- yeah. I kind of-- we've sort of been friends again recently." In her tentative acceptance that Elara seems to approve of this somewhat, Petra spins the slot machine on finding a followup sentence to that in order to not be so stilted and quiet. "It's-- kind of funny. It's not the same worlds or anything, but I ended up going to school in San Francisco, and she's got that thing in LA, so it's sort of like, small... worlds."
Metamorph One	The world outside the car is almost totally silent. The hum of the engine is little more than the sound of an ambient breeze. The feedback of the tires may as well be the ocean, much further than it actually is. All of that is a designed part of the experience, and quite possibly why Elara opted to pick a car from this series, familiar to every Concord Elite. It sort of feels like being in a space rover. Petra's posture, before long, makes Elara snort, then giggle, then say "You look like an asshole." in soprano titter. The ease with which she takes her hand away from the wheel to shield her mouth implies she's been driving for a while already. "She isn't going to smell that you were here." she says, clearly meaning Dianna. "Just don't touch the radio." It isn't on. There's nothing playing. There isn't even a playlist hooked up to it, either. It's just the sound of circulating air and road friction, coursing by as the scenery shifts from orange-violet haze to midnight blue with gradually more visible stars. Two lane splits takes her way off the highway that leads to the next ferry station, then way off the road that leads to the north side of Grand Dorado on an enormous scenic loop, and onto a freeway that seems to just lead off into the horizon; one of the several sprawling roads that had always been visible from the Elysium Apex at the center of Grand Dorado, but had never really seemed important to ask about. Before long, the streetlamps on either side shift to a more spartan bar shape, their light a little more chemical than bubbling champagne gold. The cabin is so very warm. "I talk with everyone I can." Elara says, after what must be either thirty minutes or sixty seconds of driving in silence. Probably neither. Now that Petra looks, nothing inside the car displays the time at all. A semitranslucent polymer patch reading [ACTIVTE IORITE PROCESSING] is plastered over the tiny forecast display, above [THIS SIDE UP] and below [WAIT UNTIL FULL PRESSURE RELEASE], giving it a backlit glow "There's kinda no point if we don't, right?" The way she tilts her head makes her earrings jingle. Petra can only hear it because of the quiet. 'It's-- kind of funny. It's not the same worlds or anything, but I ended up going to school in San Francisco, and she's got that thing in LA, so it's sort of like, small... worlds.' "Or it's a big Earth." says Elara. The way she says it feels like a shortened idiom. The awkward half-smile on her lips becomes strained, then falls away. "Sorry." follows up two seconds later. "Isn't it crazy to think about? After everything that's happened, we have to find something to do with another fifty years." she says, after a conversational pause. "At least. Even five feels like so much." Her hand runs down the side of the steering wheel just for the texture of it. Her nails are painted her usual favourite blue, with a white eight-pointed star in a different place on each. It's such a specific little detail that it stands out at odds, or nearly, with her mostly ordinary outfit.
Metamorph One	"I learned to drive in college." she says, answering a question that wasn't asked. "When the Concord took us on, Angkasa made us promise. She wouldn't throw away anything, or take us out of the program; but we had to finish something, any course we wanted, before touching a cockpit again." She doesn't seem to have anywhere in mind as the road stretches on into the countryside, terraformed less than ten years ago. "Di doesn't really like driving 'civilian vehicles'. I made it sound like I was doing it as a favour to her, but I was really just looking for a sense of connection. Being behind the wheel of something . . ." For a second, it seems as if she means to get into something very complicated. Instead, Elara asks "Is the music recent?" and the connection is suddenly, expectantly, clear.
Petra Soroka	"You look like an asshole." "Um-- yup, got it." Petra tries so hard to sit a normal amount of relaxed after that, but finds herself having completely forgotten what that looks like. She slouches a bit in the chair, attempting to touch her back to the seat, and has to manually scoot herself back like a little pillbug in order to awkwardly make that happen. She looks no more 'comfortable', but puts more effort into maintaining the appearance of it. Really, the thing that briefly consumes her mind is that not only does Dianna not know, but Dianna won't know. This is not something that escalates to the dramatic heights of a 'secret' of course, but it does call to mind questions about how Petra is 'handled', again fixated on that thing Dianna said when she brought back the Beauty of Ash. In a complete failure to look like less of an asshole, Petra ends up wedging her hands under her butt to make absolutely sure she does not touch the radio. "There's kinda no point if we don't, right?" "I guess not." 'Everyone' and 'can' are both words with so much baggage. Petra can only conditionally overlap with either of them, at the very edges of their definitions. 'We' has so much baggage too, actually. "Or it's a big Earth." "Yeah..." After a little sigh, Petra reexamines the feeling to find less negativity in it than she first expected. The tension and the apology comes and goes, and Petra hesitates before committing to the bold decision to revisit it. "It's not so bad if it's by choice." The subject of 'it' goes unspoken, but really Petra just intuited the wavelength and meditated on it until she forgot it wasn't said out loud. The more important reason comes to mind a moment later. "Or, it's not bad if it's for fun." "Even five feels like so much." "Right? It literally is." Petra unconsciously shaves the edge off her voice when talking to Elara, even when making that exasperated gasp. The quiet car and desolate surroundings are part of what modulates her tone, but her usual exaggerated volumetric swerves and harsh phrasing serve a purpose, and don't really find any semantic purchase here. Without noticing, one of her hands freed itself from her thigh-prison to fidget with her hair again. "I feel like so much happens every year. I guess, though, it's never been anything I could guess in advance, so I've sort of started stressing less about how or why for the time, and just like-- think about being there for it. Or something." 'What comes after college' is a hurdle she hasn't had to cross yet, but she can't even imagine the person she'll be when she has to.
Petra Soroka	"When the Concord took us on, Angkasa made us promise." Petra nods, familiar already. She wasn't exactly told, per se, but her attention was relentlessly aimed in the direction of the former Eidolon Squadron during her brief time in Applied Ontology, so she couldn't have missed it. The bitter taste of what comes to mind rises to her mouth before the actual words do, and even after double checking whether she wants to say them, it still feels like she's blurting them out. "I guess I did too-- uh, learn to drive in college, I mean. I got a license a few months ago. Um, the cockpit sorta coincided with college though, so." So, different circumstances, which is something she has to clarify or else feel a creeping tangle of outgrown bad habits crawling up her back. "They're sort of cute?" Petra says suddenly, on cars. Pointing at any part of the dashboard would stray dangerously close to touching the radio, so she can't do that, but she wiggles like she means to gesture all around at the car they're in. "Cars, I mean. I mean, like, they've got the engines and everything, but they're all so short and you only move really slowly in them most of the time? I don't know. I think it's kind of cute." "Is the music recent?" "In general?" Petra raises up her face to look directly at Elara for the first time (without awkwardly looking away after, at least), eyes a little widened. Well, that would be one of the main categories of shared experience that Val would talk about, so that makes sense. "Um, yes and no." "I, uh, played the uke back then. Ukulele, I mean. Couple years ago now, I got a guitar as a gift, and-- more recently, I've, um, gotten more guitars. Like, way more, eheh. It's..." "Um, it's a nice feeling to learn things." The dread shape of a thought looms on the edge of Petra's consciousness, partially conceptualized but with her attention avoiding completing it, on the matter of sequence with respect to mechs. "It's kind of the most mundane thing I do, but-- but, you know. That's nice too."
Metamorph One	'It's not so bad if it's by choice.' The road stretches on. The low hiss of travel fills the cabin. The bars of light and shadow alternate across the windshield. Elara's expression doesn't really change. 'Or, it's not bad if it's for fun.' But it does, after a while. The way she smiles is entirely for herself; looking at the road isn't related. "I like that one better." she says, and the moment she does, the atmosphere inside the car seems to change. The dim faux-sodium lighting feels cozy rather than liminal. "It is." Elara takes a breath, and smiles, and this time it's for the both of them. "Me and Di use the suite here in Grand Dorado all the time just because it's fun. Sometimes, Di finds a fancy party, and we get dressed up, and we go out and act like we care about anything going on, just so we can pick new outfits and get to see what everyone is talking about. I started looking into camping, because I think the kids on Io should get to do it, and Di decided she was done boycotting Earth movies, so we could watch them on a little projector against a tent." "It's fun." Elara says. "It's all terrible when you're on Earth because you're trapped. It sparkles when you steal it." 'Right? It literally is.' Elara laughs louder the next time. Even as the long road peters away into nothing, with the dramatic lights of Grand Dorado fading on the gradually darkening horizon behind them both, the theoretically barren surroundings start to feel more like a shared secret than a good place to kill and bury Petra. "So much, and so little, and a lot in-between. Time is so funny when you count up. Like, who made it this way? What's the point?" she says, giggling at a private joke. "It feels like I didn't do anything all year, but there's still so much to talk about." 'They're sort of cute?' Another snort. Almost bubbly. She gently turns the steering wheel, and the road gains noticeable texture under-tire. "They are. And I'm sort of cute, so we go together." says Elara. Ten years ago, nobody would ever imagine it. "But if you want to remind yourself, or forget--" Out of nowhere, Elara slams the pedal. The car accelerates rapidly past one hundred, and keeps climbing. The slight texture of the road becomes a chaotic, rover-esque rumble. Petra can hear the suspension working more than she can hear the engine. The wind blowing against the windshield makes a dull roaring noise inside. Elara keeps talking as if she isn't barreling through the dark at suicide velocity. "You're still behind all that steel, right?" she says. She lets off the gas much, much later than merely 'making her point'. She teases the speed down in ones and twos on the dashboard, the back-glow tuned to casette futurist orange instead of post-modern blue. Whether or not she sensed Petra's dread when she slammed the pedal is too hard to tell. "Like rewriting those old songs. It's more about you, now, than it is about the place you came from. Which always seems so backwards, doesn't it? It should be the longer you stay away, not only when you come back." she says, halfway expecting Petra to understand what she means, halfway not. She muses on something for a while, then decides on it, with a strangely approving nod. "Stealing guitars from Earth sounds nice."
Petra Soroka	"It's all terrible when you're on Earth because you're trapped. It sparkles when you steal it." "Yeah!" The little reward of a smile induces such a change in Petra that it's like hanging a light over her head to brighten all her colors. Over the course of a couple minutes or so, Petra's stiffness-- doesn't disappear by a long shot, but the wiggly habits of her pointless motions and freely loosed microexpressions, usually all but hidden by the stress of being around Elara or Io, creep back into her body. The gestures her hand makes when trying to communicate her feelings are, as always, complete incomprehensible besides the mood behind them. "I mean, like, I can't really tell myself that there's nothing to be gained, in, like, a personal attainment sense, from the entire cultural production of the whole history of the human race. I'm studying-- um, journalism, for my degree, but it's like, two-thirds reading poetry and books and everything, and I think that's been pretty awesome. I can get stuff out of it, and then I can, you know, turn it over and grind it out, and then share it with people." "There's plenty fun on Earth. Just, um, as long as I'm... strong enough to stand separately from it." Enthused by this, for the first time Petra has to internally insist on not talking instead of forcing herself to talk at all, as a stream of a dozen pieces of literature come to mind to babble about. She stops her nodding abruptly and snickers to herself, a little ugly-nervous but relaxed enough to not suppress it. "Forging off into the dark wilderness. I return from the perilous journey bringing new berries and fruits for the people of space." "Time is so funny when you count up." A laugh!! Yay! Yippee!! Petra must say something in order to keep this going, but when she reaches into her box for feelings about time, they're mostly really bad, so she tries to guide herself to the most positive one that still feels true. "I feel like, I've really only recently started doing that. Um, counting up instead of down, I mean. So it's still got, like, novelty to it." It's both awkwardly nonspecific to say, and painfully precise of a sentiment to share, so Petra rifles in that subcategory for a happy capstone and blurts out, "Friend of mine's probably gonna have kids in a couple years or something. So that's cool." "And I'm sort of cute, so we go together." Petra has to so precisely modulate her nodding frequency here. If she's too halfhearted, then she might seem condescending, but if she's too eager to agree, then the dozen snipers trained on her skull every moment of her life will finally pull the trigger. The sudden roar of the car's engine and the speed Elara takes them ripping through the dimly lit wasteland makes Petra stiffen up with widening eyes and giggle. The speed in a car is so different-feeling from taking a similar speed any other time, but after a few seconds at top speed, the feeling of the machine as a passenger is familiar enough that her heartbeat can stop climbing. As the car slows down, Petra's adrenaline-spiced laughter gradually transforms into a sigh. "Yeah, exactly. That's why it's just sort of toys when you're driving in a city, right?"
Petra Soroka	Without noticing, the relaxation caused by Elara flooring the pedal bypassed the limits that Petra set on her posture when she got into the car. She leans her elbow against the door and looks out the window, piecing together all the small disparate lights of the rural moon. "... I've never been out here before. I didn't know this all was here." "It should be the longer you stay away, not only when you come back." Petra is quiet for a bit, firstly caught wondering whether that video was what caused Elara to feel so conflicted that she sent out this half-wary invitation on a whim, then piecing together the meaning of the words. She wraps her hand around the compact mirror hanging by a cord from around her neck, where both the Beauty of Ash and the complex warpath of Qetra's body are contained. "I guess there's not really anything I could make that would be more about back then than now. It's sort of like, instead of being a fixed spot that you can be closer to or further from, it's just something there in the cloud orbiting you." The inlay of mother-of-pearl in the wood of the compact mirror case doesn't form any particular pattern where her thumb brushes over it, just an iridescent mosaic of smooth, irregular shapes. "And you can either drown it out, or point at it, and stain it with whatever color's going on right now." She goes quiet again, and this time it's almost a comfortable quiet instead of a stiff one. "Earth gave me the guitar, and pretty much all the songs for it, and the musical notation and everything. But I'm playing it. And it makes me happy, and it makes people important to me happy. So, they can't have it back. Nyeh."
Metamorph One	'Forging off into the dark wilderness. I return from the perilous journey bringing new berries and fruits for the people of space.' Like a steady breeze fanning the one coal that caught light, the warm patter of Petra's half-subdued enthusiastic nonsense keeps Elara's smile in place for far longer than she had meant it. Though her eyes remain fixed on the road as it curves endlessly into the darkness, and the mood of strange companionship dims and flickers at times, there is fuel enough between them for Elara to find that phrasing incredibly funny, and solid enough footing to crack up and uglygiggle about it. "Yeah. The appeal of crashing the moon into the Eart is that you imagine there's debris, you know?" Elara saying so, all on its own, is tacitly establishing Petra in the position of 'someone who Dianna talks to'. "Thinking about it getting swallowed up by the sun is more sad than anything; that's going to happen someday anyways. Nobody really wants all signs of everything they've ever known to be gone without a trace. It should just be broken down into small enough pieces that we can't get stranded." The subject doesn't put a trace of melancholy anywhere on her face. The same ginger glow persists through the last turn that takes the car onto thoroughly 'rural' road. Before long, the natural grain of the moon, or as close to it as still exists now, whispers through the tread of the tires. "It'd be great, right? An Earth in a billion pieces. Get a guitar on guitar shop island, then make a few big jumps and learn to play it on music camp island." 'I feel like, I've really only recently started doing that. Um, counting up instead of down, I mean. So it's still got, like, novelty to it.' "It's been most of a decade for me, and it still has novelty. I don't know whether it is novelty, or whether it's some other thing I don't know what to call." Elara says. "Going to school felt like a daydream. Like some 'alt-u' where all the same things were different and people who didn't get to be happy or normal suddenly were. Does that make any sense?" Of course it does. Elara delivers it so rhetorically that it can only mean that Petra must know all about it, by now. "But then, once we graduated, it didn't stop being that way. Even when we asked for our mechs back, and we went back to driving them, the glow didn't, fade, so much as it just became a little different. I'm closer to thirty than eighteen, and I still feel like I'm on summer camp." She giggles. 'Friend of mine's probably gonna have kids in a couple years or something. So that's cool.' Elara nods her head as if Petra had given the correct answer to some strangely obscure question; like a demonstration of esoteric wisdom. "You're going to see. It's going to happen to you." she says. "If the daydream feeling doesn't kick in before then, that's when it will." '... I've never been out here before. I didn't know this all was here.' "It's the second thing I did after getting the car." Elara says. "Grand Dorado is a big project because they built it right in the way of the 'quakes that ravaged the old superfaction headquarters. The experts advertised this one moon as being impervious to whatever caused them, because it's so far from every fault line they detected. It's way too small for this much gravity. The island the city is on is the biggest landmass here, after the terraforming melted all the ice."
Metamorph One	"So there's something kind of naughty about driving away from the city that's the whole reason the air is breathable and exploring, isn't there? You remember those little towns that sorta hung in there for no reason except they didn't have a good reason to give up?" 'On Io' is implicit. "They're starting to build up here too." 'It's sort of like, instead of being a fixed spot that you can be closer to or further from, it's just something there in the cloud orbiting you.' "That's something scary when you can only think about wanting to get away from it, right? But then it's comforting when you start caring about 'where to go next'; because there's not a 'wrong direction' that takes you back there." 'And you can either drown it out, or point at it, and stain it with whatever color's going on right now.' The seemingly endless curve that the car has been gently riding for ten minutes straight, lit only by knee-high lamps pounded into the earth like stakes leftover from its original construction, finally crosses a subtle mathematical boundary that places the tilt of the starlit dirt at a low enough angle to the passenger side window that Petra can suddenly see the ocean emerging from the blackness again. Miles away from Grand Dorado, the water is a rippling mirror of the sea of stars above. Darker than the earth and brighter by the sky, it's painted between them by the brush of the powder-blue galactic ribbon that passes overhead, where the only light to blot it out are the warm high-beams of the car. Petra can see their twin along the shore, following the night drivers like the eyes of a curious sea creature. And Elara hums to herself, satisfied with an answer she didn't voice. 'But I'm playing it. And it makes me happy, and it makes people important to me happy. So, they can't have it back. Nyeh.' "Nyeh~" Elara repeats after Petra, and slams the gas pedal one more time as she laughs.