Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Rita Ma      Tellus Station is, for a "waypoint", unobtrusively out of the way. It's a little like a mall, and a little like the kind of "rest stop" you'd find on a long highway to stretch your legs, but by the logistics of space travel is a little grander than either.

     The floor is marble, checkered in pretty designs to keep you from realizing it's the cheaper kind. The signs for the densely-packed and colorful shops are readable, but subtitled in a pictographic language that isn't.

     Space stations can be as vertical as they want without structural concerns, so the verticality here- with walkways and overhangs and gaps where you can see the milling people below- is kind of dizzying. A few aliens of various kinds are sprinkled in with the crowd of familiar humanity, the colorful M&Ms in the trail mix.

     Rita's sitting near arrivals on a bench meant for old people with hurty knees. Teleporters and hangars aren't far away. She's tapping on her phone, propped up on her lunchbox in her lap. Her usual outfit has been shed; in its place she wears a little white turtleneck and high-waisted black skirt. It's a cute outfit, but it's a little too 'elegant' for someone that small and cute to pull off.

     She looks comfy in these surroundings, but a little bored. Someone got over-excited and got here early.
Petra Soroka     Thankfully for Rita, Petra's also early. She swoops out of the arrivals hallway precisely three minutes after Rita sits down, almost like she was anxiously loitering around and hid when Rita showed up to make it look like she just arrived.

    This is Rita's first encounter with Clean Petra, and the difference is shocking. She's wearing a light green knit cardigan, buttoned up over her grey turtleneck, loosely tucked into high waisted jeans with a large belt buckle accent. Her short blonde hair is done up into two messy buns, the stray strands framing her face in a way that's meant to look casual--but Rita's *seen* what casual Petra looks like. God, she's even wearing a necklace, an understated gold chain with two back crystals dangling from it, one layered over her turtleneck, and one hanging over her cardigan.

    She's clearly tried to dress a bit more maturely, and it's really, really obvious how much thought she put into this. Her face lights up when she "spots" Rita sitting on the bench, and a heterosexual amount of bounce enters her step as she strides over.

    "Rita! Hi! It's Petra!" An incomprehensible thing to say, and her expression shows that she immediately realized that. "Er, so, how're you?"
Rita Ma      Rita pops up from the bench like she's spring-loaded, almost dropping her lunchbox in the process. "Oh!! Ms. Petra!!" She waves vigorously, then smoothly shifts into giving her friend an excessively energetic hug.

     "It sure is you," she giggles. "Thanks for saying so. I almost didn't recognize you! You look amazing." If that sounds mean, Rita definitely doesn't realize it.

     Finally, she lets go, but her hands still linger on Petra's upper arms. Her eyes are full of sunny energy. "There's a couple of clothes stores I wanted to look at, and a botanical garden- that's a place where they have lots of plants!- and then there's a sashimi restaurant, too, but I'm not sure if they're open, so I brought a lunch just in case."

     "Did you have anywhere you wanted to go first, Ms. Petra? I was thinking the clothes, but now I'm not sure! It looks like you've got everything you need," she says, with an adorably sunny grin.
Petra Soroka     Petra startles at the hug, before enthusiastically returning it, moving her arms quickly enough that her purse whips Rita on the back, like she's trying to compensate for a slow start. "I-I, yeah," The lame response to the compliment is made a bit better when Rita pulls back to see that Petra's face is flushed red.

    Petra shudders when Rita's hands stay touching her, but despite reacting like she's been shocked, she doesn't pull away. She does look diagonally at the ground while responding, though, unable to look directly at Rita's sunniness.

    "I actually don't have a ton of clothes. Most of them can't fit in the Kana, so I've sort of... just got like five outfits I swap between, haha." She looks back at Rita, but her eyes slide past her face like ice, instead fixating on reading one of the nearby shop's signs. "If we go shopping first, though, we'll have to carry everything through the garden! So let's go there, first. I-if that's okay."
Rita Ma      When Petra shudders, it's Rita who pulls away. She looks down at her hands as if the fault might be in them, but doesn't say anything. Her smile remains, only slightly dimmed.

     "Mmmm. Only five outfits... I've been in that situation, too. Is there a point to buying anything if it's so cramped?" A realization dawns on Rita as she turns to head towards the gardens, and she glances back over her shoulder.

     "Oh! But Ms. Remee said she'd be making a hideout, right? Are you going to be living there now? We'd better get you lots of stuff, then! I can help you carry it, too. I..." She trails off, suddenly feeling that she's trapped herself.

     "I mostly just use the clothes for inspiration, you know?" Rita finishes, a little desperately.

     The botanical gardens are down several sets of escalators (which Rita seems to be giddily fascinated by) and through a vine-woven archway. Really, it's a lot like a park, but with denser and fancier plants and placards to tell you what everything is. Winding concrete pathways carve between stands of trees and crowded flowers, most of which don't seem native to Earth.

     Rita is captivated. She might as well have stars in her eyes. Absentmindedly, she tries to take Petra's hand in her own. "I've never seen so many different kinds in one place," she breathes, as if speaking too loud could break the spell. "Look at all the flowers... I've never even seen ones like that in National Geographic."

     A butterfly with shiny blue wings flits past. Rita holds out her hand, and it lands on her finger. Her breath hitches in her throat. "It's so pretty... Ms. Petra, what is this?"
Petra Soroka     Petra's expression is not nearly as stable as Rita's is, when her hands drop. Her shivering awkward smile drops away, relief flooding her face, followed immediately a flash of disappointment. But she's smiling, again, hands tucked into her armpits rather than hanging limply after the hug is broken.

    "I'm not sure if Remee wants a-anyone else living there with her? I don't know, I don't know if I want to, either. She's looking at a space station for the safe house, and I'm not sure if that'd be comfortable, or, like, convenient." She shrugs, her arms still tight to her chest, "We'll see though, I'll check it out with her."

    Petra tilts her head in confusion. "Inspiration? Like, you already have all the clothes you want? Is Grier's ship that big?" She blinks in realization, and tentatively adds, "You look really good. Like, your outfit. It looks--it looks nice."

    For the first couple minutes of the walk to the gardens, Petra lingers half a step behind Rita, her stiffly awkward posture slowly thawing. She watches Rita gush about the escalator with a serene smile on her face, then gets jolted out of her reverie by her prompting her for a response, saying the first thing that comes to mind.

    "Ah, uh, you know, I've heard that if you've got untied shoes, the laces can get sucked into the bottom stair and break your foot." She blinks a few times, missing the smooth transition off of the escalator herself--thankfully with her boots properly tied. "I don't know why I said that, ahaha."
Petra Soroka     Picking up her pace to match step with Rita as they enter the botanical garden, Petra looks around with the casual admiration of someone who's seen a lot of impressive sights but still tries to take each one in. "Wow, it's beau..." Her words die in her throat when she sees the genuine awe sparkling in Rita's eyes, and Petra feels like she shouldn't finish that sentence while staring directly at the other girl. So she just swallows hard and moves on, instead.

    Petra's tried to busy her gaze by looking intently at all of the plants, beckoning Rita to "come feel this one" while stroking a bulbous bush covered in what seems to be soft fur. Every effort that Rita's made to try to hold her hand has been matched with Petra moving her purse to that side, and she's similarly, conspicuously, conscious to keep their hands from overlapping while petting the bush.

    "...So, Rita. You're from a water planet, right? That's why plants and trees and everything are new to you? What's that like?"

    Petra feels something stirring in her when looking at Rita gasp at the butterfly, the sight of her, dressed up like this, framed by the ocean of flowers, a leaf caught in her hair from pushing under a branch....

    Anger. Petulant, unreasonable, uncalled for, a nasty knot forms in Petra's stomach. She tries to crush it down, tries to ignore it so her day with her friend keeps going well, but her response comes out brusque. "It's a butterfly. A bug.
Rita Ma It's easy to see when Rita begins suspecting Petra is avoiding hand contact on purpose. A few moments later, it happens again with the bush, and she becomes certain. Her smile becomes bittersweet. There's the soft pain of something braced for, and the relief of no longer bracing. 'Ah, of course.'

"It's a butterfly. A bug."
"Once the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it can't go back. Embrace it."

    "Oh," Rita says. Just as she'd started to smile in earnest again, the wonder drains from her eyes. She shivers; the butterfly, sensing something, takes off. That seems to drain her further.

     After another minute of walking, she finds another bench to sit down on. "I need a little rest," she says. But the rest isn't for her legs. Her hands grip handfuls of her skirt, and her eyes fall to her tense knuckles.

     "I meant that I make my own clothes," she says, calling back to minutes earlier. Why's that been rattling around in her head for so long? "I mean, I learned how to sew and knit when I was little. My fancier outfits are 'real', but... there's no reason to bother Ms. Grier for something if I can make it myself, right? I don't want to be a burden."

     Another little while passes in contemplative silence. "... This really is amazing, Ms. Petra," she finally adds bravely. Her smile starts to return. "You must be a little more used to it, but even you still think it's pretty, right? ... I guess it is an 'ocean planet'. I'm from Earth, actually. But something bad happened to it. For most of my life, the only green I saw was seaweed."

     "The weirdest thing is how big all the spaces are here." She gestures with a hand at the mall in general, then laughs, just a bit. "Maybe that's why I don't mind living on a spaceship. It's not so bad once you get used to it, Ms. Petra."

     Another pause. Rita's feet can't quite reach the ground from the bench, so she swings her little legs aimlessly like a kid on a swingset. "... I think you should just ask her. Ms. Remee, I mean. You're a really loveable person, Ms. Petra. I don't know what's happened to you, but I think you'd be happy if you let other people love you, and didn't push them away."
Petra Soroka     Rita's sunny expression dips below the horizon, and Petra's face freezes. The directionless anger bubbling inside her finds its target--herself--and an apologetic note enters her frantic recovery, "Ah, but, it's cute! It's a cute bug, there's a million different kinds of them, and they've all got unique and pretty wings, and some of them have patterns that mimic eyes on their wings to scare off things that might eat them--" She's rambling, both her hands clenched into fists by her side.

    Petra's anxious gaze doesn't turn away from the despondent Rita as she trails a step behind, and because she's not looking where she's going, she stumbles off the path, crashing into a tangle of vines with bright blue pods. She shrieks and pulls away, but the pods grab onto her clothes like cockleburs, and she whines while following Rita to the bench.

    Picking seeds out of her cardigan, Petra's expression nonetheless lights up when Rita talks, completely glossing over the abrupt return to an old topic. "That's really cool! That's an amazing skill, being able to make your own clothes from scratch, I'm impressed." She gestures a hand at Rita's outfit, a burr between her fingers, and it falls out and catches onto Rita's skirt. "Did you sew this--Ah!"

    A mischievous smile crawls onto Petra's face, and she deliberately pulls another seed pod off--double checking to make sure the hooks aren't strong enough to pull out any threads--and flicks it at Rita. She giggles and pelts a few more at her before responding, "Yeah, I guess you lived on a boat? A spaceship is close enough to a boat to feel comparable, but they're able to be a lot less cramped."

    When Rita says "let other people love you", Petra freezes mid-flick, and the burr drops to the ground. "...It's not really that simple, is it?" She murmurs, with a resonant loneliness creeping into her voice, "It's not that easy, to just let something happen. Without thinking about what's expected of you, whether you've earned it, whether you're as good to them as they are to you."
Rita Ma      "Yeah! I was inspired by something, but I made it myself!" Rita's genuine pride is undercut by only a twinge of pain- she can't say she sewed it, can she? That can only be implied.

     Then the burr hits her skirt. Rita's face is pulled taut. It wants to wince, but she forces herself to keep her smile, just barely. "Ah-!! Ms. Petra, that's-" But what can she say? She can't concoct a lie in half a second, can't let her composure falter. The second burr snags on her shirt, and her expression wavers more.

     Petra is about to toss the third when Rita's composure cracks. She reaches out. In a flash her hand seizes Petra's wrist, squeezing hard enough to hurt. The severed halves of the seed pod- did her fingers cut through it midair?- whistle past her head, on opposite sides.

     Then she realizes what she's doing. Her grip slackens. There's a horrified apology in her eyes, but she can't bring it to her lips. Instead she draws in on herself after picking out the burrs, knees pulled up against her chest.

     The exotic greenery has lost its charm. Her eyes rest on the familiar concrete, instead.

     "You're right," she says. "It's not that simple. It's so easy to imagine... being hated because you ask too much. Or because you weighed people down. Or intruded on them. Your life like a balance sheet. But that's not how other people see it, is it?"

     "... I bet you'd make Ms. Remee really happy. So do it for her, okay?" A feeble, mischievous smile crosses her face. Little Shit Mode has been activated. "Or I'll ask her for you, tomorrow. Those are your choices, Ms. Petra."
Petra Soroka     Petra doesn't shriek when Rita grabs her, instead sharply gasping. Her whole body flickers, but stays in place, and she doesn't break eye contact with Rita, her mouth hanging open in shock. Her arm hangs in the air after Rita releases it, then flops into her lap.

    "W-wait, I'm sorry, I didn't think." Petra consciously resists rubbing her wrist, ignoring the throbbing. "Right after you said you made them, of course you'd be protective, I'm sorry."

    Petra feels sick, looking at Rita's curled up form, that gnawing shame and embarrassment that tells her to run, abandon this whole desperate attempt for friendship, or worse--get defensive and angry. But beneath all of that, there's a cyst of doubt whispering, if you can't manage to be friends with Rita, the kindest, gentlest, prett--kind and gentle, yeah. If she can't manage that, then who could she be friends with?

    So she digs in, takes a deep breath, tries to think of some way to solve this with the least chance of failure. "D-do you think you're rested enough now? We could go to the sashimi place next, if you want."

    Petra stands up from the bench, and offers Rita a hand with a soft smile. It's okay if it's just helping her up, right? If Rita takes it, Petra sighs, her fingers lingering on Rita's wrist before slipping away.

    "Haha, make her happy? She's seemed okay with me as a roommate for the past few days, but I don't know if she'd want something long term like that." Petra mirrors Rita's smile while walking, "But I'll ask her. I won't just assume, you're right."

    Once the pair has sat down in the restaurant, Petra pokes awkwardly at her sashimi rolls, fidgeting in her seat. Figuring she's too restless to wait until after finishing, she puts her purse up on the table, face flushed and angled downwards.

    "S-so, I don't know if you do Christmas, or if you don't, maybe this can be a late birthday present for this year whenever we decide what date your birthday is next year, or whatever, but, um..." Petra flips open the clasp, and pulls out a box with a series of three flowering, succulent-like plants, with tiny yellow, white, and blue flowers. "I-I'd thought, since you always seemed so interested in terrestrial plants, it could be nice for you to have some for your place on Grier's ship? These are super easy to take care of, and I checked, they can survive in zero-g, in case that ever happens, and--" She pauses to take a breath, "I hope you like them."
Rita Ma      The flicker, once her conscious mind has caught up, naturally surprises Rita. The apology surprises her more. "You're... sorry?" The look in Rita's eyes says she's trying to bear all the guilt herself.

     For a fraction of a heartbeat, she looks dubious when Petra mentions being protective of her clothes. Then she latches onto it like a liferaft in a storm, a little glimmer of hope amid the shame. "Yeah! I mean, that's it. And... the skirt's thinner than it looks, so it stung a little bit. I'm still really sorry, though. I shouldn't ever, ever do that. It just... got away from me."

     "We could go to the sashimi place next, if you want."

     That offer, and Rita's outstretched hand, wash away Rita's guilt. Her breath catches in her throat. All the wonder floods back into her eyes, but now directed at Petra instead of the gardens. That kind of forgiveness seems like just as much of an impossible wonder as a butterfly.

     When she takes Petra's hand, her smile reignites. It's so radiant that her eyes smile themselves shut, and her lashes dew with a little moisture. She doesn't let go until her friend absolutely insists on it.

     "Yeah. I'm rested enough," she barely manages to say. "Thanks so much, Ms. Petra. Let's go. And... I'm proud of you, for being willing to ask her. If I'd had to ask Ms. Grier..."

     That thought hangs in the air. She's in too good a mood to finish it.

     ----

     There is an all-you-can-eat special. Rita is probably going to get herself banned. There's already been a small tiff with a waiter about whether it really counts if she's not even eating the rice that the fish is served on. That hasn't dimmed her mood at all.

     "So?" she echoes, when Petra stammers the word. She seems a little excited from the very start, leaning onto her elbows on the table. Then she gasps when the flowers come out, flicking her eyes between them and Petra in disbelief. "Are those really for me? Ms. Petra, that's a lot, isn't it? I mean, you've already done so much for me, so..."

     She struggles, visibly. But the thing that tips her over into accepting it is knowing that Petra's being brave, too, and realizing she has to set a good example for the (somehow) younger girl. A little shivery sigh escapes her, and then she circles the table to give Petra a big hug.

     "Yeah. I love them, Ms. Petra. Thank you so, so much. You're wonderful to me."