Thread by @Lancer_RPG

>//...

>//...

>//all these little [stories] get lost. Galaxy's a big place, after all.

>//...

>//...

>//too many moving [parts]

>//let me see what I can send along.

>//...

The bar was forgettable.

Another wonder of gold and marble. The bar a crescent moon suspended above a world below, a robin’s egg.

Shuttles cut white scars on descent, and Laurent was stuck in a wondrous, forgettable bar.

“Ocean?” Castillo asked.

“Nah, too blue.” Laurent took a drink. “That’s methane, and some other gas.”

“Huh. I was hoping this would be my first ocean.”

“Nope. Methane. Cow gas.”

“Cow?”

“Uh, like a living carne asada. Like what it comes from.”

“Oh. Disgusting.”

“You know, I seen it once,” Laurent said. Mimed a cow’s horns, not that Castillo knew what she meant. “A cow, get chopped up for meat. On Carina. Stayed there for months. Recontextualization.”

Castillo’s face paled. “Blood?”

“Oh,” Laurent nodded, grinned. “Helluva lot.”

“I could never,” Castillo said. “Eat real meat.”

Laurent shrugged. “I have the manna and the time, why not? Life is about experience and all.”

“Hm.” Castillo sipped from her stillbeer bulb. “Cow planet. We ever gonna go downwell?”

“Nope.”

In the station’s flightcomm, Laurent and Castillo loomed over the shoulders of the duty officer.

“Traffic’s light,” Castillo muttered, watching the duty officer’s sweep.

“Titanocyclone in the southern hemisphere,” the D-O sipped their coffee. “Nothing’s leaving today.”

They watched, made notes, completed their report.

“You two must see all kinds of worlds, huh?” The duty officer asked.

Laurent took her slate back, checked signatures, and filed their recommendations. “Only the interesting ones,” she said, and smiled.

And on to the next one.

Another station, another bar. A bulkhead thick with grease from a hundred years of frying meat on a stick. Half-full bottles of malt vinegar, cruel hot sauce, an old woman slapping tortillas towards the back.

Portholes flared with light. High albedo.

“The problem is the light,” Laurent chewed the end of her pen. “Pilots keep getting flared by the ice sheets.”

“So a new exit corridor?” Castillo asked. She spoke into Laurent’s neck, tired.

“No. Just put on sunglasses.”

“A whole world of glass and ice. What a nightmare.”

Another station.

The music pounded and the dancers tethered themselves together in null-G.

Laurent’s drink glowed, Castillo’s came with a sparkler.

“Foundation day,” their server had to shout to be heard over the music. They were slim and beautiful. High albedo.

The flightcomm was broad and midnight black. Quiet men in uniform moved unhurried, and conversation was as the substrate air through vents.

Castillo took the lead, Laurent watched the world turn below.

“Ocean,” Castillo said, later that night. “It’s an ocean world.”

The company shuttle was empty but for the two of them.

It rattled through atmosphere, weightlessness giving way to the drop, the fear that down really was down now.

Castillo held Laurent’s hand white, pressed her mouth to it, eyes shut.

Laurent watched the clouds.

Castillo stood in the worldsea, her pant legs rolled up. Nothing but ocean.

It was summer, and on the horizon a storm lingered.

Lightning winked, silent.

The sand under her feet was still warm from the day. Small fish nibbled.

“Hello, little guys,” she said.

“Hey Cass!”

Castillo turned at the sound of Laurent sloshing over from their stilthouse. She held a broad, flat fish up, triumphant. “Look at how big this one is!”

“Beautiful.”

“Was gonna say it looked like you,” Laurent grinned. “Wanna come eat it?”

“Where did you learn?” Castillo sat on the far end of the stilthouse deck, watching as Laurent gutted and prepared the local fish.

“On Carina. Home rotation.” Laurent flipped a string of gut away. “You’ll get there one day.”

An easy cook, a flaky white flesh.

Laurent had bought some lemons from the storeship, local beers. Bread, toasting on the open grill.

“See? No blood. It’s clean -- here, have a bite,” Laurent said. She offered Castillo a peice. “Watch out for bones.”

Cass took a bite.

They spent a week down the well in an isolated little stilthouse, just two rooms and a wide deck a few meters up off the water.

They ranged wide in the shallow sea, polling their way over the clear water under a muslin shade, fishing.

At night, just them, and the waves.

They were rotated apart after, Laurent’s request. She was sent out to some development region, the Dawnline Shore.

A big and lonely assignment surrounded by new and unfamiliar faces, whole worlds to survey and site.

Perfect for her, in other words.

Castillo remained on-circuit, though she never once went back to that ocean world.

And Carina. She would make it to Carina. She dreamed about Carina, and the blood, and another still ocean, and who she’d meet there.

Until then, on to the next world, for a long little while.