UPON VESTIA: CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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Kay looked amused at that remark. [You're probably right. And bottom bunk, because I wasn't willing to argue the point. There were about 12 of us in one room, it was fairly cramped.] Not that he'd spent many evenings IN his bunk considering. Nope, his evenings had been spent locked in an old bunker hoping like heck he wouldn't get out and nobody would find him.

---

Ivor shrugged. "I do.. don't know..." He came out into the hall and closed the door carefully behind himself. "You have animals on a ship?"

----

"If they have no choice, then they are still slaves." Armin bowed his head.

He nodded, trembling. Whatever the dream was about it clearly startled him.

"Do you want me to get Asher?" Vestia asked hesitantly. On one hand, that robot seemed to have a knack for making people trust him. On the other hand, maybe Amari didn't want to have people around right now. After all, an android was much more physically capable of beating someone than a spaceship was.

"D-don't know..." he mumbled, Amari sorta was viewing Vestia as a mother figure he really never had.

"All right, I won't call him yet," Vestia said. "Do you want to talk about your dream, or would you rather not think about it?" She wasn't sure what she was doing here, hmm. She just left Ethan to handle it himself when he had a panic attack, he preferred it that way, so this was new.

"G-good things never last... ta-taken away." He mumbled, rocking a little.

Jewel laughed lightly and nodded at Jame's statement "We are all bird-human shape, but we do come in many sizes."

"how... how are you... the same?" Ivor asked, shy but curious as he looked between the two.

Armin bowed his head. "It is a curious thing certainly, but.. Artruvian are more... a large collection of similar species who cohabit yes?" he looked to Skye and Jewel for confirmation. They weren't all 'one species' as he understood it, they weren't cross fertile right?

---

Esk paused, hmm. He eased the door open gently. "Are you okay?" He asked flatly. She didn't sound okay.

"I'm not going anywhere," Vestia told Amari, "And you're not either. I know your life was pretty bad before this, but we're not like that. I look out for my passengers."

"P-people lied before.." he whimpered, coiling up, the tennis ball surprisingly still in one piece with in his death grasp.

"Yeah, I know," Vestia said sadly. "I guess you'll have to try and trust us."

"W-what is trust?" He mumbled, curling up on his side.

flying_purple_monkfish wrote:"how... how are you... the same?" Ivor asked, shy but curious as he looked between the two.

Armin bowed his head. "It is a curious thing certainly, but.. Artruvian are more... a large collection of similar species who cohabit yes?" he looked to Skye and Jewel for confirmation. They weren't all 'one species' as he understood it, they weren't cross fertile right?

---

Esk paused, hmm. He eased the door open gently. "Are you okay?" He asked flatly. She didn't sound okay.

"I am well, how are you two settling in?" Skye replied then looked to Armin and nodded "Right, 'Artuvian' is a general classification of many species. On our homeworld, each species has their own towns with very few that house mixtures of types, yet we are all called Artuvians because Artuvia is our homeworld." Nope, not cross fertile.
~~~
Dawn sighed and rubbed her head then looked to the door "I don't feel good, or hungry." She said then shrugged.

Esk came a little closer. "Not good how?" He asked. Hmm, infection? or just illness? She was the doctor.

---

Ivor tried to make sense of that. He nodded slowly. "i... Fine..." He looked back at the floor. Truthfully he found this place a bit overwhelming and frightening but he wasn't going to tell them that.

Silence tilted her head. "Ship big." She remarked. "Keep getting lost." She indicated Ivor.

"Trust is when you don't know for sure that someone will do the right thing, but you decide to believe that they will do the right thing anyway," Vestia said. It was a rather oversimplified explanation, but she didn't want to confuse Amari further.

~~
James nodded to Silence. "Yeah, Vestia takes some getting used to."
"Do artuvians ever get confused with different species that look really similar?" he asked. He frowned suddenly, "That was racist of me to say your species look similar sometimes, sorry."

Armin chuckled. "Ignorance is not the same as prejudice my friend." He pointed out.

Ivor looked confused and awkward and found something to eat at last.

Silence managed to pick up the fruit in her talons and shove it into her mouth. It was messy, but she didn't much care about manners.

"O-oh.." he said, finally calming down from the nightmare. This obviously wasn't his first but it was the first time someone tried to calm him.

Dawn shook her head then sighed "I don't know, just not well." She said quietly. "I don't have a scanner in here to check for a physical reason."
~~~
Skye laughed at James' question and shook her head "It's not racist, a lot of us do look similar. I don't know why, but we can tell the differences enough to not have many that would try to cross breed among us. Of course there are always the outliers, but they never have young of their own. Maybe we can get you two a map, though if you get lost, you can always ask Vestia to show you the way to wherever you want to go to." She added, looking to Ivor and Silence again.

James looked relieved. Whew, he didn't really want to be racist. Well, sometimes he wanted to be racist to Terrans, but Esk had pointed out why that wasn't great, and he kind of agreed now. "You just sorta know? Man, is it like a smell thing, I wonder?"
He barely even noticed Silence's eating antics, he was pretty used to her nonexistent table manners by now.

~~
"You're going to be okay," Vestia told Amari. "Remember the good things you did today? You went to the holodeck, and you had fancy drinks at a cafe."

Esk unhooked the small medical scanner from his belt. He'd taken to carrying one around in the mirror universe after that incident with Third, never knew when you might need to repell an anamcara. Esk had a tendency to collect potential weapons.
"Hold still." he told her as he turned the thing on.

---

Ivor picked at his food. He nodded to Skye. "I will..."

"It is said that it is easier to determine the slight differences in something that is familiar. Like determining sex or telling two members of the same species apart if the species is, in itself, totally alien to your eyes. It is a curious phenomenon, but explains why something seems obvious to some, and completely bewildering to outsiders looking in. " Armin explained.

"Ho-Holodeck was nice.." he muttered, finally hitting full calm. Unfortunately his pillow had a complete corner chewed off.

James considered that. "Yeah, that makes sense. If you live around people who share a lot of their physical characteristics, I guess you'd have to get good at telling them apart. If you can't do that, you're gonna have a hard time." He nodded sagely. "You hear about androids ending up getting confused for each other sometimes. Same eye color, face shape, even their names even match up occasionally. Ethan and Asher make it easy by dressing really differently, but sometimes they're basically identical." He smiled, "And even with species like vavare where it should be obvious, I couldn't tell if I was talking to a young female or an adult male until you taught me to look at the pincers."

~~
"You must have tired yourself out running around so much. I was impressed, you're very fast and a good climber," Vestia flattered Amari.

"J-just nature." He remarked softly, coiling his tail aroumd him.

Dawn didn't have any physical symptoms besides a fever, her wound wasn't infected and was healing well.
~~~
Jewel was watching Silence with her head tilted, though she hadn't stopped eating her donut either.

Skye smiled and nodded, focusing on her food again

"Doesn't mean it isn't impressive," Vestia said. "Are you ready to try sleeping again now?"

"Y-yeah.." he mumbled, cuddling up to the pillow.

Armin nodded. He himself had terrible trouble determining the gender of those he was speaking to, most of his race did. Other species and their pesky wierd gender dimorphism, or lack thereof. "Such are the perils of interacting with other species."

"You can't tell people's sex?" Ivor asked, he couldn't differentiate between thoughts and words. oops?

Silence stopped in her eating to stare back at Jewel, Juice dribbling off her tusks.

---

Esk frowned a little. "Good news is that you don't have a raging infection. But you're probably sick with something else." Damn. "Vestia, can you get a medic?" He wasn't about to let Dawn get a say in this. She was sick, she needed medical help. He wasn't really qualified to do so.

James snickered at Ivor's question, then looked to Armin, "Wait, you can't?" He wasn't sure if it was rude to comment on things someone else heard in someone's mind, oops.

~~
"Sleep well Amari, it's going to be okay," Vestia said. She dimmed the lights a little for him.