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“Nastya?”
She was in the engine room, carefully and gently working on replacing some wires in the wall. The humming of the engine that filled the whole ship was much louder in here. Lily hadn’t been in the engine room very often, it was Nastya’s place. But the rest of the crew were on some kind of mission on the planet below, too dangerous for a twelve year old and Nastya had decided to stay behind to do some repairs.
“Do you need something?” Nastya asked. She was slightly annoyed that she couldn’t have her normal date night with the aurora while the rest of the crew was gone, but understood that she needed to watch lily.
“You can talk to the Aurora, right?” Lily walked up and perched on Nastya’s lap.
“Yes, I can,” She carefully reached over Lily’s head to start to pull another panel off.
“And it talks back?”
“ She talks back,” Nastya corrected.
“Teach me how!” Lily bounced off of Nastya’s lap and picked up one of her screwdrivers, which had fallen on the floor a while ago.
“How to fix Aurora?” Nastya asked.
“No, how to talk to her,” Lily said.
“Oh!” Nastya looked at Lily and pushed her glasses up her nose. “You just have to address her, like you would with me.”
Lily looked up into the cables and ducts of the engine room. “Hello, Aurora!”
The ship let out a hiss of steam.
“What does that mean?” Lily asked, bouncing in place.
“She’s saying hello back,” Nastya said.
The Aurora’s engine increased slightly in pitch, before falling back into her normal sound pattern.
“That’s like laughing,” Nastya said.
Lily nodded attentively. “How did you learn all this?” she asked.
Nastya smiled slightly. “I just knew. She wanted to talk to me, and I understood.” she put a hand against the wall she had been working on, and the ship let out a hum, almost like a purr. “I love you too,” She told the Aurora.
“You love her?” Lily asked. “Like how my parents loved each other?”
“Yes.” Nastya rested her head on the side of the ship, feeling the vibrations of the engine.
A screen lit up on the wall and words started to scroll across it.
Hello, Lily! I am the Aurora. It is nice to finally talk to you. ;)
“She can do that?” Lily asked.
“Sometimes. There’s a few screens scattered around, but I prefer to listen to her.”
Lily nodded and sat down, leaning against the engine and feeling its hum. “I’m listening.” she said.
Nastya climbed off of her stool and sat down next to Lily. “that’s how you do it. You just listen to her.”
“Is she alive?” Lily asked, tipping her head back and looking up into the ship. “Can she feel it when Jonny shoots the wall?”
“Not in the way that we are, or we feel. I do a lot of fixing though. The others are careless.”
“Jonny doesn’t mean it most of the time. He’s just…. He doesn’t think about what he’s doing.”
“He’s just like that.” Nastya sighed. “The Aurora gets her revenge every time.
I show them the error of their ways. ;) the screen flashed with several video clips. Jonny laying in bed with his pillow over his ears as static blared through the speaker in his room. Jonny trying and failing to get the door to storage unit three open, leaving him trapped inside it. Jonny walking down the corridor only for a hatch in the ceiling to open and dump water on his head. Jonny walking down a different corridor only to fall down a hatch that suddenly opened at his feet.
Lily giggled. She had covered her face and was peeking through her fingers. “You sure know how to stand up for yourself!” she had learned about doing that from Brian.
The hum on the engine increased in pitch.
“She’s laughing!” Lily said. “Nastya, can you show me how to do repairs too?”
“Someday, perhaps. Aurora, my dear, what do you think?”
The humming got slightly louder, and several lights on a control panel flashed.
“What’s she saying now?”
“Just listen.” Nasya closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall she had been working on.
Lily was sitting perfectly still, head tipped slightly to the side. “Yes? Is she saying yes?”
“She is. You just have to keep listening, and you might learn how to understand someday.”
“Thank you!” Lily threw her arms around Nastya’s neck and kissed her cheek, knocking her glasses off her face.
Nastya blinked several times. Lily was so accepting, so kind, so eager to learn. None of the others seriously talked about the aurora, her being sentient and especially her relationship with Nastya. They only made jokes, although there had been less of those since they adopted Lily.
“You are going to be the best assistant I’ve ever had or I swear…” Nastya returned the hug.
“Thank you to the Aurora to!” Lily broke away from Nastya and hugged the wall, planting a kiss on one of the panels. The ship let out another purr, like it had earlier, but at a different pitch.
“Nastya, what is she saying?”
“You try and figure it out.” the mechanic picked up her glasses from the floor and put them back on.
“It sounds like when she was saying I love you earlier, but a little different.” Lily closed her eyes. “I’m listening!”
Nastya smiled and took off her glasses again to clean them off. The Aurora was saying that she was grateful to the kid, cared about her.
Nastya knew she was like Lily’s aunt, or maybe even older sister, but the Aurora whispered to her that Lily was their daughter.
When Jonny arrived back, it was three in the morning. He was absolutely covered in blood, most of it his, and his goggles were broken again. He went to find Nastya too see if she could fix them before he changed and checked on lily. She didn’t need to see him covered in blood.
What he did find when he opened the engine room door was Lily cuddled up with Nastya on the floor, backs pressed against the engine as it hummed soothingly. Lily was holding a screwdriver. Nastya’s head was on her shoulder, her glasses askew. Lily was curled up against her side. They were both sound asleep.
Jonny suddenly realized he was feeling emotions.
He quietly cursed the sudden realization that he deeply cared about both of them, picked up Nastya’s coat from the floor, and tenderly tucked it around them.
A screen flashed blue on the wall.
We’ll keep them safe. ;)
Jonny nodded. “Yeah. yeah, we will.”