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Moonlight washes over the festive scene filling Nasha Town’s square, casting the town in a silver glow punctuated by the brief splashes of vibrant colour painted by the explosions of fireworks overhead. People mingle throughout the square, many gathering in the centre to dance while others hang by the fringes and the snack tables. All sorts of fancy garb have come out for the occasion—a suite of bold jackets, a parade of sparkling dresses, a scattering of jewellery reflecting pinpricks of torchlight. Near the Adventurer’s Guild booth, a group of musicians with makeshift instruments provide suitable ambiance for the occasion. Laughter rings out into the festive night, lilting above the energetic tunes of the band.
Nine stories up, Jahoda watches the raucous celebrations of the evening. Sitting at the edge of a rooftop, feet dangling over the edge, she cradles a cup in her hand in a world-weary manner reminiscent of Boss Nef after a long day’s work. (The cup was, in fact, full of cocoa—courtesy of Lauma and the Frostmoon Scions. Jahoda doesn’t quite appreciate the taste of alcohol, not to mention the scene she had made the one festival night she had deigned to imbibe, but Nef’s effortless style lent itself to Jahoda’s unconscious imitation.) Tonight is a festival she tends to be very awkward about participating in, not to mention the unwanted attention she draws. It’s far easier to take up her drink and make herself scarce.
Ystavanpaiva, a celebration of love and relationships! A night for young men and women to seek out prospective partners with whom to enjoy the festivities, professing their love and dancing the night away.
And then there’s Jahoda: on a rooftop, alone.
It isn’t that she doesn’t enjoy a good festival—far from it. Free food, good music, fun activities; she takes part in most celebrations with vim and vigor. But something about Ystavanpaiva leaves her feeling exceedingly awkward whenever the festival rolls around. For one, she doesn’t exactly have many friends her age—or, well, friends at all, for that matter. She has informants, sure. Acquaintances even. But no one she would be sharing drinks with while surrounded by giddy couples. For another, she always ends up attracting an uncomfortable number of would-be suitors that she takes little interest in, resulting in her running to Boss Nef for help fending them off…or just running away altogether. Accepting an invitation to dance on Ystavanpaiva is akin to accepting a profuse declaration of love, something that she is not about to do. Jahoda is perfectly content with the way things are now. Her life is full as is: a great (if sometimes kinda scary) boss, a job she enjoys and plenty of work to fill her days.
And maybe there was once a time when she had more, when her life was full of people, camaraderie, trusted partners and joyous revelry. But those days are dead and gone, and so is her want for anything more than a simple, neatly contained life.
So whatever! She isn’t interested anyway! And even if she were to be the tiniest bit curious, Ystavanpaiva is a festival for lovers, and Jahoda is not in love, and that is the end of that.
Besides, she’s terribly uncoordinated. If she tried to dance she’d probably make a fool of herself in front of everybody, and then no one would take her seriously, she’d lose all of her credibility as a fixer and intel broker, and then—
“What are you doing, Jahoda?”
Jahoda jumps, a shrill sound escaping her as she very nearly leaps off the roof. Thankfully she had set down her mug moments before, lest it go flying over the edge in her stead. She whirls around, only to come face-to-face with a very familiar robotic figure standing right behind her.
“INEFFA! You scared me half to death!”
For a moment, Jahoda feels as though she’s been caught doing something she isn’t supposed to be doing. Like Aino getting caught with one hand in the snack stash she isn’t meant to be keeping. She dismisses the thought—if anything, Ineffa is the one skulking around sneaking up on people.
“Analysis: although your heartbeat appears elevated, you remain in peak physical condition,” Ineffa replies, as if reading off a medical sheet. “You are at no risk of dying.”
“It’s a figure of speech!” Jahoda huffs. Still, she doesn’t protest when Ineffa seats herself on the ledge next to her. Maybe her earlier assessment wasn’t entirely true. The title of ‘friend’ isn’t one she throws around casually, but if she had to name one person in all of Nod Krai, Ineffa is probably the closest thing to one she has.
Not that she would admit that out loud.
“What are you doing up here anyway?” Jahoda asks, taking up her mug again. She needs to recover some semblance of unbothered assuredness after her unflattering show of panic. She puts on her best impression of Boss Nef meeting with a difficult customer. “Shouldn’t you be with Aino?”
“Looking for you,” comes the monotone response. “Aino is busy snacking while she thinks I am not present.”
“Shouldn’t you be doing something about that?”
“It is a festival night. I will allow it.”
A brief pause. Down below, a peal of boisterous laughter bursts from the dance floor and rises above the buzz of activity. Jahoda’s gaze flits briefly over the flurry of dancers before skipping away to some indistinct point in space. Ineffa, meanwhile, is ostensibly focused on the view from above; a closer examination, however, might reveal the way she carefully tracks Jahoda out of the corner of her eye.
“Jahoda,” Ineffa says, “why are you not partaking in the festivities?”
The question catches Jahoda off guard; a dismissive excuse jumps to her lips before she can consider it more carefully.
“Well, I don’t have a partner.”
Ineffa inclines her head to the side, a motion that Jahoda has come to associate with her parsing logic that doesn’t quite connect for her.
“It’s weird to be there without a partner!” she quickly adds. Something about Ineffa’s question and subsequent reaction make her feel strangely defensive.
“Why?”
“Because Ystavanpaiva is a festival about love! You can’t just be there on your own.”
Not without inviting unwanted attention, Jahoda finishes in her head.
Instead of challenging her logic, Ineffa ponders for a moment longer before asking, “Then why don’t you have a partner, Jahoda?”
“What are you talking about, you lunkhead? I can’t just procure one out of nowhere!”
“Why not?”
Jahoda stares at Ineffa as if she’d started speaking Natlanese again (a precedented and very confusing malfunction). She can feel heat starting to rise from her neck to her ears.
“Wha— because— I’m not in love with anybody!”
“Do you need to be in love to have a partner for the evening?” Ineffa blinks slowly, her mechanical lenses flickering from some internal calculation.
“Of course you do!”
Jahoda is met with another infuriating inclination of the head. She swears she is going to bribe Aino to lock Ineffa’s neck joints in place next time she sees the little mechanic.
“Forget it! It’s not like you understand love anyway!”
Regret sinks in the second the words leave her mouth. Why does she feel so flustered? It’s not like this sort of blithe questioning is out of place for Ineffa. Something about this festival makes her aggravated and short-tempered, but attacking Ineffa’s lack of sensibility is a low blow. As the moment stretches on, the robot’s lack of response only worsens Jahoda’s guilty conscience.
“I, uh… I shouldn’t have— I didn’t mean to say it like that! Sorry…”
“Very well,” Ineffa says, “I accept your apology, Jahoda. However, I must correct your prior statement. I do, in fact, understand love.”
This catches Jahoda off guard. Not to say that she thinks Ineffa heartless—the robot possesses a certain humanity that doesn’t quite match the other mechanical constructs Jahoda has encountered. But Ineffa still exhibits a certain data-driven, monotone point of view that seems incompatible with more intangible concepts like romance.
“You…do?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean by that? Do you feel love?”
Jahoda doesn’t know what prompted her to speak. Then again, her words always seem to get away from her before she can consider whether or not they ought to be spoken. Surprisingly, Ineffa answers almost immediately.
“Yes. For example: I love you, Jahoda.”
Unfortunately, Jahoda had chosen this exact moment to drain the remains of her cup in an attempt to brush past her thoughtless question; the hot cocoa gets in the way of her reflexive intake of breath, leaving her bent over coughing and spluttering.
“Liquid has entered your trachea,” Ineffa says, taking her cup and patting her on the back. “Do not worry. It will clear—”
“You dumb clanker! You can’t just”—a brief coughing fit interrupts Jahoda, sending her hunched over again—“just SAY things like that!”
“But that is a factually correct statement,” Ineffa responds, her tone so perfectly even and so impossibly at odds with the declaration she has just made that the contradiction flummoxes Jahoda. Is she serious? Did she really just proclaim—no, no, surely not. Ineffa is always misconstruing human behaviours. She must be confused, she must have logged some data points incorrectly, wrongly interpreted some information that no one was aware enough to correct her on.
“Ineffa…” Jahoda finally looks up, eyes watering from the assault upon her windpipe. “What exactly do you mean by love?”
“From my experience of human interaction, love is a feeling of affection or attachment due to close social connections that facilitates interpersonal relationships,” Ineffa begins. At the blank stare Jahoda responds with, she clarifies: “To put it simply: it is how you feel about someone you care about. Although I do not process and regulate emotions in the same way as organic beings, I have certain subroutines that execute responses similar to human emotion. Hence, proximity to and interactions with those that I care about result in positive feedback.”
Ineffa places a hand on her arm. “This is true for you too, Jahoda.”
“You— you can’t just— that’s not what I was talking about!” Jahoda protests, unable to ignore the heat blossoming across her face (certainly not from flustering; the night has just become unusually temperate all of a sudden!) and the cool pressure of Ineffa’s digits on her arm. She yanks it away, breaking their connection.
“Oh? Please clarify.”
Jahoda opens her mouth to speak. Then falls short at the realisation that she is at an utter loss for words. Ineffa is, technically, correct in a very broad sense. But still! She’s completely missing the point!
“You know… like love love. Like the sort of feeling when you can’t stop thinking about someone, and you want to be around them all the time, and they make you feel all funny inside, and…”
Admittedly, Jahoda is speaking from a decided lack of personal experience—all her knowledge on the subject comes from novels, or overheard conversations. To her, this is both the foreign concept that Ystavanpaiva is founded upon and a source of discomfort as a result of her own unfamiliarity. Love in her eyes is grand, sweeping gestures and deep emotional commitment and the subsequent sabotage of one’s mental faculties.
But at her first real attempt to grant shape to the nebulous concept, a stream of unbidden thoughts about Ineffa come into startling clarity. Of going out of her way to swing by the craftshop after a commission; of teasing jabs and verbal exchanges, met with deadpan responses that overly a razor wit; of shared sunsets and moonlit conversations; of comfort, of the strange endearment that she feels towards Ineffa that makes Jahoda feel unexpectedly comfortable around her. Someone that she thinks about a lot, be it her delicious baking or her dry humour or her rapid problem-solving capabilities. Someone that she seeks out regularly and almost unconsciously at this point. The only person that Jahoda feels drawn to—not for want of information, an exchange, a service, but out of a genuine search for…companionship? Some strange feeling of warmth?
As the flurry of unsolicited thoughts sends her head spinning, a voice cuts through it all.
“Feedback noted.”
And then, “Would you like to dance, Jahoda? It would be a shame if you did not get to enjoy this festival night.”
She blinks, snapping out of her stupor. “What?”
Ineffa repeats herself, tone as steady as ever. “Would you like to dance, Jahoda? It would be a shame if you—”
“No, no, I heard you but— Me? Dance. With you?”
Some strange emotion begins to stir off the back of her sudden revelation; the feeling is new and unexpected and terrifying, a deep tug in her chest that she forcibly quashes.
“Yes. Is there something wrong with my suggestion?”
“But— but this is a festival for lovers, you lunkhead! We aren’t—”
“Correction: Ystavanpaiva is a celebration of the bonds that connect us together, strengthening Nod Krai,” Ineffa says, raising one finger as if delivering a lecture. “While courtship is a tradition that has grown popular in recent years, it was never the true focus of this festival. We do not need to be lovers to appreciate the truth of love.”
“I…”
Jahoda trails off, her gaze falling to the plaza below. At the mass of people dancing, laughing, their revelry bringing warmth into the cool night. The swinging tune of the band floats upon the wind, punctuated by the pop of fireworks. In her many years of living in Nasha Town, she’s never partaken in the festivities of Ystavanpaiva out of some subconscious aversion to the subject matter. As such, she’s never danced with anyone before; suddenly, inexplicably, she’s achingly curious as to what that might entail.
And on a rooftop nine stories up, they are far far away from prying eyes.
“…I don’t know how to dance,” Jahoda finally admits.
Ineffa nods. “Do not worry. I will show you.”
The robot offers her a hand, patiently waiting for her to accept. Hesitantly, she takes it, standing. Ineffa takes her other hand, the articulated digits encircling hers with surprising tenderness. As they stand face to face, hand in hand, the world seems to draw a breath.
Music begins to play— some dance number that Ineffa must have recorded from another festival. The exuberant clamour of the festivities below them drops to a murmur, swallowed by the tune that rolls from somewhere on Ineffa’s chassis. Everything else fades from Jahoda’s consciousness, everything but cool metal pressed against her palm, silver-blue hair dancing in the susurrations of the evening breeze, the azure glow of eyes trained on her.
A surge of hesitancy hits Jahoda like a wave. Ineffa is close. So, so close. Close enough to register every microexpression and awkward motion with that infuriatingly all-seeing robot brain of hers. She’ll embarrass herself, she’ll make some terrible blunder—tripping over Ineffa’s feet, falling off the roof—and it’ll all be permanently inscribed into Ineffa’s processing centre. This was a bad idea; she shouldn’t have agreed to this, she—
But before she can do anything, the stirring tones of a violin rise from Ineffa’s speakers, and she’s moving, and Jahoda is moving with her. Those mechanical fingers remain firmly clasped around hers, yet her guidance is surprisingly gentle. Forwards, backwards, side to side; Ineffa leads her with a rhythmic swaying motion like ocean tides drawn by the pull of the moon. They make slow, looping circles across the steel rooftop, Ineffa’s every step perfectly on the lilting beat: one-two, one-two, one-two. All the while Jahoda stumbles after her, desperately focused on not falling flat on her face. Despite her best efforts, her footwork is inelegant—but Ineffa stabilises her at every turn with a perfectly rigid balance that seems at odds with her graceful, fluid motion. She’s…really, really good at this. Surprisingly good for a housekeep-slash-combat bot.
Perhaps Ineffa’s steady presence provides a measure of comfort for Jahoda; perhaps it is the fact that their dance has continued without a hitch (or indeed, the lack of any number of her imagined catastrophic screwups) that calms her nerves. Whatever the case—although she does not consciously realise it—Jahoda’s worries begin to sink beneath the soothing waves churned up by their steady waltz. The choreography becomes as natural as drawing breath. Her focus is brought unwaveringly into the current moment. A dance between two.
Maybe this isn’t so bad after all.
But just as she thinks it—the arrangement swells, the orchestra soaring around the dancers.
And Ineffa, in a single, smooth, casual motion, pulls Jahoda by the waist towards her. One hand guides Jahoda’s arm to her chassis; the other keeps its grip, digits still clasped around Jahoda’s own. The whole thing happens so quickly that Jahoda barely has time to process what has happened as Ineffa continues guiding their slow revolutions—except now, their faces are close enough to touch.
A beat.
Another.
Jahoda becomes devastatingly aware of the pounding in her chest, so loud that Ineffa must surely be able to register it with her precise audio receptors. Suddenly, the chill air feels muggy and heavy and far too thick to breathe.
It’s not like she hasn’t been in close proximity with Ineffa before. It isn’t even the first time Ineffa has held her like this—and indeed Jahoda had been a little awkward about it the first time, but a sense of peace had settled over her after she had had some time to acclimatise.
This feels nothing like that— this feels like she felt after sprinting from Nasha Town to Hiisi Isle after messing up a delivery. Like the time she had run for her life after falling from a tree branch straight into a Fatui camp. But they aren’t even moving particularly quickly, nor is there any threat around to be activating Jahoda’s fight or flight instincts. It’s just the same old Ineffa!
But…but it isn’t. It isn’t the same old Ineffa. Something about her has changed in a way that Jahoda cannot put into words. Her appearance, smooth and polished and meticulously crafted; her motions, exacting and precise and calculated; her speech, direct and literal and monotone. Everything about her is perfectly calibrated, just as it always has been.
But something must be different. Because if nothing has changed, why can’t Jahoda look at her the same way anymore?
And to the rousing melody that continues to ebb and flow, to the looping motions that Ineffa is leading her through, Jahoda comes to the devastating realisation that—even if this is the first time she’s noticed it—things haven’t quite been the same for a while now.
When did this start? When had she stopped seeing Ineffa as some new, quirky invention of Aino’s, something amusing to tease and receive deadpan responses from, something who she could pester for free desserts and snacks?
When did she become someone who would set aside treats for her arrival, even going so far as to prepare extras of her favourites; someone who would engage her in conversation, and patiently take in all of her ramblings and complaints, and casually mention minute details from weeks prior that even Jahoda barely remembered; someone who would try, painfully, to make her laugh when she was having a bad day; someone who would help her sleep when those old nightmares cropped up, holding her hand and, failing that, wrapping her in a secure embrace until she managed to drift off; someone who Jahoda appreciates, feels safe around, cares for, even, someone who she might even have begun to… to…
And Jahoda trips over Ineffa’s foot, and slips over the edge of the rooftop.
She would have done almost anything to calm the madly spiralling monologue in her head. Plummeting from nine stories up, however, might be a tad excessive. Even for her.
But then—as a shriek of alarm is forced from her lungs by the sudden motion of her stomach shovelling her heart into her throat, arms slipping from Ineffa’s grasp and windmilling furiously—a steady hand scoops her up, spinning her around to safety. Ineffa’s face is right before her own; Jahoda is practically being held horizontally, suspended only by the arm locked firmly around her waist, the sharp chill of the cool metal pressed against her bare skin. Ineffa’s eyes, glowing a brilliant blue, fixate upon her and narrow in some expression of concern.
“Are you alright, Jahoda?”
She opens her mouth to speak.
Fireworks erupt in the night sky above them, a shattering of vermillion and saffron and aureolin that perfectly frames the robot in iridescent numinosity. Ineffa’s metal framework burns in the light; she is incandescent in these blazing hues. Plated in fire, she is a star—the most radiant star in all the night, outshining even the moon, dragging Jahoda helplessly into her orbit.
She doesn’t hear the fireworks. She doesn’t hear Ineffa’s next words, the robot’s face growing ever more concerned. Everything is drowned out by the roar of blood in her ears echoing the pounding in her chest. That traitorous heart of hers! She’s vaguely aware of the fact that her mouth is still hanging open dumbly, but she can’t seem to collect her thoughts long enough to put together any sort of meaningful response to the increasingly concerned queries directed at her. The expression on Ineffa’s face is subtle, but Jahoda can read her all too well—the minute contraction of her brow, the slight tilt of her head, the brightened glow of her eyes, the lenses enlarged to better observe and analyse and document every moment of this embarrassing display. Jahoda needs to say something, anything, anything to get Ineffa away from her.
Instead, she lets out a pitiful squeak. She clamps her mouth shut.
Ineffa lifts her upright; Jahoda’s feet make solid contact with the floor once more. Then the robot relinquishes Jahoda from her gentle hold, taking a step backwards. This should be exactly what Jahoda needs—space, separation, a break from that intoxicating proximity that leaves her breathless and discombobulated. And yet, she finds that loss—loss! She views their discoupling so strongly!—hitting her harder than anything else Ineffa had done tonight. The feeling of cold steel, those fingertips pressing into her back, had sent a positively electric thrill up her spine. Now, even with her touch disconnected, the imprints burn as if seared into Jahoda’s skin, an insistent tactile memory demanding her acknowledgment. More than that—her whole body is blazing hot despite the nighttime chill. Coupled with the pounding in her chest, Jahoda is acutely certain that she is going to explode and it will have been all that dumb metalhead’s fault.
“Jahoda, are you alright? Your temperature is elevated 0.7 degrees above expected parameters. I suggest—”
“I think I hear Boss Nef calling me!” Jahoda interjects, her voice cracking an octave too high.
Ineffa tilts her head curiously. “I do not detect—”
“Yup, that’s definitely her! Gotta run!”
And so she does. Not in a cowardly way, mind you. In a calculated, tactical, controlled manner.
That is to say, she staggers off in entirely the wrong direction, ribs first into a chimney, trips over her own feet, narrowly catches herself from slamming her face into a set of pipes, and finally makes a beeline for the correct mode of exit. As she sprints down the staircase, face still burning so hot she may well be overheating, Jahoda groans at the utterly catastrophic chain of events. She’s never going to be able to look Ineffa in the eye again, not without remembering the way they beamed cerulean against the pyric cascade of the fireworks, the way they darted up and down, scanning for injury or harm, the way— Jahoda beats down those thoughts before they can go any further. She was right! Ystavanpaiva is far more trouble than it’s worth, and so is dancing, and so is that aggravatingly calm hunk of iron that she is not thinking about and absolutely not falling for.
The second she walks in the door to the Curatorium, Jahoda slumps to the floor, cups her head in her hands, and lets out a long, suffering groan.
Ineffa watches her dance partner’s hurried retreat with a curious mixture of stimuli running through her emotional processing subroutines, something that might be interpreted through a human understanding as curiosity underlaid by a mild bemusement. She gently retrieves Jahoda’s mug, empty save for the dregs of hot chocolate, and begins a slow descent down the side of the building by the controlled thrust of her short distance propulsion module at 35% power.
Her face is as passive and poised as ever, various sensors tracking the distance to the ground, speed of descent and the optimal trajectory in order to return the mug to the hosting Frostmoon Scions before returning to Aino’s side. However, only about 23.7% of her current processing power is allocated to positional awareness. The rest is dedicated to the sorting, formatting and storing of data points, adding to her ever-growing understanding of human social interaction.
First observation: Jahoda had been in distress when she had arrived. Ineffa could recognise the minute patterns in her body language (hunched, browline furrowed, lips pouting) that she associated with a negative emotional state. Suggestion: Jahoda was lonely, being separated from the night’s social gathering. Conclusion: Positive interaction may elevate mood. Conclusion subsequently confirmed.
Second observation: Jahoda had taken continuous glances at average intervals of 8.9 seconds at the collective of people dancing throughout their conversation. The topic of romantic engagement was raised by her; subsequently, she exhibited several embarrassed responses to conversation. Suggestion: Jahoda was suppressing her desire for involvement in celebratory activities due to aversion to the romantic associations drawn by this festival. Conclusion: offering Jahoda the opportunity to partake in such activity without exposure to public observations may alleviate some of her concerns. Conclusion subsequently confirmed.
Third observation: Jahoda exhibited tension throughout their dance routine, with a heartbeat increased by approximately 58 beats per minute and body temperature elevated by about 0.4 degrees. Suggestion: Jahoda was unfamiliar with the motions of a partner dance, and felt nervous as a result. Conclusion: manoeuvring to guide Jahoda more directly may reduce tension through comfort in increased guidance.
Conclusion subsequently disconfirmed. Exhibition of stress-induced autonomic response remained high. Fourth observation—
The image of Jahoda cast in brilliant hues, suspended at a 64 degree angle from the ground; the flush of her cheeks and widening of her eyes; the pulse of her heartbeat vibrating through Ineffa’s tactile feedback receptors.
Ineffa’s processors stuttered. Her optical sensors flashed for a moment as a tremor passed through her servomotors, so brief that onlookers would hardly notice anything at all, or attribute it to the minor vibrations of her chassis while in operation. Frowning, she corrects the minor drift in her course by 0.3 degrees. Then she pulls up the memory again, attempting to process it in the manner that she processes all data for submission into her knowledge base and long-term storage, by stripping it down into constituent parts. Again, her processing stalls for a brief moment before correcting, in the way that one might stumble and lose balance for a second. Growing more concerned, Ineffa runs a diagnostic check across all systems only for everything to come back with no issue. By all metrics, she is functioning at optimal capacity.
But evidently, she is not. Moving on autopilot, Ineffa reallocates her processing power so that 92.5% of maximum capacity is currently focused on this new problem. She puts aside the offending memory data for now and begins to search her databases for anything that might provide some resolution to this predicament, beginning with engineering data but soon widening her search into all categories. The dull whirring of internal cooling fans begins to resonate from her chest.
And still, that stubborn frame of memory persists in imposing its presence upon her emotional subroutines, lingering in the periphery of her data processing stream like an untidy stain that refuses to wipe clean.
The sort of feeling when you can’t stop thinking about someone, and you want to be around them all the time, and they make you feel all funny inside…
Jahoda’s words from earlier, logged into her database on human emotion, are flagged as a match with her queries.
Ineffa frowns, tilting her head confusedly in a habit picked up from Aino (despite its lack of substantive impact on her computational ability). She logs a note to Jahoda’s quote, linking it to the unresponsive memory. Then she proceeds with the evening’s activities: helping the Frostmoon Scions with the hosting and the cleanup before returning home with Aino.
She carries Aino on the flight back home, holding the drowsy girl carefully over her shoulder while navigating her propulsion module. Despite the rush of wind over her auditory processors, she can easily hear Aino’s tired murmurs.
“Ineffaaa… why are you so warm?”
Ineffa blinks, allowing her autopilot to maintain their course as she reviews her system for the third time this evening. Her thermoregulators are in operation, but her quick diagnostic reveals that she is indeed 7.3 degrees over optimal temperature. Somehow, even this simple erroneous metric had managed to escape her notice for most of the night.
“And your core is vibrating so hard…”
Aino stirs a little, pressing her ear closer to Ineffa’s back to hear better. “Do you need a checkup already? Our last maintenance wasn’t that long ago.”
“It’s alright, Aino,” Ineffa says, patting her on the arm. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
But after she returns to the workshop, tucking Aino in and returning to her charging dock, her core continues to hum under the elevated pressure of processing difficult data. For the first time in a long time, Ineffa experiences something akin to dreaming instead of the standard, steady backup of the day’s information into long-term storage. For running through her processing unit is not unemotional strings of data, but flashes of memory files—of stirring tones carried on the wind; of measured, precise steps and carefully guiding touches; of a waltz with a close companion under lambent moonlight and luminous fireworks; and most of all, of the feeling of Jahoda held in her arms, warmth radiating through her tactile sensors alongside the vibrant thrum of a beating heart.