Rhoda looks at the little bowl curiously, a pokes slightly at the contents, before nodding. "I'd-" she yawns slightly, shakes it off, and tries again. "I...am liking trying new things?" she admits.

"Mmhmm. Tomorrow, sure." Sign sign - "I still have chores to do, but Pradnakt can leave if that will help you rest."

She isn't sure how to answer that, because she doesn't want to chase Pradnakt out if Pradnakt has other things to do out here, but she does rest better if there's less people around. She curls in on herself slightly, because she is tired, but she doesn't know how to solve this particular problem.

Pradnakt smiles reassuringly and heads to the back room; Daisy begins washing the dishes, quietly.

She tries to smile back, although she's still not very good at that. She looks at Daisy.

"Do you want help?" she asks.

"If you want, but it looks like you could use some sleep now."

She moves over to help. Except, she's not entirely coordinated, and the water-slick plate she picks up slips from her fingers. Her attempt to catch it fails, and she can only watch as it breaks.

It takes barely a heartbeat for her to be back in the corner by the door, curled in on herself, arms over her head, mumbling 'Sorry' repeatedly.

Daisy steps over the shattered plate and crouches down, well out of arm's reach, her hands on her knees. "Hey. Hey. It's okay, you're not in trouble."

Rhoda flinches further into herself when Daisy approaches. Doesn't really relax even when the droid stops outside of her personal space.

"M'sorry," she mumbles again. "Shouldn't've. Just wanted to help. Sorry. Should know better. Know I'm not-" (any real use), "sorrysorrysorry."

While she's talking, Dusk comes out; she takes a moment to look over the scene, and then says something in a firm tone to Daisy, who stands and backs away.

"Rhoda," she says, firmly again but not angrily, as she settles to the floor just on the near side of the table.

Rhoda stops talking almost immediately in response to that, biting at her lip. She's shaking. She doesn't quite dare to look at Pradnakt.

I'm not mad at you. Daisy isn't either. It's okay. It's okay for you to make mistakes and nothing bad is going to happen if you do.

She peeks out, eyes barely visible between where her arms are still wrapped over her head and her knees. She tries to hang onto the fact that she hasn't seen anything (but that thought keeps slipping away as worst-case scenarios flash through her head).

Ma'am also never tried to reassure her when she made mistakes. Didn't pretend she wasn't angry. (She lashed out occasionally, for no discernible reason, but Ma'am never pretended it was okay to make mistakes. Mistakes were Not Allowed.)

The only thing I'm angry about is what was done to you, and you don't need to worry about that. Nothing bad is going to happen, she asserts again, I won't let it.

But anger is anger. And anger normally means pain.

Except Pradnakt still hasn't lied to her. Or hurt her.

Her arms slowly slide down around her knees, forehead pressing against them, rocking herself, trying to keep her breathing even. Sorry for disturbing you. (She almost believes that she's not going to be hurt, but experience tells her that that's wrong.)

It's fine.

A pause, and then, gentler, but still not gentle: May I come sit with you?

...Yes?

She doesn't know what Pradnakt has planned, isn't sure this isn't a trick, but she's almost positive it's safer to stick with questions being orders. (But they had been trying to get her to make choices...)

She drops the meditation and stands to walk over; she's a little tense, but only a little, moving mostly with casual confidence. She lowers herself to the floor again directly beside the girl and puts an arm around her shoulder - unhesitating, firm but not restraining, intending to reassure - as she resumes her meditation.

She watches Pradnakt's movements closely. When the woman puts an arm around her, she goes rigid, waiting. (People don't touch her. Not without hurting her.)

Well, gotta start somewhere.

I'm not going to hurt you. It's just a plate, but even if it wasn't - I don't want to. I want you to be okay, and that means it has to be okay for you to make mistakes, because that's normal, people make mistakes all the time.

She looks carefully sideways at Pradnakt, not really moving. Ma'am didn't like mistakes, she offers. Not from anyone. 'Specially not from me. 'Specially not with things that were...hers. There's something else there, a carefully avoided thought about Ma'am, and things she thought were hers (something about her ship).

Okay. Well, I'm not her. I wouldn't mind a broken plate even if it was on purpose, if that helped you. By mistake, definitely not. It's not important enough to get upset over; most things aren't.

Rhoda leans, very slightly, against Pradnakt. She breathes for a moment, just waiting.

She isn't sure what the point of people getting upset is. It seems to vary from person to person. Doesn't seem to have a consistent point to identify.

(She almost wants to confess to Pradnakt, tell her why Rhoda had been being punished, but she isn't sure how Pradnakt will take that, and she feels safer here than she's ever felt anywhere.)

The point of getting upset is that - when it happens at the right time - it helps you stay safe, and get what you want. It helps you focus on what's happening so you can do something about it, and it helps people around you see that you're serious, and it makes you stronger and faster and things for little while. But feelings like that aren't always very smart - it's hard, sometimes, to remember that there are other important things besides whatever's happening right here, so it's easy to make mistakes where you try to fix one problem but end up making a bigger one. And some people just don't want very nice things, or don't care very much about other people, or they haven't learned that they can't always have everything just how they like it, so they don't really believe that the bigger problem will happen.

Daisy told me she explained to you about what happened to me before I came here, right? With my master? After that, it was really hard for a long time for me not to get upset about things, and I had to be very careful about it. And things got better, and now I'm very good at not getting upset about things when I shouldn't. And Daisy has always been really good at that; droids usually are. So you really don't have to worry about that, with us; we want you to be okay, and we're not going to get upset at you when that would make you less okay. All right? I don't want things to get broken, but that really is less important, and that really does matter.

Oh. She's still somewhat confused, but... All right, she agrees, leaning slightly more against Pradnakt.

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. She doesn't want to Pradnakt to be under any misapprehensions about her. I sabotaged Ma'am's ship, she admits. That's...that's why I was...being punished. There's other things she's not saying, but that are still present in her mind, intrinsically linked with the knowledge that she'd deserved that punishment. That if she hadn't, they would have been dead or worse. That she'd told Ma'am that, and nothing had changed, she'd been told she was wrong, even though that was her purpose, that's what she did - told Ma'am when she saw conflict, and how to avoid it.