That's...

...a person? Appearing out of nowhere? And then collapsing to the ground and curling up in a little ball of panic?

What the fuck.

That sure is a lot of panic. Being prodded by a Sith isn't likely to make it better, but she does it anyway, the alternative being leaving him to die in the desert: stride, crouch, nudge. "Who'd you piss off, hmm?"

No response. Debatable whether he understood her at all. Plausible he hasn't noticed that she's there.

She waits several seconds for a reply, and when none is forthcoming she goes back to putting her painting supplies away.

Yep that sure is a little ball of panic.

She finishes cleaning up, and watches the sunset, and meditates. Takes a couple hours.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaaa

...aa?

He uncurls slightly and looks around.

It's dark, though not fully night yet. Pradnakt is meditating, back straight, features severe, radiating a slight aura of danger: every inch the proper Sith. The pillar with its band of purple paint is a little incongruous with this, and the speeder partially visible behind it is likely neutral.

—maybe he had the right idea with the curling up in a ball of panic after all.

He can't decide what to do, and so doesn't do anything.

She finishes meditating and goes to check on him again. Nudge.

He looks up at her fearfully and doesn't say anything.

"Yeah, I know, Sith. Let's get you out of the desert, hm?"

—okay so this time he definitely did notice that she is there and saying things, and definitely did not understand a word of what she said.

...weird. Who doesn't know Basic? Well, she can try Huttese and Sabati and Sith, then.

...nope. And nope. And nope.

Okay, now he's confused in addition to terrified.

...tentatively, he says something in a totally unfamiliar language.

Nope.

Hand signs? 'Come here'?

...okay, he understood that one. And it. Seems like it might conceivably be a better idea than curling up in a ball all by himself in the middle of this desert.

—he has a little trouble getting himself to move, though.

She offers him a hand up, after a second.

(aaa)

no okay okay he can do this. He uncurls himself and takes her hand and carefully gets to his feet.

Good!

She heads for the speeder, looking back after a few steps to see if he's following.

Yep he sure is doing that.

She gestures for him to stop a little ways away from it, then sits on it and turns it on. It humms to life and floats a foot or two into the air, the headlight coming on a second later.

—he is somewhat startled and unsettled by this turn of events, but okay.

Yeah. She gives him a second to settle down, and then scoots back on the seat and pats the spot in front of her, where there's room for him to sit.

(aaa)

Yes okay he can do that too. Look at this guy. So good at doing things. The best.

She's warm and muscular and smells slightly of paint and dust and oil.

The speeder moves slowly, at first, just walking speed, and speeds up gradually.

He - doesn't actually stop being terrified of everything around him, but he settles into a well-practiced habit of not letting himself be outwardly affected by that.

All right.

A little more than half an hour later, they pull up outside a trio of buildings: One obviously a garage, one larger and plausibly a house, and one tiny and presumably a barn, from the animal-shaped creatures inside, behind the house with a garden in front of it. All three are windowless, made of smooth white adobe and roofed with corrugated metal. The yard between the house and the garage is a patch of bare dirt hosting a small fire circle, a tall metal sculpture that seems to twist in place when the speeder's headlight falls onto it, and, against the front of the house, a tree and a low well.

Pradnakt parks the speeder in front of the garage and calls to someone in the house.

(—but there's no one in the house?)

The door opens, revealing a personlike silhouette against the light inside the building.

(aaa????)

Pradnakt signs to the figure, and - it? they? - approach, coming close enough to be seen in the dim light: they're - she's? - made of silvery metal, her torso and upper arms mostly covered with raised flowers that occasionally catch enough light to glitter in various colors. "Daisy," the woman says by way of introduction, gesturing to the figure.

(aaaaaaaaaaaaa)

Yeah he's frozen up again now.

Okay.

She signs some more, and Daisy goes back inside.

It takes him a minute to go from 'frozen' to 'staring nervously at the house'.

That is a really weird reaction to have to a droid.

She slips off the speeder and goes to sit by the fire circle - much closer to the door - tosses a spark of electricity into it to light it once she's settled, and begins meditating: he's not Force-sensitive, that's clear enough, but she can read his mind anyway, it just takes a bit more effort to find it among the background noise of local life.

When she has been off the speeder for a minute he also gets off the speeder, slowly, and sits on the ground and hugs his knees and tries unsuccessfully to think.

He is bewildered on so many levels that he's starting to lose track of all the ways this situation makes no sense, and that's terrifying, and this strange woman has some kind of really intimidating aura going on that he's never seen the like of before, which is also terrifying separately from the general terrifyingness of the rest of the situation, and also there is a person in that house who is some kind of nicely decorated robot, she could just come up to him and touch him and he would have no way to stop her, that is the most terrifying out of all the many very terrifying things going on here. (He keeps circling back to that last one, but he is by no means together enough for his mind to lay out the actual chain of logic that explains why a robot is exempt from his ability to stop people from doing things to him that he doesn't want them to.)

...uh, okay. For someone who is very obviously not Force-sensitive, he sure seems to think he has Force powers, or at least something like them; that's worrying. (Did he somehow lose his Force sensitivity and not notice? That seems implausible, but then so does him appearing out of thin air...)

It is at least obvious that he's never seen a Sith before, and at this juncture the aura is doing nothing but upsetting him; she drops it.

—that's—good? Maybe?? aaa.

Better than nothing, anyway.

She leaves the telepathy going and goes inside to make tea for both of them.

He keeps trying to come up with any sane explanation for how he ended up in this strange place with this strange person (firebender? with inexplicable ominous aura??) and her strange technology, and he keeps failing to think of anything, and then he keeps remembering that there's a robot over there who could just touch him and everything becomes aaaa for another little while.

Well. Tea. She brings it out on a tray, with a little bowl of sugar and a cup of milk; she approaches as close as he's comfortable with, sets the tray down, and backs off that far again with her own mug.

Comfortable is a relative term. But anyway.

Tea is a thing he recognizes and can deal with! Having one thing present that he recognize and can deal with is a vast improvement over not having any! He is soothed by that and by the tangible presence of water and even by the tea itself once he has some, although it tastes sort of unfamiliar. At least it's not poisoned. That's probably a good sign.

She makes a quizzical face at him, puts her tea down, and goes to draw a bucket of water up from the well.

—???

Water. In a bucket. She's not sure why he finds that comforting, but given he does: sure, whatever. She brings it over - carrying it both much more easily and much more neatly than one would expect, from the size of the bucket and how full it is - and leaves it by the tray, and then goes back to her tea.

yes except this implies she has somehow been reading his mind this whole time which is also completely terrifying

who would even want to read his mind??? he doesn't want to be in his mind half the time, what's she getting out of it??? also he was not aware that that was even a theoretically possible thing at all??? is she literally a spirit, is he somehow in the spirit world - he reaches for the bucket and a drop of water comes up to dance across his fingers - no you can't bend in the spirit world so there goes that theory and he is back to square what the fuck.

...okay. Maybe some leadership will help here. She clears her throat to get his attention, and then points to the house: "Daisy." Taps her chest: "Pradnakt." Gestures at him, expectantly.

"Sora."

(and she can probably tell how scared he is and of what and why—that is the worst kind of thing for someone to know about him—this line of thought is not helping but he doesn't know how to stop he has never had to deal with a mind-reader before—)

Calm nod: "Sora."

She points back to the house, and holds her hand flat, palm down, when she turns back: "Daisy, nothing." She taps her chest; draws back her cloak to reveal a copper cylinder attached to her belt, which she taps, somewhat reverently; taps her forehead and gestures to him, and then in an arc around her; lights her hand up with sparks for a moment; levitates her mug; and finishes up by briefly levitating a fist-sized ball of water, with nothing like the finesse of a practiced waterbender. "Pradnakt, Sith." And again she gestures to him.

...so 'Sith' is the thing that does - all those things? And -

"Waterbender," he says, shifting posture slightly and rippling his fingers so the water in the bucket comes up and does a circle around his hand and then goes neatly back down.

"Waterbender," she nods, and then repeats it in Basic.

He tentatively echoes the translation.

(not safe not safe notsafenotsafe—she hasn't hurt him yet but that doesn't always mean much—but she can read his mind so there's not exactly much he can do about it—)

Hmh.

She stands, takes a step back, and brings out her lightsaber, showing him the unlit hilt. "Safe," she asserts, and then lights it: "unsafe." She brings up a ball of water and touches the tip of the lit saber to it for just a moment, producing a burst of steam, and repeats, "unsafe." She turns it off and holsters it, showing her empty hands when she's done: "safe."

She sits.

"Sora safe Pradnakt, Sora safe Daisy, Pradnakt safe Sora."

...if that is meant to be 'safe' he is really unclear on how this demonstration was supposed to back up that assertion.

Fair. "Sora unsafe Pradnakt, Pradnakt unsafe Sora," she points out.

...yes, that appears to be true. So. Now what.

Yeah he's not getting it.

Hm.

She gestures 'one minute' and goes into the house, returning with a bowl of soup in each hand and a pair of cups levitating along in front of her. She puts the cups down with the tea and floats one of the bowls over to him.

...okay, sure. Food.

She's fairly distracted by it, but doesn't take long to finish eating. While she's waiting for him to be done, she fills one of the cups with water and refills her mug and sets them in front of her.

He finishes his soup a minute later. It's good soup. Unfamiliar, but still more familiar than most other things around here.

Yeah, there's not super much she can do about the unfamiliarity issue, but that's next to work on. For now:

"Tea," she indicates the mug, and then "water" and the cup. Then she holds her hands in front of herself in loose fists: "Pradnakt tea?" she bobs the left one. "Pradnakt water?" she bobs the right, and then makes a show of thinking about it. "Pradnakt tea," she asserts, and takes a sip from her mug. She returns her hands to the held-out-loosely-fisted position, bobs both, and identifies the gesture: "choice."

...well - that's useful vocabulary, he supposes. "Choice," he echoes, a little awkwardly - her language is kind of hard to pronounce.

She nods. Good!

"Pradnakt choice," she continues, "Pradnakt safe," left-bob, "or Pradnakt unsafe." right-bob, and then she makes a show of thinking about it. While she's doing that, she says, "Sora choice. Sora safe? Sora unsafe?"

—he really kind of wishes she hadn't asked him that question—

If he's understanding her right, she's saying - she has the decision of whether or not to be dangerous, and he also has that decision, and she wants to know which he'll pick.

Well, empirically: often the wrong one.

But - he can't imagine it even helping, here, there's just too much going on, he only ever murders people when they're a very direct threat to his safety or when he can absolutely conclusively get away with it and has enough stability to enjoy the respite from constant fear. Unfortunately, this set of conditions sets up a rather unfortunate incentive structure. If he's only safe when he's too off-balance to indulge in murder, then the safest thing to do with him is keep him that way, or just kill him immediately before he has a chance to get settled, and he would really rather that neither of those things happened.

- Ah. She nods, looking more melancholy than irritated or disturbed.

And then the obvious thing to do would be - decide not to be dangerous, but - it's really not as simple a choice as it looks. That respite from constant fear is very tempting, or he wouldn't have become a serial killer in the first place.

Sigh.

"Daisy safe," she adds, after a few seconds. "Touch," she demonstrates, on her own arm, and then "not touch," her hand held flat, palm down, a few inches away. "Daisy not touch Sora."

...well it would be nice if he could believe that. He even - sort of does - but the only way he's managed to function in society at all was by knowing with absolute certainty that he could stop people from touching him if he had to, that no one could hurt him even if they tried. And he can't bloodbend someone who hasn't got any blood. Pradnakt is also frightening that way, because she has powers he's never heard of and he suspects bloodbending wouldn't stop her from using them, but she's at least less viscerally terrifying because she has an ordinary human circulatory system and he is used to those.

Yeah. (That's - weird and kind of disturbing. But it's not like she wouldn't have to worry about telekinesis if she was dealing with another Sith, and it doesn't seem that much more dangerous in practice.)

She looks queryingly at him, after another moment, and makes a vague gesture that might perhaps mean 'anything else?'

—he's not entirely sure what she means by that.

Okay, uh.

"Talk," she starts with, pointing to her mouth. "Pradnakt talk. Talk talk talk."

That established: "Sora choice Pradnakt talk?" Is there anything he wants her to talk about?

He has some trouble figuring out when things she says are questions, but he thinks he's starting to get the hang of it.

There... isn't anything specific he can think of to talk about, really... but he is aware that he is not at his best right now amd may be missing something.

She nods, "okay," and then heads into the house - to the back, this time.

...staying right where he is seems like the safest response. He does that.

She's not long - ten, maybe fifteen minutes - and comes out pushing a smallish wheeled metal contraption and floating a larger object made of dust-colored canvas. She takes them around the side of the house between it and the garage to set them up; they turn out to be a tent and folding bed.

—okay. That's - reasonable.

She makes another, briefer trip inside for a small table and a lamp, and then seems satisfied with the setup. "Sora," she confirms, gesturing at the closed tent, and then returns to sit in her previous spot.

...probably he should go be in the tent then? Maybe? He hesitates.

Shrug. "Sora choice."

- okay. But that doesn't really solve his problem, he still has to guess the safer path... maybe the safer path is to sit quietly in the tent and not bother anyone?

"Hmh." She looks like she's trying to figure him out.

He is definitely not sure what to do about that.

...hmm.

She starts naming the eating utensils that are handy; in short order he has the words for cups and mugs and the teapot and the bowls and spoons, and the bucket for good measure. All of them but his mug, she arranges between them as she names them. When she's done, she gestures to the collection: "all."

There's a question of whether he'll get that one.

He is attentive to the vocabulary lessons, and manages to guess what 'all' means, although he's not sure he got it right.

Well, that's an advantage of reading his mind, she can tell.

"All safe Sora."

...um... no? There are lots of things that are dangerous to Sora. Like the desert they're in the middle of, and Pradnakt's otherworldly powers, and the barely-glimpsed strange creature that sent him here - even if what she means is just that the people and things nearby are not dangerous to him right now, that doesn't mean none of them will be in the future, which is why he needs to figure out how to be a good guest who doesn't upset anyone. Especially because she knows so many of his horrible secrets already and is probably going to find out the rest.

She makes A Face. It is fairly readily interpreted as 'I'm really very sure of that, it's silly of you to disagree with me'.

...well that's a little intimidating. And he's not sure which thing she means he shouldn't disagree with her about - and he wouldn't even know how to start thinking of the world as a safe place, even if it were the old familiar world and not this new strange unsettling one, the only times in his life he has ever felt safe have been while he was committing murder, and he has already figured out that he definitely shouldn't do that, even if there was someone around he could get away with murdering, which there really obviously isn't.

"Mm. See," she taps next to her eye. "Pradnakt see Sora," she gestures from her eyes to him. "Pradnakt see Sora think," and this one gets the forehead tap - point at him gesture from when she was explaining her powers. "Sora think all unsafe Sora. Think safe Sora; all safe Sora." You can think that if you want to; it's no more dangerous than anything else.

...he thinks she means that she doesn't mind if he keeps being scared? Well. Okay. Good?

Nod. "Sora see," she adds, her tone confident but suggesting that it's perfectly fine that he hasn't seen it yet.

...that seems really unlikely but he suspects he is not going to convince her.

Sure.

She mimes sleeping, and identifies the word for him. "Sora choice sleep?"

...sure, okay. A reasonable thing to do at this hour. If night even works the same here as at home.

She gathers up the dishes to bring inside. Before she goes, she pauses to look speculatively at the water bucket, but ultimately leaves it there.

He considers whether it would be okay for him to move the bucket closer to the tent, decides it probably is, and does that. And then he goes into the tent and fails to sleep because everything is terrifying.

She stays mostly in the front of the house, and eventually curls up on the floor behind the door, apparently to sleep.

He gets to sleep eventually, although it takes several hours.

When he wakes up, the sun is up, Pradnakt has moved to a slightly different curled-up configuration, the animals have been let out of the barn, and a noticeable amount of the water in the bucket has evaporated, but everything else is apparently the same.

...yep. He's still here. Wasn't a dream.

Now what.

Kind of up to him, isn't it.

...it's very tempting to just huddle in his tent not doing anything.

But that is probably the wrong answer.

But he doesn't know what he should be doing instead.

About ten minutes after he wakes up, Pradnakt uncurls and sits up, and after a further ten minutes she stands and leaves the house; a few seconds later she's stopped to announce herself at the door of his tent.

There is a brief flicker of an expectation in the back of his head that actually that's his father and he is about to be set on fire, but he's so used to those moments that he barely notices the thought as it goes by. He peers nervously out of the tent at her.

She's holding a tray of food, and also holding very still and making a rather disturbed face.

...???

She blinks and snaps out of it, instead looking worried and vaguely incredulous. She holds out the tray for him to take: scrambled eggs, buttered toast, a small bowl of applesauce and a glass of milk.

"Um. Thank you?" he says hesitantly, accepting the tray. It is worrying that she's disturbed or worried by something and he doesn't know what, but he also doesn't know how to find out, so he might as well just have breakfast.

Tray delivered, she heads back into the house.

She takes longer with breakfast than he does, but not dramatically so. When she's done, she returns, this time with a sketch pad and colored pencils.

Once he finishes his breakfast he calls up a little of the water from his comfort bucket and cleans all of the dishes with it; he is just finishing with that as she returns.

Aw.

Okay, so. Sketchpad: the first page has a simple drawing of a fire; she points to it, then to Sora, making a face that rather clearly communicates 'what the heck?' and also that she is worried about him, and then floats the pad and pencils over.

...okay if she wants him to draw things he can draw things, but what - oh, she probably caught him thinking about his father.

He is not much of an artist but he manages four stick figures, each manipulating an element. Stick figure with hovering rock: "Earthbender." Stick figure with streams of water: "Waterbender." Stick figure with flame blast: "Firebender." Stick figure with little swirling breezes: "Airbender."

New pair of stick figures with associated elements: "Father, firebender. Mother, waterbender." Ensuing family tree: "Brother, firebender. Sora, waterbender." Brother gets crossed out. He's not sure if she's still reading his mind, but if she's not he has no idea how to explain 'my father strongly implied when I was growing up that I had an older brother who was a firebender but also an incorrigible troublemaker so Father killed him and started over', so he's just going to move on. Here is a bad drawing of the house where he grew up, on Ember Island surrounded by lots and lots of lightly tended wilderness. Here are father-stick-figure and Sora-stick-figure standing next to the house.

New page: Sora-stick-figure doing various badly drawn tasks like cleaning his room and reading books and learning firebending katas for no reason except that his father wished he'd been born a firebender instead. Father-stick-figure watching approvingly as long as he gets it right. Sora-stick-figure dropping a plate and breaking it. Father-stick-figure yelling. Father-stick-figure throwing fire blasts at cowering Sora-stick-figure.

He looks up from the page and over at Pradnakt - is this a sufficient explanation?

- hard to tell. She certainly is having some sort of reaction to it, though; the doom aura isn't back, but it really might as well be.

She reaches over, stiffly, and a tiny bit of lightning plays over her finger, and the instance of his father who's throwing fire at him smokes and chars under it.

—if that means she wants to kill him, well, Sora already did that. But he's still not sure if she's reading his mind so he's not sure if he needs to figure out a way to draw 'faked suicide via bloodbending'.

She relaxes a little, at least, and nods. "Good."

She takes the pad back and flips forward a few pages to get to one without a scorch mark, on which she draws a cloaked stick figure holding a red line. "Sith," she identifies, then flips back to his last drawing and identifies the instance of Sora's father watching approvingly as 'happy', the burnt one as 'angry', and the cowering Sora-instance as 'scared'. Back to her page, she draws little faces for all three emotions and identifies them.

Next, the Sith figure is repeated, zapping a bolt of lightning this time. Below that, the stick figure with an angry face next to it and a larger bolt of lightning, and then one with a scared face and a lightning bolt between those two in size. Finally, one with a happy face, and a smaller (but not much smaller) bolt of lightning than the original. Then, three more Sith figures, with progressively larger angry faces and lightning bolts to match.

...hm. The lightning is emotion-based somehow?

"Mmhmm," she nods.

She adds another symbol up by the faces: a blue half-circle, which she identifies as 'think'. Then, at the bottom of the page, a Sith figure, again with an angry face and now with a think symbol as well, and lightning, now hitting a second, uncaped figure. She traces her finger from the Sith, through the angry face, along the lightning, and to the other figure, then back toward the Sith. She pauses as she nears the Sith, and draws a larger angry face and a much smaller think symbol, then continues tracing the path back through both of them to the Sith figure, making a disapproving "mm" as she does.

...the lightning is emotion-based and makes you feel the emotion more strongly and think less? That sounds terrible??

She makes a woggly hand gesture and taps the zapped figure.

...makes you feel the emotion more strongly and think less specifically when you murder somebody with it? Otherworldly powers are so weird.

"Mmhmm." Next page.

A Sith figure again, this one with long brown hair, identified as herself. A second one, larger and in a slightly more elaborate cape: Pritruth. The two of them fighting with lightsabers; Pritruth looking on while Pradnakt sits at a table working on something; Pritruth looking on while Pradnakt produces a series of increasingly large lightning bolts; happy signs - small ones - all around this. A dividing line.

She pauses to identify some things from the previous page, 'lightning' and 'kill' and 'more' and 'less', and then flips back and continues her story aloud. "Pritruth scared Pradnakt," she starts, tapping the page once below the dividing line. "Pritruth talk Pradnakt kill. Pradnakt not think Pritruth scared, not think..." she goes back to the previous page and waves at the 'the Force is kind of fucked up' drawing. "Pradnakt kill. Pritruth talk more, Pradnakt kill more, Pradnakt think less. Pradnakt think," another gesture at the drawing. "Pradnakt think: Pradnakt not kill, Pritruth kill Pradnakt."

...so Pradnakt was - learning? from Pritruth? and Pritruth was afraid of her, and... Pritruth told Pradnakt to do more of the fucked-up murder magic... because that would make her less scary?? And she - didn't know, or didn't realize, what it would do to her? And then she realized? maybe? and concluded that if she stopped doing fucked-up murder magic then Pritruth would kill her? He is really not sure he has that right.

"Mmhmm." She adds a drawing of herself sitting crosslegged with her eyes closed, large angry and small thinking symbols on one side, slightly smaller angry and slightly larger thinking symbols on the other, and then draws her finger through them to suggest 'meditating reverses that effect, a little'.

...well that's better than being totally helpless in the face of the fucked-up murder magic, he supposes.

"Mmhmm."

She draws her finger from one side of the page to the other, to suggest a considerable amount of time passing. "Pradnakt kill Pritruth," she taps the far side of the page, and then draws another dividing line and taps below it.

"Pradnakt less less less think, Pradnakt less less less choice. Less less less choice kill," she emphasizes, and sighs resignedly.

...because of the fucked-up murder magic? She just - kept killing people because she was in the habit? That sounds like it must've been awful.

"Mmhmm."

"Pradnakt meditate more," she taps the picture as she uses the new word. "Pradnakt think more, Pradnakt choice more, Pradnakt choice," and she gestures around them. "Not kill." She indicates another period of time, this one multiple passes along the page, "Pradnakt," wobbly gesture, "safe."

...hmm. That... does make a lot of sense.

"Mmhmm."

"Pradnakt choice," she does the thing with her hands again, "kill, safe. Pradnakt choice safe. Sora choice?"

...the serial killer lifestyle wasn't... actually working out that well for him. But it's still the only time he's ever felt okay, ever, at all. But he doesn't exactly have access to safe opportunities to commit murder around here anyway. But he's not sure he can face going the rest of his life without ever feeling safe again...

"Mm." (Gosh she wants to give him a hug. Bad idea, though, if he has issues with being touched.) She goes back to the emotion faces, circles a finger around them: "feel. Pradnakt choice Sora feel safe. Pradnakt think."

...she... wants him to feel safe? Well. That's nice of her. He has no idea how to make it happen. If he had any better ideas than murder he'd have tried them already.

Nod. "Pradnakt think," she repeats.

Okay. He nods.

Nod.

"Choice," she does the hand thing again, bobbing each in turn and then the left one a second time, after a pause. She points to her left hand with her right one, "want. Sora want?"

Does he want... what? Things in general? Um. It would maybe be nice to have something to do besides sit in his tent and fret, but probably her life is not set up to provide useful tasks to a random stranger who speaks ten words of her language and whose main skills are bloodbending and being afraid of things. Especially since he can't go near her robot friend without panicking.

"Mm," wry grin, nod; that is rather the case. She deposits the pad and pencils on the table, anyway, and takes the tray back inside.

Yeah that figures. Sora sits in his tent and frets.

He's left alone for about half an hour, and then: "Sora? Daisy," Pradnakt warns.

...aa? He peers out of the tent.

The pair of them are crossing the yard toward the speeder; when they get there, Daisy mounts it and, after a brief signed exchange, drives off.

...oh.

Pradnakt watches her for a minute, and then comes over. "Daisy go," she gestures away from herself. 'Daisy come," she makes the reverse motion, then points to the sun, and then the spot on the horizon where it'll set.

So the robot friend is going away and coming back later - around sunset? Um. Okay.

Nod. "Sora come see?" She gestures houseward.

...okay, if there's something she wants him to see in the house he will go in the house.

The room immediately inside the front door is dominated by a huge table, cluttered with tools and machine parts and surrounded with benches. Bins of parts sit along and hang from the side wall, a few large machines, a cabinet, and a door take up the back one, and the side wall nearest the door has a small kitchen workstation set into it. Wherever they're not otherwise occupied, the walls are hung with fabric in colorful jewel tones; the pile of pillows next to the door is darker and duller and doesn't fit with the look of the rest of the room at all.

Pradnakt goes to sit at the far side of the table, leaving him space to explore the room.

It's pretty. And strange - almost everything about local technology seems so different from what he's used to. He instinctively tries not to touch anything.

She lets him look around for a bit, and then starts demonstrating things: the sink, the stovetop, a little hover-motor she recently refurbished.

Huh. He doesn't know much about this sort of thing, but it almost seems like - like this world developed all its technology in completely different ways from his, so they have a lot of the same things and a lot of different things and even the similar things don't work quite the same way...

Seems plausible.

Is anything particularly catching his interest?

He's not much of a gadgets person, so most of the things are just... sort of there. But the decor is pretty. And it's good to know how the kitchen things work here.

Okay, well, in that case...

She opens the door to the back room, which is her bedroom, and has a much higher concentration of pretty things - to the point of being a bit overwhelming, in fact. Not quite every inch of wall is host to a sculpture or framed poem or what have you, but most of them, and a good portion of the ceiling as well. The shelves beside the bed house a mixture of artwork - small paintings and framed photographs, statuettes, soft sculpture - practical (but still pretty) things, decorated boxes, and mystery items, like the collection of black hand-sized discs in one of the boxes. Even the bed - which takes up almost the entire room - is decorated with glittering embroidery on its dark grey quilt. (The pillows from the front room would look just at home here, too.)

Wow. That is a really pretty room.

Yeah.

She sits on the bed to retrieve a small painting from the shelves, a forest landscape. "Painting," she identifies, and then mimes the act. "Sora painting?"

Is she asking if he paints? No, he doesn't. He never managed to learn. He's much better with art in three dimensions; he does little ice sculptures sometimes, although he's not great at those either, yet.

"Ah." She puts the painting back and takes a small metal sculpture down from the wall to illustrate the word. "Pradnakt sculpture. Sora sculpture?"

He nods. Not metal, though; he works in ice, with waterbending. It's easier than most other things. (A half-formed thought of alternative media, which he flinches away from in something like embarrassment.)

Hmm, okay. Ice isn't at all easy to keep, out here, but she might be able to figure out something that'll fit in her generator's capacity. Or get a second generator, if it comes to it.

Anyway. Similarly: poetry?

Poetry can be nice, but he is not personally any good at it.

Yeah.

She looks around the room for more potential things - embroidery's probably not dimensional enough, and neither is calligraphy... photography, maybe? She has... well... she has a couple of landscape photographs on the shelves, but if he's not familiar with the tech that might just confuse him; instead she rifles around in a box and comes up with a picture of Daisy, with a few scarlike chassis patches instead of her flowers, in a small spaceship's lounge, apparently just having been interrupted from reading something on a datapad.

Oh, hm, photography. He's never tried that.

Nod. "Okay."

That seems to be it in here - "Sora want more?" Does he want to go see more things, see if any of them suit him?