Mourning had watched Sydney carry her cousin aboard, curled in her knot, half sleeping. Before he woke up, she'd sniffed him, his feet, his crotch, his breath, before shivering in disgust and jumping back to her nest on the adjacent bunk. There she'd sat, watching this disgusting thing Sydney had dragged in snore.
When it woke up, it was loud. Waking up, it groaned and stretched, filling up the space in the bunk. She'd bobbed her head up, watched it s it moved, wondering what it would do. Then, it saw her, and started yelling. It was very loud.
She jumped back, dodged around the poles supporting the bunks, and curled herself in the corner, hissing. This thing had invaded her home, stank up the nest, and was now yelling? at her?
A commotion from the living area brought Sydney around from surveying the damage, and she was rather quick to realize that Juan and Mourning weren't hitting it off great. She ran back to them in leaps and bounds, skidding to a halt a few feet from them and quickly assessing the situation.
"Juan, Mourning! Settle down! Geez, no need to try to beat each other."
Juan stared at Sydney with an open mouth and shocked look. His eyes moved from the Nomad to his cousin and back again. Mourning simply crouched in that curled position, poised.
"You're defending that... that thing?!" he demanded.
"That's no thing, that's Mourning, and yes I am. She wouldn't hurt a fly, unless it hurt her. Now, stop threatening her and thank me for not leaving you down there drunk and asking to be pick-pocketed."
"AND STAY OUT!" Sydney yelled as Juan walked away from her ship, rubbing his rump and muttering under his breath. She muttered under her own breath, the most innocuous words being "ungrateful little". He had decided that any "Nomad lover" wasn't family of his, and had opted to be forcibly removed from her ship. One less idiot in the universe to deal with, that's what Sydney thought. Of course, that did make her back at square one, with the engine to fix to boot. Maybe she should find an engineer.
Going back to where Mourning lay, huddled, Sydney pointed at the floor and put heavy emphasis in the word 'Stay' as she subsequently looked to find a dedicated mechanic to work on her ship.
They always stank. They were bigger or smaller, but they always stank. Mourning lurked just beyond the curve of the shell, since the one was loud. They lumbered around, banging and stinking and heaving and breathing, and she ducked behind covers, put things between her and them. One after another, they came on, reeking slightly different each time, and sometimes tried to be bigger than Sydney.
Sydney was bigger than Mourning. Sydney was, usually, bigger than them. They'd try to be bigger than Sydney, these loud, large, stinky beasts, who lurked back in the deep, damp end of the shell so much less than she or mourning. Mourning didn't stink, just like Sydney. Eventually, they'd try to be bigger than Sydney, and they'd be very loud, just like the first one, and then there'd be a new one. For a while, Mourning wouldn't have to hide around the curve of the shell.
Sydney got infuriated as crewman after crewman proved incompetent, rude, bossy, or (in the worst case), downright perverted. Waking up to a hand up her shirt had landed that sleazeball the fastest ticket off the ship yet -- out the airlock. She may be small, but she was a fighter and had a lot of stamina, as well as force of will.
Of course, Mourning didn't hesitate to help her overpower the man who pushed his luck a bit too far. He had yelled something about getting out of his mind, but she paid no mind to him.
Round and round they went, trading goods and taking odd jobs. They ended up floating in Honshu, clinging to the underbelly of a Naval Battleship. It was real easy to fool the sensors with all systems powered down except the mag-grips. Trick was the approach, and doing it in one of Kusari's many sensor-scrambling nebulae really helped.
The thing was that Sydney was supposed to board the ship and steal something. A convenient cascading system failure would occur at exactly 0400, and that was when she would have to spacewalk to the airlock, pick the seal, and get in and out.
She sighed as she looked out the viewscreen of the cramped cockpit and wondered if she'd ever see the beauty of home again.
Sydney looked at the clock above the airlock door and zippered up her space suit, grabbing her helmet. Her hair was in a bun on the top of her head, and her backpack was at her feet. It was full of all sorts of thieving equipment. She checked the small blaster she kept in her right boot, the "just in case" measure, and shouldered her backpack. Pulling her helmet on and clicking it into place, she attached the O2 line from the can of compressed oxygen on her belt to the helmet.
0359.
She opened the airlock inner door and looked outside the small window in the outer door. The inner door closed behind her, the atmosphere was drained from the compartment, and she waited.
The lights flickered then shut off on the battleship, and that was her cue. Opening the airlock's outer door, she hopped out... which sent her slowly hurtling towards her destination, a maintenance airlock which let into an unused part of the ship, which should be fairly quiet.
Sydney wasn't right. Sydney was off, jittery, still. Sydney sydney sydney! They were alone, now, and later, but not always. Today, this moment, alone. Sydney and Mourning, again. Their shell wasn't in a bigger shell. Sydney was in a smaller shell, she'd put it on over her head. Then she'd stepped out of the shell.
Mourning left the shell. She pressed up against the plates, and the walls slid open, and she drifted. She drifted. The shell opened...and she was bigger, slightly. She moved around, drifted. The song!
The song glowed, shifted. Echoed off of the big cold, and vibrated up from inside it, bounced over her shell. Her shell, sydney's little shell, both had their own songs, low, subdued things, mild and quiet, but bold, so bold! Bold against the greatsong, the roaring song, the dragonsong. The song which echoed from up near the center, from the down, the slow, the heavy. Mourning felt it, felt it and understood. She knew the song, the song, how long ago, here, just now, and far, far away. Some whispers immediate, others older, and others older still. She felt, outside of her shell, the whole of time, stretching out behind her.
She darted left!
And up! Aside!
forward.
Sydney was gone, her song silenced. Sydney?
***Sydney!***
***Sydney?***
As Sydney came into contact with the metal exterior of the battleship, mag-clamps activated and kept her from flying off into space. She was right next to the airlock. Taking off her backpack, she pulled out the first thing she'd need, tactfully put in last. It looked like a tent when Sydney activated it, as it expanded quite a bit. A metal circle big enough to cover the entire airlock with some room to spare, with mag-clamps on it to hold it in place. Some sort of material that made a hemisphere was connected to the metal ring.
Making sure she was inside, she attached the ring to the hull and was pleased to see it stayed fast. Next, she pulled out what appeared to be an aerosol can. Moving closer to the door, she sprayed a circle about two meters in diameter. Within moments, the corrosive acid ate away at the metal and she pushed it in. The hiss of air escaping and filling the new space created by the "tent" greeted her ears, and Sydney slipped into the airlock.
Artificial gravity kicked in, and she found herself standing. Next, the inner airlock door...
Mourning had, for the first time, crawled out of the shell. And outside, she'd discovered a song so vast and brilliant, so deep and true, a song of things which had happened, were happening, far away and close, but never reachable, brought to her in a nurishing flow of knowledge and information so deep that she could barely seive the surface. She'd found, on top of her usual understanding from inside the shell, where everything was so close and immediate, that she knew the history, what had happened here, and far away, in echos from eternity, and she'd found Sydney's notes in the song, the harmonies of the shell Sydney wore out into the great song, and then those notes had dissappeared, gone. Just as she was discovering how to move in this new place, in this song, she'd lost Sydney, she'd lost her we.
With that shock, Mourning focused on her immediate surroundings, her immediate history. Sydney had been...there. And around her, she'd emptied out the song, creating an empty space, untill none of the song touched her. That was how Sydney had dissapeared.
Mourning drifted over to the hole in the song, found where it butted up against the greater shell, the huge shell, and shoved herself through. Pressure pushed back at her, and then...Sydney was there again, but the song was gone.
She rushed over to Sydney, across the slick surfaces, and pounced at her feet.
***Sydney!***
***Mourning Sydney shell, Mourning shell, Shell, Mourning Sydney Song, Mourning Song, Mourning Sydney Shell!***
***MourningSydneyWe, yes?***
As Sydney ran an EM spike over the inner airlock's security port and attached a small suction-handle device to the door to manually open it, something attacked her from behind. It pushed her legs out from under her and she went down in a screaming tangle with whoever was attacking...
Just Mourning... she thought as the familiar warmness entered her mind. Weird creature with unusual abilities, but harmless to her. Sydney got back on her feet, and tried to tell Mourning to stay. When she got the door open, however, it followed her. Sydney rolled her eyes and consulted the small map for directions.
The hallways were all dim with emergency power keeping a minimum of lights on. Sydney didn't remove her helmet because she couldn't carry it easily, though she did open it and turn off the O2 feed. She hooked the next right and came face to face with a Kusari soldier.
![[Image: u8rHEaq.png]](http://i.imgur.com/u8rHEaq.png)