It was the steady and familiar beat of a wave notification that woke her, not the roar and panic of the ship nearly crashing some two days prior. The noise reduction bulkheads she had lined in her shuttle added about an inch of thickness and cramped it in a bit but she slept better than the dead. Chang'e let herself yawn and stretch out and indulge in the pain of her limbs reminding her of life. She let the pinging go on for another minute or so while she did a quick inspection in her mirror. She pinned her waist-length hair into an impromptu bun, wrapping it over and over and letting the excess flow spill over her left shoulder. She wrapped herself in a red silk gown and cleaned off the evidence of drool off the corner of her lips.
It had been five (ten?) minutes before she answered the wave. Her monitor came alive with a young man with brown doe eyes who looked as though he had been waiting all this time in the same alert position. He was staring into the monitor with the attentiveness of an earnest lover that was waiting for the response to an all too important question. Chang'e regarded him with a polite smile, felt a yawn coming on, and stifled it with sheer force of will and a tilt of her head. "Oh! Did I, uh, wake you," he gulped and managed a smile that melted away the tension he built up in waiting. "Meihao de yuanjing?"
So familiar, nánhái?"No, no. I've just been..." She feigned at trying to come up with some clever lie by looking off to her side. She was thinking about breakfast and if she had enough provisions stored to keep off that protein poison the captain fed her crew. Then she brought her vision back to her monitor and laughed; a light and embarrassed admission of being caught in a lie. "Yes, you did. Traveling by space and not having the sun and moon to dictate my schedule has me...out of sorts."
"Oh, yes! I understand. Are you, I mean, I'm forgetting what to say." He took a moment and breath and started to speak, "You do me a great honor in responding to me, my lady. When I saw your signal come alive over all the stars and all the moons and..." He looked down off monitor. Chang'e took this moment to pop a small ball of dried tofu into her mouth. His gaze came back and it began. He stumbled over the declarations of her beauty and his good fortune and she eased him into natural conversation. She found him to be the nephew of a childless land owner, moving into this planet for property and possibly mining. He mentioned about a quarter of this. She inferred the rest. He kept looking off-screen. Possibly trying to figure out the ship's location. More likely re-verifying her guild status.
"You understand I cannot make commitments as this is--" He stopped her just shy of saying no.
"I do! I only ask that for what little time you are here that you...would do me the honor of joining me for a late lunch? I'll send a boy to fetch you. If you'd join me he'll take you to my estate. If you cannot...please, have him take you where you need to go. Allow me the pleasure of assisting you in some way." He glanced off screen again, furrowed his brow, and cut off the transmission abruptly. Chang'e thought him bookish and too clever for his own good.
Richard was awake and was a small bundle of brown fur nuzzling at her ankle. She pressed back gently with her bare feet and set about her routine. She spent the remainder of the free fall dressing herself, occasionally stumbling into her furniture, still disoriented. She slipped into loose fitting white low-waist ankle length pants and threw on a white
dress imposed with blue flowers and a blue hem and silver sandals. She worked her hair into a braid. A silver chain hung off her left earring, hooked onto a hawk feather. Her make up was understated; a light blush and peach colored lips.
She walked out of her shuttle just as the ship landed. Outside of her noise-cancelling bulkheads the life and teaming personalities clashed through the echoing passageways. Her brief walk through the overhead and down the stairs into the hangar bay already open and letting in fresh air. She caught the captain in passing. The woman smelled of cigarette smoke and sunlight.
"Captain." She offered a polite smile in greeting. "How much longer will we be staying?" She said so in a sing-song voice and walked passed the captain as she said it. She was already expecting the growl and unhelpful remark she'd become accustomed to.
