James
Straight up gave the thread a header

A *Threader*

But fr I shall wait for reply heehoo
Shannon
*Stargazing.*

*After her conversation with asa in the Cradle's proprietary intranet, Nakanishi had continued to stare sleeplessly out of the window in her and Mamoru's dorm. Stargazing was something Nakanishi did when worries and fears would keep popping up in her head and keeping her awake. Searching for certain stars, drawing constellations with her imagination, and thinking about what it would be like to be one amongst the stars, watching the Earth from far away.*

*Nakanishi drew up a few constellations out of shapes she noticed: the Hourglass constellation, the Pythagoras' Triangle constellation, the Cradle constellation, and a couple more. One by one, she would point up at the sky and draw various lines and shapes out of the twinkling stars with her finger, like a giant, omnipresent "Connect the dots" Sheet.*

*As a chilly breeze gently weaved around the various forests and buildings around her, Nakanishi suddenly had a feeling that she had looked at every inch of the night sky that she could see from her window. She made her 5 constellations, and she had seen all the different shades of reds, oranges, whites, and blues that each dot in the sky randomly possessed. She tried to move to another window for at least a slightly better view, but she was constrained to the same scope as before.*

*Nakanishi turned to the door that separated the dorm from the concrete gray hallways that connected the entire building to itself. She heard from somewhere that residents of the Cradle would be allowed to go on the roof, even at night. That would almost certainly give her the best view possible: high up on a chilly rooftop with the entire night sky in view. Nakanishi smiled at the thought, but was the legend true...?*

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*Being as quiet as she could possibly be, she shut the window she was originally stargazing out of to keep the dorm room warm, then she put on her socks and shoes for outside travel, and crept out of her room at an unbearably slow pace, doing her best to keep the door from creaking. Then, she very gently shut the door, made sure she could still get back in with the key, then crept into the eerie, dark crypt to find a staircase.*
James
*Flick.*

Eyes to the sky, Akvilė flicked her beat-up lighter and lit another cigarette, gently rolling the butt of it between her teeth with her tongue and a *Lot* Of focus. A brisk chill whipped over the top of the Cradle, and the knitted sweater she'd worn up clearly wasn't enough. She wasn't shivering, but her bones ached. Her tendons felt stiff, like a puppet cut free from its strings. Her limbs had their string, but she found it hard to move them. The *What ifs?* Of splintered tendons didn't sit well with her.

She was out on the roof once again because it was undoubtedly the best place to plant a telescope she'd been able to reach yet. As she gently sucked on the butt of her cigarette and lowered her eye into the awaiting piece of her telescope she thought about her attempt on the 106.3 Tower on the outskirts of town. She'd come so close yet failed to make her attempt, halted in her tracks by the presence of maintenance men milling about the site for over an hour. Frost had set in; she'd been *Forced* To leave.

She set her sights on the Crab Nebula and remembered to exhale. She coughed hard and attempted to dial her settings in.
Shannon
*The near-complete lack of natural light to reflect off of the gray concrete floors, walls, and ceilings made it impossible to see without a flashlight. Nakanishi dug her Samsung Galaxy A20 out of her coat pocket and turned the flashlight on, angling it low to light only the pathways that she could take. Despite nobody else being out here during the night, Nakanishi didn't want to disturb or blind anyone with the light.*

*Step... Step... Step... No matter how slow and deliberate Nakanishi's steps were, the shoes that she wore, which were part of the uniform she used to keep with her in Japan, kept their clicky nature and made sure that whoever was awake at this hour would hear something like someone snapping their fingers through the hallways. Nakanishi was worried that she'd wake up one of the residents in the dorms and be yelled at for it.*

*And the sheer darkness of the building wasn't helping her worries settle. No matter how many times she reminded herself that there was nothing in the dark that could harm her, she couldn't help but grow fearful of what lied just beyond the light of her smartphone, her sort of sanctuary providing a sense of safety in that she could be sure nothing was hiding in the dark, except for herself. Nakanishi did to control her breathing to be slow and silent, despite the fear that was slowly mounting in this silent sea of darkness.*

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*Step... Step... Eh? What's that in the distance? With a slightly shaky hand, Nakanishi pointed her phone up to illuminate the area in front of her. Steps. A railing. A staircase! Just what she needed! With a feeling of relief that came with being a step closer to her goal (no pun intended, I will rip your hair out strand by strand if you mention it), Nakanishi smiled a little bit and approached the staircase before ascending the steps to the third floor of the building. It wouldn't be long before she'd find another staircase leading up to the roof.*

*As she approached the second set of stairs, Nakanishi realized that she wouldn't've even gotten this far compared to herself when she first arrived at the Cradle. After thinking back on some things she did recently at the Cradle and around Isakstad, a smile crept up Nakanishi's cheeks as she then had a realization that she actually seemed to be getting a bit more confident in herself. She made sure to remember that goal.*

*And then, with a deep breath, Nakanishi slowly ascended the thin, metallic steps. Nakanishi felt rust on the railing that she held on to, but it kind of became a norm for her to be seeing and feeling rust in this building. She looked up and noticed that the rooftop access door was open just a tiny bit, so she pointed her phone up and slowly opened the door, which made a quiet, metallic creaking sound before gravity pulled it the rest of the way open. Now that she was at the roof, she turned off her flashlight, put her phone in her pocket, and stuck her head up to peek over the concrete and scan her surroundings, hoping that nobody was already here.*
James
*Whirr, click. Click. Phew.*

The soft noises of her telescope being further dialed in and her occasional breaths were all that punctuated the silence up on the roof. This was how clear skied nights went by in Akvilė's world: up on the roof, one hand glued to the dials of her telescope and her eye firmly pressed into its viewport, thin wisps of cigarette smoke drifting around her head like a halo of burning futures. She found this (mostly) nightly routine relaxing, and almost freeing in a sense. Daylight brought her into the focus of the others she saw in the hallways and common rooms much to her chagrin, so night time felt like a warm cloak flowing down her shoulders, keeping her safe and keeping her unseen.

At least, usually it did. She was staring at the Crab Nebula intently when the unmistakable creaking of the access door ripped her attention from her stargazing. Her head whipped around nervously to face the door.

Staring directly at the door she noted it as ajar. Thrust open much further than she'd left it on her way up. Her jaw tightened slightly at the thought; *She wasn't alone up here now.* Too set up to simply flee she swallowed down a kernel of apprehension that had lodged itself into her throat and kept her eyes fixed at the door. After a couple of seconds a head popped up, and she immediately picked up on one physical trait of note: her eyes. She looked into the girl's eyes, every bit as timid as hers, and with just a bit of moral apprehension. *Was it wrong to assume race just off of eye shape?* Was the dilemma she contended with for a moment in the snap-taut silence that lingered as they made eye contact before she bulldozed over those qualms with a little regret and the emotional callousness of an Abrams tank. Between the eyes and her memory she found herself somewhat certain they were the dame person she'd been talking to earlier that night in the Intranet. Yusuke, or whatever it had been. Not a familiar face, but a stargazer all the same.

She didn't wave. She didn't say anything. She simply exhaled deeply through her nostrils and went back to her telescope, albeit with less intense focus than before. Outside of Amelie's treasued company she still found herself unable to truly relax in social scenarios such as these, and it showed in her tense shoulders.
Shannon
*Nakanishi slowly turned her head, scanning the roof with her eyes. Empty... Empty... Empty... Em-PERSON! Nakanishi was startled by the sight of another person on the roof and immediately ducked below the roof with a faint gasp, moving herself out of sight completely from the other person's perspective. This was bad, this was bad, she wasn't alone. Nakanishi hadn't figured out who they were, as she was just focused on getting herself out of sight in that moment of panic. She thought for a moment... Who exactly were they?*

*After about a minute of Nakanishi trying to muster the courage to ascend once more, the girl slowly raised herself back up until she could just barely see onto the roof. They were looking away, seemingly too focused on their telescope to care about Nakanishi's presence. They were looking into the stars, uncovering their deepest secrets, just like she was just 10 minutes ago. Except, Nakanishi didn't have a telescope. They were just a stargazer. Suddenly, she remembered the conversation that she had in the Intranet just before she left to go up to the roof for a better view of the sky. Could they be that same person...?*

"A-Anata wa... Da-dare desuka?" *The girl asked in her mother tongue, her voice being so faint that the stargazer almost couldn't hear her at all. Despite having spent months and months here in Sweden, she hasn't learned a single bit of it, for some wild reason. Perhaps her virtual escapes from this harsh reality were getting in the way of her Swedish language studies. Either way, she still didn't learn Swedish at all, and she needed to get started on that. Whilst waiting for an answer, Nakanishi slowly raised herself, allowing more of her body to become visible to the stargazer, shoulders first.*
James
Though the wind flowed by at a not-insignificant pace and her open eye was affixed to the telescope she noted the distinctive creaking sound of a partially-rusted hinge and pulled her sight away, once again locking eyes with the stranger.

She said nothing at first. Instead she stared, and began to twiddle with the knobs of her telescope nervously. This was the one downside she'd found with the roof: pedestrians. It was a common hangout in the small hours, over cigarettes or liquor or vibes or whatever else, and this meant people she didn't know. People she simultaneously hoped wouldn't approach her yet wished they would. Potential friends locked behind prison bars of her own design. Potential memories. It was her fear of the human factor that left her immobilized in those spots; she could understand the world on a structural level, so why couldn't she get a bead on people?

Faint Japanese hit her ears and snapped her out of her thoughts. Immediately recognizing a language barrier she pulled out her phone, a veritable Pandora's Box gifted to her by the Deans, and frantically typed with one hand. With a single peek to make sure she'd typed it in right she set her phone face down on a nearby milk crate left behind by a previous resident and plastered with stickers and drawings over the years. She knew the method worked – after all, how else was she to survive in Poland without much of an understanding of its language? – but wondered if the microphone would be sensitive enough. She knew from past experience that microphones had a lot of issues out in the field.

"Ar galėtumėte, uhm... Tai pakartoti? Vertėjas y-yra pasiruošęs, "Google" Padeda. Ta– tačiau gal ne su vėju." She forced her voice up a little, speaking a little louder than a mouse and feeling everything in her trying to slam her throat shut until she learned her lesson. Her phone picked it up; 

**"Could you repeat that?"** It parroted in Japanese, in a monotone that Akvilė admittedly found charming. She'd already earmarked the technology as a future instrument of sorts. **"A translator is ready; Google is helpful. Perhaps not with wind, though."** It finished. With that she took a step back, and waited.
Shannon
*Nakanishi waited nervously, staring back at the stranger on the roof with nervous eyes. Then she heard the sound of another completely alien tongue, though their voice was quite faint from where she was. She noticed that it sounded different from the Swedish that she heard almost every day, yet she could not discern what language it could be. It didn't sound like English, which was one of the only other languages that she could recognize. What could it be...?*

*The girl continued to stare, watching the stranger do their thing. She got up... She set her phone down... She stepped away... Then, for the first time in a little while, Nakanishi heard her own language again. The robotic voice of the translator app that Nakanishi could hear faintly immediately reminded her of her conversations with Mamoru, who she saw as more of an older brother figure than anything else. She even remembered a time where she had to prevent herself from subconsciously calling him "Brother". She loved her younger brothers, but she thought Mamoru was the best older brother she could've ever had here.*

*Nakanishi snapped herself out of her thoughts, realizing that she was holding the stranger up by thinking idly. She dug her phone out of her pocket and opened the translator app on her phone, which had been set to Japanese -English. Nakanishi decided to stay with the option, hoping that the other stranger would be able to understand it. Holding her phone by the bottom corners with both of her gloved hands, Nakanishi spoke into it in Japanese for a little while, also having to force her voice up. She used up all of her willpower to keep her mouth from slamming shut and staying closed like a thick, extremely heavy vault door. When she felt like it was good enough, she tapped the button to speak the message, turned her volume up, and held it up high so that the stranger could hear it.*

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["Who are you?"] *The phone spoke in a robotic monotone, relaying her message in English. Nakanishi lowered her body a little bit to rest her arms, which have been holding her up for a minute now, and were starting to get tired and sore.*
James
One click of silence, then another.

In the momentary hush that followed Akvilė wondered if her thought had worked. Had it been loud enough? Or had the message been lost and she was just staring at this young'un poking out of the roof like a fool? Momentarily beads of sweat began to pool on her forehead, nervous nectar right to the brows of her eyes, and she began to knead her hands together. What if her presence was unwelcome, or the language barrier was going to be too big an issue to overcome? She thought and thought until the King's English hit her ears, snapping her out of her thoughts and back to the land of the living.

*Right.*

The question asked, though, clearly left Akvilė trepidatious. Why did it have to be an instant question about herself? Why? Why couldn't it have just been a question about the stars or what she was doing up there or literally anything that wasn't an intrusive question? For a few moments she sank deeper and deeper into her mind before remembering that she wasn't alone. She spoke into her phone again, in Lithuanian rather than the English that the other girl had assumed she spoke. After a few moments it parroted her words back in Japanese:

**"No matter."** It spoke, bowling over any stutters her voice originally held. **"It's cool up here. Windy. Are you just going to stand?"**
Shannon
*Nakanishi had to really tune in to the faint computerized voice from the phone's speakers to hear it over the breeze. She didn't get a name, but she also got a question that she wasn't sure how to respond. What did they mean? Like, stand on the stairs that she was on right now? It felt sturdy, yet also like it could give way at any moment, so Nakanishi wouldn't be on that ladder for much longer. After thinking about it, Nakanishi realized that asking them who they were was probably a little too personal of a question to be asking right off the bat. Her face flushed with embarrassment at this realization, and worried that they were going to dislike her if she kept asking questions like that.*

*However, Nakanishi couldn't dwell on that. She was asked a question, so she needed to answer. But, what would she answer with? What did they even mean by that question? She went back to her earlier interpretation of whether she was going to stand on these stairs or not. Maybe that's what they meant. Nakanishi gulped with nervousness and spoke into her phone again using its dictation feature, quickly realizing that it was harder to force her volume up this time around. But, she pushed through and managed to get the message into the app. She held it up and let the phone do the talking for her.*

["Not for long. I'm sorry for the question earlier, I hope it wasn't too personal."] *Then, Nakanishi slowly took a step up the stairs, being careful not to make any sudden movements for the staircase's sake.*
James
The other girl simply stared back for a moment before speaking into her own phone. Akvilė listened, though silently she felt her patience wearing thin. She didn't have much of it for new people, admittedly, and the pace with which she spoke back into her phone might have shown how antsy she was to get back to her telescope.

**[No matter.]** Her first quiet burst popped out of the translator in the other girl's mother tongue. **[I'm going back to my telescope. Join if you wish. I can teach you.]** The second came a few seconds later, partially muffled by Akvilė dropping her phone into her messenger bag while it was still talking. Turning back to her telescope she began to toggle her knobs slightly, yet seemingly without intent. She didn't seem to know *What* She was going to look at next, what with her idle twiddling and eyes fixed on the stars and breath coming off as clouds from her nostrils.

Suddenly she swivelled the telescope around, and as if an undeclared machine she began to dial her settings in with precision and speed that could have only came from experience. What had she set her sights on...?
Shannon
*The offer to be taught how to use a telescope immediately intrigued Nakanishi. She had no way of seeing the stars other than with her own naked eyes. If space was this brilliant from Earth just with her eyes, she could only imagine what it would be like to see the stars and planets up close. A sudden movement in the distance grabbed her attention, and she quickly realized that it was the other person using their telescope, seemingly with a good level of proficiency. As a sudden chill went down her spine after a cold breeze hit her face, she slowly ascended the steps further until her feet were set on the gray concrete roof.*

*Nakanishi pulled her phone out and enabled its flashlight feature to see the roof below her and make sure she wouldn't trip on anything. She slowly began to step forward, over pipes, puddles, random bits of litter, bugs, and cobwebs, until she was within a few meters of the other person, who seemed to still be fixated on their telescope. Nakanishi turned her flashlight off to not distract them with the bright light and looked up at the sky, wondering what the other could be looking at. Venus? Jupiter? The Moon? Proxima Centauri? The Pleiades? It was hard to tell with how dimly lit the telescope was, but Nakanishi found the thought of stargazing with someone to be a very comforting thing. She wasn't alone in pondering the wonders of the Universe.*

*Then she remembered the offer to learn how to use the telescope. Nakanishi looked back down at the other and wanted to ask them if she could be taught the ways of the telescope, but Nakanishi worried that the other would become upset if she distracted them with the sound of her own voice and her phone's voice. This worry put her off from asking, and so she remained silent. Eventually, her legs would become tired and tingly, so she sat down to let them rest.*
James
The funny thing about Akvilė's psyche was how much it resembled that of a rabbit. Even in the best of times she was on guard, one sudden movement away from dropping everything and scampering away in a primal rush of fear, and she immediately felt the air shift as the head and torso she'd been communicating with finally joined her. 

She was busy setting her sights on a particular part of the sky and twiddling the knobs at that moment. She wasn't, however, wholly immersed in her own thoughts. She was too frightful, too nervous of people and the wider world to ever let her guard down fully in public. So the presence was felt, and though she didn't lift her head her body visibly tensed a little. The tendons running up into her hands became pronounced and tight against the soft skin of her hands as she attempted to work the telescope, rendering them a touch more rigid than she'd have liked. 

She clicked her tongue twice in annoyance and shot a tendon out from the back of her neck with only a sharp inhale and a wince to tell that she felt anything of it.

Perhaps to the other girl's horror – no thought crossed Akvilė's mind that perhaps it would frighten her – she began to rifle through her messenger bag for her phone, and after a few moments of this neck tendril writhing and twisting through the air it apparently found her phone. Twisting and stretching upwards it dropped her phone into her awaiting hand, and as if a tool exhausted of its use it detached and slithered over the edge without a word. Akvilė seemed visibly pained in the aftermath, given how her voice hung heavy with moderately masked agony as she spoke into her translator.

**[So you joined.]** Her phone replied a few moments later with the hallmark coldness only an android could manage. One advantage of the translator, she'd discovered, was that it *Obliterated* Her otherwise-persistent stutter. **[I will teach you in a bit. I'm currently honing in on Cat's Eye Nebula. In Draco. Are you familiar with the constellation?]**
Shannon
*Even though the area was only barely lit by the moonlight reflected off of its chalky white surface, Nakanishi noticed the other person's muscles tensing up a bit by her presence. Nakanishi remembered some moments in which her muscles would tense up whenever someone unexpectedly brushed past her, so she connected the dots and realized that this was probably the same thing happening to the other person, except Nakanishi only had to be close to them to get that reaction. She didn't want to make the other person feel unsafe or uncomfortable, so she moved to back away before her ears picked up an unusually sharp inhale.*

*To her horror, Nakanishi noticed a tendon extending out the back of the other person's neck. Immediately, Nakanishi gasped loudly and quickly backed away, her first instinct to run out of fear that she would be attacked. A reasonable fear - I mean, you don't just see something out of Parasyte and stay to watch, right? Anyways, Nakanishi watched in terror as the tendon began to search through the bag resting beside the spot where the woman sat, until it seemingly completed its objective as it first dropped a dimly lit object into her hand, then detached itself and writhed away like a snake. When she sensed that the woman was in pain after that whole ordeal, her instinct was to then go over and ask if she was okay, but the fear struck into her heart from witnessing what she just witnessed kept her in place.*

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*It wasn't until the phone parroted something in robotic Japanese that Nakanishi finally moved a muscle, like a stone statue suddenly moving itself after hundreds of years, stuck in a single pose for centuries to be looked upon and admired. The Cat's Eye Nebula she was familiar with; it literally was about a cat's eye. She adored cats! But Draco, she wasn't familiar with. She hasn't even heard of that constellation. Nakanishi spoke another message into her phone with a noticeable hint of fear in her voice and a shift to a quieter volume, until her phone answered in a robotic monotone:* [I am not familiar with it.]
James
Akvilė couldn't really tell what the other gal was saying, but it sure sounded like she was scared. *Right.*

**[Oh, uh... Apologies? Yes. Formal but fair.]** The translation spat after a quick burst of Lithuanian from her end. She became acutely aware of the terror she'd instilled when the other girl's toned shifted from *Friend?* To *Frighten.* She burst another one, blessedly smaller and proportionately less painful, and tied her phone to the stand of her telescope as if it were just a bungee cord. More wincing occurred, but this time she'd tried to hide it. Behind her wrist and behind the shield of her body sat her phone, knotted there with a tendon, like a Christmas gift from Ed Gein. 

She clicked her tongue twice and finished dialing in her telescope. She waved the girl over.

**[Come over here.]** She spoke into her phone, now apparently set to its maximum volume. **[I have it in view, and it is always better to see these things up close first. Read later. Mind your eye.]**

[It's fine, promise! I legit don't mind a few days' wait lol]
Shannon
*Nakanishi stayed back as the other woman apologized to her for the tendon-induced scare. Nakanishi figured that the scare was likely unintentional, since it seemed to be a power of theirs, and given the relatively older age in their voice, they'd perhaps be more acquianted to their power than Nakanishi was. Fortunately, with how dim the moonlight was, Nakanishi couldn't really see them wincing, so their attempts at hiding it worked.

*When she was prompted to come over, Nakanishi nodded and slowly began to step forward. One baby step at a time, wanting to make sure that the woman really wasn't going to attack her with a tendon. As she slowly approached, Nakanishi noticed that the insides of her insulating leather gloves had frozen due to her still uncontrollable cryokinesis, so she clenched and unclenched her hands to break up the frost and ice that had built up inside of the gloves, then shook her hands to shake the ice out of the glove hole.*

*After ensuring that it was safe to get to the telescope, Nakanishi crouched down next to them, then looked into the viewing hole of the telescope. The nebula looked tiny, almost like any other star. It didn't take very long for Nakanishi to find the nebula, as it looked a little bit larger and dimmer than the rest of the stars around it. Nakanishi couldn't help but feel underwhelmed; it didn't look like the colorful, grandiose structure that it's shown as in a few of its most popular pictures, but Nakanishi found it cool that she could see something like that so far away. For a moment, she took her eye away from the telescope to find the nebula in the night sky. She couldn't discern it from other stars unfortunately, but she was happy that she got to see one of her favorite nebulae. She stood up, then stepped back, relinquishing viewing privilege to the other woman who most likely owned the telescope. She was still a little frightened by the tendon from a minute ago, but she seemed to be calming down.*
James
Fjdmsjfkakgks nishisponse

But also. Akvilė only had the telescope fixed on one star in Draco, it's on a nebula in the constellation, Nishi absolutely wouldn't be able to see the whole thing unless she backed up and looked up at the sky I don't think

But maybe I misread? :0

YEAH THEY WERE! /NM GKSKGKSKF

She doesn't bring her telescope up just to gaze with her eyeballs, she's there to see cool shit and see how it changes over time

She stepped back without a word and let the younger peer through her telescope.

In the moments that followed Akvilė kept her eyes on things, mostly speaking. The ways in which the other girl's hands touched her telescope, the apparent weight her eye socket was uncertainly pressing against the viewport, the crystals of ice peeking through her gloves. That detail alone suggested a lot, and she took note of it. Cold weather made her tendons tight in a very unpleasant way.

She looked out over the horizon once she was done staring at the other girl's icy gloves, fixing her sight on each and every radio tower on the horizon. So many opportunities, so many radio waves, so little time. The shifting of coat-fabric knocked her out of her analog daydreams and back into digital reality.

**[Nice, is it not?]** Her voice barely raised above the cascading winds, and her visible nerves only spooled themselves tighter as her phone defied her expectations. She wasn't panicked, but instead her expression turned into one of annoyance. She spoke the words into her phone again, this time louder, and made sure it had mimicked her before spitting out that thought caught between her two front teeth. **[Nebulae are so dim here, yet so bright. It enraptures a person, humbles them, teaches them beauty. I like them, I guess.]**
Shannon
*Nakanishi stood by as the other woman spoke. Nakanishi's expectations were also defied when no robotic message followed it. Nakanishi let out a quiet "Eeehh..." As she tried to think about what to do now. In the awkwardness quickly mounting over their silence, her train of thought was derailed when she noticed the woman's face morph into an expression of annoyance. Immediately, Nakanishi feared that her quiet noise had annoyed the woman in some way and wanted to apologize, but at the same time she wanted to keep her mouth shut to prevent any further annoyance. In a moment of slight panic, she apologized and kept her mouth shut at the same time, saying something like "Go-enna-ai!".*

*After quickly realizing what she just did, Nakanishi's cheeks flushed a shade of red with embarrassment and she went silent for the moments that continued until the woman spoke again, with the robotic translation that followed suit. Nakanishi nodded in agreement when asked if the nebula was nice. Again, it was about a cat's eye. She adored cats, especially the stray orange cat Muto-San who she still visits often. He is Nakanishi's biggest reminder of home, and she appreciates that.*

 *She listened to the second message after the first, and after a moment of thought, felt like she agreed. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and almost dropped it on accident. She fumbled the Galaxy A20 a few times, leaning and gasping to catch it, but once it was firmly in her grasp, she sighed and stood up straight again, feeling embarrassment at what just happened. She spoke into her phone in Japanese, barely raising her voice above an audible volume. Then, she spoke into her phone again, raising her voice a bit after the app failed to pick up on what she said. Then, she flipped her phone around to show the woman the translation, and allowed her phone to speak in its robotoic monotone voice.*

[The Cat's Eye Nebula is my favorite. It is about a cat's eye. I love cats.]
James
Akvilė couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for the other girl. She knew how it felt to be the skittish youngster in an unfamiliar land, compacted into her shadow from fear and unable to properly communicate it, so as the other gal fell silent in the moments that followed her outburst her demeanour shifted a little, just enough to dissipate a little bit of the stress built in her shoulders and throat and soul.

**[That's cool. Cats are nice.]** A little hesitant, sure, but as she spoke in a half-forced hush the translator she'd tied to her telescope spat her words back, soulless and fit for her guest's ears only. **[I saw three regularly where I lived before. Two tabbies and a maned cat. They were friendly.]** She continued, her words stumbling over each other and needing several passes before her point got across in distinctly machined Japanese. **[Miss them very much.]**

Kneeling down, she put her eye back into the telescope, and clicked her tongue softly as she fixed her vision on the nebula of the hour. The other gal would speak if she had something to say, she figured. Hoped, really. She didn't have much else to input otherwise; too nervous.
Terry
Hey
I'm gonna take a break for a bit, stuff went down that i don't want to get into
James
[Sorry to hear that! Hopefully whatever's goin' on on your end resolves well enough. :]
Terry
I am
Not too confident it'll go down well

Whoops
Uh
I forgor 💀
James
[All good. I'm focusing my writing energies elsewhere anyhoo.]