[Illium, Magea Cliffs] Bird songs (closed)

Of course she had never worn an envirosuit. But it was an enticing thought.
“Is it even possible for others than quarian to wear a suit? I mean, a real one, not just one of those costume things they sell at the fetish stores? I had no idea how heavy it really is actually, you look so…. light.” Especially today, on other occasions or their first encounter Ana had made the impression of crumbling under a weight.

“Actually, speaking of which, that may sound super silly, but, you know, sometimes questions have to be asked or they haunt you… how do you deal with sweat inside the suit? I mean, do quarians even sweat? We do, humans do, although different, so…?”

For a quarian this must be something the dealt with without thinking. For Taleeze is was a wonder of technical handcraft.

“One thing I can’t understand is - your people was so well known for its arts – wasn’t cooking among them? I mean, why is it, that you never went on to invent really satisfying food substitute pasts with tastes? When I look around what kind of trash is sold these days, something like that must be really easy to achieve or am I missing something?” She put one hand under her head, scratching her rearmost ke’ku. “I couldn’t live without decent food or a variety in taste, I’d go crazy … or get grumpy pretty fast.”

While thinking about culture and quarians, Taleeze was remembering a small conversation she had on CDN, with another quarian. A grumpy one actually – may be the feed indeed.
“Did you ever dance? I have heard that the quarians have a great tradition and that it’s coming back now, that there’s more time again for such things. There was an interesting article on CDN about a quarian trying herself at asari dances – I might want to do that the other way around some day.” Taleeze was musing about a few classical forms of dancing she knew and some of them shared a similarity. “I just realized that you won’t need eyesight for a considerable amount of dances? In most dances for two people you will heave a distinct leader who takes care of that and the other partner can just enjoy the movement and music. Strange, how you never notice some facts until….” Would Ana be a good dancer? She definitely had body awareness and flexibility.

Another fact Taleeze hadn’t really thought about was that the various medications for Ana may have been special to her quarian nature and that interactions would occur. Nonetheless she was happy that her observation on Ana being deliberately more outgoing wasn’t completely false.

“It’s good to see you like this. Talk to me about getting the ass up and out finally! Nothing compared to you of course, but I know about ‘staying at home is easier’ maybe. I am glad you don’t and I know Daia is as well.“ Slaying caved in isn’t good for your mental state, really. “If we lose our curiosity , we lose our feeling for life itself, you might have heard that saying already, but it is true, be it a Matriarch or a quarian.”
Wasn’t the pain ever going to get better? She looked over at the opaque faceplate, hiding a woman. “ “Are you going to have further treatments or is there anything…? I mean, there is a lot of stuff happening in the medical sector these days.”

Having just been asked five questions in under a minute, Ana'Therion was a little overwhelmed.

"Ehhhh..."

She took a second to prioritize, and pushed back the growing sense of weariness (and the accompanying temptation to just drift off and fall asleep, listening to the birds. Trying to get home if she nodded off now would be...interesting).

"All right, in order. Uh...Taleeze, of course people other than quarians wear envirosuits. Not specifically quarian envirosuits, of course, because they wouldn't fit another species - you have different joint structure, a different number of fingers, and so on - but how else do you think they explore planets with dangerous weather conditions? Like if the atmospheric pressure is too high, or if it's incredibly cold, or if the air is made of corrosive gases or whatever. It's the same kind of environmental protection gear that we wear, it's just that they can take it off once they're done exploring."

Excellent. Question two.

"We do sweat, yes - despite the whole dextro-protein thing, our skin is structured much more similarly to humans or asari than turian plates. The envirosuit takes care of that, though. See, the first layer, the one closest to the skin, is porous enough to absorb moisture, so after perspiration has cooled the skin, it passes through the layer, almost like natural evaporation. What happens afterwards depends on the suit model. I know there's some that process out all the impurities and basically act as a moisture reclamation system, but the kind I wear uses it to lube the suit's joints and provide coolant for the power source. More efficient, plus less of a health risk."

Question three.

"I don't really know, I wasn't there three hundred years ago and no one really bothered to preserve anything culturally important - the geth had most of it until very recently." Ana had often wondered how exactly a species managed to 'lose their culture' in three centuries, and had eventually chalked it up to the same incompetent deity that had designed their nonsensical immune systems. Maybe there had just been a whole lot of inbreeding. "I mean, there is paste that tastes good - the stuff from animal proteins is usually pretty decent, and I know there's a gourmet line for people with more credits than sense - but most of it is needlessly expensive. Emphasis on 'needlessly'. You don't need nutrient paste to be delicious; you pop the tube, suck it down for twenty seconds, bam, done. There just isn't the same emphasis on food and meals and whatever as there is in other cultures. Maybe in another hundred years we'll be back on the culinary scene, but right now it's not really worth focusing on." She leaned back on her palms, stretching a little. "Not that we can't. I mean, despite not being able to taste any of it, I got pretty decent at throwing stuff together for Daia now and then. Can't now, of course, but it's not like it's a forbidden skill to us, as if life was some kind of RPG with racial skill options."

Question four. Her cheeks were starting to ache, and Ana resolved to shut up for a while after this was done. With a murmured voice command, she released a flush of opioids into her system, and relaxed with an audible sigh.

"I used to be pretty good at it, yeah. One of my old friends from the boards was a fucking amazing dancer--" Briefly, Ana'Therion wondered how Diocese was these days. Probably dead. Most of the people she'd known back then were. "--and when he did competitions on Omega I usually filled in as his partner. We could do just about anything; talongier, Thessian flash, fandango, whatever. Good times." Not necessarily 'better times', though. There was the whole Omega thing. "To elaborate, though, I think those days are mostly over. I mean, don't get me wrong, I doubt it'd be impossible. I could probably still tango if I had somebody to lead me, for example, but there's too many unknown factors and I can't imagine I wouldn't end up tripping. Plus, given how easily I get worn out, I doubt I'd make it more than a few rounds. Which is okay by me. Not much worth dancing about anymore."

What had question five been? Fuck, she had to get better at this. Sometimes Ana was amazed she could navigate the penthouse, let alone Apricity or the office, with a memory this easily distracted.

"Ehh..." Ah, right, pain. No wonder she'd forgotten about it, given the rush of relief just now. "Oh, treatments. Someday, yeah, I'm gonna get a dermal regen scan. That'll probably be, uh..." Doing some brief math, Ana'Therion felt her heart sink a little. Even with her dipping into the savings as heavily as she'd been, it'd be a while yet. "Probably at least a couple years, but yeah. Honestly, once that's done, I'll be happy, I think. No more scars, which means no more pain, which means no more drugs, no more exhaustion. No more waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to drop off again for hours. I don't think I'll ever see again, but..." She smiled thinly. "I'll settle for having my face back. Well, most of it."

With all of that said, she flopped back down on the blanket, 'staring' at the canopy of branches overhead, and breathed out a sigh. Whew.

Listening to Ana’s reply made Taleeze almost feel the bodily pain. She had gotten carried away and just babbled along her trail of thought, not realizing that she should have made smaller steps. Letting her thoughts trail was easy in this environment and while Ana spoke, she had turned to her side, at first, sipping at her water, then just watching the quarian talk. The movement of her hands, as she underlined her points of the breathing rhythm of the breast, the flickering of the speaker control light at her helmet. She noticed the pauses and one in particular. I seemed as if Ana was released from a cramping.

Funny enough, the quarian hadn’t understood her first question correctly. Taleeze basically knew what a space suit was although asari rarely wore them but relied on biotic bubbles which were, funny enough, often easier to handle than a heavy suit. She specifically meant a quarian suit, a quarian helmet. What must it be like, to live all your life inside a suit? Being a ‘bucket’? That probably was the crassest of differences to an asari who were the species with probably the most easy relation to nudity, if you wanted to disallow hanar, who never wore clothing.

What must it be like to be touched through a suit? She’d never know.

Unless she’d meld with a quarian and share her deepest emotions of course but those chances where minimal to say the least.

“Mhm…” was all the reply Taleeze gave. She felt like thinking and enjoying this moment. They had talked and talked, Taleeze had never seen the quarian talk so much.

So she was considering further surgery. Facial restoration even but why so lo… oh. Money of course. Taleeze had never thought about that aspect, in fact she never thought much about money at all. Fortune in the field and Freh’ya’s considerable income – which was now going elsewhere of course – had led to a carefree lifestyle. She didn’t have to buy or reconstruct her own stuff after the war, as Daia and Ana had to, and that made her feel stupid in an instant. She’d have to talk about that with Daia at another time.

Taleeze let out a deep sigh. A couple of minutes had already passed since Ana had finished. What had stuck from the explanations was a general feeling of indifference. Everything was weighed down by the health issues, no real interests or passion about anything. The theater – maybe, if one would be nit-picking. Not fun to be Ana.

“If you ever consider going even just one round of dancing and Daia should not be available – I am your woman anytime, Ana.”

A totally relaxed sleepiness crawled over Taleeze herself. If she’d just doze of now, it would be wonderful. She wondered at what sky Freh’ya was looking now. Was it day or night?

A couple more minutes passed.

“Do you hear that bird?” there was one with a particular lilt, different from the others. An outsider in the choir. And still, he always got a wailing answer, echoing around the cliffs.
“His call is very different but he always gets an answer when he calls.”

"We'll see. Can you tango?"

The silence was a blessed reprieve for Ana'Therion, who took a minute to just relax and listen to the birds as her painkillers kicked in. Although she didn't get anything close to a high from the drugs, the psychological benefits of the pain fading away were as good as any chemically-induced euphoria. Give it another year and a half and she'd probably be an addict, incapable of functioning outside of a perpetual drugged state (which would take more, given how much of a resistance she would've built up to the painkillers by then).

...On second thought, maybe she should find a way to accelerate her timetable on the dermal regeneration. Augh.

"I hear him, all right," she answered, singling out the strange-sounding bird. It was much easier than it would've been two years ago - without sight, Ana had learned to pay more attention to her hearing, to direct her focus to different sounds and scrutinize them much more carefully. "With a call that unique, how can you not get an answer? Good on him. You have to stand out a little if you want to get noticed. Sometimes that comes with its downsides, but hell, you ask me, the good times are worth it. I was kind of a standout myself for a few years, and it had drawbacks here and there, but I didn't regret the upsides for an instant. That's a good bird."

There was a measure of cheer in the sentiment, for sure. It wouldn't be unfair to say that Ana was more than a little bitter about the past, and there were aspects of her state of being that absolutely drove her up the wall, but to say she was unhappy would be going too far. There was still much to reminisce on that warmed her heart to claim otherwise.

"Yeah, a good bird," the quarian said idly, ankles twitching back and forth to some unheard rhythm. "We'd all do well to learn from him, Taleeze." There was a pause, then: "You've got a nice name, you know that? I've thought so ever since Daia said it to me. It lands on the ear nicely. Taleeeeeeeze."

Another benefit of blindness: it hadn't just helped her focus her hearing, it'd given her more time to appreciate the lyrical nature of some words. Ana took what victories she could get.

Can you tango? Taleeze was chuckling a bit. What an unexpected reply, as she really hadn’t expected any.
“I dance for a living. Yes, I do. Azure Allure put us through our paces when they started addressing humans. Social skills and of course society skills like their dances.” Taleeze made a mental note to polish her tango, just in case, since she hadn’t danced it for a considerable time. Her mind was tracking steps for a second or two. Hadn’t there been a post on CDN recently? She had to look it up. Not much hope that Ana would ever call on her though as there was either Daia anyway or Ana just being polite.

“Elcor loved to watch us dance tango especially, for some strange reason I never understood. Maybe it had to do with certain forms of bodily expression they just liked.”

Taleeze noted that the calm moments and the listening to the bird obviously had a positive effect on Ana’s mood. Maybe doing nothing, but together, was another good option for future times. Asari usually weren’t hasty in their everyday lives, they could afford to take their time when on their own but cooperating with short lived species had upped the general pace of life. Illium had been particularly hectic in contrast to Nevos.

“Yeah, we should.” Taleeze mused when Ana was talking about the bird analogy. It had sounded a bit like ‘those who burn twice as bright burn half as long’. Taleeze didn’t think, Ana had her times behind her. Maybe some, but there was some still to come. If she could sense anything with her 220 years, then that. Ana seemed to be on a way out of the dark, slowly, very slowly.

When Ana was practically singing her name, Taleeze felt a warmth well up inside her.
“I like how you say my name. I noticed that, kind of the first day, on our little quirky take off. You were riding the e just like now, but now it just sounds nicer. I always found the name a bit odd but it is really my name, it is unique. The way you say it, makes it sound softer as Daia makes it sound.” Taleeze chuckled, when she remembered that. “Daia makes it sometimes sound like ‘sneeze’ in her accent, you actually tend to pronounce it more like in ‘release’. I like it when you use my full name. For most, I only go by Tal, but somehow, when you say it… it’s good.”

She thought about her own trouble with Daia’s name. It had taken her getting used to actually pronounce it Day-ah, as she had thought from only reading, the Da would be like in ‘dark’. Daylight suited her more anyway.

Taleeze took another deliberate pause.
“You quarians have so much more telling names than we do, with all the ship names and birthplaces in them. Ana’Therion...” Now, that wasn’t as easy, especially if you ever read anything about mythology, human at that. But given the name was quarian, it was just the oddest of coincidences but Taleeze guessed, the quarian was aware of that.

“You have very special name too, with a mysterious ring to it.”
In fact, Taleeze thought Ana’Therion would have been a much better name for her style back then as the Lexi’Bel pseudonym ever was. She had first encountered her old ‘Domination’ signature on the old boards and had been mighty impressed by the name, even more so when she had discovered it was a real one.

“Just Ana is good. It has a friendly sound to it. If that makes any sense at all.”

One of the benefits of coming from a species that had a lot of music was that linguistics tended to be sort of a lyrical pursuit. Even in non-Khelish languages, it was easier to feel the melody, so to speak, in a lot of the words.

"To be fair," said Ana'Therion, folding her legs under her reclining form in order to stretch her thighs. A quick arch put just a little bit of strain on her muscles, and then she relaxed again. "To be fair, Daia got it right the first time she said it to me, which is the only reason I knew to snip the consonant at the end. Otherwise, I probably would've rhymed it with 'sneeze' too, and that would've sounded silly. Taleeeeezzzzze. Ancestors, it sounds like steam escaping."

Arch, relax. Arch, relax. Okay, there we go, that felt better. Ana de-contorted and stretched back out.

"I guess that was good for both of us, pronunciation-wise." She turned her head to 'look' in Taleeze's direction, resting the side of her helmet against her blanket. "Most people don't really pick up on the glottal thing just from text, so they say 'ANN-uh' instead of 'AH-nuh', no concept of an open back unrounded vowel. Linguistic philistines." This was perhaps a bit unfair, but 'a bit unfair' was everything about Ana'Therion in a nutshell. "You like the name, huh? Thanks. It's not that old; my clan's only been around for a couple hundred years, because we were sort of an offshoot. Name changes and all that. It's Khelish for 'bouquet', like flowers. Which I guess is all right. Not very fitting in my case, but you can't choose your name."

She had been told that it was more ominous in other languages, but well, there was no accounting for that. Her days of being ominous were long over, at any rate, so it wasn't like there was a reason to contemplate that.

"Most of us were...well, this was shortly post-Rannoch, so we'd lost a lot of the population, and my, uh...patriarchal ancestor, I guess, gathered up some of the people who remained, without much in the way of families of their own, and just kind of officially consolidated them into a new clan. And there we were. Engineers and roboticists, mostly - I was the first in a couple generations not to go into some kind of field related to cybernetics or AI or that kind of thing."

An eyebrow perked upwards, even if the asari couldn't see it.

"What's your family like, Taleeze?"

It was funny to talk about the pronunciation stuff. Taleeze had to laugh a bit as Ana was toying around with her name.
“But I more often than not like Daia’s cute accent. She does cultivate it a bit and it suits her, I think.”

Obviously she had been lucky to not mess up Ana’s name. She had heard it from Daia of course but also the single n made the correct pronunciation natural in her dialect.
“Well, there’s only one n so I wouldn’t think any different of it, by just reading. Correct me, but the vas Nedas doesn’t mean anything really, right? Since you have no ship you’re attached to….” Taleeze wasn’t sure but thought she remembered reading something somewhere.

“My family, huh? Asari family business must seem strange to you probably. My daddy was a turian, a pilot trainer on Lusia, my mum is an archivist. I have a half sister at about Daia’s age but she was already out and about when I was little.” Her mind trailed back to the days when she was a young asari, before becoming a maiden, the years with her daddy. She snuggled on her side, pulling her knees up a bit, really comfortable. It was strange how used to looking at yourself you get, in that mirror that was Ana’s visor.
“Both mum and sis are well. Mum had been on a ship and they stayed in space the entire war and sis had been on some remote colony, doing…whatever she does exactly, something xeno… something. We see each other like every hundred years. Which is okay with extranet and all and she always has lots of fun stories then. Mum is on Lusia now, helping with the rebuild of the archives. She didn’t like me going as a volunteer… which mother would? But I saw how she looked when we met again… so reliefed! That was only after the relays reopened,. There’s a good thing, we don’t need to talk much and the quantum entanglement kept us aware of each other all the time. We have relatives on Palaven and not everyone made it there unfortunately….” In fact, during the war and fighting itself, the connection with her mother had dominated Taleeze and only after that was over, the more delicate one with Freh’ya had surfaced.

“I really was a daddy girl, I am happy to have so much memories of him. He could be at my coming-of-age ceremony. I was 75 when he passed on.” Daddy was a very comforting memory, no regrets. The old turian, with those proud eyes and that beautiful woman by his side.
“I wanted to be a pilot myself as a kid! Mum was totally against it and I guess she wasn’t even happy that I decided to go for engineering instead of arts. But the love for books and literature I owe to her, definitely. Life had been pretty nice and beautiful back then.” Before the Reapers, before everything that meant anything had been destroyed. Almost everything.
“I want it to be like that again for those coming after us, Ana.”

Ana had decided to go back to her people when they called, despite that she was already detached from the fleet, at least as far as Taleeze knew the story. Wasn’t this also doing her part to make it better again for coming quarian generations? So quarian kids could play again in the sand at the beaches of Rannoch? She had paid a high price for that.

“What’s with your family?” She had no idea if this was a touchy subject or not but it had become very clear, that there seemed to be no real bad topics anymore. Taleeze for one, had gained great trust in Ana.

"It doesn't really mean anything, no. Just that I'm not ship crew."

Today seemed like one of those days where being able to feel the warm sun through the trees would've been nice and relaxing. Unfortunately, that wasn't really an option - an envirosuit was meant to protect you from weather, after all, and so the inner temperature was perpetually temperate. If Ana could feel the sunlight, it would be cause to start worrying about breached seals.

"Back when we were all ship-bound, it carried some pretty dire implications, but eh. I didn't mind, after I left. Some quarians, when they settled on planets, would use 'vas planet name', but that's stupid. You can't be crew of a planet." Ironically, if you wanted to be very, very technical, the Health Directorate stint might've let her qualify as 'crew of a planet', or at the very least 'crew of a city', but Ana had neither the interest in being technical nor the patience to indulge anyone who did. "Either way, I was well past the point of caring what the Fleet thought, and I definitely wasn't going with 'vas Omega' or 'vas Illium' or anything along those lines."

It was nice, at least, to hear that Taleeze's family situation had been (and still was) stable and pleasant. It sounded like she'd had an excellent upbringing with people who loved her, which was what really mattered. Despite Ana's extensive education, she'd never really placed more value on opportunities and training than on love and affection, as far as raising a child went. She had concluded a while back that her own childhood and adolescence had probably affected that view heavily.

"Well, a lot of the time when we're invested heavily in something, we want those who come after us to follow the paths we laid out," she mused. "Of course, they don't always do that, people have their own desires and aspirations - so then you get the choice of whether to encourage them in that or get mad. And a lot of the time, if you crack down and they do go along with it, it's only out of a sense of obligation, and then they end up resenting you and being generally bitter." Ana paused a second as a strange, exotic-sounding bird trilled overhead. "So, even if your mother wasn't too thrilled at first, I'm sure she's proud of you. It means a lot to most parents when their children go as far as you have, especially when a lot of it's been in the service of the Republics."

She frowned a little as the asari asked about her family. Uhhhh. How to concisely sum this up without getting into overwrought detail...

"My family's...complicated," Ana finally said, "and it's a subject I usually try to avoid whenever possible. That said, you didn't know that, and it was bound to come out eventually, so, hrm. Long story short, my father was a sociopath - like, an honest-to-god sociopath, the kind that's wired without empathy, and my mother, rest her spirit, was well-meaning but a total pushover. Things were not good back on the Fleet."

Going by strictly clinical definitions and drawing a few undue conclusions, Ana knew it wasn't unreasonable to assume her early homelife and childhood had played a large part in shaping her into the (unnatural, decidedly messed up) person she was today. It felt like she was abandoning personal agency if she said that, though, and it also contributed to the 'abused people grow up to be fucked up' stereotype. (And that, in turn, opened up a whole new can of worms, especially since most people assumed 'abused' was a tactful euphemism for 'molested', which she had definitely not been.) As such, this wasn't a level of detail she went into with anyone, ever.

"It's good that you have people to fall back on, though. Asari tend to have large, diverse families, so I know that's not exactly uncommon for you guys, but that's no reason not to be grateful, yeah?"

“I’m sorry that I brought it up.”
It was pretty clear that Ana’s past was a problematic field and she was obviously looking at her upbringing as a reason for some of the problems she had faced as a personality. The way she was despising her father was pretty extreme after all. Taleeze mused, that maybe in a way this view had indeed led directly to Ana diving into psychological studies, trying to grab some of her own on the way. Seems like she did, to a degree, but you just never get rid of your own past, do you?

The deliberate drop of any vas name was a given. Ana had made it sound as if she distinctively wanted to separate herself from a community, especially a quarian one. She had never seen Ana socialize with other quarians, neither on or off board that she knew of, so she added that to the equation. Ana was just Ana the individual, and that was going to be how Taleeze would look at her and it suited her world view anyway.

“But thank you for telling as much as you did. I take it, that’s not something you’re telling just anyone. So consider any of that safe, but I think you do that anyway.”

The shadow had crept along as the time passed, now the flickering light through the foliage was playing in her eyes, while her legs still got warmed by the sun.

“Don’t overestimate the amount of quality relationships we have. It sure adds up over the decades but it also has much more lose ends than you think. You just can’t constantly add close friends, it would just blow the mind and the emotional capacity to keep track. If you… well I basically, as this is surely a personal matter as well, so if I invest in a friendship I indeed do judge if this is something worth adding and something that will last. If there is a friend I indeed want to be able to depend and vice versa, anytime.”
She took a moment to think.

“Family is still family, you have no choice … Mum will go to Palaven as soon as her time allows. A lot of family has been lost there. I am not as close to them anymore as she still is though. But I might go some time as well. See, that is our fate here, we stay, others pass, we asari always stay behind. We may have found specific ways to deal with loss, but we are always those that lose.” Fuck, do not bring that topic up now. She sighed.
“We just have other issues, That’s what I want to say here, and they may be different but still as hard to tackle as any other.”

“You in a way are already ahead of me. You have the deepest thing anyone can ask for, You have found a price that is the essence of being itself.” Hold onto that, Daia is a gem. “I am not quite there yet, strange as that may sound, but the journey… the maiden journey is one big promise in a way. I am happy for what I find along my way and I cherish every moment as best as I can.” She tenderly nudged Ana’s arm, truly affectionate.
“Maybe one day I wake up and think – hey, I am a matron now. Maybe I‘ll find…” Freh’ya, that asari that would not leave her mind. Maybe someone with blond hair and blue eyes…. maybe.
Taleeze felt love inside, it was a beautiful day, and it did not matter at all that it was still a journey ongoing. The feeling was all that mattered. Everything would be alright.

“Everything will be alright, Ana.”

"Mm."

There was not much to say to all that. Ana had already been through the lifespan discussion a few times, had no family worth talking to, barely any friends, and not much in the way of a future. It was easy to look past that and say everything would be all right, she thought, when you were in the position Taleeze was.

Then again, perhaps that was a bit uncharitable towards the asari.

"That's what I tell myself, at least," she agreed, pushing herself upright.

Idly, the quarian wondered what Daia was up to. They didn't see each other often at this point (well, technically, Ana didn't see Daia at all, but you could only mince words so many times before it got punch-in-the-mouth-worthy), since one of them slept half the day and the other had CEO duties and adult films and escort agencies and pildavi games and whatever else to be in. They made the most of their shared time, of course, but it didn't stop Ana'Therion's mind from wandering over to her bondmate now and then - it was a natural symptom of being in love, after all.

Ah. Right, Clients. Probably getting some, uh, afternoon delight.

"Thanks again for taking me out, Taleeze," she said. "I'm aware that I'm...a bit difficult to get close to, but it's nice of you to feel me out anyway, so to speak. Good to have people who value trust and all that."

“I think you make it hard for people to step over that first hurdle. Which not necessarily is bad because whoever does so brings some dedication into the ring already and you are a person who deserves that.” She shrugged “at least that is my opinion. It is great discussing things with you and I wouldn’t want to waste your breath over simple chit-chat, you are one for deeper conversations and you gave a couple of things to think about. It is good to charge some small entry fee for that – if I may say so.” She chuckled and sat up, into a cross-legged position.

“I am glad you joined up, Ana.” She listened to a few birds for a moment, then took a sip from her bottle. Almost empty. She sighed.

“It has been a real beautiful trip. One of the rare afternoons I get off work lately and an intellectual exchange is charging the energy cells.”
The sun was going down behind the trees and the shadows had almost reached the vertical cliffs.

“Want to go back? I need to move a bit or I’ll just fall sleep here.” Not that she would mind.

They rose and Taleeze packed the blanket and the empty bottles into the bag. Ana’s arm on her own now had become a natural feeling and together they slowly returned they way they had come.

An asari and a human male passed them, jogging, other than those two, they had been on their own the whole day.

“Actually, how did you get hold of that car of yours? Those two you guys have are really rare. And… would you mind if I drive the Jag manually on the way home? If you do mind, that’s perfectly okay as well.” The thing was just too tempting…

She was definitely not all that approachable. That point, at least, Ana'Therion would gladly concede.

"Yeah, fair enough. When you have the amount of energy I do, you learn to budget it accordingly. Let's head on back, then, before it gets dark. Actually...hrm. It might already be dark, the internal chronometer's putting us at early evening. I don't know."

Back at the Jag, Ana stowed their stuff in the backseat. "I don't mind if you drive," she answered, waist-deep in the back as she strapped everything in. "I mean, it'll be fun for you, and if you're bad at driving or something it's not like I'll be able to tell, heh. So hop in and go for it."

She kicked back, stretching her legs and resting her feet on the dashboard, as Taleeze started the 'car up. Even tired, disabled, and generally out of the game, so to speak, that didn't stop her from showing off the assets once in a while. Old habits died hard.

"This isn't actually my 'car." Presumably that was obvious, being as she couldn't really drive at the moment, but Taleeze had asked, so she may as well get the obvious out of the way before delving into the nitty-gritty. "Daia converted it from a Terran model a few years back, and then, after I moved in, she was in the midst of getting a new one. So us being working professionals, and having different hours for that matter, we just delegated a 'car to each of us and moved on with it from there."

As she pondered Taleeze's obvious fondness for the skycar, it occurred to Ana that she'd never really asked the asari about the specifics of her mechanical interests.

"So I was thinking, since you're clearly interested in the Jag...what kind of engineering or mechanical stuff do you actually do? I just realized I've never asked. Is it more of an auto mechanic type thing? I mean, normally when I hear 'engineer' I think of...I don't know, drive cores. Maybe that's the quarian effect."

“If I was a shitty driver I would not ask.” Taleeze shook her head, sometimes Ana was really a bit too indifferent. “Also, you sure would notice when I would start bumping things. But since I consider myself an excellent driver, rest assured.” She chuckled over the ‘excellent’.

“I even think I could as well drive this piece of machinery in a way that even you notice that it’s not the autopilot on ‘smooth’. Such drives need to be put through their paces or they start to rust.” Taleeze was thinking of using the scenic coastal route. Would depend on the amount of traffic.

She tossed the bag behind the seats and switched the engine on. She noticed the position Ana was taking, a shapely leg propped against the dash. Not being able to see didn’t mean she was completely immune to striking poses obviously. Good to see some of that left in her. The sun was low already and although the car had a state of the art glare protection system, Taleeze decided to flip the off-switch and fished her shades from a zipper on the side of her bag. Putting them on, she observed her mirror image in Ana’s visor… if Daia ever corrected her makeup that way? She had to giggle over that image and switched the car into gear. With a roar the Jag lifted and Taleeze was accelerating exuberantly onto the skylink that would bring her to the coastal skyway.
Steering with one hand she grinned and thought about the cliché picture the two now presented. Then Ana asked about her engineering background.

“What I do currently, are a lot of things for the Apricity. I know my way around equipment like techarmour, drones, cloaks… and weapons. The latter knowledge I do not need at the club of course. That all was part of what I did with the Corps of Engineers. Maintaining stuff. You learn a lot and you get your hands on everything.” And you get to keep a few things in the end. “So I help with the stage setup in general or prepare all the equipment for that pildavi show. But more interesting may be what I did before the war. I was fresh from university and took on a position in the design and test department of a skycar company, Verio.” Taleeze was taking the upward turn onto to Skyway with more speed than necessary, the lateral g’s felt great.

“I wanted to get into the military section, working on fighters, but a military term of service was mandatory for that and I didn’t want to join up back then so I went with the next best flying thing. But that got boring and the pay wasn’t keeping up with the extra hours so I shifted my focus into the entertainment industry. I actually was janitor and dancer at the same time in a couple of clubs, this is how I learned my way around stage equipment.” She remembered the wild years when she was even illegally modding weapons for some big shots on Nevos. A stupidity she wouldn’t do anymore these days. “So yeah, I can do this and that, diversity comes in handy. The military was desperately looking for technicians, and I thought that would be an easy way to contribute.” But goddess, had she been wrong. “But there was no easy way.” She sighed.

“Anyway, so now you know why I have a bit of an interest in vehicles. I was even thinking about getting myself something, maybe a motorbike, something to restore and work on myself… sometime maybe.”

The traffic was light and Taleeze was still a bit enthusiastic with the speed, but the great sound from the engine, although somewhat fake, was rewarding.
The trip home was shorter in time, even if the way had been a bit longer. When the Jag was leaving the main route to decent to the penthouse, Taleeze couldn’t help but add a few last swinging S’s before setting the machine down on it’s usual spot. She switched all the automatic features on again and then turned the engine off.
“There we are.”

She exited the car and come around to the other side, were Ana had just climbed out.
“Ana, that was a wonderful day, thanks for coming along. You’re a great company to have, no matter what you say.” Taleeze’s mind wandered back to the moment when she had almost lost it and Ana had put her hand on her shoulder “I’ll always remember the ninety meter nutripaste.” After a pause she added “I want you to meet Freh one day.”

Not even thinking about it, she instinctively hugged the quarian, brief but decided.

Ana had spent most of the day relaxing, and saw no reason not to continue doing so as Taleeze listed the areas of her expertise...which, as it turned out, were quite extensive. Maybe they should've been born as each other.

Well, then again, maybe not; she wouldn't wish the 'quarian experience' on anybody.

"That's impressive," she mused as they took the scenic route home. "Skillset like that, you're pretty much guaranteed to never go hungry, especially if you're asari." The disadvantage of not being an asari, or another 'desirable' Illium species, had been made very apparent to her.

The maddening thing about her condition was how difficult it often was to control the fatigue. She hadn't exerted herself much today, hadn't really done anything that required a lot of physical effort - hell, they'd just spent the last hour relaxing. And yet here she was, still kind of worn out. Maddening.

As such, Ana resolved to go in and at least take a nap. Maybe she'd be up in time to catch Daia when she got home, assuming she set her alarm properly and didn't sleep through it (which had, embarrassingly, happened a couple times now. Fortunate that she was married to the CEO, for those days when she was late to work).

"Well, thanks for inviting me, Taleeze. I mean, this trip was all you, for the most part. You came up with it, planned it, drove us, the whole nine yards. So thank you."

Thanks to the suit, she saw the hug coming. It was not wholly unexpected, given that Taleeze was an asari - so although Ana stiffened a little from unease, she wasn't caught off guard. After all, the gesture was sincere, and given with good intentions. So it was that the quarian raised up onto her tiptoes and returned Taleeze's hug with surprising warmth. Say what one would about her social habits, she knew who her friends were.

"Well," she said when they pulled back, "when you find her and bring her home, I'll have the chance then, won't I?" No ifs, just the eventual certainty.

Turning, Ana opened the door to the apartment and strode inside.

"See you round, Taleeze. Heh. 'See'."

Swoosh.