[Log]

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Crew Commons, Grace O'Malley [Haven]
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Saienne is sitting at the dining table, her legs crossed up underneath her as she perches on one of the benches. One elbow leans on the table, giving her whole frame a skewed look. She has her PDA beside her - but its screen is dark - and also a small leatherbound book full of what appear to be names and figures. Also out on the table is a little package, wrapped tightly in some kind of dirty yellow oilskin and tied up neatly with string. She pulls the book a little closer towards her and taps a fine-nibbed pen on the paper, not yet adding any text.


Josephine wanders from the starboard quarters looking as if she might have actually gotten a few hours of rest. Rubbing the back of her neck she looks around the nearly empty commons. "Hi Sai," she says quietly, so as not to seriously interrupt the woman's work.

Saienne swivels on the bench and lifts her pen from the paper in a gesture of greeting to the other woman. "Afternoon Josephine," she says good-naturedly as she lays the pen flat on the wooden table next to the ledger. "Everythin' fine an' dandy?"

"Oh, as fine and dandy as it can be, considering the circumstances," Josephine replies, "Which, all things considered, could be quite a bit worse, eh? You want something to drink?" she asks as she goes rummaging for a cup of some sort for herself. "And don't let me interrupt your work either."

"Surely could be," Saienne says, gravely. "In so many ways." She nods a yes as Josephine offers a drink. "Although I reckon there's plenty of time yet for things to go south, ain't it so?" She looks back at the PDA, book and package and shakes her head. "I ain't workin', really. Just a little panic set in when I realised how much I rely on this gorram thing." She prods the silvery PDA with her pen. "Not havin' it around these past few days has been a real education." She looks up, grinning crookedly. "My aunt Loretta used to hate these things. Said folk should rely on their memories more, an' not some buzzin' lump of metal an' circuitry." A beat. "She was a theatrical type, mind, so I expect memorisin' stuff came easy. I can't hardly remember the day of the week, sometimes."

Apparently, Josephine is simply serving plain good old fashioned water today. She fills two cups from a bottle of spring water and brings one over for the other woman. "I've only ever used pencil and paper myself, really. Until I randomly and bizarrely decided I would go from temple life to...oh, I don't know, say, being part of a space ship crew ...which got me thinking I'd better figure out how to push some of these buttons and get stuff to work. You should've seen the first waves I sent. I think they were entirely blank."

Saienne takes the cup with a grateful bob of her head and drinks deeply. "Thank you, Josephine," she says as she puts the cup down on the table. "My handwritin' ain't worth chicken shit," she says, somewhat mournfully, as she scrutinises the rows and columns on the book's open pages. "But I expect Aunt Lottie was speakin' some kernel of truth 'neath all the technophobia." She grins up at Josephine again. "Well, hell, I'm sure you got good reasons for switchin'. Ain't we all?" And she chuckles, then, at the thought of blank waves winging through the airwaves. "Least you ain't too afraid to try - that's the most important thing, I reckon."

Josephine grins at that. "Oh, I'm terrified half the time, truth be told," she admits. "But that's part of living. You can't get too comfortable with your life or you end up getting lazy and missing all the good parts. So here I am, with you folks, enjoying the good and bad." She brings the cup to her lips for a good long sip. "If you need me to write anything down for you..you know..neatly..." Apparently she got a glimpse of the 'chicken shit' handwriting, "You have but to ask."

"Wiser words ain't often been spoken," says Saienne, in response to Josephine's assessment of the truth of living. "Ain't no one in the 'Verse who ain't afraid of somethin' or other, an' if they tell you otherwise...? Well, I reckon they ain't bein' honest - with you or with themselves." But she returns to her original point. "I reckon what I meant by not bein' afraid to try is that you got the right attitude to things you don't understand. Seems to me you approach such as challenges, not insurmountable obstacles." She shrugs, and smiles lop-sidedly. "But what do I know?" She regards her scrawled-in books again, frowning slightly. "Well, that's a right kind offer, thank you." She looks back up at Josephine. "Some clients ain't too keen on waves an' electronic communication an' prefer letters written on paper an' usually hand delivered an' all. Mayhap I'll come an' find you next time I have cause to write one?" She shakes her head. "I do deal with some odd folk."

Josephine smiles a bit as she sinks into one of the comfortable chairs, holding her mug carefully in her hands. "I'd be happy to write a letter for you, just so long as its nothing too shady," she qualifies with a grin. "And..I try to look at everything as new experiences, new lessons..new opportunities to become something more than I was before. And I mean in the spiritual sense, not saying I need to move up in the world and get rich and famous or somesuch. I think you know plenty more than you realise, Saienne."

"Oh, Josephine," says Saienne - and she sounds the faintest bit crestfallen. "I absolutely ain't in the slightest bit shady." She gestures at the PDA and the book. "All I do is traipse around the 'Verse with stuff folk don't want to trust to the postal service because it's too valuable, too sensitive or too dear to them. It really ain't in the least bit shady - the folk are just odd because they're so gorram particular, mostly, not because they're crooked." She takes a drink from the cup of water, and stares into the middle distance for a moment. "But I expect I ain't ever explained that before, so it ain't no wonder folk'd think things were a little... wonky." She smiles soon enough, though, as Josephine continues. "Fame an' fortune surely can be an overrated state," she says, nodding in agreement. "Don't seem to bring nothin' but misery to most. But I do believe your philosophy ain't such a common one. Folk find comfort in avoidin' new things, security in stickin' to the old." She shrugs, and grins again. "An' if you say so - I just know what I know, I expect."

Josephine still wears that faint smile on her face. "I wasn't assuming anything about your trade, Saienne. Firstly, because it isn't much my business, and secondly because if I'm getting to know you as a person, I'm not going to get very far if I start making assumptions and jumping to conclusions and painting you in all the colours you aren't. People don't think you're..wonky," she says, repeating the last word carefully, because it isn't part of her usual vocabulary. "I /am/ starting to think you don't think much too highly about yourself, but..then again, I'm once to talk. Aradia started threatening me with all sorts of unusual punishment if I said one more time that I wasn't sure I had a place with this crew."

Saienne has the good grace to look a little embarrassed now. "My apologies, then," she says to Josephine, "For jumpin' to the conclusion that you were jumpin' to conclusions, as it were." She shakes her head. "I expect I'm just used to folk assumin' - clients, onlookers, my own gorram family." She grins, "But I also expect I shouldn't get so defensive about the whole thing." She regards Josephine with warm brown eyes. "Well, Josephine... you're the heart an' soul of this ship, I reckon. If you don't mind me sayin' so, an' all." She turns away abruptly from thoughts of her own business and asks. "What d'you reckon you want, out of all of this? Just the experience of livin'?" And then, realising she has asked a very personal pair of question, sits up a little straighter. "Forgive me for pryin' - my mother always said I was too nosy for my own good."

Josephine shrugs into her cup of water, since she's drinking again. "You don't have to apologise for speaking your mind, especially as respectfully as you are. It's a pleasure. And it's no wonder you'd feel defensive if so many people were making assumptions in the past. But we don't have any of that here." She considers the question carefully, "You can pry all you like, you know. I have no secrets. But you've got the right of it already. I just want to..live, to experience the 'Verse, to meet different people, to learn how to do new things.." She smiles faintly, almost dreamily, looking off at nothing in particular. "This existence is so wonderful, so beautiful, so terrifying, so sad...all at once, sometimes. It is truly magnificent."

"Magnificent ain't exactly the word I would choose," says Saienne, but courteously. "Bewilderin', more like." But she nods nonetheless, some recognition with the sentiment sparking somewhere deep down. "Ain't no better way to do that than this, I expect." She glances around the commons. "Although... mayhap crashin' through an Alliance blockade into an almighty snowdrift is an experience we'd all rather not have have."

"Bewildering, yes," Josephine contemplates. "That is a good word. I like it. And this was quite the experience, wasn't it? I don't think I've cried so much since...well, since I was quite small. Well, when nobody was looking at least," she confides with a wink, unashamed of her emotions. "But just look..at how much stronger of a crew we are already, for what would seem to be an entirely disasterous event. Think how much better you know the others now that you have seen how they react in the face of impending death. It has been..good for us, in a way. Not so good for Grace, but she can be fixed. And we'll keep on flying."

"An' keepin' on flyin' is the whole point, ain't it?" She nods and begins to scoop up her belongings, depositing them into various pockets in her trousers and her coat. "I should get goin'," she says, "Ronnie gave me a list of things to shift an' I ain't even got started yet." She drinks down what is left of the water in her cup and walks across to the galley. "An' she ain't in good shape, Grace, certainly, but I reckon there's enough faith an' loyalty in this crew to patch her together again." She grins. "More'n enough, even." And, so saying, she stomps off towards the engine room to play her small part in that patching.