He sets the little rancor down carefully on the nearest surface and leans in.

"Sounds like the weird ones would be just as interesting for different reasons."

"Oh, yeah, definitely; I really wish they could've done a droid one, I learned a lot about what those species are like."

"It's probably hard to get a hold of droid fiction. I don't think a lot of people believe that droids could even write fiction at all.

But I'd read the hell out of that."

"Yeah. It's not Daisy's sort of thing, but I bet there are some out there who could. If, y'know, they were allowed to grow up enough to get the idea," she sighs. "Well, maybe someday. Meantime I have these; I might be misremembering some of them but at least one should be what you're looking for." She hands him four datacards and then flops backward on the bed to reach for a reader from the shelf.

"Yeah..."

God. Poor droids.

He tries to put that out of his mind for the moment and take the datacards, tucking them carefully into his pocket.

And then he has a reader, too, and Dusk heads back to the front room.

"Anything else I should take care of while I'm out, Love?"

"I hadn't dropped off the library stuff yet. Other than that, no."

"All right. Last call, Kai-Zi."

He thinks for a second.

"...where's your bathroom?"

It had to be asked.

She points him to it.

He runs off, runs back and grabs one last chocolate chip pancake off the table.

"OK! I'm good!"

And off they go. It's a four hour trip.

He spends most of the time reading alien fiction and occasionally giving an animated opinion on one of the stories.

She mostly resists the urge to ruffle his hair in response.

Well, he'd be fine with a little ruffling.

Good, 'cause she's only mostly resisting the urge.

"It's cute how excited you get about things."

"What? No. Things are just exciting."

"And you're cute about it!"

"I mean...I guess."

He can't quite hide that he's a little happy about this.

Hair-ruffle.

Awww.

He scans the horizon again for the town. He's...not easy to scare, but is definitely a little apprehensive about the whole process of walking through a town where he killed someone the night before.

The road she's taking will give plenty of warning that the town is coming up, but it's not quite in view yet.

"There's nothing to worry about. I can sense everyone there already; even if they weren't going to be avoiding us like their lives depend on it, I'd know instantly if someone was planning on attacking you. But the hard part is going to be finding someone who'll sit still long enough to take a message, not fending them off."

"The message 'don't go out looking for this guy's murderer'?"