Linya avoids haring off to do things much while Miles's arms are unusable. Once he can feed himself comfortably enough to prefer to do so, though, she makes plans with Ekaterin to go with her and little Nikki on a hike in some nice woods of mixed-origin fauna. She packs a picnic and takes the lightflyer and flies out to pick up the relevant subset of Vorsoissons.
So she waves away the nexus map and calls up a picture of Earth's sky at night, complete with a full moon.
"I went with a tour group to the middle of the ocean, where there aren't any buildings that light up, and I sat there in the dark and my eyes adjusted and there were so many stars," she says. "You could do that here too, but there wouldn't be the moon, just the stars." She woggles her pen to check its chrono, and then gets up. "And I think I'm supposed to drop you off at home pretty soon so we'd better start walking back to the lightflyer."
"Do you want me to carry you again?" asks Ekaterin.
He nods. She picks him up.
Linya folds up the blanket and puts it and the discards from lunch into the basket and goes with them along the path.
Ekaterin gets tired after a few minutes, and puts Nikki down. He clings grumpily to her leg, impeding her progress down the path.
Linya scoops him up. He's not heavy at all. "Do you want to be carried or sit on my shoulders?" she asks.
"No trouble," says Linya, and she carries Nikki all the way back to the lightflyer. And then as promised he gets to sit in her lap and watch her pilot it.
Linya sets down near the Vorsoisson home and releases them to their pursuits. Nikki gets ruffled hair and Ekaterin gets a hug, and then she flies back home.
"It was good. Nikki doesn't like salad, and does like pictures of the Earth night sky and nexus maps and the lightflyer. And Ekaterin joins you in not quite approving of baby pictures preceding babies."
"She thought it seemed backwards and that pictures don't substitute for the real thing."
"Of the possible reasons, I think those are sensible ones."
"Are they yours? I don't think I have an understanding of yours?"
"I... don't think you have an understanding of mine either," he sighs. "It's complicated."
Pet pet. "Do you want to try to explain or is it not worth the trouble?"
"Then I will probably languish in confusion for a bit longer." Pet, pet.