"Yay!" He continues to hug at about the same pressure, and doesn't seem likely to let go unprompted.

Nova starts to relax into the hug, his own return hug becoming a little more natural. "Your mum...glows?" (There's a slight hint of jealousy there, that Shay has a mum, regardless of glowing status.)

"Yeah, when her face is in a window it glows yellow and there's little orange flames in a circle around it. Like a sun. But they're not hot, just warm." It would definitely be cooler if they were hot.

"She sounds nice," Nova says. "Sounds pretty." (And there's that tone that is probably a little bit envy. But he knows he didn't deserve someone that nice in his life and Shay did.)

Shay nods into his shoulder. "Yeah. She doesn't like me to do a lot of stuff in case I get hurt, but she's really nice. You sure you don't wanna meet her?"

"...she might not like me. I might hurt you." It definitely isn't a no, it is definitely more someone trying to convince themselves that the thing they really want to do is a bad idea. (Even if Nova is actually worried Shay's mom might not like him.)

He unhugs a little, to bounce without shaking his hugging partner. "She likes everyone! And I think it'd be fine, I haven't got hurt so far!"

The 'so far' worries Nova a little. (He doesn't want to hurt Shay, but sometimes he can't help it if he flickers.)

But.

"I think I would like to?" he says quietly.

He grins. "Great! Everyone'll be so excited to meet you!" He starts to rise, then stops. "Do you need to talk to Bar or anything else for the mission to be complete or do you wanna go now?"

Nova blinks a little confused and then shakes his head. "I don't. Think I need to?" The words don't make a massive amount of sense, but he'll go along with them and hope they do eventually.

Shay scoots back to avoid bonking his head on the table, and to give Nova a bit more room, then jumps to his feet.

"And if the door doesn't go back right then we'll need to figure out how to get it to, but I think that's probably not the point?"

Nova slides out from under the table, but keeps himself very small and withdrawn into himself. "Probably not?" he agrees hesitantly, moving to follow Shay.

"Yeah. The stars outside are pretty, and the room is weird, but the only people here are you and Bar and she can't move and there's no obvious clues about the door?"

He pulls open the door, and sure enough, it opens onto a tiny room, tiled with triangles and diamonds and illuminated by blue light. He waves for Nova to go through.

Nova hesitates, before he sidles through, trying to look around without actually lifting his head. The room is pretty, but very, very different to anything he'd seen back... home.

Shay follows him in. As the door closes, the room is flooded with blue light. There's a gentle tingling feeling all through their bodies, and as the light dims, a different pair of doors is visible. They slide open, showing a different room, whose walls and floors are tiled with pale yellow hexagons, made up of smaller diamonds.

As they exit, three doors along the same side of the room come into view. Each has a triangle with a picture of a face. Two seem to be asleep, but the one above the door they left from has a smile. "Welcome back Shay! Oh, you've duplicated? I'm sorry, I'm not sure how that happened." Her face switches to a concerned frown.

Nova flinches, and moves a little closer to Shay. (He's still looking around a little curiously, but less so now someone has noticed him.)

He shakes his head. "This is my new friend, Nova! From my mission!"

The triangle's face returns to a smile. "Oh good. I wouldn't at all know how to fix that, unless going back through did it." She goes to sleep like the other doors.

Nova blinks and then gives a small smile. "Never had a friend before?" he says quietly when the triangle has gone back to sleep. "Are they. Always like that?" he points up at the triangles.

"Never? That's a sad amount without one. Oh hey, but that means I get to be the first! Yeah, the doors like to be asleep unless you're going through them. And they get worried if they mess something up but they can usually fix it by just sending you back the other way, and then you just have to walk back to where you wanted to go."

His smile widens a little.

"Oh...so that's what you were thinking with the door back...?" he gestures behind them, trying to indicate 'the bar'.

"Yeah. She never sent me there before and it was supposed to be a different ship, so I thought maybe she got confused and sent me the wrong place? It was a weird thing to happen, but it was good!"

He starts walking, toward a pair of sliding doors without a face.

Nova follows after him, both eager and a little wary.

Shay smiles reassuringly, and leads him into a larger room, with a giant window looking onto stars in space. They go up a short set of stairs, to a booth closer to the window. There booth contains a chair, a happy planet mobile, several levers and buttons, and a wheel.

Nova looks around in amazement, and shock. He's never seen anything like this before.