"If I can clear things up with him it'd be good. I obviously can't talk about it with him, I can see how that would go right now..." She takes a deep breath. "Yeah, I'll think about it. Goodnight for now?"

"Good night, I'll see you tomorrow." Sandra leaves quietly. Once she's alone, she sighs, did she do the right thing? She really hopes she didn't push to hard.

She gets set for bed.

The ship is quiet, it rocks gently with the calm winds. It rains briefly.

Sun sets and rises. Nick is up with the sun, collecting floatgrass from the island below. Walta still seems to be asleep.

Good morning wonderful world! Sandra is also up early. She'll head up to the greenhouse and meditate, she wants to be calm for today.

The greenhouse: Is still pretty. Those tomatoes look about ripe.

Maybe Sandra will ask Nick if she can pick those for dinner tonight. In the meantime, she gets up, stretches and feels much better. She's ready to face the day.

She should probably go find Nick, so she does.

Nick is methodically gathering floatgrass from the island below, like Sandra and Walta did the other day. He's humming and looks surprisingly relaxed.

"Hey, I wanted to know if you had anything that needed doing."

"Ah, good morning. Well, we could always use more hydrogen. I was planning to forage for edibles here, too. And I want to install the radar later, of course."

"Sure." Sandra will start exploring the island, keeping her senses primed for any possible dangers. If she sees anything that looks edible, she'll gather it up.

There's wild onions, roots and tubers, some berries, some tree nuts and acorns, some of that sweetly sour native fruit she used in the chili yesterday. A bunch of birds and rodents and some Cloudbank fauna and a small family of pigs!

Sandra gathers everything she can, then stumbles upon piggies! She remembers that Nick and Walta don't have the chance to eat much meat. She senses the life in the pigs, and she knows that she couldn't harm them, nor could she capture them to sell, knowing what they would become; she's OK with eating already dead animals, not indirectly causing the harm of another animal.

She's not Nick, there are many things more important to her than money.

The pigs are ignorant of her internal decision-making.

If she watches them for long enough they even show her their favorite patch of root vegetables. Seems to be wild potatoes.

She'll pick a potato or two, but leaves enough for the pigs. As she heads back to the ship, she thinks about Nick, she doesn't really know what to do with him. Maybe while she sets up the RADAR she'll be able to find out more about what makes him tick, and how she can connect with him. She doesn't want to be a hypocrite and only try to connect people she likes.

Walta is up and about by now. She waves at Sandra from the greenhouse on the roof as she comes in.

Sandra waves back, backpack of foraged goodies in tow. She'll drop off the veggies, and go up to see her.

Walta is harvesting and replanting carrots. "Hi, Sandra! I'm kind of surprised Nick hasn't had us get underway again yet. Surprisingly nice to have a day off like this."

"I think he wants to setup the RADAR first. Once the two of us do that, he'll probably have us get underway. It should make your lives easier by quite a bit."

"Besides from being really, really cool like all tech? Yeah. Then again the Captain might also use it as an excuse to sail through the night. Makes us faster, sure, but we'll need a third person to keep that up for sure."

"Would he do that though? Bring on a third person, I mean. It seems to me that he'd try to make it on just two people, even if it killed you both."

"Maybe. He can be hard to predict. He might also try to take a month off of sailing and have us both build more tools and automatic devices until it can be handled with two."

"That seems like a lot of lost time, when he could just hire someone else. I wonder if his loner nature is stronger than his pragmatism. Do you think he'd do something cost-ineffective in order to keep it to just the two of you?"

"Mm... Maybe. For all that he's all about profit he is also a nerd, he likes making that kind of stuff. And he gets touchy about the ship and the idea of more crew."

Sandra nods. "I think part of his idea of freedom means doing things on his own as much as he can. He seems very protective of his freedom."

"Yeah, I could see that. Maybe that's why he wouldn't..." She trails off and shakes her head. "I probably should just blurt it out, get it out there, but I can't make myself do that. The thing we were talking about yesterday."