Walta tastes it. "Yeah, not bad at all. Especially since neither of us had to cook it!"

Lilith laughs, a little. "I'm glad you like it."

"I can tell you gave even this quickly tossed together stew more thought than either of us do for cooking. We're both airheads. As in, our heads are always thinking about flying the ship."

Walta nods, smiling.

"Heh."

She should not be settling into a niche, here, he wants her off his ship, this is temporary.

Still, no reason not to fit comfortably as long as she's here. Right?

She turns to Walta. "I was gonna ask what you do all day, since you said about wanting to meet me properly. But I guess the captain –" she nods to him – "just answered that question."

"Yeah. This is actually a small ship - comparatively speaking. Only a hundred and twenty feet or so. Most ships are, like, two hundred feet long and sixty wide and high, but have at least ten crew. So it's a lot of work for just two of us. We can manage it because Nick is three quarters of a genius and built tons of automatic things."

"Three quarters of a genius. I like that. Just enough human left in you to talk to us regular folk, huh?"

"I'm not that smart. Just quite determined to find ways to make things work."

"If you say so.

Did he tell you we were talking about making paper out of floatgrass?"

"He mentioned. I think it will make bad paper. But bad, cheap paper will still sell."

"Fair enough. And there are uses for cheap paper. I wonder if there's a niche for newspapers..."

"That sounds like some paper you put news on. I'm assuming there's more to it?"

"Heh. A newspaper is a periodical, usually published daily but sometimes weekly or twice-daily, usually printed on cheap paper with cheap ink. Regular mass distribution of recent news.

The problem would be if you don't have the population density to support a lot of subscribers. You need a lot of people all interested in hearing the same news, and enough such news that they can't just hear it through the grapevine."

"Maybe a big city could support that. I doubt I'll go into the newspaper business myself though."

"Right, not you personally. Your world.

How big do your cities – how big do cities here get?"

"I think most have, like... Thirty thousand or so people? And even that supports itself through trading craft stuff for food and recycling everything. It's just so hard to get huge because getting enough water, moving things around the city, getting enough food all gets harder and harder."

"Huh. I'm pretty sure that's big enough to support a local newspaper."

She's kinda been dominating the conversation here, hasn't she. She tries to remember how small talk works.

"Anyway. Uh. What do you like to do in your spare time?" Is that too presuming, she wasn't invited here, but Walta said she wanted to get to know her, it's probably fine?

aaaah

"When I'm not learning cool things about mechanics and electricity, or relaxing in the greenhouse, I draw. I don't fancy that I'm much good at it."

"-You're better than most, though not a wonder of the art world," Nick interrupts.

"Thanks, boss. Well, I enjoy it. I did the name on the side of the ship. I guess you haven't seen that yet."

"I look forward to seeing it.

...after we land."

"We landed ten minutes ago! Just goes to show you what a fine ship and captain we have here that you didn't notice." She laughs. "I'll show you after dinner."

She relaxes fractionally. "Hah, right. You mentioned, didn't you.

I'd like that. Thanks."

"We'll all three go and gather floatgrass while we're down there. We're running a bit heavy because of the extra weight, need to make up for it."

Right. That's a thing.

She nods. "Sounds like a plan."

She's about done eating.

Nick and Walta finish up soon after. "It's not a huge concern and you're not putting us at risk, but I can't afford to forget to keep the ship running smoothly. That's literally a captain's job."

Nod. "Well. I'm happy to do what I can to help."

Does it look like they're going right out, or does she have time to wash the dishes first?

"I'll go get the bags."