"I know, right!? We're in space! In my trainship! So, optional things to do: fly around and check out some pretty clouds, see if there's anything else to see, maybe spend some time bouncing around the cargo hold if I turn off the gravity..."

She grins curiously at the other girls. "Any other ideas?"

The many lights of the city she used to live in was both a sign of life and a shroud that drowned out the night sky.

Stars and swirling nebulae, delicate and nude before her, no atmosphere between her and it.

She is unworthy of it. How many people wished for this? To be free, to see the stars, to go where they please? To bear witness to the firmament?

Her eyes burn up.

"Huh?" She says, voice slightly shaky. "Oh, uhm, let's look around."

Sable looks up at the hint of shakiness in Strawberry's voice, and her smile softens to something small and gentle. She reaches out a hand to each girl, a bit shyly in Strawberry's case.

"We can take some time to just admire the view first, though. There's no need to rush off immediately, what with this being all our first time in deep space."

She blinks at the hand offered from the girl she barely knows. Every concern she might've had in this exact scenario seems so small right now. And yet as her hand inches towards theirs, as her fingers curl around a soft hand, her heart hammers in her chest.

She doesn't trust herself to speak, turning slightly to gaze out the window.

Eva's just been staring starry-eyed at the view; when Sable extends a hand to her as well, she takes it too, a slight tremble in her own hand.

"For all the strange places we've been to together, I think this is the first time I've really been awed. I dreamed of going to space someday, back on Earth. Never thought I'd get the chance."

Sable's smile widens a bit, and she gives each hand a gentle squeeze as she gazes out the window with her girlfriend and hopefully a new friend.

"I'm glad we can see it together. Girlfriends, new friends, sharing in the wonder."

She squeezes back. "Yeah." Strawberry whispers.

The inconceivable vastness housing an emptiness rich in color, light and detail. In its observing it becomes something more, transcending mere light and matter to become a memory, a pattern of thought in a conscious being. Something that might catalyze a change within its observers. More of an effect on the universe than any of the image's constituent photons could achieve on their own.

Patterns of light transmogrified through the engines of change that are human beings into something greater.

Eva closes her eyes after a moment, commiting the image to memory, then looks back out at the starscape. 

"We are a way for the stars to know themselves."

The words are barely a murmur, but a small smile lingers on Eva's lips afterwards. 

"Strange to find something so alien and yet so familiar out here."

The Pirates relax into a blur, burning the moment into their hearts with a tender sigh: girlfriend on one side, new friend on the other, stardust all, gazing upon radiant stardust. Truly a beautiful experience to share.

"Nothing so beautiful as animate stardust, sharing wonder with each other."

They squeeze the hands they're holding again. "Hello, stardust," they whisper.

"Hello Stardust." She whispers.

"Hello, Stardust. Glad to see you're here to meet us."

Eva smiles. 

"So what are we waiting for? Let's go explore."

"Yeah," She takes a steadying breath. "yeah, let's go."

She squeezes both girls' hands, leans over to kiss Eva's cheek, smiles gently at Strawberry, and steps over to the pilot seat.

"Any requests, girls, or better ideas than 'aim at a pretty cloud'?"

"Nah, a pretty cloud sounds wonderful."

"Yeah, a pretty cloud sounds..." She spots a distant pinprick moving in front of the bright backdrop of nebulae. "Hey, do you see that?"

Eva's eyebrows rise. "What is that?"

Scale is not something that comes easily in the void, especially to fallible human minds with no points of reference. As they approach it slowly becomes apparent that it is big. Very big.

Its front is like a flower, with massive petal-like fins bulging like sails, reflective from the back. It trails behind a long, thin, grey body, like an eel.

Just saying that it is many times larger than the trainship doesn't do it justice, it's body could be better described as a landscape, it's length measured in kilometers.

It doesn't seem to react as they approach. Strawberry's mouth hangs open.

"Holy fuck that's a huge creature. What the fuck. Unreasonably large. Okay, let's try aiming to go around it and see if it diverts to intercept or not, that way I can figure out whether I need to flee at hard burn."

She puts word to deed, adjusting the pseudo-track attitude orb to starboard to pass on the enormous entity's port side. It slowly grows larger-still in their view as they approach.

"Woah." Strawberry breathes. The being doesn't seem to react at all to their presence. The front of the petal fins aren't reflective like the backs are, instead they have a grayish-orange color to them. Nothing obviously looks like an eye, though the center point where all the petals meet could be a mouth.

"How does it... exist? Move? Eat? Metabolize?"

"Good question. Maybe gravitics or something? Maybe it eats nebulae?"

She... would not say no to some reassuring togetherness-ish physical contact while they marvel at this enormous beastie, actually, but isn't really up for asking.

Mostly she just marvels at it and keeps flying.

"Whoa..." Eva smiles and watches the creature, floating soundlessly in the hard vacuum. "That's amazing..."

"I sure hope it's friendly, or else slower than our ship."