Nose: is boop.

"I have a baby sis. Dunno about favorite so much."

"You wouldn't have come for me if I wasn't your favorite."

"Best, most special, ultimate favorite."

Giggle. "Of course."

Flop.

She pulls Ellie over top of her, snuggling contentedly under her sister's weight. 

They spend a rather long while weaving among the Core worlds, keeping their heads down and moving fast, spreading the money Ellie stole from their parents as thin as possible. It takes them three weeks to get firmly into the Vermillion Bird Cluster - a logical place for anyone looking to oppose the Alliance, given the long history of guerilla opposition scattered among the systems, nebulous and resilient in a way the Alliance has been thoroughly unable to crush. Ellie's allies in rescuing River help, here, once Ellie gets the information she gathered and what little River can articulate to them - and smuggling political dissidents out of the Core is their specialty.

The Alliance, of course, can guess where they'll go, and the dissidents have their own uses for the sisters besides - but with River, slipping away again is easy, away from both revolutionaries and oppressive government, cutting sideways into the White Tiger cluster. It'd stayed independent longer than anywhere else, and is still under tight military control - but there's a system at the crux of Vermillion Bird, White Tiger, and a defuse tangle of Rim worlds, popular enough with smugglers and deeply corrupted enough that it's rather trivial for River to find enough holes in the Alliance's net - and River has a feeling that this is their best bet for escape.

...Or, well, she had. River's been worse some days, better others, but clearly in need of medication to control her sometimes dangerous symptoms - her heart rate has a way of spiking, she sometimes gets so dizzy she falls over, she's spent multiple days in hallucinatory episodes... But she's lucid enough right now to get them through, though it leaves her with a bad headache and a dazed expression.

The Persephone System is rather busy, skies and orbital stations thronged with traffic. The system's only inhabited planet has a jagged, rocky surface, much of the planet prone to dangerously strong winds across its wide plains. The surface cities - including every approved port - are in deep craters and valleys, thin skyscrapers built to sway and twist in the gales, though supposedly most of the permanent population lives in low buildings studded into the prairies. Despoina is the biggest port city, and their best bet - for both anonymity and for passage into the near Rim. The docks are extensive, built on the small mountain in the city-crater's center, though many ships (including the one they come in on) are forced to park in orbit while crew, supplies, and passengers take elevators or shuttles down.

There's a lot of people looking for passengers, of course. Most of them not very aggressively - there's a lot of potential passengers, too.

Still, one woman strolls up to Ellie as she's examining the ships allowed to park on the actual docks, smiling, and asks, "Looking for passage?"

"Depends where you're going."

"Adventure, a new start, peace and quiet, freedom, excitement... Okay, I'm out of fancy advertisements for 'assorted places in the Rim.'"

"How big are your cabins?"

"Depends how much you feel like paying. Smallest's a bit over two by one and a half meters - so the bed takes up most of it when it's folded down - and biggest's more like two by three. And there's nothing stopping you from getting two cabins."

"Except money. It'd be passage for two."

She glances at River. "Shared or separate cabins?"

"Shared." Ellie's picked up by now that River is generally calmer when Ellie is close.

River nods a little.

Thoughtful hum. "You'll probably be most comfortable in the biggest, then, especially since Rim trips can take a while." She names a pretty good price.

"Deal. Which ship?"

"The Serenity; she's a Firefly class - that beauty over there." She points to a rather beaten up mid-small ship down the row.

"Nice ship." The ship does not look all that nice.

River giggles a little, cracking her eyes open and raising her face from 'buried in Ellie's hair' (she's had a photosensitive headache all day). "I like glow-worms. They're pretty."

"'Glowworm' makes it sound like something out of a cave," she says with a small laugh. "I've always called them starbugs." She shakes her head a little. "The Firefly ships are reliable, though, and pretty fast - though not so cutesy as you'll see in the Core, I'll admit."

"As long as it flies, right?"

"Does a bit better than just 'flies.'" Shrug. "Captain's gonna wanna talk to y'all before any money changes hands, make sure you know what's allowed or not while on ship, but you can sit down over by it until she's back."

"All right. What's your name?"