"...I mean," says Talon, "not that weird, right? A snake is just a head with a spine. I bet lots of people could look at all the creatures going around with heads and spines and wonder what happens if you delete the rest."

"Fair point! But I don't know if you'd properly get a snake that way, they're so bendy. Spines aren't usually that bendy."

"...true. And the snakes in the story were the bendy kind."

Joy swishes his tail thoughtfully. "...maybe you could get it from thinking of a tail with a head, instead of a spine."

"Oh! That makes sense!"

Tailswish (pleased).

"...how did you two meet?" Joy asks after a bit. 

"I was an egg and something bad was happening and then she rescued me. I don't remember very well because I was an egg."

"...huh. I don't remember anything from when I was an egg."

"Being an egg for me was sort of like dreaming but not very much. I don't remember it that well but I remember a little. I like being hatched better."

Joy flicks his tail in acknowledgement.

"Can you read another story?" he asks Teela. "- do you have one with Jedi?"

"I have one with Jedi but it's sort of weird."

She reads out the story of a little boy growing up on a barren planet, surrounded by friendly droids and his cheerful old mentor, cautioned never to enter the basement of their shared home. The boy dreams of being a Jedi but has very little understanding of what that entails, besides that the Force is involved somehow and they're brave and heroic and much more exciting than the work of terraforming this hunk of rock. His mentor tells him that he can't possibly become a Jedi without a Kyber crystal, because a Jedi needs a lightsaber and a lightsaber needs a Kyber crystal; so he scours the whole planet, but can't find one anywhere. Finally, driven by his search, he enters the forbidden basement... and finds a little spaceship there! He plays with the spaceship, pressing random buttons on the controls and pretending to be a Jedi like the one he wants to grow up to be.

Unfortunately, his random button-pressing successfully sent out a comm signal with his pretend Jedi messages, and now there's a Sith on their doorstep looking for naive little Jedi to kill. The mentor reveals himself to be a Jedi and hides the little boy in an even more secret room than the basement; when the boy emerges, he finds broken droids, a broken lightsaber, and his mentor dead. He grieves, buries his mentor, repairs the droids, and completes the work of terraforming the planet all by himself in his mentor's memory. When the Sith returns, the little boy finds the spark of the Force within himself, repairs the broken lightsaber, kills the Sith in battle, repairs the spaceship, and leaves the planet to seek his fortune.

The story is ambiguous on several points, such as how long this all takes, whether the boy is himself a droid or not, exactly how dead the mentor ended up and in particular whether he left behind a Force ghost who continued to help and teach the boy or whether the boy was just imagining all that, and whether or not there are even any other living planets left in the universe for him to find at the end.

Talon has heard this one before but still has a lot of feelings about it. He is MAD at the Sith and SAD about the dead mentor and HAPPY about the boy carrying on his mentor's legacy.

"...huh. That is a pretty weird story... I like it, I think. Even though it's weird."

"I'm not sure if anything like it ever happened, but I like it too."

The ship begins making noises that indicate it will imminently enter hyperspace!

"- should we strap in?" Joy asks.

"I would say yes if we had anywhere to strap in, but we don't. It's a bit of a bump but it's not so bad if you're sitting on the floor," which they are.

"...right. It's fun that we're in a [whistleclickwhistle], I feel like - oh that didn't translate, did it. Um. Something where, even though it's a gift, you have to think about if you want to take it?"

"Well, I did steal it, on purpose, which if you think about it is rather the opposite of hesitantly accepting a gift, but somehow I still think the spirit of the descriptor applies," she says.

The bump occurs. It's sure bumpy. Hard to fall over when you're already on the floor, though.

"A [clickwhistleclick], maybe? - that's not a real word I just made it up."

Joy rocks back and forth at the motion. "Wheeee."

Giggle.

Whee!

"...I was going to ask you to tell another story but I feel mildly anxious about making you do all the work keeping us entertained and that makes me wonder if you'd like me to do something. A story-song probably, though I don't know how that'll interact with the translator. Do you want to hear me sing?"

"Yeah!"

Nod nod.

Joy starts in on a song! His singing voice is high and piping, but pleasantly so; it's clear, not shrill.

The song is about a young... whatever species he is... who is implanted with a lover and immediately sets out to adventure, leaving his fathers behind, because he's desperate to do something interesting, not just make art and have fun. Unfortunately, he is not very well suited to adventure; fortunately(?), he's self-deluded enough that he manages to convince himself at every turn that whatever disaster has just ensued is what he wanted. He loses his possessions fairly early, but reasons that he wanted to experience the world on his own merits. He makes several friends and drives them away with his terrible luck and inability to own up to mistakes, but convinces himself that they were the cause of whatever disaster latest befell him. Eventually, he falls in battle against a shark he had convinced himself was threatening a nearby village, which is actually a farmer's beloved pet; he goes to his grave convinced that he is a hero dying before his time, and when the spirits of the deeps show him his life and ask his regrets before letting him drift out of reality, he cheerfully claims none. The spirits state that he is the only man who has ever died happy, and that on balance, more people should lie to themselves if they want to enjoy life.