"... 3, 2, 1, action!" she says, snapping her fingers.

The soul arrives, splashing into place within the body almost like a fluid being poured into a container, if there were such a thing as an insubstantial fluid that poured at just shy of lightspeed.

The doll blinks and sits up, apparently undistressed—

—and is immediately joyously captivated by the view. She ignores everyone present in favour of staring up at Saturn's rings in wordless wonder.

(Slight ripples are still reverberating through her soul as it finishes settling into place, but if this causes her any discomfort, she isn't letting on.)

Oh thank goodness. That is so much better than the alternative.

Sandalwood is going to pretend that she has not just spent the last six fifths of an hour anxiously catastrophising. She relaxes her shoulders and just watches their guest for a moment, to ensure she's okay.

"It's so beautiful," she says, very quietly.

"I'm glad you like it," she replies.

There's no rush, so she's content to let their guest examine the rings and the stars as much as she would like to.

She startles a little at the sound of another person's voice, and spends another moment staring up at the rings before tearing her gaze away so she can look at Sandalwood.

"I think you have successfully brought me somewhere very strange," she says with a tiny smile. "What do you want to do next?"

"Well, my overarching goal is to give you the tools to have a good, fulfilling life here until we can figure out how to send you back," she replies. "But if you want to have a look at more beautiful things, that's definitely an acceptable next step. What do you like most about the sky here?"

"...it's round," she says, and then her painted cheeks darken briefly in a soft pink blush. "I mean—" She traces the arc of the rings with a sweep of her little wooden arm. "The way the bands of light have such a clean curve against the black sky. It looks like a poem."

"Yeah, Saturn is a natural wonder," she agrees. "The biggest project around here is definitely the shipyards, but there are a lot of little satellites and homes built in the rings for the view. I bet you'd also like to see some of the O'Neil cylinders -- they also cut a pretty striking figure against the stars."

She looks back up at the sky.

"There's no rush, though. We can certainly stay here and stargaze for a while."

"What cylinders?" she wonders.

"Oh! O'Neil cylinders are a particular design of space station," she explains.

"Some people say they look like floating bricks, but I think they have some of the same stark, geometrical beauty that the rings do. The ones I'm thinking of aren't cylinders, technically. They are, for obscure reasons known only to the fork that set up the template for this particular cluster of stations, Reuleaux heptagonal-prisms. But the point is, picture a large rod floating in space, one side brightly lit by the sun and the other in darkness, speckled with windows that look into an interior filled with greenery. The outsides are covered with solar panels, but at this scale they look like individual black sequins, making the station shimmer and sparkle as it rotates," she describes.

"That does sound pretty," she says consideringly. "Where are they?"

Sandalwood checks the date and thinks about angles for a moment, before pointing back in the direction of the sun, about five degrees above it.

"They're back in Earth orbit, because they were one of the earliest station designs," she replies.

"Do you want to show them to me?"

"I do," she replies. "There, uh, is a small problem with teleporting again, though. Your body came along with me just fine when I teleported, but your soul took about an hour to catch up."

"I didn't see any reason to suspect this was bad for you," Teak chimes in, from where she was quietly observing. "But just in case, I think probably you shouldn't teleport again."

"So we can either use telepresence, or go the slow way!" Sandalwood continues, undeterred.

"...that's very odd," says the doll. "Why would my soul be slower than most people's?"

She shrugs. "I think I mentioned, but the rest of us here don't have souls."

Blink blink.

"How..."

But she can't figure out how to finish that sentence.

Sandalwood can't really figure out how to answer that question, either.

"All of our thinking is being done in our brains?" she replies. "Since you're the only ensouled person I've met, I'm not sure what you're expecting them to do."

"...I think... I think I expect souls to go along with being alive, and you are alive. But I don't understand souls, really, I just expect them. Sorry. Should I stop being confused by things I can't explain? It's probably inconvenient."

"Can you just stop being confused by things?" she asks. "That sounds somewhat impossible. But anyways, I don't mind when you're confused. I'm pretty confused about souls too. Being confused is a reasonable reaction to meeting aliens, I think."

"I guess I can't stop being confused on the inside but I can stop being confused on the outside. It's important not to do the wrong things and inconvenience people."

"Well, I do agree with that," she responds. "But in the current circumstance, my job is mostly helping you get oriented, which is actually harder if you don't show me when you're confused or ask questions that you're wondering about."