"Welcome! It's good to see you."

"Thank you," says Callida, smiling. "It's good to see you too."

"Yes, you have a lovely home!" chimes in Envee.

"Thank you!" says Cordelia. "You can't see my contribution from here; it's the lift tube at the back."

"How very sensible!" declares Envee, delighted. "Actually, speaking of, do you mind if Callida turns off her translation module so she can practice speaking English?"

Callida has a very dry look on her face, but doesn't protest this.

"Not at all, if Callida would like to do that," she says.

"My accent's a bit thick and my vocabulary needs work, and there will probably be awkward pauses as I try to string words together, but no, I don't mind. I could use the practice."

"Excellent!" says Envee, pleased.

"Come on in, then, both of you."

She leads them to the dining room, where Miles is waiting.

"Hello, Envee! Hello, favourite Sith Lord!"

Inside go the pair, and they take their seats.

"Hello!" says Envee, brightly.

"Hello, Miles," she says, after a pause to fiddle with the translator, in accented but understandable English.

"Ooh, no translator."

"Yes. Sorry if I'm not as -" she pauses to figure out the word. "- well-spoken."

"She's actually had the translator on standby for translating to Basic for a while. Where it'll give her a translation for a sentence if she asks for it, but otherwise leave her to figure it out on her own."

"You're picking the language up pretty fast, then."

"There are Force.... things... for memory."

"Techniques," provides Envee.

"Thank you. Force tech-niques." She has a bit of trouble pronouncing this word, and winces slightly.

"And she's had some practice at learning languages before. Most of them were dead, and the ones that weren't she didn't need to personally speak, so actually speaking a different language is a bit of a change for her!"

"Well, I'm impressed with your progress," says Miles.

"Thank you."

"How many languages do you know? I speak English natively, Russian fluently, French conversationally, and Greek inadequately," says Miles.

"I'm not - fluent in any of them, but I understand Huttese, Bocce, Binary, a bit of Durese and Cheunh. And the - native Sith language. Then a number of dead languages useful for..." What's the word for archaeology? "..... digging up dead things."

"I'm going to assume you were reaching for 'archaeology' rather than 'graverobbing', although the line can be thin."

"Archaeology," she agrees, amused. "... Some graverobbing. The robbed dead were terrible, so it's fine."

"Whose graves have you robbed?"

"Sith Lords. Terrible ones."

"I suppose I could've guessed that. I'm tempted to ask what you found there, but I'm not sure it would make good dinner conversation." Pause. "Because 'whose graves have you robbed' is perfectly good dinner conversation, of course."

Callida smiles. "Of course."

He laughs.

She was correct, it is easier to deal with how atrociously hot he is when she has a plan. She can just vaguely enjoy his laughter while still keeping the necessary emotional distance.

"Sometimes there were holocrons." And other things she can't talk about. "Buried with the Sith Lords because -" and then vocabulary fails her. She makes a face and waves a hand. "They didn't trust anyone. Took everything they had to death, or tried to."