"Excellent, then you can report back to take a two hour nap," Solae replied smoothly. Damaris immediately burst into a fit of giggles in response to the maternal remark so casually issued to a full-grown man undeniably larger (and perhaps older) than his female counterpart. Despite the amusement it caused the young girl, and the sweet delivery by the diplomat, her tone was insistent. She had seen the exhaustion in Rene's movements and countenance and now had a fresh worry on her mind. They would not fare well on the open waters, much less with their mission on the land, if their navigator and protector looked like death warmed over. He would be responsible for finding and perhaps hauling fuel back to the caldera. None of their goals would be more easily achieved with him sleep=deprived.

"Will he really come back and take a nap?" Damaris inquired. Now that she had filled her belly with protein bars and an instant vegetable soup she had become emboldened. Physical recovery had strengthened her courage to ask questions, to show glimpses of her personality, to not be so timid and paranoid about her host and hostess regardless of their origin.

"Maybe, maybe not," Solae shrugged, "He's my partner before he's my knight in shining armor, so even when I tell him what to do I need to respect his right to refuse," she said, trying to utilize this bit of time as a teaching moment. Damaris had not yet puberty yet but she would in a few years. Their encounter with another might be fleeting but she wanted to impart on the girl a model of a relationship with healthy boundaries. The aristocrat wasn't honestly certain what courtship and marriage was like in the troubled teenage years of the general populace, but it was a horrific mess for nobility. Surging hormones, parents who treated each other like business partners, and the backstabbing that happened all too often among the elite did not make those awkward years of transitioning from a child to an adult any easier.

"Mia, can you please pull up a map of San Roayo?" the slender blonde requested.

"Yes, but there is not a proper display in the kitchen. Would you prefer for me to use the screen in the hold or the cockpit?" the artificial intelligence replied. Her tone was still even, placid, and polite, as if the inappropriately sultry vixen had never existed. Solae was now certain she found it unnerving to hear Mia speak without the purr. The comical and exasperatingly amorous manner in which she spoke when a minor wasn't present had become comforting in its own way. Now that it had disappeared she was nearly unrecognizable to her biggest supporter.

"Let's use the hold. Would you mind coming with me, Damaris? If we're going to take you home with the high tide I will need you to show me where you live so we don't arrive on the other side of the island. The storm will have caused a lot of damage so we'll want to travel as far as we can by water. Roads will be washed out for at least another day or two while they clear debris off of them," she explained as she led the way to the hold. By the time they had changed rooms Mia had already projected a very simple topographical map of San Roayo onto a large screen attached to an abandoned storage rack. Solae would never tell her innocent charge that this same screen undoubtedly was used to monitor the vitals of slaves chemically induced to a comatose state. She and Rene may have committed grand larceny by taking [i]The Bonaventure[/i], and continued arguably criminal acts to elude capture and defend themselves, but they were still putting the space vessel to more moral use than it had likely seen before.

The girl looked at the map for several long moments. It wasn't that she didn't know where she lived but rather she wasn't familiar with looking at the geography from above. Solae was beginning to contemplate how she might be able to assist, either by conducting a long range scan and building a more basic 3-D image, or by trying to hijack a satellite in orbit around the planet. Damaris cocked her head to the side and pointed to a small ridge on the outskirts of the city where homes were clustered tightly together near the shore. "There, I live there I think," she said.

"Would you like me to create a chart, Lady Solae? You may want to upload it to a device and take it with you on your journey," Mia suggested. She sounded like an eerily pleasant automated system or perhaps a recording of a receptionist that was given a script of appropriate words and phrases. The linguist bit the inside of her cheek lightly to keep herself from commenting. Shifting her focus back towards their upcoming mission she nodded.

"Yes, thank you Mia. It would be in our best interest to take something that we can upload data to since we won't be able to easily contact you. Can you do an inventory search and let me know what would require the least modifications, have the largest storage, be moderately resilient to moisture, and have a sufficiently long battery?"

"Of course, Lady Solae," Mia replied instantly before falling silent to carry out her task as well as afford her human counterparts a chance to converse. Rene and Solae had gotten used to having the company of a sentient machine but Damaris had not; she found the concept novel, fascinating even, but it was hard to trust a disembodied voice guided by foreign algorithms and with no facial expressions to interpret. 

"Is there something else you need from my home?" the girl asked with a slight quiver in her voice.

"No, we're just taking you to your home, I promise. Since we'll be in town, though, I thought I'd try to find some information on how Sir Rene's family is doing. He had to work very far away from them and they haven't keep in contact. We want to see if they are safe, if they moved, if they are doing well before we see them. It's very hard to be apart from your family, isn't it?" she asked rhetorically with a soft pat on the head. Her heart ached all that much more for her recently deceased parents. Perhaps a week had passed since they were brutally murdered and instead of mourning them like a dutiful daughter she was trying to forget them while she kept her mind occupied and hands busy. Reuniting another group of relatives was all she could think could possibly be penance for such a transgression.