[b]Bella and Redana![/b]

So comes sleep, the brother of death. 

Across the ceiling runs plasma vents, great channels into the heart of the Reactor as they make their way through to the vast drive plume that propels the [i]Plousios [/i]forwards. The flow is uneven, the steady rising and falling of fusion burn as tuned by ever-busy magi. In places along these vents the shutters pull back to reveal transparent windows into the coruscating veins of power, bathing this interior space in artificial sunlight. The shutters open and close automatically in tune with the motion of the engine, creating the impression of clouds passing over the landscape. The gentle change between heat and cool, the steady whirring breath of the distant ventilation macrofans, the changing patterns of light and shade, the soft grass and ever-blossoming trees...

When this ship's keel was laid, so many centuries ago, the builders had memories of springtime afternoons. Of lying on the grass beneath blossoming trees, amidst good company, as the patterns of the clouds shifted and changed overhead. There is something unutterably sad about the way the breeze is stale and the sky is clattering pipes and how the ambient temperature is forty two degrees celcius (pleasantly warm by the standards of bioforms designed to walk on the baking surface of Venus, but somehow not [i]quite [/i]right)...

This beautiful room amidst all the artificiality of this vast, interstellar starship is a memory. A memory of a moment left behind so long ago on ancient Earth, something primal, something true. And despite all the flaws in the work of the builders, all the compromises they had to make with the machines that burn as suns do, with the rainbow distances of Poseidon, some echo of the moment they remembered rises again here. Even if the walls are metal and the ceiling is pipes and the clouds are clattering shutters... spiritually, this moment is right.

And in this guise comes sleep. In and out with each of you, drifting away and then coming back. Conversations happening in half-awake murmurs as important words are said, but will need to be said again, and again. 

Tell us of conversations that might be dreams and dreams that might be conversations in the shadow of this false spring afternoon.