Bounding. Bouncing. 

Tons of metal should not feel so light, but the road works many miracles.

[i]Sunlit Brook[/i] is not designed for combat. Its engineering is heavy-duty because everything in space is heavy-duty. Truth be told, it should not exist in the dread dangers of space, but the road works many miracles. A ship’s mighty prow cleaves through stardust and spacestuff like a bullet. Sit behind it, and, no, yes, you would be roasted by the engines, but please think of a bullet for a moment. Sit behind it, and the world would be still. But it’s not just here. Along the edges of the craft, in the wake of the ship’s prow, there is a narrow band of stillness.

The plovers that live here are short, squat, compact. Powerful legs designed to leap distances, not heights. Never heights. Jets above deny the void. Jets below deny the ricochet. Arms end in fingers more clever than those meant to hold spears. These are the helpers. The scurriers. The carriers of supplies. The cleaners of ship-wounds, before others cauterize them. They flit about the edges of the ship, bouncing to and fro, painted in a swirl of artificial, angular color, meant to stand out against hull and void alike. At their speeds, others must see them coming long before there is a risk of collision.

Here, on the ground, Dolce’s packs are filled with supplies to feed and keep the crew, and not their plovers. He has no need of the upper jets, and diverts all power to the lower, landing so softly he hardly leaves a crater. He wastes not a speck of momentum as he tumbles, bounds, bounces along the trail, as if carried along by a heavenly wind.