Much had happened since Elias had found his fate intertwined with the China doll. He had gotten to know some of the crew, but the obvious communication barrier made this a slow and difficult practice. It was hard to establish trust when you needed a minute to exchange just a sentence. Still, at the very least he found that he wasn't catching sideways glances to make sure he wasn't doing anything afoul of the crew anymore. 

His speech wasn't the only part of the estrangement from the crew. It was always so that people Elias came across either mentally slotted him into a gentle giant or a vicious goliath, with almost no room for anything in between these two extremes. Though they weren't at all rude about it, the impression the man got was that he was received as being somewhere along the lines of the latter. He didn't very much care for this, but he also understood it was on him to dispel this. In retrospect, he supposed he hadn't done that much to try and get a more reasonable interpretation of himself. He had spent a considerable amount of time on what he considered 'his job', tending to this and that within the ship's machinery. Much of his interaction with the crew was simply nodding to them as he walked by things upon the vessel and marked down information upon a clipboard. At the same time for whole days he wouldn't meet the rest of the crew, busy with his own devices. Socialization being difficult to say the least, he spent most of his free time alone. If and when someone came by to check up on him, he'd be lifting random objects in lieu of proper gym equipment, reading whatever books he could scrounge, or simply staring at walls and ceilings. He didn't want the others to see his personal projects, not while they weren't done and could be the subject of non-negligible embarrassment. There were many knick-knacks he was trying to make, but of course the most difficult was the fortepiano he was working on. The instrument was a rare luxury he greatly missed, and the half-finished one he had left behind when fleeing together with the religious folk was all the more painful to be gone. 

But now that was all behind. In fact, they would be making planetfall soon. He hadn't been with the crew enough to yet feel comfortable asking the Captain for anything resembling payment to spend down on Pelorum. But he also had a habit of finding ways to make money. Maybe a quick fight in some idiot's ring, maybe a trip to an antique shop and fixing up an old clock for a geezer to double the value of the device and gain the split difference as a payday. 

There was also the other matter. Slavery was not nice, and as much as Elias wanted to distance himself from the family he felt betrayed him, taking advantage of the blood relation to ensure he didn't succumb to such things again wasn't а negative. He absolutely needed to head to a bank to see if his accounts were still active. All these thoughts ran through his head quite fast as he sat on a box with his hands clasped together, staring at the blast-door of the cargo bay. Envy went through the man as his peripheral vision caught the university kids. School was the best damn time of his life. It all went downhill from there. He couldn't go on the beach with these little shits. In fact there was very little he could enjoy. His eyebrows narrowed ever so slightly as his mood soured. Well, maybe at least he could listen to some fine tunes. Surely there'd have to be some bastard that could do a good syncopation on a world like this.