The princess's dating diaries (Part 1)

Emely grimaced as she finished adjusting her outfit over her bump. She understood totally why Meli had insisted she go first on their round of dates with Jaisyl; she was the most likely to disagree, and if she disagreed then there was no point in any of the rest of them spending time with the princess… that didn’t make it any more annoying that she was having to leave her perfectly good nest.

It was a few days after Dustin and Jaisyl had gone for their walk in the gardens, enough time for Meli to put together a full schedule and still over a full week’s travel from their next major stopping point. In that time, Emely had migrated her bundle of blankets, pillows and other soft things from the ready room into a corner of the bed chamber, allowing the redhead to wake in the morning from wherever she’d ended up, wolf down whatever Naera prepared for breakfast and then return her nest to work.

Now, however, she had to go outside. She knew that her sir was outside, and so she should have wanted to be there, but Feliax instincts were getting stronger the closer her time got. Quite a large part of her wanted to just burrow back into her pile of blankets, but she’d agreed to this, so…

The door slid open as she was deliberating, and Jaisyl stepped in, holding a basket. Emely blinked. Jaisyl blinked. Then the princess rather pointedly turned and faced the wall. “Please put some jeans or leggings or something on, Emely. This is not that kind of date.”

Emely blushed despite herself. Clearly, she’d taken longer than she intended, lost in her thoughts, and she hurried to finish dressing. Once she’d managed, she coughed to get Jaisyl’s attention. “So umm… what are we doing?”

Jaisyl lifted the basket. “I spoke with Bleu to see what would be alright to do with your…” she gestured towards Emely’s bump before continuing “…and she said you’d been nesting a little earlier than she expected and that I should probably expect to do something simple. So I prepared this. I’ve got some embroidery, and some snacks, and I thought we could sit and talk and just… why are you frowning?”

The Feliax woman shook her head. “If I’d known we were having a picnic, I wouldn’t have gotten dressed. C’mon, I’m going back to my nest and you can post me in biscuits or whatever you’ve got in there.”

Defia frowned as she considered her appearance in the mirror. It wasn’t technically necessary to use the reflection, she had a perfect understanding of her form and her outfit in three-dimensional space, but she knew the rest of the crew would use a mirror and so she’d taken to doing the same in order to understand them better. At the moment, she was mostly concerned about her hair.

Emely had been on her date with Jaisyl the previous evening, and by all accounts it had gone well; the pair had apparently sat and talked for the entire time along with consuming a truly impressive amount of snacks. According to Emely, she’d spent the evening burrowed into her nest in the bedroom and had imperiously sent the princess down to the galley twice to replenish the hamper of food they’d split between them. Given Jaisyl had done so willingly, it looked like Defia would need to revise her planned approach to her own date.

Originally, she’d intended to go for an austere look to try and put the woman off. Out of everyone, she was the most capable of making someone feel uncomfortable just by her appearance, but if the princess was actually trying… Frowning, she focussed, her hair shifting back from spiky tendrils to it’s normal form. Idly, she wondered what Jaisyl would try and do to win her over; given she’d spoken with Bleu about Emely, the rogue Fractal thought it likely that the princess would have sought advice on how to best approach that evening’s activities.

Deciding she’d gotten her appearance where she wanted it, Defia picked up her portable painting set in case they were going somewhere that she could use it. That way, even if the date itself was a disaster, she’d at least be able to make good use of the time. With it in hand, she turned and left her quarters.

Jaisyl was stood waiting for her at the end of the corridor, looking rather nervous and holding a sketchbook. “Defia… if you’re ready, I thought we could spend some time on the observation deck? We drop out of the weave in about a half hour, and apparently our route takes us past a set of gas giants that should be interesting subjects to make art of, if that’s okay?”

Defia felt she should frown, but suppressed the process before her attempts at humanizing herself could move her facial features. She hadn’t expected the usually standoffish princess to put that much thought into their date.

Sammie lounged against the wall outside Jaisyl’s quarters. She’d handed the controls over to one of her juniors for the weave flight at Dustin and Rye’s personal request; honestly, she’d far rather have been the one to complete all the hops to the distant mystery star, but with both of them asking she’d had to agree that some downtime would be appropriate. And since that was the case, she hadn’t really been left with any good reason to refuse to have her date with Jaisyl now as the ship skimmed through the weave, the day after the princess had gone out with Defia.

Given Jaisyl had pre-empted both Defia and Emely’s plans, Sammie had made a point of getting there early. She was going to be the one deciding where they went. Specifically, she was planning on dragging the princess to the nearest room with a holoprojector to watch a classic grav-ball game. With hot-dogs and soda. If her royal stuck-upishness could handle that, then they could spend the rest of the time lounging around talking about whatever Jaisyl thought appropriate.

The door opened, and Jaisyl emerged, dressed in a surprisingly casual top and jeans. “I thought you would probably want to do something other than just sitting around, so I picked fairly hard wearing clothes. What’s the plan?”

A little over two hours later, Sammie tossed Jaisyl another hotdog. To her continued surprise, the Tho’unn caught it without any apparent effort, just like she’d done with the last three. “Honestly, princess, I dunno where you put those. One’s usually more than enough for me,” Sammie said as she returned to her seat.

“’S good. Dunno either, but hurry up and un-pause the recording. Mars are ahead but I think they’re gonna lose in the second half,” the princess replied. As she dropped into her seat and thumbed the button to resume playback, Sammie shook her head. She’d expected to only watch one game, but as soon as it ended Jaisyl had asked if there were any other matches they could watch. Before she could change her mind, the pilot had loaded up one of her favourites - a championship match between Mars and one of the Earth orbitals, back in the early days of the game… and now they were both sitting on the edge of their seats, even though Sammie already knew the final score.

Jaisyl spat a mouthful of hotdog all over the back of the seat in front of them as the Martian player lost the ball in the final minute in their half of the arena. The score was tied, the ball was in the Orbital’s hands in a dangerous area, and there were seconds left… and then just as Sammie knew it would, one of the Martian players jumped. The ball was intercepted and spiked down the arena, another Martian player lunging after it as the Orbital team spun and… the recording’s audio broke down as the crowd went wild at the Martian team’s seemingly impossible score right as the final buzzer went.

“That was incredible!” Jaisyl yelled in Sammie’s ear, the princess forgetting all decorum as she grabbed the other woman’s shoulders with ketchup-stained fingers. “How did that go in? What happened next year? How many more of these games do you have recordings of?”

As she queued up another match that would see them to the end of their date night, making idle conversation with Jaisyl while the projectors reset and the princess topped up their drinks, Sammie mused that maybe her royal highness could fit in with the rest of them after all.