Skidoo turned and stretched. She brushed the tips of her tentacles over the walls as though caressing them. The ship shifted flesh away from over its nerves, left only the thinnest membranes between the nerve and that outside pressure, trying to read patterns in that touch. It seemed as though there was a message, a pattern that built and repeated, echoed and changed. While Skidoo did this, she pulsed water through her mouth, turquoise eyes blinking. The patterns of color on her skin throbbed and shifted rhythmically, sometimes in a way that interacted with the pattern, augmenting or amplifying it.

The ship was unsure what was happening, but the sensation was pleasant. It recorded every detail in order to be able to replay it later as needed. It was, the ship thought, an experience that they would want to repeat more than once.

Lassite was accustomed to silence and solitude. It was his natural habitat. Working in the restaurant was a source of irritation and pain, but he had volunteered to serve as maître d’ in order to make the most of that pain, to embrace it in the name of Becoming.

He had even done what the captain requested, and learned the ways of manners, which were quite like the ways of ritual, except that they were utterly devoid of meaning in any way that really mattered.

But finally they were on the Spiral of Destiny. The past year had been unnecessary irritation, and now it was over. He had not realized that it would end so abruptly and so violently, and he should have known that when he saw the darkness and doom. He mourned the ones left behind, more than he should have. Maybe he had gotten soft.

He opened the bag that held the bulk of his belongings, and then the ghost bag. Its contents squirmed and glowed, contained by the spellwork he’d lined it with. Satisfied, he closed it again.

He circled the inside of his room several times, learning its size, and then shut down all his senses and walked it again and again until he could do so without stumbling or colliding with anything. Once he had memorized its dimensions, he began to do the same with the hallways outside his room, working in a slow outward circle.

The ship, aware of everything happening in its interior, could not help but notice. He was memorizing the ship’s interior, the Thing thought, despite the fact that the ship could change it unexpectedly. Was the creature unaware of that, or did it not care? Was there some other purpose to the mapping? The ship could not think what that might be, but there was something unnerving about the way that the creature moved down the hallways, its hood pulled back to expose its face to the air, its eyes entirely—as far as the ship could tell—closed.