Blue propped herself up on her elbows, looking around with interest. "How did you manage to land such a sweet gig while the rest of us are being run ragged?"
One side of Kira's mouth tilted up lazily. "You too can have this. All you need to do is go a thousand rounds with about a million drones."
Blue grimaced. "No, thanks."
Kira snickered, not blaming Blue. Kira would rather have bowed out too.
"Training is that rough?" Kira asked.
Blue groaned, flopping to the shingle. "I don't know who is worse. Wren or Maida. They're relentless."
Blue popped up, her gaze wide and indignant. "Last night, I fell asleep in the middle of reconstructing a grav hook. Me! I never do that."
Kira couldn't help the chuckle. "Are they worse than me?"
Blue looked away, grumbling. "That was different. You were trying to prepare me for war in the event I ended up in the thick of things."
Kira arched an eyebrow wryly. "If you're better for the experience afterward, I'd say the momentary discomfort is worth it."
Blue's agreement was grudging as she sat up, wrapping her arms around her legs and looking out at sea. Distance crept into Blue's gaze as silence fell between them.
Kira waited patiently, figuring Blue would reveal the reason she'd sought Kira out eventually.
Kira was content to let the simple peace of lying there fill her. This was nice. She didn't often let herself exist in the moment, and she found it more restorative than a thousand treatments with Quillon.
"This place is interesting, isn't it?" Blue asked, pulling Kira out of the beginnings of her doze.
"How so?"
Blue considered it. "Their technology outstrips ours in a way I can barely fathom. In many ways, it's so advanced it resembles magic."
"That's not new," Kira pointed out. "The Haldeel are like that too."
Blue nodded. "You're right. Yet unlike the Haldeel, their society shares similarities to a feudal one with a warrior class and an almost military-like hierarchy. One might even say an oshota's duties resembles that of the knights of medieval Europe or the samurai of feudal Japan. The Overlords only answer to the emperor, and I'm not even sure he controls them."
Blue paused, her expression puzzled as she considered the different implications of such a conclusion.
Kira let her think. This was how Blue worked. She bounced her ideas off others, learning and adjusting based on their responses. Once, she'd done this regularly with Kira every time she had a problem she couldn't solve.
It was nostalgic being in this position again.
"Each House exists within an intricate network of alliances and grudges. The very fact that they have no homogeneous identity should make them chaotic and disorganized, almost unheard of in a society as advanced as theirs obviously is," Blue continued.
Kira suspected she could guess why. Graydon's revelation in the Hall of Ancestors provided answers Blue had no way of obtaining from her position as an outsider. Unfortunately, Kira couldn't give them to her, not until she understood for herself the full ramifications such knowledge would have.
"Then there's humanity's history," Blue trailed off.
"What are you talking about?"
"Myth and legend have long been how humans made sense of the world," Blue pondered. "Most are nonsense, their origins lost in history, but where there is fiction there is often a seed of truth hidden within. When you take these stories and then see certain patterns emerge across many cultures who would have had no opportunity to interact, it makes you question certain things."
Kira tried to follow what Blue was saying. "You're going to have to break this down, because I'm not following."
"What if the reason humans have so many different stories about strange, mythological creatures is because the inspiration for those creatures once visited Earth."
Kira sent her an unconvinced look. "You think the Tuann visited ancient Earth."
Blue’s excitement brimmed in her expression. "Why not? They have the technology for it. In Germanic mythology, elves were said to have pathways to other worlds. We’ve seen something very like that already. Who is to say the Tuann never used their world gates to visit? It would explain why we've seen human symbols here and why they're so dismissive of us as a race."
