But he wasn't particularly emotional, so there's that.
She brought a bloom over to him. "Look at this. We have plants kind of like this on my world, but they don't smell this good. You have to smell it--" she practically shoved it into his face.
He took the flower and sniffed it. "It does smell nice."
She just wandered around looking at everything. "I didn't realize how much I missed nature. All I need here is a blue sky."
"Your sky is blue?"
She nodded. "Isn't yours?"
"On one of the moons, it is. The others, it varies, depending on the moon."
"You live on moons?"
"Our moons orbit a gas giant."
"Ahh, I see." She smelled a couple more blooms. "I just love this. I may have to come up here and spend time just being in the air. It's so nice they have this space for people to spend time in."
"It is where the oxygen comes from."
She turned. "Wait. This is how you get oxygen for the station?"
"That is why there are so many of them. They are recreational spaces as needed, of course, but their practical purpose is to create the oxygen. The plants were specifically chosen for how well they convert carbon dioxide into oxygen."
"Wow. That's very practical of you."
"I did not design this."
"I mean, the humanoids here, you included."
He nodded.
She paused at a particular leafy green plant and stroked the leaves. The leaves shifted from green to lime to yellow under her touch, and when she let go, they returned to green.
"Wow," she whispered, and blew on the leaf.
It changed to lime again.
"This is amazing."
"Do you spend a lot of time in nature?" he asked.
She stopped playing with the leaf and stepped back over to Kolvin. "My grandparents live on a beach, and I like to walk on that beach whenever I can. The sound of the waves and the smell of the water, all of it is very soothing to me."
"You study the stars, but you are soothed by nature."
She nodded. "I am, I guess. I think I've always been one to look into the stars and wonder what's out there." She glanced at him. "And now I can see what's out there."
"Takes the mystery out of it."
"Yeah, it kind of does."
They continued to walk through the park. There were others around, just walking around. Others were artists. She saw a few people reading over something, whether it was books or news, she didn't know. But the park--whether he considered it a park or not, now was a park as far as she was concerned--had a decent crowd.
People reading...
Hmm.
