Aleph thought she might have been used to the wonders of living on an alien ship that could skim to the very edges of the speed of light.

She thought she had become accustomed to the wonders of Pylo and Tunie. It had been over a year by her reckoning since they left terra and although nothing was ever mundane it had become a kind of familiar assortment of wonders.

Simply going over the manifests of Tunie’s various holds and peering at the strange objects they designated had once been a life changing marvel. Talking with the ship for the first time had been an accomplishment that set her above anyone she had ever met in Terra. But she thought she was becoming accustomed to the wonders of her new life.

There were surprises of course still. There was the hazy and distorted recollections of their first outing to Redweed. And then the much calmer and more reserved outing with Pylo as chaperone that she could actually coherently remember in the right order.

But she thought she was prepared for her life to fit a pattern. She thought she was coming to know the shape of it and ready for its strangeness to become a new normal.

The addition of El’sie as a stumbling teacher and lecturer, the dynamics of Pylo and Omega, Quarti actually turning out ot be useful if still a bit of an insufferable teasing old witch from before recorded history.

Tunie a giant puppy full of joy the size of a mountain!

Oh and she was almost forgetting von Squidgie worth!

Who was currently clinging to her in a tight hug that she could not say precisely was from her trying to comfort for the tragedy that they just witnessed or her clinging tightly to something she knew as she watched the impossible unfold before her.

The other clerk child, who she did not know the name of nor could she hope to recognize with most of them splattered like that was coming back together.

There were light distortions and her symbiotes ached if she focused on the scythe like loop of the ‘brushie’ as it was angled and shifted in El’sie’s grasp. Pylo had come barreling into the place fuming and coiled up tight like she was going to burst into tears again.

But Aleph had yelled some sense into her. And now they were both watching as El’sie worked.

It had started with just a constant flickering pulsing, the explosive splatter playing out over and over and over again as if El’sie was rewinding a flickering second, letting it stutter forward, then cycling it back again. Then all activity had momentarily halted. At first Aleph thought the clerk was frozen, but slowly she began to spot the slight shine of minute threads in the light of the brushie.

After she noticed the first few then it seemed that countless more individual threads of blood and skin and bone and things Aleph did not even know the name for began to slowly started to shine and weave like rope around each other.

It reminded her a bit of knitting.

She had mostly learned to knit from Omega. it was one of the things she was drilled on, there were systems and designs of simple computer processes onboard the berths that could be programmed with simple loops of wire. Knitting was a vital maintenance skill for if they ever had to fall back onto such a robust backup.

But it was also useful to be able to make a scarf or socks or what have you out of the fibres grown by some of their plants.

At the very least it was good for maintaining her sweaters.

Still she shivered, this was like watching the flesh, blood and viscera of a person be knitted and woven together. Or like they were being gently unraveled in reverse?

Pylo was scowling a little bit at it but Aleph was not entirely sure why.

“So, that’s the Brushie you use on Tunie? The thing that um, rearranges all of her uh... “ she floundered for a good way to describe Tunie’s various ways to describe the operation of her own feathers.

“The atoms in her feathers, the fibers of her tines and the delicate filigrees of her coiled loops of energy. The self reinforcing resonant lattice of her limbs stored full and rich in potencies so as to outmass every scrap of cargo and her entire skeleton besides. The intricate prismatic mandala which further bonds and sustains them yes. I groom and hone and restore my dear Tunie’s feathers with the most delicate of breaths and sweetest of whispers with it”

It was honestly a chaste and almost clinical description compared to some of the ways Pylo still talked about Tunie. If Aleph had not gotten the frankly adorable gushing and delight that Tunie spoke of Pylo from the other side of this relationship she would have suspected something a bit untoward was being done to the ship.

“It is an instrument of one of my and Tunie’s favorite recreations between trips. It helps to keep her healthy and fit. It was naturally very, Very, VERY EXPENSIVE! and ▙◀ is using it for something I did NOT pay to have it able to do!”

Aleph blinked and looked back at where almost half of the Clerk had been reformed and was twitching occasionally. It honestly looked like they were still a corpse, just one that had not realized it was dead. But compared to the bloody smear that had been there before it was an incredible improvement.

El’sie’s various components had opened up all over, with doors and passages, there was a feint deep red glow coming from within obscured by occasional bursts of white smoke or steam.

“I don’t think they are going to break it Pylo...”

Pylo snapped her face back at Aleph sneering towards a full snarl, then there was a tremble running up and down the siren’s body before the expression went slack and the whole posture turned tired.

“You don’t know what churns within as well as I do Aleph, there is much that goes into ▙◀’s thoughts that have little to nothing to do with the kindly way she has treated with you and the others. There are lurking forms within and behind and before those thoughts which could utterly invert every nicety she has enacted upon you and yours”

She huffed and great steamy clouds burst from all along Pylo’s sides.

Aleph could not hear it insulated as she was in the walker’s bubble but she remembered the chug and the deep vibration in her bones. When Pylo huffed in an atmosphere Aleph knew she sounded like a locomotive.

She also knew the venting was hot and steamy and smelled of sharp and sweet mysteries that clashed with the almost sizzling metallic scent that clung to Pylo from the near vacuum that filled most of Tunie.

The Clerk was two thirds of the way reconstructed and one of El’sie’s limbs was now gently clasped over them and pinning them in place so that their random spasming and writhing did not move them away from the rethreading of their flesh.

“And even with them yearning to give you niceness and friendship Aleph there are cracks in that. The term they used, the words they chose to explain the concept to you? They call them standard persons. They did not see anything wrong with associating that concept with morality, with your own beliefs in the very essence of good and consideration. With the foundations of your own belief in what is precious and should be protected”

Aleph blinked a bit and looked down at Squidgie. Who was watching their fellow Clerk be reconstructed with rapt attention in their single eye, although at her glance the eye rolled up to Aleph.

“Miss Pylo is the expert in these matters... Translation and conveyance, Sirens especially of House Courtesan are known to speak nearly every language of the reef. It is said their elders speak even to gods! I however am still uncertain the nature of my own mistakes...”

She turned back to Pylo who was, sombre. Her expression was strained in a way Aleph had never seen before. Pained and also somehow apathetic.

“I don’t think I fully understand why you are so upset over that still”

Pylo sighed heavily and gave her neck and shoulders a little twist.

“▙◀ took a tool meant to be used to help weigh the might of polity and empires against each other. The measure of utility and capacity to produce, defend and innovate. They took this concept which is comparable to how many weapons or factories one of your little neighborhoods on Terra might menace another with. They took this and told you to treat those factories and weapons like they were people who could suffer in anguish, Like they would feel pain when they do not.”

Aleph frowned. That seemed not really at all like what Von Squidgie had explained.

“Not just that, but ultimately it is meant to denote interchangeability or even preferential REPLACEMENT. It’s an ugly thing when others use meanings or worse yet believe meanings like that.”

There was so much pain in Pylo’s voice there that she thought the siren was going to start sobbing gooey tears again like when Omega told the story of the mountain.

“Living by only that concept... ▙◀ would trade your life for a stupid squawker box if it could perform with enough innovation. Nevermind how much torturing you would be needed to-”

“i ApOloGiZe fOr InTeRruPTION tO oUr DiScUssIon. pLeAsE cEaSe bEiNg sO uNfAiR wItH mY pErSpeCtive to tHe yOuNg tErRaN”

El’sie was suddenly there before them, they walked kind of out of sync with themselves. Bits shuddering and flopping in ways that seemed unhealthy. Most of the opened panels were flopping about and still puffing with white jets of steam. It put Aleph in mind of when Omega or her was frazzled and their hair went everywhere.

The clerk that had been nothing but jelly smeared across the floor a few minutes ago was whole and healthy. If a little bit wobbly. A glance at them and then von Squidgie saw her assistant/adopted child/employee rushing off to do her bidding?

Aleph frowned and was not sure what she should think of that. Either way she trusted that the recovered once ex-clerk would be checked over now and tended too for the trauma.

Pylo had a very grumpy face.

But El’sie looked like they were about to fall apart.

“El’Sie are you alright? You look ... really bad”

“pRoCeSsInG sUbStRaTes oVerLoADED. eConOmic cR-r-Rash in pR-pr-Progress... pRioritiZzzzzing rEpAiR a-a-and ERROR coReCtiOn oVeR nOnE-vItAl sUpLemeNtary Pr-pr-pr-pRotoCals!”

Aleph looked between Pylo and El’sie.

“I think probably we should have this discussion after they have a chance to recover?”

Pylo snorted but turned away and started crawling/slithering away.

El’Sie jerked a few times then did something that probably was going to be a nod to Aleph. However it only got through a few jerks of it before promptly just collapsing under the strain of Tunie's 'gravity' in a heap.

The only sign it was even still alive was status updates on the erratically glitching screen and the semi regular puffing of white vapor.

Aleph let out a long breath and stared up at the ‘ceiling’ and finally let what she just saw fully sink in.

By any measure of Terran medicine that Clerk had been completely deceased.

No soul could have stayed rooted in such a ruined body.

And clerks didn't even HAVE souls.

She tried to comprehend that.

The clerk had been... destroyed, like a book smashed and smeared. The contents of it lost forever? No memory carried over to be reborn? No self to persist beyond the loss of the body?

She shuddered and felt tears welling up in her eye.

That clerk had been utterly gone far as either her, Omega or even Quarti could have reasoned and then El’sie had brought them back.

Better than reincarnation probably.

“Miss Aleph?”

Von Squidgie turned up at her tears landing on their skin. She sobbed and squeezed them tighter in a hug.

A pattering of tiny hands gently patted and rubbed her back and shoulder.

“There there miss Aleph. don’t worry the young go-fer is fine and fair! They just are a bit confused about what happened in the last shift! Barely any damage at all! Miss El'sie was very careful!”

She could not bring herself to do more then shudder and just squeeze harder.