of course we have blue hair and pronouns

L watches Seren fiddle with their hoodie strings and sleeves with the patience befitting not a saint but a deity to whom the concept of patience nor comfort has never been introduced.

Xe is fascinated.

"This elastic...it stretches, for to pant and sweat? Dizzy!"

"Well yeah, sort of." Seren smiles. "I guess you've got yourself wrapped up pretty tight."

At that, L does a little shimmy, ankles first, to prove the flexibility that both ci and cir pants possess. Seren doesn't go so far as to stand up and join cim, but they wave their hands companionably.

It was definitely not a joycruise to confront Regina, however inadvertently, about the loss of her husband - the most awkward of unwinnably scripted social encounters. But now, with sufficient survey of Oblivia handily completed, Seren is thrilled to be able to hang out here with L rather than in the sterile BLADE Barracks with the most mystifyingly uncomfortable couches.

Too, Giogion as a coworker is nothing short of hilarious, given their mutual boss.

"If I were any smaller, I could be the little angel on your shoulder," Seren muses. "I'm only in the female body because it's the closest they could get, anyway."

"You must deal with the cards in play, indeed..."

Sooner or later, Seren will get a handle on their whole gripe with mimeosomes and how they're treating her sensory inputs and outputs, and be able to talk about other things he thinks besides what the humans call gender dysphoria and what this star calls body wrong.

But that's later, and this is sooner. They compromise by throwing up devil horns with index fingers on either side of their head.

"Look at you, L! You've got a shake in the making, for sure."

"A milkshake? Why, that sounds delightful!"

"Ugh, I wish! With fries...but I shouldn't, no matter how miranium-rich I am. Say, speaking of fries and drinks," Seren pointed with an imaginary cookies 'n' cream-laden stick of potato, "I wanted to tell you, Frye's skill with tension points goes crazy - he's always reviving me. Sorry, that's non sequit. Just wanted to say... Oh, yeah. I guess I owe him a drink at this point. Not that I drink."

L is about to point out the glass of water next to Seren's hand when they clarify, "Not that I drink anything with more alcohol than sugar. Rather have space dust than anything else, but... And speaking of basic principles, you remember that bald guy we did that rescue mission with? The one with the tattoo?"

"We recall...quite insistent on us following his methods, despite his newness to Mira and our demonstrable oldness."

"Yeah. That. Listen, he cannot know about my whole star thing, okay? I can only imagine what fresh hells that'll bring."

"Perhaps a musty hell, instead," L observes. "For he is...quite."

"And now I'm thinking about learning about the Miran world. In concept, I mean. BLADE has a division for every kind of fetch quest, but not one dedicated to observing, studying, and classifying the indigenous creatures. Don't you think that's odd?"

L takes Seren's gravity and doubles it, in accordance with cir horrible resistance level. "We are indeed most interested in this. We propose to make our own division - the Grateful Wanderers."

"Huh." Seren leans cheek on fist, intrigued by this. "Why grateful?"

"Because we should much rather be grateful than dead!"

Talk about non sequit. Seren's particular love for loanwords into the English (or whatever it is) that the people of NLA use has had them on many a rabbitholing archival search, and the first result for "non sequitur" has a footnote example: "his weird mixed metaphors and non sequiturs". What a fond sigh they'd released at that.

It's a very pleasant way to spend a day off - not that either Seren or L care very much for Elma's idea of a routine and work-life balance. Seren prefers to work when the working's good, and take on any and every mission accessible to them, without all the preamble. L, meanwhile, is just self-employed.

And what other hobbies are available that aren't work-coded, anyway? BLADE and their fetch quests aside, one could garden, or cook, or learn a sport. Seren, in the mim, is just that slightest bit too heavy to participate in Ma-non balancing competitions. Imagine the mass of a star balanced on the head of a pin...

Seren pulls down their halo and twirls it around their finger, trying and failing to catch L's eye for a ring toss. Maybe if ci stepped just a little bit farther away it could catch on one of cir casual-wear horns. Best not to chance it...aaand L's dancing again.

"L? What's your favorite idiom for two things that go well together?"

"We find," L begins, as ci often does, "that the phrases with the most staying power have an aftertaste like chalky cheese." Ci grins broadly, with all pointed and curved front teeth showing. Seren instinctively grins back, then sets in to nitpick.

"Cheesy?" It's true, chalk and cheese sounds like an assonance-aided winning combination, to them. "Who's cheesy? I'm not cheesy - this is milk!"

"But from which bovine..." L wonders, rather than correct Seren to speak of corn products instead, or otherwise not to refer to milkshakes which are as yet merely twinkles in moonish xenoform eyes - and remember here what the moon is made of. Remember also that if Seren were not born on Centauri, they may well have been born on the cob.

But such punny social grace escapes them: "Uh...maybe you? You've got the horns."

It's L's eyes that dance at that. "We are certainly amused by you, Seren. When would you like to schedule our expedition to ascertain how long to wait until taking a bull home to our china shop?"

"So contrived it sounds like me. But I'm for it! Anytime you're ready, my fine feathered friend."

As always, thought Seren, vim and vigor in vestigial we'll be.