insertmeathere | Ickle Meatships!

What's this? Why yes, there's a little Kaylee here, with spaceship-legos and the little booklets that show how to build cars and spaceships spread out all around her. She's not following any particular model, more taking the finer points of each and putting them together into one snazzy working model.

"Ooh, nice," says tiny Lyle. He's actually not so tiny--he's one of those kids who grew all the way UP before growing out.

"I haven't seen any spaceships like these before." And he's kneeling down with her, putting things together, trying to make an absurdly fast one.

Oh, good, someone to play with!! Kaylee grins waaaay up--he's ta-all--and pushes some legos closer to him.

"The designs they got are no good if you just use that one..." She holds up her half-finished model. "But if you take the thrusters from that one, and the engine pieces from that one, it'll all work loads better."

"Yeah, theirs are pretty boring."

Hold on while he sees how many thrusters he can stick on a single craft. It's some sort of octopus-ship.

She doesn't really know what the ship he's making is supposed to look like, but she leans in closer to get a better look at it. Eventually, Kaylee just shakes her head. "If you got all the power goin' there you're gonna need somethin' bigger to run it."

He grins. "So I'll invent a better engine."

One that explodes!

A better engine? She likes that idea. "What're you gonna call it? Might be able to pull it off with a compression block, if you could get 'nough power through it."

"Call it?"

Lyle was never good at names.

"How about the Awesome Engine?"

Oh, she likes that name. It fits perfectly! "Good one!"

"Is that a shuttle class with ablative plating?" Comes a voice from a respectful distance away belonging to little Lafiel (http://i49.tinypic.com/5dvwd1.png). She's very interested but also polite enough to not invade others' personal space.

Kaylee shakes her head, a moves so the other girl has decent access the legos as well. "I haven't figured out how to make it yet, but it's real tough, so it'll take more'n some bullets to pierce these!"

Little Jamie wanders over to peer at the spaceship legos with interest. He's still wearing his kilt, although it looks it could do with a wash. Come to think about it, so could Jamie. He looks like he's just gotten back from having a grand old time in a mudpuddle.

"What's that?"

Mudpuddles are fine, well, and good, but they don't smell as good as the grease in her daddy's shop. Still, Kaylee doesn't seem to mind the mud covering the approaching boy at all.

"It's a ship!" she replies simply. It's an obvious answer, after all. "Gonna be the best ship in the whooole 'verse!"

"That's not a ship," Jamie says, sounding rather skeptical about the whole thing. "There's no sails, or oars or anything like that."

There's a pause - and then he asks, "What's a 'verse?"

"Of course it's a ship. It's a spaceship!" She looks up at him, confused. "What kinda ship are you talking about??"

Does this kid live one some forgotten Border planet? "A 'verse is everything. Space 'n the planets, and all of it."

"Why, a ship ye sail on the ocean, of course!" He looks at Kaylee with an utterly baffled expression on his face as she talks about 'spaceships' and 'planets'.

After a moment, he frowns and asks, "Are ye feeling ill? I could go see if there's some leeches if ye are." Maybe she's running a fever and that's why she's talking nonsense. Being bled should help with that.

"Ain't a body sails the ocean anymore." She's more curious than anything. Maybe he just reads too many story books.

Her nose scrunches up at the idea of leeches. "What're leeches s'posed to do? 'M feelin' shiny, 'sides."

Jamie frowns a little more as he tries to figure out if she's making fun of him or not. "People sail the ocean all the time. Old Hamish used to be a sailor before he lost his leg, and he tells us stories. And I've seen a ship, too. A big one!" He holds his arms out to demonstrate just how big, before puffing up importantly. He knows alllll about leeches, after all, and is more than happy to share with Kaylee.

"Why, ye use leeches for letting the bad humours out. Ye put them on your skin and let them sit there until they get all fat and bloated, and then they fall off. Old Hamish had a great fever when he was hurt, and when they cut the leg off they put leeches on, and he didna die."

He pauses in his description of leeches to peer at her confusedly. "How can ye feel shiny? Ye can look shiny, if ye have a lot of metal on and you're outside. But feel?"

"No, people live over the ocean, maybe, but that's only on the Central Planets."

Jamie sounds like he could possibly come from the Central Planets, though. Especially with the idea of leeches. That sounded like something the Alliance would try and pull on people. "You're 'Liance, ain't ya?"

She crosses her arms, and gives a little huff. "I can be shiny if I wanna be shiny. It means 'M feelin' good, or nice. You look like you'd be a shiny person, but you ain't covered in metal neither."

He folds his arms against his chest as well. "I'm not 'Liance." Whatever that is. "I'm Scottish." Jamie thinks this should explain everything.

Shiny means feeling good or nice? "I never heard it used that way before." He looks down at his liberally mud-splattered body, and his mouth twitches. There wouldn't be much shining going on now, even if he was covered in metal. He looks back up at Kaylee and grins mischievously. He plucks a rather large chunk of mud off his shirt - it's not completely dry. "We'll see about being shiny," he says - and promptly tries to stuff the mud down Kaylee's shirt.

"'Liance could be anybody, even Scottish." He doesn't seem to know what it is, though, so she'll drop it. For now.

Really, not many of the kids in the room look shiny in the clean sense of things, but Jamie's definitely the muddiest she's seen so far. Until he goes about trying to mud her, that is. "Aaaah!" She laughs, and wiggles in an attempt to get away from the mud. No such luck, and she can feel it squishing down her shirt. "No fair, I ain't got any to get back on you!"

Tickling's the next best approach. Oh, she'll show him, alright!

Jamie looks almost unbearably smug for a moment. "Not so shiny now, are ye?" And then Kaylee plays dirty, so to speak.

"H-hey! That's not going to work!" Still, he's squirming a little. Hard to say, though if it's because it's a girl, or if it's because he is ticklish and she's getting close to a sensitive spot.

Typical boy, always think they have the upper hand. "Still plenty shiny!" She's not the one covered in mud, after all.

But she's got him beat already when it comes to tickling, and (as carefully as a kid can) knocks him over to pin him while she's tickling. "I dunno, seems to be workin'!"

Well, if Kaylee keeps this up, she'll be covered in mud too. Especially since Jamie (even when little) is pretty darn agile and doing his level best to squirm free. The mud does help there.

She's got him pinned pretty good, though, and if she wasn't a girl, he wouldn't be above resorting to fists to try and help get him out of it. Fortunately for Kaylee, Jamie can't hit a girl. Instead, he tries to turn the tables on her by tickling back.

"We'll see about that!"

If Kaylee cares at all about the mud she isn't showing it. In fact, the dirtier she is, the happier she seems to be.

The tickling back, though. She can't really pin his hands and tickle him at the same time, now can she? "Nooo you're s'posed to hold still!" she blurts out, before falling sideways off of him in a fit of giggles.

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