no_thief | (no subject)

Felix offers a tiny smile. "Nope," he says. "It happens all the time here. You'll want to see it, it's a -- "

The whole time he's been talking, the sound's been building, no longer so low or so distant anymore. Right before he can tell her what it is, the noise peaks, and --

Whoosh.

The branches of the taller trees ripple a bit as a Colonial Raptor passes overhead.

Kaya gasps, and flinches back involuntarily -- but her eyes are wide with something else in addition to the flash of fear, and she doesn't back away.

"What was that?"

"It's a Raptor." He can't help but grin. "They're part of the Colonial Fleet, they're, um -- "

Ordinarily, here is where he'd spout off a long list of facts about both the Fleet and Raptors themselves. In the interest of simplifying it for Kaya, though, Felix restrains himself. "They're a type of machine they use to fly between planets and other ships that're up in orbit. We're really close to Fleet Headquarters, so they come through here a lot."

Usually not quite that close, though. The Raptor crossed about a hundred feet up; Felix is more used to that number being significantly higher.

She steps forward; unconsciously, she reaches out and touches the windowglass with the tips of her fingers.

"A machine that flies," she breathes, in wonder and disbelief. "How does it do that?"

"Um -- "

Okay. He was good the first time. There's only so long Felix can keep his natural impulses in check.

So what follows is an earnest -- and, to Kaya, entirely incomprehensible -- flood of information about the basics of Raptor flight. It's going to segue into spaceflight soon enough if she doesn't stop him.

She's listening, and trying to understand, and her face is increasingly blank.

When he pauses for breath, she says "And you said they ... fly between planets?"

He corrected her before, when she said stars.

"Yeah," he says with a nod. "Raptors're mostly for flying to other ships, like battlestars, but they can go planet to planet if they want. And we've got different kinds of ships that just do nothing but planet-to-planet stuff."

The word battlestar makes her shiver, for some reason.

"And they're not magic. Like your, your book."

Felix, by now, no longer gets that small, irritated flare -- the one that felt a little like being caught in a miscommunication and a little more like being talked down to -- that he used to get when he heard the word magic. "Right. There's no magic here. It's all technology."

A beat. The tiny smile, this time, is a little mischievous.

"We could catch the bus down to Fleet Headquarters if you wanna see them up close," he suggests.

Another faintly blank look. "Bus?"

"...I'll explain on the way there."

(That faint dryness to his voice will become very, very well-honed in another seventeen years.)

It's not too far a walk to the bus stop -- five minutes, maybe, and less to put them level with the roadway. Cars and people alike bustle past; Felix makes sure to keep pace with Kaya, uncertain how she'll react to everything.

The cars were terrifying at first; now she sees that they're enclosed carts, that's all, with people inside them. And somehow moving with no horses, and faster than any horse could run -- but she can accept that. The empty cars standing still at the side of the road are unnerving, until she realizes that they won't go without people in them.

The people don't all wear the same kind of clothes that Felix does -- but they're all the same kind of strange, and she's slowly getting used to them, especially after all the kinds of people she's seen at Milliways. They're looking askance at her clothes, though, or maybe she's imagining that.

Picon's a comfortably middle-class colony: not the hub of prestige that marks Caprica, but not a poor and disenfranchised planet like Aerilon, either. Kaya's ragged clothes are just out of place enough to garner a second look; it's the sort of second look that's followed by a shrug and prompt dismissal, though.

Felix doesn't notice any of that for at least a minute. When he finally does, he steps a little closer to Kaya, as if to say, It's okay -- both to her and to the people on the street.

"We're gonna turn left up here," he says as he takes a break from his explanation. Felix points to the corner just ahead.

She nods.

"Everybody's so rich here," she mutters uneasily, just barely above a whisper.

"We're -- "

He intends to finish that sentence with not that rich, but it's cut off by another rising thought: you are to somebody like Kaya.

Confronted with the embarrassment of something he's never thought about before, Felix falls silent, hands finding his pockets again.

It's not the wealth that's striking her, really; it's the ubiquity of it. There don't seem to be any poor people at all.

Maybe they're just somewhere else.

"So when the bus gets here," she says, going back to where the explanation left off. "How do we make it stop?"

Relieved, Felix jumps back on topic. "It'll stop automatically," he says. "Unless it's too full to take anybody else -- then we've just gotta wait for the next one. All we have to do is stand under the sign that says it's a bus stop and -- "

Abruptly, he stops in his tracks.

"What?"

Her eyes jump from his face to the direction he was looking, to behind them, before coming back to him.

"What is it?"

"Did you hear that?"

He's got his head tilted to one side as he frowns, slightly.

A moment's silence.

There's a lot of unfamiliar noise: the cars going by, a distant humming like insects but not insects, other sounds that sound familiar but she's not sure they're what she thinks --

"Hear what," she asks, a little grudgingly.

"I thought I heard..." Felix trails off again, still poised and listening, before he turns to a line of cars parked on the side of the road.

Squeak. Squeak-squeak.

"That!" he hisses.

This time she hears it, and frowns.

In a whisper: "Is that an animal? It sounds like...."

It sounds like a very young animal.

"I don't know," he whispers back.

Squeeeeak.

Whatever it is, though, it sounds like it's coming from underneath a car just ahead of them. Felix begins to drift that way, mumbling a quick, "'Scuse me," as he crosses paths with another pedestrian; once he's there, he wipes off his hands on his knees, squats down, then realizes that's not going to work and rocks forward to kneel on the curb.

Kaya, meanwhile, glances around warily -- once -- and then crouches next to him.

"Do you see it?"

Felix practically has to turn his entire head upside-down, curls of hair threatening to dangle in the gutter, to get a good look under the car. What he sees isn't anything definitive: just a clear straight line of light divided in two by some kind of small, blobby shadow.

The shadow shifts. A car goes by, erasing the line of light for a split-second; Felix frowns, trying to scoot a little closer.

"I think so," he says --

And then he jumps back in surprise as two pairs of small, amber eyes reappear inches from his face, both of them blinking curiously.