The Great Planetside Errand Run

The list-gathering started the night before, the moment word got around that Dani and Nari had actually gotten approved for an overnight trip down to the planet, and by the time the two of them sat down for a quick dinner before their early departure, half the staff had already found some reason to wander by their table with a request.

"Okay, but hear me out," Ivo said, sliding into the booth across from them uninvited, a scrap of paper already in hand. "This isn't that big of a list."

Dani took the paper, unfolded it, and her eyebrows went up somewhere around the third line. "Ivo. This is eleven things."

"They're small things."

"You've got 'the good gummy candy, not the cheap kind' and then two lines later you've written 'a new game console' like that's a normal addition to a candy list."

"They had one on sale last time Milo mentioned it. It's not that expensive."

"It's not on any list I'm carrying through a shuttle terminal," Dani said, handing it back to him. "Cut it down. Give me three things you actually want, and I'll see what I can do."

Ivo heaved the enormous sigh of the persecuted and took the list back, scratching out items with visible reluctance, muttering something about how nobody appreciated ambition, while Sena, passing by with a stack of clean napkins, glanced over his shoulder at the revised version and snorted.

"You just crossed out the candy and kept the console."

"The candy's replaceable. The console isn't."

"The console also isn't happening, so maybe reconsider your priorities," Dani said, not unkindly.

"What's next on there," Sena asked, tilting her head to read upside down. "'A poster of something cool.' Something cool. That's the whole description?"

"I'll know it when I see it," Ivo said, with total confidence.

"That is not how shopping works."

"It's exactly how shopping works, you just don't have vision."

Sena set her napkins down long enough to lean over and tap a line further down the page. "And what's this one. 'Snacks, the good kind, you know which ones.'"

"She does know which ones."

"I do not know which ones," Dani said. "I have never once known which ones, and yet somehow every single time I bring back the wrong snacks and you act personally betrayed."

"Because you know which ones and you're doing it on purpose."

"I promise you I am not that invested in your snack preferences."

Ivo pressed a hand to his chest like she'd wounded him, and kept scratching items out with the air of a man making tremendous personal sacrifices, muttering his way through another round of edits until the list was down to something reasonable — a specific snack he liked that wasn't sold anywhere near the station, a small handheld game he'd been eyeing for months, and, tacked on at the very end in slightly smaller handwriting like he was embarrassed to admit it, *anything cool, your choice.*

"That I can work with," Dani said, tucking the list into her bag.

"You kept the poster idea," Sena observed, reading over her shoulder again.

"I kept the *spirit* of the poster idea," Dani said. "There's a difference."

"There is not."

Sena's own list, by contrast, was short and neatly written on a single card — a specific brand of tea she liked that the station's regular supplier didn't carry, a hairbrush to replace one that had finally given up after years of service, and a small notebook, "the kind with the grid pages, not lines, if they have it."

"You're very organized," Nari said, admiring the tidy handwriting.

"Somebody has to be," Sena said, with a small, dry smile, and went back to her closing tasks, though not before adding, almost as an afterthought, "If you happen to see stationery in general, you can use your judgment. I like nice pens."

"That's suspiciously similar to Dani's list."

"It is not remotely similar to Dani's list," Sena said, already walking away, and Dani, overhearing, made a small triumphant noise like she'd been vindicated by something.

Sol's request came scrawled on the back of a receipt, thrust into Nari's hand sometime around the dinner rush: a particular brand of dish scrubbers that held up better than what they usually got through the supply route, a bag of a specific dried chili she liked to keep in her own personal stash separate from the kitchen's, and, at the very bottom, *socks, the thick kind, mine keep wearing through at the heel and I refuse to pay station markup for basic socks.*

"Socks," Nari read aloud.

"Station markup on basic goods is criminal," Sol said, without looking up from the flattop.

"Don't argue with me about the socks."

"I wasn't going to."

"Good. Because I will fight you about the socks. I have strong feelings about the socks."

"I believe you."

"I'll believe you when there's a bag of them in my hands," Sol said, flipping something with more force than strictly necessary, and Nari decided that was probably as close to gratitude as Sol tended to get before a trip actually paid off.

Chef's request, when Dani finally caught him for a moment between orders, was exactly one item, delivered without any fuss at all. "There's a coffee brand, dark roast, comes in a blue bag. Little shop near the transit district used to carry it, if it's still there. That's all I need."

"That's it? One thing?"

"Don't need more than one thing," Chef said, and went back to his grill.

"You could ask for literally anything," Dani pressed, half-teasing. "New knives. A fancier apron. Something for the kitchen."

"Kitchen's fine the way it is. Get the coffee, that's the whole assignment," Chef said, and Dani found something quietly endearing about the fact that out of the entire staff, the man who fed everyone every single day wanted nothing more than a specific bag of coffee for himself.

Tomas caught them on their way out of the kitchen, holding up a small worn photo of a particular sized wrench. "If you happen to pass a utility-supply shop. Not urgent. Just been meaning to replace this one for a while and never get around to ordering it properly."

"We'll keep an eye out," Nari promised, tucking the photo carefully into her bag alongside everyone else's requests.

"Take a real look at the photo," Tomas added. "The head's a specific size. If they hand you something close-but-not-quite, it won't fit right and I'll just end up making do with the old one anyway, same as always."

"Close-but-not-quite doesn't count. Got it."

And then there was Stirling, who approached the matter with his usual calm precision, presenting Nari with a short, carefully worded note rather than a hastily scrawled list.

"If it is not too much trouble," he said, "I would appreciate archival sleeves, the kind used for preserving paper documents, in a size suitable for small laminated cards. I would also welcome a small divided box, if one can be found, appropriately sized for organizing coasters by category."

"By category?"

"Establishment type, primarily. Some guests give coasters from bars, others from restaurants, occasionally from events. I have been sorting them by hand, but a properly divided container would improve the system considerably."

Nari looked at the note, genuinely charmed by the specificity of it, and thought of the small, careful shelves in his room, the coasters lined up in their rack. "I'll find you the best organizing box this planet has to offer, Stirling. I promise."

"That is very kind. Thank you. I would not want to be a burden on your trip."

"You're the least burdensome person on this list, honestly," Nari said. "You wrote it down in complete sentences."

"I did think that might be appreciated."

"It was. Deeply."

By the time Dani and Nari actually made it to the shuttle dock the next morning, bags packed and boarding passes in hand, they were carrying six different lists between them, a photo of a wrench, and enough good will from the rest of the staff that it felt less like running errands and more like being sent off on an expedition.

"You'd think we were leaving for a month," Nari said, settling into her shuttle seat and pulling out the small notebook where she'd consolidated everyone's requests into one organized page.

"They're just excited somebody's finally going," Dani said, buckling in beside her, practically vibrating with her own excitement. "Trips like this don't come around that often. Everybody wants a piece of it."

"I like that they trust us with their lists."

"Of course they trust us. We're extremely trustworthy," Dani said, grinning, as the shuttle's engines began their low, building hum beneath them. "Well. I'm extremely trustworthy. You're new, so you're still on probation."

"I've been here almost a month."

"Exactly. Practically a rookie." Dani laughed, and the shuttle eased away from the docking clamp, the station falling away behind them through the small viewport, its lights receding into the scattered field of stars.

"So what's the actual plan," Nari asked, once the shuttle had settled into its cruise and the seatbelt light had blinked off. "Besides the lists."

"The plan is: lists first, because if we don't do them first we'll get distracted and never do them at all. Then lunch somewhere good. Then whatever we want."

"That's not much of a plan."

"It's the same plan I always have and it always works out fine," Dani said. "Don't overthink it. Half the fun of a trip like this is not knowing exactly what's going to happen."

"I like knowing what's going to happen."

"I know you do. That's why I'm dragging you along, so you get some practice not knowing." Dani stretched her legs out as far as the narrow row allowed and glanced over. "First time off-station since you started, right?"

"First time anywhere, really, since I got hired."

"Then you're allowed to be excited. I still get excited, and I've done this trip probably a dozen times."

"What's your favorite part?"

Dani considered it, tapping a finger against the armrest. "Honestly, the first minute you step outside the terminal. Everything smells different. Sounds different. It's such a small thing but it gets me every time." She glanced sideways. "You'll see what I mean."

"You said that like it's a secret."

"It's not a secret, it's just better if you find out yourself instead of me explaining it." Dani pulled her jacket up over her shoulders like a blanket, settling in for the ride. "Wake me up if anything interesting happens. Otherwise I'm taking a nap. Six hours is a long time to just sit here being excited."

"You're going to sleep through half the trip before we even land."

"I'm conserving energy for later. Shopping day requires stamina," Dani said, already closing her eyes, and Nari spent the next stretch of the ride alternating between watching the stars shift slowly outside the viewport and reading back over the consolidated list, mentally sorting which stops made sense to hit together, while Dani slept beside her with her jacket pulled up to her chin and a small, contented smile on her face the entire time.

The transit district, when they finally touched down some six hours later, hit them with the particular sensory wash of a place built for constant movement — wide covered walkways threading between shuttle terminals, storefronts, and transit kiosks, the low continuous murmur of announcements overhead, advertisements scrolling lazily across storefront displays, and crowds of ordinary travelers moving in every direction with the unhurried purpose of people who did this every day.

"Okay," Dani said, standing just outside the terminal doors and taking a long, deep breath like she was inhaling the whole city at once. "This is my favorite part. That first minute where you step out and everything smells different than the station."

Nari breathed in too, and found she agreed — a mix of something like baked bread from a nearby stall, the mineral tang of transit fuel, and beneath it all, the simple, distinct smell of open air, faintly humid, entirely unlike the recycled climate of the station.

"It's a lot," Nari admitted, taking in the scale of it, the crowds, the noise, the storefronts stretching in every direction.

"It's a good lot, though. Come on, there's a coffee place two streets over that I've been thinking about since we boarded."

They found it easily enough, a small corner café with mismatched outdoor seating and a chalkboard menu, tucked between a shuttered tailor's shop and a newsstand doing brisk business in the morning foot traffic, and settled at a little round table with two cups of coffee that were, Nari noted with quiet interest, genuinely different from anything they made at the station — a slightly different roast, served with a small pitcher of cream on the side rather than mixed in, in a ceramic cup instead of one of their own increasingly beloved mismatched mugs.

"It's good," Nari said, "but it's not better than Stirling's coffee, somehow. I don't know how he manages that, honestly, being a robot behind a bar."

"He takes it very seriously," Dani said. "I think he's read actual manuals on brewing ratios. There's no reason our coffee should be this good on a station in the middle of nowhere, and yet."

They sat for a while just watching the street, sipping their coffee, letting the morning settle around them — a delivery cart rattling past loaded with crates of some leafy green vegetable, two kids racing each other down the walkway while an adult trailed behind at an unhurried pace, the newsstand vendor calling out headlines to nobody in particular. Nothing especially remarkable, just the ordinary churn of a place that existed for people passing through it, and somehow that was exactly what made it interesting to watch.

"It's not fancy here," Nari said. "I sort of expected it to feel more like — I don't know. A big city."

"It's a transit district. Nobody comes here to see the sights, they come here to catch a connection and grab a coffee. The actual city's further in, if we had time for it. This part's more like the station's front porch." Dani gestured with her cup at the street. "Which honestly, I like better. Feels more real."

"Real how?"

"Nobody's performing for tourists here. It's just people going about their day." Dani finished the last of her coffee and set the cup down with a satisfied clink. "Alright. Enough philosophizing. We've got a list longer than my arm and a whole day to get through it."

The shopping stretched out through the late morning and into the afternoon, weaving through a mix of practical errands and pure indulgence that blurred together pleasantly as the day went on.

They found Chef's coffee first, in the little shop near the transit district exactly where he'd remembered it, the blue bag sitting on a shelf between a dozen other roasts. The shopkeeper, an older man with flour-dusted forearms despite selling nothing that required flour, watched Nari read the label twice before asking if she needed help.

"We just want to make sure it's the right one," Nari explained. "It's for someone particular about his coffee."

"Everyone who buys this brand is particular about their coffee," the man said, not unkindly. "That's why they buy it and not the cheaper one next to it."

Nari bought two just in case, tucking them carefully into her bag with the satisfaction of having crossed off the easiest item on the whole list, while Dani examined a display of roasted beans in bulk bins nearby with the vague, unfocused interest of someone who didn't actually drink much coffee herself but liked the smell of a coffee shop regardless.

"We should get some for the restaurant too," Dani said. "As a treat. Chef would pretend not to care and then use it immediately."

"That's not on anyone's list."

"It's a good idea, though, right?"

"It's a good idea," Nari agreed, and they added a third bag before moving on.

Sena's tea took a little more hunting, three shops in before they found the right brand — the first two carried similar but not quite matching blends, close enough that Dani was ready to just buy one and call it done until Nari held the label up next to the handwriting on Sena's card and pointed out, with some satisfaction, that the words didn't actually match.

"She wrote down the exact name. She's going to notice if we get it wrong."

"She's not going to notice."

"She noticed you kept the poster idea on Ivo's list from across the room, upside down. She's going to notice the tea."

"Fair point," Dani admitted, and they kept looking until the third shop had it, tucked on a shelf between a dozen other loose-leaf blends, and Nari felt a small private satisfaction in getting it exactly right.

The notebook with grid pages turned up almost immediately after, in a little stationery store that Dani practically dragged Nari into after spotting the window display.

"I could spend an hour in here," Dani said, running a hand along a shelf of colored pens. "I don't even need any of this. I just like looking at it."

"Get the notebook for Sena, at least."

"Obviously I'm getting the notebook for Sena. I'm also getting this pen, though, because look at it, it's got a little star on the cap."

"That's not on anyone's list."

"It's on my personal list. I make my own lists too, you know." Dani turned the pen over in her hand, testing the click of it a few times, entirely absorbed, before adding a second one in a different color "for backup, obviously," and while she was distracted, Nari quietly picked out a small stack of nice pens for Sena as well, remembering the offhand comment from the night before, and slid them onto the counter before Dani noticed.

"What's that?"

"Nothing. Sena thing."

"You're buying Sena a secret gift and pretending it's not a big deal, that's very on brand for you already."

"I learned it from watching Sena do the same thing for Stirling," Nari said, and Dani laughed, delighted, and bought Sena's notebook and pens along with her two pens with the little stars, entirely unrepentant, and they moved on.

Sol's socks and dish scrubbers came from a practical goods store a few streets further along, unglamorous but satisfying to check off — a whole wall of bulk household items, socks sorted by thickness and material in neat labeled bins, scrubbers arranged by brand. Dani held up two nearly identical packs of socks, squinting between them.

"These look the same to me."

"Read the fine print. She was specific about the heel."

"'Reinforced heel and toe.' Okay, this one." Dani grabbed the correct pack decisively, then hesitated. "Should we get her an extra pair? As a bonus?"

"I don't think Sol wants bonus socks. I think Sol wants exactly the socks she asked for and nothing else."

"That's probably right," Dani admitted, and they added the scrubbers without much more debate, satisfied with the efficiency of the stop.

The dried chili took a bit of hunting through a small specialty market that smelled overwhelmingly of spices and dried herbs, stall after stall of jars and packets in colors Nari hadn't seen before.

"This place is incredible," Nari said, trailing her fingers along a row of jars. "I want to buy one of everything just to try it."

"Get something for the station. Chef might like something new to play with."

Nari picked out a small jar of a spice blend she didn't recognize, mostly on instinct, thinking of the way Chef sometimes experimented quietly with the specials board on slow nights, and tucked it into her bag alongside everything else, while Dani wandered two stalls down and got thoroughly absorbed in a conversation with a vendor about the difference between three nearly identical-looking dried chilies, none of which turned out to be the one Sol had actually requested.

"None of these are it," Nari called over, holding up the sample she'd found matching Sol's description at the stall she'd been examining.

"I was doing *research*," Dani said, wandering back over. "You can't rush chili research."

"You have five minutes of chili research and zero chilies to show for it."

"The research was the point. Buy Sol's actual chili, I'll take notes for later."

They bought the correct bag, along with a smaller one of something unrelated that had caught Dani's eye entirely on impulse "for the restaurant, we should have more variety," and moved on toward the utility-supply shop with the satisfied momentum of a day that was, so far, going remarkably well.

Tomas's wrench turned out to be the easiest find of the whole day, sitting in a bin of similar tools at the second utility-supply shop they tried, after the first hadn't carried the right size at all. Nari pulled out the worn photo and compared it carefully against three candidates before settling on the right one, remembering Tomas's warning about close-but-not-quite.

"This one. Definitely this one, look at the head shape."

"They all look the same to me."

"That's exactly why I'm the one checking and you're the one holding the bag," Nari said, and Dani held up the wrench triumphantly like she'd won something.

"One down. Well, six down, if we're counting properly. We're doing great."

"You didn't do anything, I found it."

"I held it very supportively while you found it. Teamwork."

Stirling's items took the longest, oddly enough — the archival sleeves were easy, found in the same stationery store as Sena's notebook, tucked in a drawer of specialty supplies that the shopkeeper had to dig out from the back after a few minutes of searching. But the divided organizing box proved surprisingly difficult, most of what they found either too flimsy or too small — one promising candidate turned out to have only four compartments when Stirling's coaster categories, by Nari's count, numbered at least six — until they finally turned up a sturdy wooden one in a little home goods shop tucked into a side street, with a dozen small compartments exactly the right size for a coaster collection.

"He's going to be so happy about this," Nari said, examining it with real satisfaction, turning it over to check the joinery, the smooth sanded edges of each little compartment. "You should have seen his room, Dani. It's so tidy. He's going to sort his whole collection the second we're back."

"You went in his room?"

"He showed me. During delivery day, remember, with the mugs? He's got shelves of stuff. Coasters, bow ties, this book Sena gave him for his birthday."

Dani paused mid-step, turning to look at her properly. "Sena gave him a birthday present?"

"Yeah. She never mentioned it?"

"She absolutely did not mention it," Dani said, delighted. "That is exactly like her, though. Doing something sweet and just never bringing it up unless somebody happens to ask." She shook her head, smiling. "I love that woman. I really do."

"Me too," Nari said, and meant it more than she expected to, thinking of the conversation they'd had after the mug delivery, the quiet way Sena had described marking Stirling's birthday because it seemed like something he should have, whether or not it strictly made sense.

Ivo's revised list took them into the late afternoon, the specific snack found easily enough in a small shop that specialized in imported goods, the shelves crowded floor to ceiling with brightly packaged items from a dozen different places, most of which neither of them recognized. Dani read a few labels aloud in increasingly dramatic voices while Nari located the correct snack on the third shelf she checked.

"Found it."

"I was building suspense."

"You were reading the ingredients of a candy bar like it was a dramatic monologue."

"Some ingredient lists deserve the drama. Have you seen how many syllables are in half these words?"

The handheld game required a trip to an electronics store where Dani spent a solid fifteen minutes debating between two nearly identical models before finally picking one on the strength of it having, in her professional opinion, "better buttons," while Nari sat on a nearby display bench and watched with quiet amusement as Dani turned each console over in her hands, pressed every button twice, and consulted a staff member with the seriousness of someone buying industrial equipment.

"You know he's just going to play it and never think about the buttons again."

"The buttons matter, Nari. This is an investment in his happiness."

"It's a fourteen-year-old's handheld game."

"An investment is an investment regardless of scale," Dani said, and finally settled on her choice, paying with the satisfied air of someone who'd done her due diligence.

"He's going to complain that we didn't get him the console."

"He's going to complain regardless. That's just Ivo. Doesn't mean he won't secretly love whatever we bring back," Dani said, and then, catching sight of a display near the register, added, "Oh, hang on — look at this."

She held up a small keychain shaped like a cartoonish spaceship, cheerfully painted and slightly absurd, exactly the kind of thing a fourteen-year-old would pretend to find embarrassing while secretly clipping it to something he used every day.

"That's not on his list," Nari pointed out.

"Nothing good ever is," Dani said, already carrying it to the register, and Nari laughed, because she couldn't really argue with that logic.

Lunch came in the middle of all this, at a small noodle shop Dani swore by from a previous trip, tucked into a narrow storefront with a handful of tables and a menu written entirely on a chalkboard that changed, apparently, based on whatever the cook felt like making that day.

"This is one of my favorite places anywhere," Dani said, sliding into a seat with the contentment of someone returning to an old friend. "Don't tell Chef I said that, though."

"I feel like Chef would be fine with it. He's not exactly precious about his cooking."

"No, he's really not, is he. That's one of the things I like about him. Some cooks get weird if you mention liking someone else's food. He just wants to know what was good about it so he can figure out if it's worth trying himself."

They ordered a couple of bowls, and the noodles came out fast and hot, genuinely good in a way that was different from Chef's cooking rather than better or worse — a brighter broth, a different balance of spice, the specific flavor of a kitchen that had been making the same dish the same way for years in one particular spot on one particular planet.

"It's good," Nari said, between bites, "but it's a different kind of good than Chef's ramen."

"That's exactly it," Dani agreed. "His is more like — coming home. This is more like a nice vacation. Both good. Different good."

They lingered over the meal longer than they probably needed to, talking easily about nothing in particular — a show Dani had been meaning to watch, a music player Nari wanted to save up for, the small, comfortable gossip of station life that neither of them tired of even after they'd covered most of it back at the restaurant.

"I still can't believe how much stuff we've hauled around already," Nari said, glancing at the small mountain of bags stacked against the wall beside their table. "And we're not even halfway done."

"This is nothing. Last time I did this run I ended up carrying a potted plant back for one of the old kitchen staff. On a shuttle. For six hours. It kept tipping over every time we hit turbulence."

"Why a potted plant?"

"She missed her garden. Said the station recycled air smelled wrong without something green in it. I didn't have the heart to say no." Dani shrugged, poking at her noodles. "Anyway. Bags of tea and socks are basically nothing by comparison."

"Do you always end up carrying something ridiculous?"

"Pretty much every trip. I think it's a rule of some kind. You can't do a supply run for that many people without at least one item that makes no logical sense."

"Today it's the console-that-isn't-a-console."

"Today it's the console-that-isn't-a-console," Dani agreed. "Honestly kind of a light year, by my standards."

"Can I ask you something?" Nari said, partway through her bowl.

"Always."

"Do you ever think about leaving? Going somewhere else. Not the station, I mean, somewhere bigger, more like this."

Dani considered the question with more weight than Nari expected, turning her chopsticks over slowly. "Sometimes, yeah. Not seriously, though. I like visiting places like this. I like knowing they're out there. But I think I'd miss the station pretty fast if I left it for good. It's small, but it's mine, you know? I know everybody. Everybody knows me. That's not nothing." She glanced up, smiling. "Ask me again in five years, maybe I'll have a different answer. For now, though, I like where I am."

"I think I might feel the same way eventually," Nari said. "I've only been there a month, but it already feels more like mine than I expected it to."

"That's how it gets you," Dani said, grinning. "Sneaks up on you. One day you're new, next thing you know you've got opinions about which mug is the best mug."

"The mud one's not the best mug. Ivo's wrong about that."

"See, now you've got opinions. It's already happening."

They finished the meal slowly, in no particular hurry, splitting one more small plate of something fried and unidentifiable that Dani insisted on ordering "for the experience," before finally gathering up their bags and heading back out into the afternoon crowd.

The evening brought them to a small arcade tucked between a noodle shop and a shuttered clothing store, the kind of place that had clearly been there for years, its cabinets a little worn but well-maintained, the lights inside spilling warm and colorful out onto the street.

"Okay," Dani said, practically bouncing as they walked in, "this is non-negotiable. We are absolutely doing this before we head back."

"I've never actually been in one of these," Nari admitted, looking around at the rows of machines, the flashing lights, the low electronic hum of a dozen different games all running at once.

"Then tonight's your lucky night. I'm an excellent teacher."

They started with a racing game, Dani sliding into the seat with total confidence and immediately falling behind on the first turn, laughing at herself the whole way through, while Nari, more cautious, actually managed to hold a steady lead for most of the second lap before Dani caught up in a dramatic final stretch that ended with both of them nearly falling off their seats.

"You're a natural," Dani said, slightly out of breath. "That's actually annoying, considering it's your first time."

"Beginner's luck."

"There's no such thing as beginner's luck, there's only talent I need to be worried about."

Next was a small basketball hoop machine near the entrance, tucked between two louder cabinets, the kind that rewarded speed more than accuracy, and Dani, who claimed some vague past experience with actual basketball, immediately proved that the claim had been at least partly exaggerated, missing four shots in a row while Nari, throwing purely on instinct, sank an embarrassing number in a row and set off the machine's small triumphant fanfare.

"Okay, that's genuinely unfair," Dani said, watching the little digital scoreboard flash Nari's score. "You've never played basketball in your life."

"I've never played *real* basketball. This is a plastic hoop and a foam ball."

"Doesn't matter, it still counts. I'm deeply betrayed."

"You'll recover."

"I don't know if I will, honestly."

They moved on to a claw machine next, feeding it credits with the grim determination of people who knew, on some level, that the odds were against them, Dani narrating each failed attempt like a dramatic sports commentary — "and she goes for the fish, and — oh, so close, absolutely devastating for the home team" — until she finally managed to snag a small plush toy shaped like a fish, which she held up in triumph.

"This is going straight next to the fish mug. They can be friends."

"That's a weirdly specific plan."

"I have many plans. Most of them involve fish, apparently."

The real discovery of the evening came at a small machine tucked in the back corner, a memory-matching game with rows of lit panels that flashed in sequence, growing longer and faster each round, and Nari, almost by accident, turned out to be startlingly good at it, holding her concentration through round after round while Dani watched with growing, delighted disbelief.

"How are you doing this."

"I don't know, I just — remember the pattern."

"That's not normal, Nari. That round had like fourteen steps."

"I guess I just notice things. I don't know, it's the same as remembering people's coffee orders, kind of."

"It is not the same as remembering coffee orders, that was genuinely impressive." Dani watched her clear another round, then another, a small crowd of exactly one other bystander pausing to watch as the panel sequences grew longer and faster, until the machine finally beat her on a round with over twenty steps, spitting out a small ticket in acknowledgment of the impressive run. "Okay, that's officially the best thing I've seen all week. You're doing that every game night from now on."

"Only if it's fair."

"It's completely fair, I just want to watch you dominate people who don't know what's coming." Dani gathered their small collection of prizes — the fish plush, a few tickets, and a little rubber ball Nari had won on a whim — and glanced at the clock on the wall. "We should probably think about heading toward wherever we're staying, actually. It's getting late."

Nari paused, turning to look at her properly. "Wait. Where are we staying?"

Dani opened her mouth, then closed it again, her expression shifting through several stages of realization in quick succession. "I — okay, don't panic."

"I'm not panicking. Should I be panicking?"

"I had a plan," Dani said, in the tone of someone who was rapidly discovering that the plan had, in fact, never fully existed. "The plan was, we'd get here, and then we'd find somewhere."

"That's not really a plan, Dani, that's just a hope."

"It's a plan-shaped hope," Dani said, already pulling out her communicator and pulling up a map with the slightly too-bright cheerfulness of someone covering for a genuine oversight. "Okay. Okay, it's fine. There's definitely places around here. We'll just — find one. Right now. Before it gets properly late."

The first place they tried, a mid-range hotel near the transit district with a lobby that smelled pleasantly of something floral, turned out to be fully booked, the desk clerk apologetic but firm, mentioning something about a regional conference filling up half the district's rooms for the week.

"A conference," Dani said, once they were back out on the street. "Of course. Of course there's a conference."

"What kind of conference?"

"Does it matter? The point is it stole our room."

The second place, a few streets further, had rooms available, but at a price that made both of them wince in unison at the posted rate.

"That's more than we budgeted for the entire trip," Nari said, doing quick math in her head.

"That's more than I make in a week," Dani said, already backing out the door. "We are not staying somewhere that expensive just because I forgot to plan ahead like a functional adult."

"You're not a nonfunctional adult, you just got excited about the arcade."

"I got excited about several things today, and none of them were the hotel," Dani admitted, laughing now despite herself, a little punchy with fatigue and the growing absurdity of the situation. "This is officially the least responsible I have been in years, and I want it on record that I regret nothing about how we spent the day, even though we are currently homeless in a city that isn't ours."

"We're not homeless, we just need to find a room. Come on." Nari pulled up her own communicator, scrolling through listings with the calm, methodical focus she brought to most problems, and after a few minutes of searching, held up the screen triumphantly. "There. Transit lodge, three streets over. Small rooms, but it's got availability, and it's actually reasonably priced."

Dani leaned over to look, squinting at the listing. "It says the rooms are 'compact.'"

"Compact is fine. Compact means we have somewhere to sleep."

"I like your confidence." Dani straightened up, grinning again, the earlier flicker of embarrassment fully dissolved into simple amusement now. "Lead the way, then. You found it, you get to be in charge."

The transit lodge turned out to be exactly as compact as advertised — a narrow building near the terminal, clearly built to serve travelers passing through rather than tourists settling in, with a small front desk manned by a bored but friendly attendant who checked them in without much ceremony and handed over a single key card.

The room itself, when they finally hauled their considerable collection of bags inside and shut the door behind them, was barely large enough for the two narrow beds pushed against opposite walls, a small shared nightstand wedged between them, and just enough floor space to stand in if they didn't both try to move at the same time.

They stood in the doorway for a moment, taking it in, and then looked at each other, and Dani started laughing first, the kind of helpless, worn-out laugh that came from a long, good day finally catching up all at once.

"This is the smallest room I have ever seen in my life," she said, dropping her bags onto the nearest bed, which left almost no room to walk at all.

"It's clean, though," Nari said, laughing too now, picking her way carefully around the pile of shopping bags that had already colonized most of the available floor. "And it's got two beds. That's really all we needed."

"We remembered everybody's tea and coffee and socks and organizing boxes, and we forgot the one thing that literally every trip requires."

"In our defense, we were very thorough about everything else."

"We were extremely thorough," Dani agreed, flopping backward onto her narrow bed, which creaked in mild protest, surrounded on all sides by bags.

They spent a while after that just sorting things out, more out of the satisfaction of it than any real necessity, laying bags out along the foot of both beds and going through them one at a time. Chef's coffee, all three bags of it, got set carefully to one side where nothing could crush it. Sena's tea and notebook and the secret stack of pens went into their own bag, which Nari zipped shut with a small private smile. Sol's socks and scrubbers and chili got stacked together, and Dani held up the socks one more time just to admire them.

"I feel like these socks are going to be the most appreciated item on this entire trip."

"Higher bar than the wrench?"

"The wrench is a close second. Tomas is going to be thrilled in a very quiet, understated way. Sol's going to be thrilled and tell us about it at length."

"That tracks."

Stirling's organizing box got unwrapped again just so Nari could look at it once more in better light, turning it over to check the compartments, already half-composing in her head how she'd describe it to him. Ivo's bag got a longer inspection than strictly necessary, Dani pulling out the handheld game to check the buttons one final time, and the little spaceship keychain, which she clipped experimentally to the zipper of her own bag "just to see how it looks" before reluctantly moving it back to Ivo's pile.

"You could just keep that one."

"It's not mine, though. It's the principle of the thing."

"You bought it."

"For him. The principle stands." Dani set it carefully with the rest of Ivo's items, and surveyed the small chaotic kingdom of purchases surrounding them, and felt something warm and satisfied settle over the exhaustion of the day, or at least Nari did, watching her.

"We did good today," Nari said. "Even with the room thing."

"We did great today," Dani said, propping herself up on one elbow to look at her properly. "Best trip I've had off-station in ages. Even if we're sleeping in a room the size of a broom closet."

"It's not that small."

"Nari, I could touch both walls if I stretched my arms out."

"...Okay, it's pretty small."

They dissolved into laughter again, the good, easy kind that came from a full day and tired feet and the particular comfort of having someone to share both the fun and the small mishaps with, and it took a while before either of them settled enough to actually start sorting through the bags one final time, checking off the day's purchases against Nari's carefully kept list before they turned in.

"Everybody's list," Dani said, watching Nari go through it with quiet satisfaction. "Every single thing. Even Ivo's, and he asked for eleven things originally."

"We got him three good ones. That counts."

"He's going to complain about the console anyway."

"He's going to complain, and then he's going to love the keychain, and he'll pretend he doesn't." Nari folded the list closed, tucking it back into her bag, and looked around at the small, cramped, thoroughly conquered room, at the two of them wedged into it with an entire station's worth of errands successfully completed and one very obvious oversight cheerfully survived. "This was a really good day, Dani. Thank you for bringing me."

"Are you kidding? I wouldn't have wanted to do it with anyone else." Dani reached over and switched off the small lamp between their beds, plunging the tiny room into comfortable darkness broken only by the faint glow of the transit district lights filtering through the thin curtain. "Get some sleep. We've got a shuttle to catch tomorrow, and a whole restaurant full of people waiting to hear whether we actually pulled off their lists."

"We pulled off the lists."

"We did," Dani agreed, through a yawn. "We just didn't pull off basic trip planning."

"Next time," Nari said, smiling into the dark, "I'm booking the room first."

"Deal," Dani said, already half asleep, and the tiny room settled into quiet, two tired, happy girls surrounded by bags full of small kindnesses for the people waiting back home, ready for the shuttle that would carry them, and everyone else's carefully gathered treasures, back to the station in the morning.