The Royal Court of Alisandre was as old as it gets, and as new as they could make it, byzantine to its own youth.  According to Draig’s memory, the Princess had never been lost, though he often kept her company by encouragement, a sense of duty, and sheer curiosity.  No one ever stopped them, and he understood without being told that no one was to stop her.  Besides, why would he?  The kind of trouble she got into was no bigger than him.

This time, they’d found a seam, where well-kept ancient building met gleaming expansion.  Soleil peered through a waist-high portico on the old side.  “There are stairs!”  She boosted herself to hang through it.  “Small, not grand.”  The Princess wiggled over the lip and stood again to face him from the other side, now taller.  “They go up,” she said, pointing, and disappeared as she beckoned him up behind her.

They climbed together around a bend in the stair, losing the new wall behind them.  Above and ahead was a similarly sized opening, blocked with a piece of fitted and barred wood.  Fists at her waist, she inspected it.  “You can reach that, can’t you?”

Draig raised his arms to grip the wooden bar.  “I can get a good hold.”

Looking from him to the barricade, her smile grew.  “Will you help me open it?”  Catching the smile, he nodded.  It was blocked, neither sealed nor locked; he didn’t think there’d be a skeleton or a beast behind it.  She held up the barricade while he removed the bar, and together they cajoled the piece of wood from its dusty seat.

They squinted their eyes against the sudden breeze that blew across their faces.  The Princess peeked out.  “It’s a walkway.”  She boosted herself over and through like last time.  Draig felt his heart pound.  Soleil’s head poked above the sill – she was sitting.  “It’s high down this side,” she said tersely.  Her dark hair picked up in the wind.  He went to follow her out, but she said, “You’d better not.”  All he could see from his view was part of her and a section of stone beyond.

“I’m just going to…”  With a hand inside the opening, she stood.  The breeze couldn’t be that strong, could it?  She was standing differently, eyes blinking, face serious.  Then, she just climbed back in.  They left things the way they found them.

Soleil could now bundle cords, the process of tying separate streams together along their lengths to create a new trunk.  A bound set of cords proceeded differently.  The conversations illuminated each other.  Once she could tell them apart, she learned how to put them together.  To do this, she used a viewport or a streamviewer.  Though it meant she was parked in one spot more often, this was her greatest degree of self- agency aboard their ship.

Soleil understood this to be a living network, which continually amazed her.  People felt this as they breathed and walked, like a part of their biology.  The streams were always responding.  The ways they were created, combined, and recombined blew her mind.

They were so much like humans.  How long have they been Vedani?  Where did they come from?

Sometimes, she called the race. Other times, he did. She knew the Imperial hallways better, from the four years since she learned how to walk in them. When the Princess called an unexpected snap, Draig knew it would be a good one.

Straightaways were fair, and fun, since their races weren’t necessarily clean. Almost as a rule, they included shoving, windmilling, and weird stepping. Maximum impediment without sending each other to the floor. Sometimes, his six-year advantage was no advantage at all, her light feet seeming not to touch the ground, gaining over his awkwardly growing stride. A straight hallway meant they could see when there was no traffic ahead. They were like puppies crossing a kitchen floor, puppies that got faster and faster.

First, she had to learn how to listen. Humans could do it, they insisted, and Soleil didn’t hide the fact that she found the notion daunting enough to show serious doubt. The Vedani communication networks were complex, built to be instinctual, and seemed to require long division. They brought her to a viewport, an empty frame with oddly attached peripherals. When she grasped the cords they offered, the cacophony she heard approached static saturation. The image she could now see was a terrible mess. Her first reaction was a helpless, blank look – not one she was used to wearing.

It was solid hours of listening before she learned how to color their voices, then how to judge their distance and the ring of relevance with only perhaps a symbolic coordinate. Soleil wondered how much space was really represented by this interface.

They showed her a terrain uniquely theirs. Soleil had figured after first meeting them that she must meet them fully, and now was glad she’d committed to the notion.