Night-time Reading
The Condor floated lazily across the evening sky, brushing against crimson clouds that gathered in the air. The vapor that had risen in the scorching daylight in Atmos's southern regions now prepared to rain down and Stork made sure to keep his beloved ship high above the cloud layer, fearing thunderstorms, nightgaunts, or thunderstorms disguised as nightgaunts.
In one of the crew compartments, Piper sat experimenting with a frost crystal. Thinking she might just manage to increase its range by 20 more percents, Piper charted out its hidden secrets, structures, compositions...
Putting down her crystal scope, Piper rubbed her temples and started moving towards her bunk bed. It was far too late to keep working on something so relatively trivial. Finn could stand to wait just a little bit longer for his special ammunition.
Speaking of Finn, Piper thought as she felt something rustle under her pillow, He's been getting quite a collection of fans over the course of our adventures. The guy's got pictures of female admirers plastered all over the wall in his bunk. Piper had seen them only once, once was enough, she'd hate to add to his ego by giving a limp insult or heaven forbid, praise. The worst part was that most of the girls looked... normal... cute, even. Lucky bastard.
Pulling a small stack of photos out from under her pillow, Piper looked at her own, private collection. There were some correspondence cards from Dove, a semi-intelligable letter from Suzi-Lu which included enough swear words and sexual references to make a Cyclonian task master blush, let alone Piper herself. She also noted that it came with a voucher for free drinks at Terra Nord's warmest tavern (used).
Pulling out the final letter, Piper's heart soared. This was her personal favorite: a get-well card recently sent from Starling. This card was also Piper's greatest source of personal frustration, as she had originally meant to write a candid love letter to her Sky Knight idol, but it ended up sounding like she had Amazonian blood-fever and Starling's reply had been a, rather heart-filled, letter of support for her and her condition.
Piper would sometimes pretend it contained hidden messages, as if the Interceptor ace had actually gotten the core of her message and reciprocated her feelings in a way only Piper would understand. She knew that Starling had great problems facing life after the death of her entire squadron. Even with Aerrow's insistence that she should join the Storm Hawks, Starling had chosen to remain a loner, fearing losing more loved ones. Piper felt so sad for her, it added even more insistence to her near-worship of the older girl.
She looked at the letter again, feeling a sinking feeling in her chest, as if the gulf between her and Starling was getting wider and wider. She doesn't even know who I am, only saw a cute girl screwing up introductions. Piper's interpretation of the letter now seemed more farfetched to her than ever before.
But she did complement on my tactics at Bogaton, that's gotta count for something.
If only Starling would spend more time with them, getting to know the Storm Hawks beyond Aerrow and Radarr. Piper would be such an exemplary tactician, infiltrator, spy, crystal engineer, operational mastermind, Sky Fu master, anything it'd take to make some impression on a real living legend like Starling, and maybe then open up to her and be frank with her emotions, not hide them behind such a wannabe cool exterior like before. If not, she'd be likely to turn into Finn!
Giggling at that last horrific thought, Piper quietly snuck all her letter back underneath her pillow, then changed her mind and put them in a drawer in her working table instead. I'm not that secure to keep an open collection. Yet.
Feeling a bump in the hull, Piper groaned. It looked like Stork hadn't managed to keep the Condor out of the turbulent clouds after all. She buckled up and got ready for a turbulent flight.