Roxy feels the ground under one foot, and then the next, and then the first again, in the straightest line she can follow with her eyes shut. The artificial blindness makes the ground feel at once both more real and disconnected from her. She swings one foot harder, close to the ground, and chokes a little at the smell of dust. Old reports have told her about radiation and cancer on an Earth beyond human control, and despite the decades that have surely seen the dissipation of whatever poisoned the air for a doomed species, she still chooses to spend her time indoors, still worries that Dirk will forget to be cautious and allow the lining of his lungs to blister and inflame, that he will choke on his blood and she won't know until it's far too late.
Roxy breathes deeply and carefully, when the urge to cough is gone, and then screams, sharp and sustained. If she thinks on it hard enough then she can warp the sound of the echoes that bounce back from the shells of buildings into something a little unfamiliar, as long as her eyes stay closed. The pink darkness of her eyelids could hide anything. Roxy wonders how much like her her mother would have sounded.
There are nervous footsteps behind her, so she lets her mindset slip and blinks away the darkness, and then the brightness, until she can focus well on the carapacian who had heard her and been afraid. She curses herself for not having thought of this, and then tells it that nothing is wrong, it was just a game. Roxy says that she's afraid it's not a two-person sort of game, and her eyes begin to sting under a star that doesn't really seem like the same sun anymore, while the carapacian waits, barely blinking. It is a body built for change and adaption, while she can hardly cope with what is, ultimately, such a small alteration in the balance of a thin layer of gases. They can play other games though, if it wants, she tells it. Why don't they just go back inside?