Strawberry's Descent

[Private Message from: Bram]"+1 crew. Found a cartographer, decent guy, actually wants to be here instead of just handing off the lenses. Why don't we bring Petrov too? Feels wrong doing a big expedition without him."

Arista read the message mid-frame-weld, setting her tools down to reply properly.

[Private Message to: Bram]"Petrov's on an actual vacation. Hasn't logged in for four days. First time since the metro started, I think."

[Private Message from: Bram]"...Huh. Good for him, honestly."

[Private Message to: Bram]"Genuinely. Man spent a year and a half building Gantt charts for a project that kept trying to kill me in increasingly creative ways. He's earned every single day of not thinking about logistics."

[Private Message from: Bram]"Should we wait for him? Feels weird starting something this big without the guy who'd immediately spot six risks we haven't thought of yet."

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Arista considered that for a moment, genuinely torn, the old instinct to grab every good person immediately warring against a newer, hard-won respect for the fact that not everyone owed her their entire free time indefinitely.

[Private Message to: Bram]"No. We don't wait. He'll see the announcement when he's back and either jump in or he won't, and either way that's his call to make, not mine to pressure him into. He's spent long enough making sure everyone else's plans didn't fall apart. Let him have his four days."

[Private Message from: Bram]"...That's surprisingly mature of you."

[Private Message to: Bram]"I contain multitudes."

[Private Message from: Bram]"I said that first."

[Private Message to: Bram]"And I'm saying it better."

She set the tablet aside, returning to the zeppelin frame with a small, genuine smile, already mentally filing Petrov's eventual return under "whenever he's actually ready" instead of any deadline she controlled.

Crew roster stood at four now, herself, Bram, Colm and his careful, obsessive cartography, and whoever else the coming weeks turned up, with one seat left quietly, deliberately open, waiting for a man who'd earned the right to come back to this project on his own schedule, not hers.

"...Okay," she murmured, welding the next frame joint into place. "Let's finish building this thing properly, then. No rush that isn't earned."

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