There's no place like home

[Jazzi]

---

A taut yet mild pain from the feel of her teeth giving a gentle bit to her lower lip brought a degree of focus as Thallia keeps a steady, subtle forward thrust on the throttle. Brown eyes, narrowed and sharp, were fixed on the vid-screen showing the camera mounted to the welder arm's downward view. A fountain of bright blue sparks erupting from where the tip of the welder meets the outer hull of the Aletheia. Absolute concentration and the rhythmic beats of Revolving Door, Mungolian Jetset, to fill the mind. Nothing but the work in front of her, and the will to do it. That 'Little Book of Happiness' she'd found in Newport's public bathroom said something along those lines anyway.

Time was ticking to get the Aletheia ship-shape as soon as possible. Such pressure usually came with stress and the sense of existential dread. Yet, with her hands on the controls of this CUV-39M "Mender", that dread didn't find purchase. How could it? Before her was a problem, and in her hands the solution. She need only apply it.

"Clouds like souls in a stolen sky~ You're like a tear in a stranger's eye~ Like a treasure in an old dime store~ You disappear then arrive once more~"

Was that it? Was that why she'd been so stressed? So wound up and tightened up like a spring ready to launch? She'd allowed her fear to have her chasing problems with no solution. Mysteries with no answers. No answers that she could find on her own, anyway. Perhaps. that book had something to say on that too... "Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy."

A bright, beaming smile slowly slowly creeps out across Thallia's lips. With her head bobbing side to side with the bass vibrating the flight seat, she pauses for a moment to drink from her flask of coffee. Her hand moves to the pad holstered at her hip, yet she hesitates before leaving the pad be. Whatever that is, it can wait. "Everyone deserves a little joy. Even me."

---