[Outer planets. OA perks up visibly, smile widening to crinkle the corners of her eyes; there's even a brief flash of teeth. One of the marvels of this place, one miracle among many, is that it gathers so varied a flock of castaways. As widely as she's travelled, there's always somewhere new she hasn't been, an angle from which she hasn't viewed the incomprehensible tangle of the multiverse.

No, not a tangle. Something else. Dendritic, fractal, a recursive infinity. A garden of forking paths. How marvellous to know that every soul here has wandered one she has not. How easy, too, to forget. The reminder is nice.]

Yeah? I've never-- not that I remember.

[Hap thought she'd gone to Saturn once, recorded something during one of her NDEs that convinced him that's where she'd travelled. OA knows better: it wasn't that she'd gone to Saturn. Saturn had come to her.

It's all much too complex -- and mad -- to explain now, and none of it much matters anyway. It comes, besides, with too much other baggage: why she spent a long time underground. Who put her there. Why his discomfort, his open antagonism attract her attention, concern, even something like trust more than a smiling face would.]

It must be beautiful. Looking back, how small everything really is. Knowing there's always a light, even if it's just the one you bring with you. And you chose it.

[That does matter. It always matters. So does talking about anything but where they are right now.]

Did you spend a lot of time out there?