"Poetry Officer, report?"
"It's wet and it smells," Aspien Breeze-Blown-Pollen says sullenly.
"That's poetry, is it?" the away team leader says archly, so Breeze-Blown-Pollen shifts her stance and declaims in traditional cadence:
"I have taken
the readings
which were in
the sensors
and which
you were probably
requiring a report on
forgive me
it's unremarkable
so wet and so smelly."
"...Remind me what happens if you get written up again, Aspien?"
The away vessel is kneeling in cool swamp water, crew compartment unfurled like a seed pod to allow the away team to wander about and form an impression of the local conditions. Czo and Jan are sitting on the lip of the compartment while the rest of the team wade around wailing about their lack of waterproof boots, monitoring the away vessel as its sycamore orbital drop vanes cool from their descent and it, already, buds new leaves to replace the burned-away ones, tasting the air for composition and microorganisms, absorbing the pattern of surface-received light wavelengths from the local sun.
"Are you gonna whine about getting your feet wet?" Jan says, and Czo flashes her a smile.
"Oh, I grew up on a big slow river delta," she says. "Lots of wading and swimming and getting covered in mud. Be nice to me and I might teach you to fish."
"I grew up in a block of flats," the orc says. "Good luck teaching me any of that, nature girl," but she looks extremely pleased anyway.
