Page 128 of Every Almost

But as Reyna looked more closely at Charlie, she had to admit...

"What is that?" Reyna's gaze fell to the rectangle on Charlie's waist.

Charlie stared at Reyna, seeming to try and understand the change in subject. But, she went along with it, looking down at her waist and pulled the rectangle off her belt. She held up the device and the cord attached to it.

"This," she stated proudly. "Is a Walkman. It plays music. Well, it plays cassettes, which are these things that have musical tracks burned into some tape, that is read by this machine here and plays through this," she said, holding up the cord with what looked like a small bolt connected to wires attached to the end of it. Charlie pressed a button or activator on the device, and Reyna could hear a faint sound from the small bolt, tinny and distant but undeniably rhythmic.

"This isn't the first time you've mentioned music," Reyna said. "It was... Fleetwood Mac, wasn't it? On your shirt when you landed?"

"Yeah." Charlie's face changed when she talked about it. "I was lucky enough to have transported here with my bag as it brought nineteen cassettes with me. From Earth. When I..." She gestured vaguely at the universe. "Arrived."

"Nineteen."

Charlie actually looked slightly embarrassed at Reyna calling her out. "It's my whole collection. Well, the portable part, at least. I had more at home." Charlie looked down at the Walkman in her hands. "Music is... a way for me to process things. It always has been, at least since I was very young. When I've been happy, or sad, or when I can't figure out how to say what I need to say," Charlie looked up at Reyna and smiled. "I've found there's always a song that can help me figure out the words or, just, say it for me. My Dad, Frank, was the one that 'ignited my passion,' as he used to say, for music." Reyna watched as Charlie's face softened at the mention of her father. "He was the one who showed me that a song could do what words couldn't."

Reyna was listening so intently, finding herself genuinely curious about the concept. The idea of carrying a huge emotional part of your life in a small machine, ready to access whenever you needed it.

The Coalition had music, of course, but she'd never heard anyone describe their relationship to it the way Charlie did, almost as though music were a language she spoke more fluently than her own.

"And you have all of that in this machine," Reyna said.

"Most of it, at least the ones that really matter." Charlie looked down at the Walkman, and her expression shifted into something quieter. "Katie is here, in the music." Reyna walked over to Charlie, standing close to look at the details of the Walkman device.

"How so?" Reyna prompted, encouraging Charlie to talk so she could listen, just like Kess had suggested.

Charlie looked up at Reyna. "She made me a mixtape - a cassette of songs she recorded on her own specifically for me - every Christmas." Charlie put her hand inside her pocket and pulled out a square made of plastic with what looked like two wheels in the middle of it. "Those are my most cherished pieces of music," she said as she returned her gaze to Reyna. "And every single one of them made it with me. Here." Charlie held out the plastic square to her, and Reyna looked down at it. She could see what looked like art drawn on the outside of it, little pictures of certain things she recognized and others she didn't.

"This is one of them? A 'mixtape?'" Reyna asked as she took the square from Charlie and turned it over in her hands, looking at all the art. She saw Charlie nod out of the corner of her eye, then raised her gaze just as Charlie did the same.

"That one is from Christmas 1985, five years ago," Charlie continued. Reyna looked down at the mixtape in her hand once more before returning it to Charlie.

"Based on just those few things," Reyna started. "I can understand why music means so much to you."

Charlie shrugged. "It's the things in life that help us keep going that come to matter more than we ever thought possible. Who ever knew I'd find relaxation in a some harmonic echoes from machines?" At that, Reyna placing her hand against the ship's wall, just like Charlie had been doing earlier.

"You mean just like how you were also listening to the ship?" Reyna asked, her mouth twitching in a smile.

Charlie blinked, then grinned. "Yeah. I can feel the engines through the walls," she said, matter of factly, nodding her head up and down as she turned towards the wall in question. "I've learned that the frequency shifts depending on where you are, which means the propulsion core is somewhere..." She pointed down the corridor. "That direction. Maybe four or five decks down."

"That's... correct, actually," Reyna said, not bothering to hide her surprise.

"The harmonics give it away," Charlie mentioned as though it were obvious. "The resonance pattern weakens the further you get from the source, but it also distorts differently depending on the structural materials between here and there. Metal conducts it cleaner than composite. So you can map the path by—" Charlie stopped herself. Reyna's eyebrows pinched together. "Sorry. I'm doing the 'thing.'"

"What is the 'thing?'"

"The thing where I talk about engines and people's eyes glaze over," Charlie let out with a laugh. But somehow, Reyna heard the unspoken words underneath that laugh, the ones that told Charlie she bothered people because of how passionate she came across.

"My eyes aren't glazing over," Reyna said sternly. Charlie looked over at her, and smiled. And Reyna could see that one came from the heart.

Reyna realized Charlie was slightly taller than she was, tall enough that she had to lift her chin only just to look into her eyes. She looked back and forth between Charlie's eyes.

"Would you like to see the engine room?" Reyna asked, finding purpose in her gaze.

Charlie's face answered before her mouth did. Her eyes went wide, her cheeks went slack as her mouth opened, and her body began to visibly vibrate. Reyna could see that something that had been restless and caged suddenly came alive.

"Yes," she said. "Oh my god, yes."

The Emberkind'smain engineering bay was four decks down, just as Charlie had predicted in her placement of the propulsion core location. It was a wide space that hummed with the contained energy of a ship built for long-haul missions. Consoles lined the walls, diagnostic stations glowed with scrolling data, and the engine housing dominated the far end like a cathedral altar, curved and massive, thrumming with the deep pulse Reyna knew Charlie had been tracking through corridor walls all week.