Lindsy had sent the message to both of them at 1600 and then spent the next two hours putting the quarters to proper use for the first time.

She had gone to the bar a couple doors down and talked to whoever was managing the galley stores and come back with actual ingredients. A Rigellian grain she had sourced from the orbital ring because she had known she would want it eventually, tucked into her cases alongside the spice jars and the cooking cloth she had been carrying between ships for many years. Vegetables from the colony market on the ring that were three days old but still good. A dark Rigellian wine she had been keeping in the storage unit under the desk since before departure and that she had been waiting for the right occasion to open.

This was the right occasion.

The quarters had a cooktop built into the counter along the wall which she had discovered when she moved her cases in and which had immediately made the room feel like the right choice in a way that went beyond the king sized bed and the viewport and the two chairs. She had the grain going in a heavy pan, the vegetables chopped and ready on the cutting board, the spice jars arranged in the order she used them. She was in a fitted cream top and dark cargo trousers with her feet bare and her hair loose and she looked, for the first time since she came aboard, like someone entirely at home.

The door slid open and Mei-Lin stood in the corridor in an oversized grey sweater and black leggings and suede ankle boots, her dark hair in a loose braid done quickly and without a mirror. She looked past Lindsy at the room and then at the cooktop and the heavy pan and the spice jars on the counter and then back at Lindsy in her bare feet.

"You actually cooked" she said.

"I am cooking" Lindsy said, turning briefly from the cooktop. "It is not finished yet. Come in."

Mei-Lin stepped through and the door slid closed behind her. She took in the meditation mat along the wall, the navigation library on the desk, the photograph propped against the shelf, the carved figure beside the bead string, the two chairs angled toward each other at the table. And then the bed.

It was a king sized bed with a cream fitted cover and two pillows and it occupied the sleeping area with the authority of something chosen deliberately. Mei-Lin looked at it for a long moment and then looked at Lindsy's back at the cooktop.

"That is quite a bed" she said. "For a small ship."

"It is" Lindsy agreed, without turning around. "I noticed it when I moved in and decided not to examine the decision too carefully."

"Wise" Mei-Lin said, and pulled herself into the chair closest to Lindsy with her feet tucked under her and said nothing further about the bed.

The door chimed again at 1835 and T'Vara stepped through in a long dark draped cardigan over a deep purple top with grey trousers and black boots, her short black hair as sharp as it always was. She stopped just inside and looked at the cooktop and the pan and the spice jars and then at Mei-Lin in the viewport chair with her wine already in hand.

"You cooked" she said.

"She is cooking" Mei-Lin said. "It is a distinction she is particular about."

"I heard that" Lindsy said from the cooktop.

T'Vara looked around the room, noted the meditation mat and the navigation library and the photograph on the shelf and the king sized bed which she registered without comment, and then took the remaining chair and looked over at Mei-Lin. "This is a good room" she said, and Mei-Lin agreed that it was.

Lindsy poured three glasses of the dark Rigellian wine and handed them out without asking because this was her quarters warming and they were having wine and that was settled. She went back to the cooktop and the room settled into a comfortable quiet with the grain simmering and the planet turning in the viewport and nobody feeling the need to fill the space immediately.

Mei-Lin tucked her feet more securely under her and looked at the wine and then at the cooktop and then at T'Vara. "When did you last have someone cook for you" she said. "Actually cook. Not replicate."

T'Vara considered the question. "Verath IV" she said. "The colony medic. She made a point of cooking from actual ingredients on the days when supplies had come in. She said it was important to remember what food was supposed to taste like." She paused. "I was fourteen. It has been a while."

"Lindsy does this regularly apparently" Mei-Lin said. "She had a cooktop on her last three postings from what she told me. She sources the ingredients before she even knows where she is going."