[ he watches her, then looks down. his instinct is to turn the conversation around. talking about life on the ark is still so sensitive for him. he doesn't like to dwell on those corridors, let alone the home he'll never be able to revisit now that the ark has crashed and fallen apart upon its descent to the ground. where he wants to be is far from that place, but he has always found himself lingering on the memories or mom and o. he doesn't move his head, remaining as he is as he thinks back on his time in the ark. what hadn't he told octavia? ]

I told her what they looked like. Sometimes I drew them. [ he smiles, ] I'm better at drawing stars then anything else. [ his smile falls, but it's a natural fading of it as he glances up at her. ] She couldn't see the stars, and we didn't have a window. I just kept telling her about what I saw whenever I walked by this big window. Sometimes I used to think I saw Andromeda and Heracles out there, so I'd tell her about them. She always liked those stories.

[ until she'd stopped liking the ones detailing the stars more than the heroes themselves, and a part of him thinks she'd begun to resent him for the freedom he had to walkabout the ark. but he'd never wanted to take to the corridors without her in hand. ]