Welcome to Gaia! ::

"How do you even do it?" She wondered aloud, walking past a broken column and out of sight. "You've been here way longer than a lot of people. You do a bunch of actual work, and I assume you're good at it because you're still alive. But you're always so unhappy. How do you even get up in the morning?" She resurfaced from behind the column, to look at him. "What's your motivation?"

"That's terrible." It was a crisp, honest response. "Your only motivation is that you haven't stopped yet. You're going to stop one day, though. You're going to have to look back, and ask yourself if the time you just spent was worth it."

She turned her detector to some sand dunes, sweeping idly. "It takes a lot more than inertia to move me, but when I move, I know it's always worth it." She grinned to herself at a joke that she wasn't sharing, just yet.

And then her detector whirred, and she pulled out a broken weapon shaft, putting it away in the bag carefully. "I'm going to look back on my life, and consider it a job well done."

Otto was a dark cloud moving through the sand, his attitude clouding his judgement and thickening every word he said. Maebe strung up everything she'd found, and slid down the dune to walk beside him. She remembered how pure, and beautiful she once found him. She wondered if that had been a mistake, those first few days.

She couldn't attribute his attitude to her actions. He was like this all on his own. Why, then, did she see so much light within him when they were together? If she didn't know any better, she might have just written him off as dead inside, just like herself.

And then what fun would he be?

"Stop for a second." She hopped up in front of him, settled her belongings down on the sand, and stood face to face with him. "You're just walking around like this. You could at least try to be more comfortable." Her hands were in his hair instantly, running through the locks over and over to squeeze all the grime out. She shook her hands clean, and then worked on his face, rubbing outward to try and clean what she could. She couldn't really clean him up completely, but at least he wasn't covered in chunks.

"I know you do." She rolled her eyes, and slicked his hair down as best as she could. "So do I. But we have to wait until we're back home. So there's no point in complaining about it now. Just remember how good it's going to feel, and let that thought fill you with comfort." She used her jacket to thoroughly clean his mouth, before leaning in to kiss it. The kiss lingered, because this was what she liked to think about for comfort.

When she pulled away, she looked at him seriously.

"Now stop grouching and get back to base. I'm sure you've got lots of mess ahead of you before you get a shower. But if you're a good boy, when we get home, I'll wash you myself."

She turned him around, and sent him walking with a pat on his a**. "Oh, who am I kidding, I'd do it even if you were very, very bad."