Ok hope I am doing this right!
The universe and all the wonders it has to offer
[AN: Yes, you are]
There’s always one. The long-term tourist or peripatetic individual who never lost their sense of wonder. You could always pick them out of the crowd.
They looked around.
Everyone else stared down or straight ahead, lost in the haze of self-delusion that every spaceport was the same and nothing ever changed.
This one had everything in a backpack and a slightly disreputable towel over one arm.
Lyr changed her path to intersect with theirs. All the tells were saying this traveller was human. Ah, there it was. The green cloisonné pin featuring a 2D representation of a ball with two human-esque arms and just a mouth, making a rude gesture.
This was a member of the Loyal Order of Hitchhikers.
Permanent nomads, at least until they ran out of the ability to travel, they went wherever they could get a ride and really got their money’s worth out of a rectangular piece of terrycloth.
They smiled as she approached. “Hello, officer. I love the use of decorative Tukkatukka.”
“Not many people notice that,” said Lyr. “Are you set for sleep-space?”
“I’m frood,” they informed. “There’s by-the-hour hot-bunks in the upper regions of the Elemeno. I’m certain I can make the Time by then.”
“Ah. Good storyteller?”
“Storyteller, musician, I can even juggle. And, if all else fails, I can tell everything over again to the nearest Archivaas.”
Lyr sat in on one of their stories. They were good. Well worth an Hour coin in the raggy cloth hat.
Just for an hour, on the power of words alone, she had been somewhere else.
Lyr returned to her duties, only changed on the inside. One of the many reasons she was fond of the Hitchhikers.
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