Unexpected Company

After June's journey, the day continued and soon concluded. Throughout the whole journey and after June went back to sleep, the twins danced, lighting up Bonnie in progressively more vibrant moonlight, as the festival raged on.

“Oi, my body feels sore, I guess my mind was too focused on everything else to worry much about the soreness building in my body.” June sits up out of bed and turns her head to the side and stares at her blank whiteboard.

“Man yesterday was super productive.” June gets up and walks over to her terminal where a notebook sprawls out, littered with messy notes. Inside the notebook, the writing consists of, in simplest terms, a summary of the things she did and the progress she made the night before.

A simplified version of her notes consists of vague descriptions of the night and the dancing twins, then she wrote about what happened while she was out on her Journey.

She wrote about how she found a few different plants that she wanted to further study and how she discovered that after finding several small springs under similar conditions to the one she found previously.

With further investigation, she noticed that the was an abundant amount of an alien algae-like plant that when she brought it back for more intricate analysis, she found that it was a source of further purification within the springs. The algae acts as a sort of constant filter, keeping the springs extra purified and clean at a consistent rate.

Under that, she wrote about a couple of different herbs that she found while she was around the springs. The first one was she called “Merrymint” and the second one she called “Solar Belles”

Through her bullet-pointed notes, she wrote that the first one was a tiny, pinkish-grey, clover-shaped plant with diamond-shaped leaves and that she found it scattered in patches around the valley.

The next point reads “properties aromatically similar to Basil and Thyme with a distinct and strong undertone of Spearmint” and under that follows more scientifically dense information like the presence of certain essential oils like Eugenol, Thymol, and some menthol, and other various details of its chemical make up.

As for the Solar Belle, the stuff she wrote follows a similar structure. The appearance was “Long and skinny, grey stem with a large yellow bulb that had streaks of white on it sprouting from the end”.

Under that she wrote “Bulb has herbal properties.”. she lists various information about what the analysis came back with. “Properties aromatically similar to citrus, licorice, and lavender”. “Known essential oils; Citral, Linalool, and Estragole.

The notes go on more in-depth about various other flora she found and plans to analyze at some point. She found a large-petaled flower with deep jade green petals and dark yellow moss with tiny green spots on it.

From the quick analysis, the flower petals seem to have a weird bio-mutation where it, throughout its long lifespan, has taken on properties of the various minerals, the most prominent one being Serpintite. The Moss was similar but holding high amounts of sulfur inside its makeup.

A little note sits next to both of these, both noting “PAINT?”. June's main reason for picking up samples of these was because she saw the colors and thought she could make some cool paints out of them.

“Oh man, I wonder if these would go good with some tea.” She grabs a cup and starts to brew some green tea. “Though that would first mean I’d have ta dry these out and make em proper herbs and spices”

“Hmm. Makes me wonder, I know HQ did a surface scan of the planet and it came up that this was likely a planet with no fauna at all. But with the atmosphere and the way this place seems to be, I find that hard to believe. There's so many fascinating examples of evolutionary mutations in the plant life here, I can’t imagine animals can’t do the same.”

June snaps out of thought to the realization that the tea kettle has been hissing at her for a while now and she hadn’t even noticed. “Oh, bloody hell my water! I forgot about ya!” She turns off the heat and pours the water over a green tea bag sitting in her mug,

“Can’t forget this.” June reminds herself as she grabs a container of sweetened condensed milk from her fridge, scooping about a tablespoon up with a spoon and putting it in her green tea.

As June goes outside to sit and watch the twins perform, a couple of hours pass by of her relaxing on the hill. Eventually, she grabs her mug and starts thinking about what she should accomplish for the day.

“Well Bonnie, what do ya think today’s mission should be? What goals do I gotta try and accomplish?” She thinks about starting her farm up and maybe researching a bit. But her mind soon trails elsewhere. “Oh, I have got to find a way to make a rover!” She looks up with a cheeky grin directed at Bonnie “That, my friend, is my top priority right now. Definitely more important than basic, less interesting stuff.”

Fort Tattie is nestled on a tall, looming, hill. The hill being higher up than most of anything else in view is what makes it so scenic. The dome covers a clear flat piece of the hill, but around the hill is a semi-dense amount of trees that cover every side. The expectation is the southern side of the hill where there are no trees and the view is completely unobstructed.

June turns around to face north. As she's looking into the woods, a confused sense of realization hits her, “Now, I’ve been here almost a week and I haven't even explored the woods right next to me. Maybe I can find something over there.”

As she's walking forward, she stops momentarily. “Now wait, before I go and get to doing that shouldn’t I maybe go find some info on what I need or something? I feel like that would be smart”. She shifts and starts heading to the pod.

She starts to look through files and various information regarding the company's rovers and different kinds of models and such. Over the course of several hours, the research gives her a solid idea of what she would need to build a rover.

“Alright, so bout all I need is a lightweight material for the framework, some kind of mobility system to accelerate wheels in some way. I would need to make a motor” She looks over at her computer. “Aside from those I need to find things to manufacture a power system, electronic components throughout the entire thing, and a sensory system.” She starts to drag the rest of the files she needs into the suit

As she puts her suit back on and gets ready to head out to the woods, she snaps her fingers, opening up the suit’s files to see everything. “Cool, so with a couple different apps I made here, I should be able to easily find similar materials to what I’m looking for. As long as I scan it and it uploads to my system, I should be able to know if and what I can use it for in my schematics.

She makes it over deep into the woods around her. Around half an hour goes by and she sees something underneath one of the trees that catches her eye. “Now wait a second. Why does that hole look kinda funky under there?” A weird suspicious feeling clicks in her head “Oh no way, am I off my trolley? Is this..?”

June bends down, kneeling over and peers into the strange opening under the tree. For a moment June sees nothing, but then as she steps up off of one knee, she sees two little, beady eyes looking back up at her. June looks down in shock which shifts to awe in seconds. “Oh wow, aren’t you a bloody cute thing”