Free Time

Apparently Kay had too much of it. Free time. The sort you spend idly at some bar, sipping the same old drink and dwelling on the past instead of looking toward the future. People were starting to notice.

Hikari had challenged her to find something that would get her blood pumping again. As it turned out, it seemed going planetside and hopping onto unstable two-wheeled vehicles to go really really fast around a track was just the thing. In all fairness, her old friend made it sound exciting. Perhaps it would bring back a fraction of the excitement of epic races long gone. She had agreed to try.

And then there was this amarrian... Nicoletta. Kay remembered her from years ago, back at a time when she actually bothered to chime in on the Summit from time to time. Ms. Mithra had, at the time, invited a group of anti-slavery people to visit her estates and see how things weren't as propaganda painted Amarr slavery to be. Kay hadn't been terribly impressed.

Now here was this woman again, turning up at Daredevil's Lounge, of all places, and reading her well enough to suggest ways to occupy her free time. A visit to her estates had been out of the question - even though the races were on indefinite hold, Kay still had fans and followers and principles to maintain, not to mention she was now a member of Electus Matari, with all that entailed. She would not endorse slavery by doing tourism at a place she knew ran on slavery.

An invitation to go riding horses? Insanity. There was no disputing the fact that Kayleigh was of small stature. To perch a tiny jin-mei on top of a big beast with a mind of its own? It sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, of the kind with the potential to break a neck.

But an invite to dinner? Somewhere a little more neutral? Why not? One could have a civilised talk, perhaps a meaningful discussion with an opponent, yes? There would be no harm in it. And the alternative was to sip the same old drink, at the same old place, missing her wife...