Asalina was deeply shaken by the endless stars spread across the vastness of space. Throughout the entire "observation section" that followed, her gaze scarcely left the boundless starry sky beyond the high-strength transparent polymer conduit. Even though the overwhelming sight made her, facing the stars for the first time, feel an almost trembling pressure; even though she felt as if she might fall out of the tiny orbital cabin and into that limitless darkness, she could not tear her eyes away.
The stars seemed to possess a kind of magic, drawing the gaze of every Sentient Being that beheld them.
After a while, other things suddenly entered Asalina's line of sight—metal objects floating in distant space, glittering beneath the starlight like sparkling gems.
She saw an Voyager satellite passing along a nearby orbit. It floated against the dark backdrop of the universe, its metallic shell still shining, though some of its edges bore mottled scars left by tiny meteorite impacts. The Dragon Seal Witch, entering space for the first time and having never lived through the Voyager era, did not recognize what it was. Yet she immediately thought of the Voyagers, and her eyes widened.
"Lady Cassandra!" She immediately turned toward her temporary "travel companion." "Look at that outside—it looks like... Lady Cassandra? What... what's wrong?"
Asalina stared at the sea monster beside her in astonishment. It was the first time she had seen such a complex expression on the face of this seemingly carefree and optimistic race. Cassandra gripped a nearby handrail and stared fixedly at the shining satellite in space and an even more magnificent space facility farther away, yet the focus of her eyes seemed to rest somewhere more distant, in depths of the stars that Asalina could not understand. The sea monster's tail slowly tensed and