Für Elise

My dearest Elise,

We have been here for what seems like an eternity. When the Shadow Dominion attacked Ling we thought it was an earnest overture of felicitous combat, but now that we are here they spurn our advances. We wait for them day in and day out but, although they venture into the system long enough to bat their eyes at us coquettishly, they quickly turn on their heels like Cinderella at midnight before we can invite them to dance.

We have taken to entertaining ourselves, in the meantime. There is a zoo, but it has no creatures worth writing home about. A friendly keeper has begun trading droids to many of us, and we are all amassing quite a collection. I have strung paperclips together to decoratively link all the corners of my cockpit, and was able to line up datapads down the main corridors of my ship to tip over as dominos.

I do worry that it has been so long since the maintenance droids have had anything to repair that I shall have to oil them simply to keep their joints ready to move. They are not as resilient as organics though, so I may have to wipe their memories to prevent boredom from driving them homicidally insane. You know how droids can be.

I wish you were here, so that at least we could pass the time together at sabaac and dejarik as we so often do. It seems there is nothing else for us here, unless the cowards suddenly grow spines.

Yours interminably,

– Oggy