Killerie woke up on the floor.

Lifting her head and upper body, she twisted around to find herself in the living room, soft mid-morning light streaming through the large windows behind her. Her favorite blanket was wrapped around most of her segments, and two mugs sat on the table in front of her. A few leftover hints of hot chocolate was still in her mouth, although the mugs were empty.

Looking around, she discovered Madeline preparing two bowls of cereal in the kitchen, along with a pair of glasses already full of chocolate milk. The second best thing behind hot chocolate.

Her mom gave her a smile. Instead of waiting by the kitchen table, she brought the breakfast over to Killerie and set it down in the living room. Killerie wasn't sure why she found that so exciting - it was still the same breakfast, just in a place where she normally wasn't allowed to have food.

Stretching her legs, Killerie settled back under her blanket, resting her head on the plates further down her back. "Good morning."

"Good morning to you too," Madeline replied. "Are you feeling better?"

Killerie thought about it for a moment. She'd molted, which had been horrible as usual, but she'd fixed the microwave and been helpful to her mom as a result.

And she was having breakfast in the living room.

"Yep!" She decided, and Madeline chuckled.

They stopped talking, and the silence was broken only by the sounds of crunchy cereal being chewed in a mouth that couldn't fully close.

“I have a surprise for you.”

Killerie looked up in the middle of a bite. One advantage of a speech device was that she could talk with her mouth full, which she promptly did. “What is it?”

“I got reserved tickets for us to go on a vacation.”

Killerie paused. “A vacation?”

“It’s not like last time when we went to the beach,” Madeline added, and Killerie shivered at the memory. Crabs and centipedes did not get along, as it turned out. “I was thinking we could go to someplace a little further away.”

Killerie frowned, trying to figure out what she meant. “...Newest York?”

Her mom shook her head, a faint grin slowly appearing. “I was thinking Grinatyz.”

Killerie almost fell over, nearly upending her bowl. “Another planet? We’re going to space!?”

Madeline took a sip of chocolate milk with an undisguised smile. “We’re already in space, bean.”

“You know what I mean!” Killerie shot back, but her mind was elsewhere entirely. She’d only been to actual space once, when she had been adopted, and that didn’t count because she didn’t remember it at all.

Space was huge! She’d thought it was just big when she was younger, but her mom had taught her about kilometers, continents, and then planets, solar systems, lightyears, galaxies and the universe. It was impossible for anyone to ever see everything that existed.

Which, of course, meant Killerie wanted to give it a shot.

“Do - do we need luggage? I mean, I don’t have any clothes and you - wait, should I have clothes? I feel like I should bring a hat or something if I’m going to space. Oh, I should bring a plushie! But which plushie? Or I could bring some blankets - and, wait, should-”

Madeline cut Killerie’s rambling off before she could get too far. “We don’t leave until tomorrow morning, Killerie. You don’t have to worry about lug-”

“Tomorrow morning!?” Killerie nearly shrieked, her vocoder breaking the end of the word off in her shock.

Her mom snorted in amusement. “Well, I thought you’d be excited. They’re a present from Ciar. He reserved both the tickets as an apology.”

Killerie wasn’t listening. Dumping her breakfast in her mouth, she rolled off her couch and skittered for her room. Her nest was still a mess, and the flaking molt gave her a frosty glare, but she wasn’t paying attention to either.

Crawling up the wall and partly across the ceiling, Killerie pulled the attic hatch open and shoved her head inside. Several multi-colored bins sat inside, mostly full of lawn decorations, old toys and a few boxes Madeline kept locked. More importantly, an entirely unused red suitcase sat in the back of the attic. There was a very small spider web and an even smaller spider occupying the pocket on the front.

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Careful not to dislodge the spider, Killerie levitated the suitcase over to herself and backed down into her room. Placing it on her floor, she paused for a moment.

What was she supposed to do with the spider? It’d been living on the suitcase longer than she’d been using it, and it felt rude to kick it out of its home. Granted, there probably weren’t very many flies or gnats in the attic…

Making a quick decision, Killerie picked the spider up and carefully grabbed its web too. She strung the web up in the corner of the room and put the spider in the middle. It immediately shot for the darkest part of the ceiling and hid there, tiny little eyes glinting in Killerie’s direction.

With her empathy satisfied, Killerie dove back for the suitcase and threw it open. She had easily a dozen plushies buried somewhere in her nest and she wasn’t looking forward to deciding which ones she wanted to bring.

Naturally, she was bringing her second favorite blanket because she couldn’t lose her favorite blanket, and she had to bring her beanbag pillow for the trip there. To make it even better, she had room left over for more than one plushie! Boris the dog, Mavis the lizard, and Benny the skyde followed shortly. Since there were going to be souvenirs, she went ahead and put a satchel in the front pocket.

Next she put in her third-favorite hat, a giant flat one with a floppy brim that made her feel like a pirate. Three scarves followed it in short order: a very nice plaid one that Madeline had bought a long time ago, that was starting to wear thin, a rather fluffy purple one that Killerie had knitted herself, and an emerald green one that matched her chitin, according to Madeline.

After a moment’s thought, she decided to pack the extra vocoder, just to be safe.

Zipping the suitcase up, she happily set it next to the door and tried to remember if she’d forgotten anything. She figured out that if she had forgotten something, she wouldn’t remember it anyway, so there was no point in trying.

Charging into the hallway, she barreled towards the kitchen, opened the cereal box, and retrieved a single piece. Madeline was folding Killerie’s favorite blanket on the living room floor, and while she gave Killerie a raised eyebrow, she didn’t say anything.

Heading back to her room, Killerie carefully set the cereal piece in the middle of the rescued spider’s web. She didn’t know whether they ate cereal or not, but it would hopefully appreciate the apology either way.

Without anything more to do, Killerie walked into the living room. Before her mom could get them, she yanked the empty mugs off the table and into the sink in the kitchen. “You need to pack too!”

Madeline chuckled. “I don’t have much to pack, bean. And it’s not until tomorrow morning!”

“I already packed everything!” Killerie irritably huffed.

“Did you remember your chitin polish?”

Killerie froze, and then went for the bathroom. Madeline’s laughter followed her down the hallway as she ran.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“What do you do when you meet strangers?”

“Not talk to them!”

“And if they try to sell you something?”

“Don’t talk to them!”

“What do you do if you can’t find me?”

Killerie paused at the question, thinking for a moment, and then checked the small stack of cards in front of her. It took a few seconds to rifle through them before she looked back up at her mom with an eager expression. “I yell really loudly until you can come find me!”

Madeline chuckled. “Not quite. Find another shedling if you can and ask for a phone.”

Killerie’s antennae drooped. “Oh.”

Leaning forward from her cross-legged position, Madeline gently patted Killerie on the head. “It’s okay. Just don’t get too far and you won’t have to worry about it.”

Killerie gave her a wan smile. “But what if I forget?”

Her mom planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll remember for both of us.”

With a sigh, Killerie got onto her feet and started cleaning up the discarded bits of paper they’d used to make the flash cards. Scooping them all up into a pile, she opened the trash can with a thought and dumped them in.

Killerie was starting to realize that space, as epic as it was, had a lot of issues. Madeline’s card wouldn’t refill so long as they weren’t on Odman, and as it turned out a lot of things cost money everywhere else. One of the few pros was that Madeline had reserved a two-way flight before her card was refilled, which meant they were free to spend the remainder of the money on alien souvenirs, alien food, alien plushies, and hopefully at least one alien blanket. Killerie had no idea how exactly a blanket could be alien, but she was certain it would be very interesting.

Madeline took a sip of water. “It’ll be fine.”

“But what if it isn’t?” Killerie fretted, folding one of the blankets on the floor and placing it in the overflowing blanket nook.

“It will be,” Her mom reassured her. “There are only so many ways a vacation can go wrong, and most of them are covered by whatever the shedlings build. There’s no need to worry.”

Killerie deflated, flopping onto the carpet. Madeline aww’d, pulling the shedling’s head into her lap and rubbing Killerie’s plates. “Are you really that worried?”

Killerie was quiet for a long moment. "I just… really want it to go well."

Madeline sighed. "Well…"

Turning around, she leaned on Killerie's back, folding her hands in her lap. Her presence felt… tense, somehow. "Okay, what's the absolute worst thing that can happen?"

Killerie stared into her mom's eyes and solemnly told her, "The planet blows up."

"And how would it do that?"

Killerie paused. "I'm figuring it out."

Her mom gently laughed, pulling Killerie in closer and giving her a hug. Killerie wrapped her legs around her mom's stomach, still unable to fully silence the worries close to her heart.