"Seven"
"I hate to sail on this rotten tub.
'Leave her, Johnny, leave her!'"
Seven found herself sat at a camp fire below a land bridge, pouring rain on either open mouth. Various cosmonauts from across the galaxy were gathered here, part of a mercantile caravan that she slipped into for ease of travel. An ion storm had rolled in around the open space of Ifron, grounding all vessels for the foreseeable future. Typically, Seven would just stay on her ship and not engage with others, but curiosity got the better of her. She wound up sitting with those who decided to converse while they had nowhere to go, keeping to herself at a bit of a distance.
And they sang. Songs she had never heard before, in fact.
"No grog allowed and rotten grub.
And it's time for us to leave her."
They all seemed to have booze on reserve to break out for the occasion, and it was unclear if any of them were more than simply passing strangers amongst the stars. Even so, they sang and drank like they had been friends for a lifetime. There was something so alien about it, from the outside looking in. People in so many places seemed to just connect. Like they had been doing it their whole lives, really. They probably had been. Seven knew that she was really the foreigner to these sorts of things. In an environment where you were forced to kill to survive you developed very poor social skills. Lest you give the enemy a knife to drive into your back...
Or suffer the wrath of those who lord over you.
"Leave her, Johnny, leave her!
Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her!"
Maybe that was what drew her in, made her so curious. It was in the nature of most beings to covet what they could not have. Seven knew that she probably could not connect with these strangers, but she could watch them bond. Try to wrap her mind around how they did it with the fleeting hope that maybe she could do the same.
Not that it would do any good without actually taking the chance to put herself out there. Fear kept her away. Kept her observing instead of acting. Worst was that she knew it too.
One day she'd have to let herself be vulnerable. Fear was just a difficult beast to tame.
"For the voyage is long and the winds don't blow
And it's time for us to leave her."