The graceful stroke of a brush, the flowing line of ink following in its wake. Lines crisscrossing on what amounted to paper this far away from Earth.

Alessia dipped the brush into the next color—blue, for a successful terraforming—as the crowd looked on in appreciation. Her little stand at the market on base always drew an audience, but today it seemed like she had more customers than normal. Was there something happening that she didn’t know about? A new colony or a trip to a neighboring world? She wasn’t privy to all the goings-on on base, after all.

“Could you add anything for good time dilation?” the eile asked, as Alessia finished up the line of blue, merging it into the teal and green on the other side of the paper.

Alessia nodded silently, pulling the bottle of red closer to the paper and letting a trio of drops of ruby ink (it was made of the blood of some creature, she was pretty sure, but some things were best left untouched) bead up on the upper left corner.

She had started doing this mostly as a party trick. Jobs for humans were hard to come by this far out, and the ex-boyfriend she’d traveled here with had long ago dropped her for a prettier, more exotic model. But things like ink drawing and calligraphy were rare amongst most of the races that called this base home, and it was a novelty. Eventually more and more people stopped by, and Alessia had earned a steady stream of customers.

She wasn’t a wizard or a sorcerer. Not even a scientist. Humans had no innate magical ability, and sometimes Alessia felt a little guilty, acting like she could do something she couldn’t.

But on the other hand, her ink bottles never ran out, despite not being refilled in years. The bristles on her meager supply of brushes never needed cleaning.

More importantly, she hadn’t lost a customer yet.

It didn’t matter what dangerous mission they’d been on, how far they’d journeyed, what else had befallen their crew. Anyone who went into space with one of Alessia’s little paper talismans on them lived to tell the tale. She had thousands of images on her datapad of past customers showing off the ink lines in their new home, lightyears away from the base, or sharing them with warring races during peace talks.

The base might have been the size of a small moon, but it was small, all things considered, and word traveled quickly in a place like this.

So Alessia kept on, working everyday to fulfill all the requests and honing her craft as she did. Dots of red ink for time dilation, blue lines for successful terraforms, purple squiggles and black dashes for times of peace. The symbols had changed slightly as Alessia continued on, but not by much.

She finished up the current piece with a last flourish of white for pretty constellations in their new home, nearly invisible on the paper, and the elie scurried off, showing it to anyone who asked.

Alessia jolted when she saw the last customer in line for today. Pristine uniform, bionic arm.

The admiral.

The new one, since the base tended to go through admirals the way her neighbor’s dog went through chew toys. No one was sure how long this one would survive. This was a contentious corner of space, after all.

But here he was, gentle smile as he asked for a token of protection.

Alessia hadn’t lost a customer yet. And she wasn’t about to start now.