Each Sunday, Weekend Writing Warriors offers a selection of eight-sentence excerpts from writers in multiple genres and forms. Check out the full roster here.

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Our Arna, on the other hand, pretends to care only for her space-travel simulations. From time to time, she pops up with canny suggestions that tell her for a skillful eavesdropper. That last bit of negotiation with the Captains, for one: I definitely saw Captain Jehen smile at Arna’s bargaining. Put more on the table than you think you can get, and gracefully concede the impossible while you walk off with more than you’d realistically hoped for.

What’s more, she’s got daring and a large imagination. If there’s someone she’d get up to tricks with, it’d be Yasmin Ship’s-Heart, on the engineering level at least and possibly more. They’d be a fine pair of young rascals–though Yasmin reminds me that she’s long past her apprenticeship, thank you very much. Her ship’s-ghostie passes for seventeen, and that’s five years older than Arna.

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Speaker is Taryn, diplomatic outrider for the Outposts, bomb squad engineer, jack-of-all trades. She appears in my 2013 NaNoWriMo project, Inside the Jump, as well as the untitled Romance with Rayguns.