[Pausing between dishes, Lys quietens, glancing not at Zeta but at her own well-washed and deeply pruned fingers—strong, calloused, slightly longer than those of her buddy in choredom. ​Zeta's voice and appearance were all wrong, their surroundings almost incomphrensibly different, but otherwise this could have been any other shift spent on punishment duty back home. A fleeting sense of something familiar on an alien world.

Shrugging, Lys puts new energy behind her casual smile, tilting her head to flash it Zeta's way like a laser beam dialed up just a little too high.]

Well...I guess it's more that I really like helping out? It feels good being able to do good, even if all we're doing is cleaning up.

[The tentative appreciation shown by (some of) the locals who'd noticed their efforts had also gone a long way toward boosting her mood to the point of nonsensical humming, rather obviously so. She'd puff up just slightly, flash that stupidly earnest smile, and promise them that it was "no problem!"]

Plus, I'd rather be here than back in that cell.