Safe aboard the Roci, Mei plays catch through the air, adopts Avasarala as her 'nana,' and demands her da every five minutes.
Recovered and awake, Mei fills the Rocinante with a child's noise on the voyage home. Amos and Bobbie play catch with her, launching her flailing and shrieking with delight through the machine shop's microgravity until Avasarala intervenes — a child is not the ball — and gathers her up as 'nana' (a word Mei has to ask about). Smelling of wax and vanilla, she is 'good for about five minutes' before demanding 'Where's my daddy?
I want my da!' Reunited with Prax, she monopolizes his attention, and decides Avasarala is funny, commandeering part of the old woman's every day. Healthy and thriving, she is the bright, insistent heart the whole ordeal was fought to save.
A small girl with shoulder-length black hair whirling around her in microgravity, face bright with delight; smells of wax and vanilla, nearing the age of losing her milk teeth.
The rescued child, thriving and playful, dividing her devotion between her father and her new 'nana.'