Okay, new rule. She was going to find Al all the cute pets and just hand them to him after that reaction. It was honestly too cute for worlds. She smiled, crossed her arms, and leaned back against the terminal. She knew SAM was registering all she was seeing and feeling, which was honestly also good for the AI. He got a lot of her fuzzy feelings when she was with Liam, but he wasn't here so she'd honestly never had much of the cute things. And that wasn't something she could manufacture. It had to be spontaneous. "She is adorale." Smiling she got a few seeds and set them in Al's hand's so the hamster could be distracted with that while the boy cooed over her.
She'd show Al the fish, but she wanted to clear that with Shepard first. Sara had rights to come to the Captain's Cabin at all times, but it was still a matter of politeness. Somewhere, her father's ghost was proud of that.
"And to answer your question all ships are a 'she'. It's just a thing that's been done ever since we sailed on boats with sails." She paused, and she was honestly just asking SAM if he knew why. When he piped up with the answer over the private channel she smiled. "It's because of a romantic notion of sailers being married to the sea, or just finding comfort in thinking of a ship as a mother of sorts." She shrugged. "I never said it made sense. No one really knows why we do it honestly. It's just done. Like some cars are a she too. I think he answer is honestly: people are weird."
She didn't rush Al or try and draw him into more conversation. She just let him enjoy his cute thing. With everything going on, she figured he'd earned a bit of that.