middleofsomewhere | Event: Healing Waters

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Event: Healing Waters

"Good morning passengers, it is day twenty three of the month of Grasshopper. All passengers of the Voidtrecker Express require rest. Next stop Jema’grethy Island. All passengers prepare to disembark."

It is a very strange morning message that rings through the train on the morning of day twenty three but as the passengers of the Voidtrecker Express wake their screens glow with the colour of the void and a holographic screen pops up for them to read.

World #2554098133741: A world once inhabited by an ancient civilisation and now preserved as a historical site, nature reserve and well-being retreat. It is famous for its relaxing hot springs, calming atmosphere and beautiful beaches.

It is a popular void-traveller destination, particularly among void missionaries as a place to rest and recuperate after difficult missions.

The Voidtrecker Express will spend three days here, arriving today and leaving on day twenty six of the month of Grasshopper. The dressing carriage is open for your convenience.

It is time for a holiday it seems!

Preparation

For those who go to explore the dressing carriage they will find a variety of beachwear and wetsuits. One cupboard has a pile of tents and groundsheets in all four team colours.

One cabinet is exclusively filled with beach towels, in a kaleidoscope of colours, designs and patterns. Another is filled with different shapes and sizes of plain towel dressing gowns. There is even a cabinet with buckets, spades and small rock-pooling nets.

It seems they are in for quite an adventure.

Arrival

"Shortly arriving on World #2554098133741. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

The train lurches and rattles as it leaves the void they will get a glimpse of silver-purple sky and a beautiful ocean below.

However some passengers might be a little more than distracted, one staring at that table for a second too long, another seeming lost in thought for a couple of seconds, a longer than normal pause in a sentence. They see a vision, a glimpse of a life that is not their own. Not all at once, but here and there as the train descends to the island.

But then it is gone and things are back to normal. Just in time, as they come to land.

Jema’grethy Island

The train has landed on a grassy ridge, overlooking a beautiful beach of white sand and the ocean beyond. It is warm, but not too hot, a cool ocean breeze cutting through the heat making it pleasant. Behind them is a grassy plain, changing to forest in the distance. There is the sound of birdsong in the purple sky. To the west the land is more craggy, the silhouette of a fortress in the distance. In a word, it is idylic. A sense of peace permeates the island.

A little more worrying is the volcano-like structure in the north. But even a quick glance will show it is not a typical volcano. There is no smoke and the liquid slowly running down it in rivulets is pink and blue.

Exploring the passengers will find beautiful beaches, ragged cliffs to walk and caves to explore. Where it is more craggy the beaches are made of pebbles- perfect for rock pooling.

The place has no people, but it is clearly maintained. The eastern beaches have racks of shallow boats, both canoes and one- or two-person sailing dinghies. There is also a small building in which scuba gear is stored, along with several waterproofed manuals and instructional literature.

Ruins of ancient houses are scattered across the island, but the main settlement is built into a rocky section in the north-west that has been secured with ropes and stairways cut into the cliffs, perfect for scrambles and hikes.

There are no living quarters, but there are sheltered sections with basic toilet facilities marked as camping grounds in five different sections of the island - by the hot springs, within the ruined fortress, beside the harbour, on the eastern beaches, and on the northern face of the mountain.

Hot Springs

To the west are the hot springs. They have both outdoor and indoor areas; the indoor areas being wooden loghouse saunas, changing rooms and storage sheds, whilst the outdoor areas are a tiered series of pools spilling down the side of the mountain and shaded by brightly flowering trees. The waters are hot, mineral-rich and soothing.

Perfect for overly stressed, world weary Void heroes...

(OOC: More setting information is here, please feel free to go wild with the setting and have a fun and relaxing time. You can use this post as a catch all for your holiday or make your own posts on

middleofsomewhere. More information about how the memory event is structured is here!)

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The sweet smell intensifies as they climb - not enough to make thinking hard, but enough that she sets Bobo about to running a scan on materials in the area for what it could be...

"Whatever else is going on, this landscape really is harmless; there's nothing here that could kill us if ingested."

She gives Roland an odd look. "You'd think there would have been a flyer on the subject."

That gets him slightly more riled up, turning to Nita faster than usual. "Exactly! If Jema'grethy is a well-known destination for void missionaries, you'd expect at least a couple of tourist brochures. A map of the island, top five best places to watch the sunset, even."

The smell isn't lost on Roland either, but it only makes him wince in silence. It was cloyingly sweet, but it was confusing. What was it? Where was it coming from?

"I'm just glad to know the isle's passed your standards, Nita." Not that he wasn't going to be any less off-guard. It's just not in his nature.

"It'd all be a lot easier if our worlds had been void-active to begin with, I'm sure."

Not having access to the void equivalent of Yelp! was causing them serious worry, here.

Meanwhile, Nita snorts.

"I ran a scan with wizardry; I couldn't tell you that much just by smelling. It's that... stuff produced by the volcano that's making the smell; it's some kind of syrup."

Which was as much as the peridexis could determine with minimal data.

"Syrup?" His mind flies to sweet syrups he's most naturally familiar with - pancake syrups, maple syrups, candied syrups..His confusion doesn't let up.

"Wanna take a detour then? See if we can find a nice stream of...syrup to dip our toes into?" At this, Bambosh suddenly reappears behind his boot, jumping up and down until it settles into a nice waddle in place. That's not a coincidence; he's manually called him back to his side, though higgledies were inclined to follow their charges anyway, even as they wander.

"Should be just ahead."

Not much more work for them; apparently it could be ingested raw... Shaking her head at that bit of trivia, she catches sight of Bambosh teleporting again.

"At least if it decides it wants a taste, it'll be fine. ... Can they even eat?"

Meaning higgledies, of course.

"That's good. I wouldn't want one of my best allies to get a higgledy tummy ache, heh." Bambosh doesn't react to that, but there's a cognizance there - it begins to speak in its strange language again, though Roland cannot understand it at all. That was more Evan's territory.

"And they can. But not for nourishment. They eat to get stronger. Get tougher. I believe this one has a taste for - " Roland pauses, finger under his chin before he answers, though a little uncertain. "- Hot peppers. Or peppers of any kind. Right...?" As he looks down at Bambosh, he just stares up at him with a hiiiiig.... steaming out of him. Whether or not that was affirmation or not, would be left to mystery.

Nita, listening to the higgeldy, snickers.

"Yeah, I'm not sure 'tougher' is what this planet is for. 'Sweet', maybe."

A moment of amusement, in an otherwise serious conversation.

And speaking of 'sweet,' there they were, a sticky stream oozing out of the ground a few steps away. The smell was reminding him of candy. The colors weren't helping either. He calls Bambosh silently to settle on his shoulder, which he complies with easily. Roland would rather not risk anything even though Nita's already scanned it, declared it safe.

He approaches first, arms crossed, expression skeptical. "And you're sure this is fine?"

Nita marched on up beside him, kneeling to test the stream of ooze.

"It's more 'do we test it, or let someone else do it', I'd think."

Unless there was a third option that also resulted in them learning about it - not doing anything didn't seem like a satisfactory idea, here.

He takes in a deep breath and kneels beside Nita after a brief pause.

"Here goes nothing, then." Better Roland than Nita, and better Roland than anyone else on the train. His hand hovers close over its surface, and he only hesitates once before he goes in for the plunge, dipping the side of his knuckles into the sludge and goop.

It's not...unpleasant, at least. Neutral temperature, and it reminds him of tree sap with the way its viscosity wraps around his hand. He lifts his hand for Nita to study, the trail dripping down at a snail's pace. It was aesthetically pleasing, at the very least.

"Bottom's up?" He waits for Nita to finish looking at the syrup before he decides to risk it and taste it himself.

Nita eyes him carefully throughout; worst comes to worst, he could give himself a psychosomatic reaction to the stuff, and that would be bad for everyone.

There's still no sign of anything going wrong, however, and so she scoops up a small amount of the syrup herself.

Touching it to her tongue, her eyes go wide.

"... Have you ever tasted something that means you the opposite of bad?"

It wasn't as if it was pure sugar, but it was good, above all else.

Roland quickly regrets not eating it before Nita had a chance to ingest it herself, paranoia setting in that perhaps it was poison, and he had to run to get her to help -

- but nothing really happened. And according to Nita, it was the opposite of something bad happening anyway. Roland blinks in confusion before taking some of the syrup into his own mouth. The reaction is instant.

"Whoa."

He glances at its colorful stream down by their feet, then back to his companion. The higgledy on his shoulder stares at the syrup itself, bopping its head to its slow flow out of the crevices.

"If a feeling had a taste." And the feeling, was calm. Incredibly so. Like a hit of Oxycontin.

"You see what I mean." Taste? Eh, who knows.

"It's not even addictive, or so the scan says." She lets herself take another tentative taste.

Bambosh starts poking the syrup, but again, Roland knows its harmless at this point. Might even do it some good, with all the energy.

"Should we be taking this back with us? To study? Or...do we just have our fill every once in a while for three days straight?" He quirks a curious eyebrow at it, half-joking, but really he wonders if this was the reason. "The brief said this was a popular resting spot for people like us, right? Maybe this is why. Because the whole island is made up of...this."

"I'd say yeah. You brought any canisters?"

Nita, for her part, could improvise with wizardry, but there was no sense putting it all in one place.

Then she snorts. "Given all there is to do besides this, I don't think so. Unless it means mental rest?"

Speaking of...

He materializes a jar of sliced up carrots from his Arms Band, shaking it slightly with one hand. Roland offers it to her. There's a joke here, but he's delivering it pretty dryly, face way too serious.

"Dip?"

Or, feed it to Bambosh, even if it isn't to its taste. Get the jar empty.

For a moment or two, Nita looks quite confused.

"How long have you been carrying that?"

She's familiar with claudications, certainly - but why carrots?

But she takes a piece out, dipping it to see if anything happens.

(She's half-expecting it to dissolve, for some reason, but of course it doesn't.)

Chewing the carrot, she hums. "Not sure these go well together; it's not like ranch dip," she summarizes, once she's finished.

"Bambosh? You want any?"

He just lifts up his right elbow to signal to his Arms Band - a useful hammerspace from the second world. "I thought I might get hungry on the island. So I packed a snack before leaving the train."

Nevermind that Nita literally dipped the carrot in the syrup...He regrets making that half-joke now, worried that it would taste awful. Roland can't help the face that he makes, uncharacteristically silly despite keeping reserved, and he barely manages to grab three sticks at a time to munch on while he offers two to Bambosh as Nita had asked of the higgledy.

The higgledy opens its mouth, ingests it, but it just glows as it absorbs its nutrients. It does not do its higgledy dance - but sighs instead. "Sorry buddy, no peppers right now. Let's see if I can't save up points to get you some from back home, okay?"

Turning back to the river of syrup on the ground, Roland tries to eat the carrots faster. Don't mind him Nita, this was a mission!

"Smart."

She'd gotten used to keeping snacks in more mundane locations, after her own claudication had failed to come with her to Nautilus, but that did not take away from its utility.

She takes another carrot to eat, though she doesn't dip it this time.

"I can see if there's some from other worlds already on the train? It might like those."

"Yeah? We'd appreciate that, thank you. I wouldn't mind if Bambosh got a bit stronger, even though he's already pretty formidable." The higgledy returns to its exploration of the syrupy goodness, peering into its blue and pink depths until its face almost touches the surface.

It didn't take long for Roland to eat almost all the carrots in the jar, offering the last few sticks to Nita.

"Alright, this should do it. Let's hope it keeps. I'd hate it if this rots away and turns sour instead of sweet, or something."

"As long as he doesn't set off the sprinklers in any cabins, I wouldn't mind either."

Given what had happened with Ifrit the previous month, it seemed only reasonable.

Nita takes those sticks and pockets them - she'd rather eat them after they'd climbed down, at this point - before nodding, making a face.

"Yeah, not getting any details about this stuff's shelf life."

"Bambosh is harmless until I command him to fight by my side. I promise he's insured, heh." The jest is made with ease, but he's disappointed to know that even Nita's powers couldn't completely decode the mystery of the stress-relieving syrup.

"Darn it. So all we know about it is that it's edible, and it makes you feel calm. Is it even worth bringing with us, at this point?" His finger has found its way back, under his chin again.

Nita manages a grin for Roland at that joke. It helps in easing the tension, at any rate.

"It's cheaper than trying to find out if we can order it in the shop, no doubt."

"Then that's settled. Bambosh, if you don't mind?" He lets the higgledy help them out, since they were already so close to the syrup. The fiery elemental is handed the empty jar and it cutely follows Roland's mental instruction, waddling to scoop up as much of the syrup as it can. With a little help from his humanfolk charge, Bambosh succeeds and hands it to Nita with small, outstretched arms.

"Mission complete. Let's enjoy the rest of this walk."

~~And off they go, riding into the sunset -- nope, wrong fandom and thread!~~

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Event: Healing Waters

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Probably heading towards wrap here?

Yes! Let's get those points baybeee! Nita can keep the jar <3