Event: Healing Waters

[voidtreckermods]

"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!)

Comments

[sensitiveapple]

She scoots over a little, giving him room next to her. She smiles and touches his hand. "You... don't talk much about your past." She says, softly. "But there were people, people you cared about very deeply before you ended up on the train." Not that she doesn't care for Jocko, she does, but not the way it seems that Joss cares for Romeo and those women.

"Who were they?" She asks, softly, indirectly answering his question.

[dredefulchilde]

That confirms his suspicious.

"I'm a lot older than you," he says cagily, focused firmly on his toes as they splash around in the steaming mineral water. "I'm..." (he does a quick mental calculation) "...roughly fifty-three times as old as you are. I don't talk about my past because there's so much of it, and most of it is unpleasant." He goes quieter. "I...cannot say I was an especially good person for much of it."

But she had seen something. 'Who were they,' indeed? The question is so loaded.

"I...would say who they were depends very much on what you saw. Could you describe it?"

[sensitiveapple]

She doesn't look at him, her feet stilling in the water and letting him talk. She thinks about what she saw. "You were watching someone play some sort of game I think?" She says, a bit confused. "Romeo was there. And this beautiful woman walked in. You called her mum." She whispers, never having really had that. "But the woman playing the video game didn't talk. She used her fingers to speak?" She's not sure.

She sighs. "But you weren't... you. You didn't know anything about your past, or about who you were." And that bothers her. It's not something that she's ever thought about happening to her.

Misa puts her hand on his. A gesture of solidarity.

[dredefulchilde]

Oh God.

Joscelin's eyes suddenly burn with tears, and he looks away stubbornly so that Misa can't see.

"That was my family," he says eventually, voice quiet. "Romeo, Mum, Ginia. The people I loved the most." He takes a deep, steadying breath, and continues:

"I was in another world before this one. About two years ago, I was summoned to...a sort of afterlife, I suppose. I was told that I was dead--which was true, just not the way I thought--and that I was a spirit weapon for a god or goddess. Ayumu--Mum--was my goddess. My world. She gave me a name and I became her vessel to defeat evil spirits. Through whatever process that brought me to that world and turned me into that spirit weapon, I also lost all of my memories from my time before. I knew I was called Joscelin Fitzthomas, but that was it. That's where I met Romeo, and Ginia." He grows even quieter still. "I was happy, not remembering. But somehow, I was brought here and I suddenly remembered it all. Romeo stayed the same. He's still a spirit vessel, still doesn't have his own memories. Now I'm human and he isn't and I'll age and he won't. It's not fair."

He sighs.

"I saw something too, actually. There was a market, and a man with a gun? You had a knife."

[sensitiveapple]

She still leaves her hand over his. She thinks he needs the support, even if he doesn't. She can hear his love for the goddess in his voice. "I'm sorry you lost Ginia and Ayumu." She says.

"But I doubt you'll lose Romeo. He cares deeply for you." She can tell that.

"A Twi'lek. His name is Jocko." She doesn't even have to ask what he looked like. She knows. The guards around the house wouldn't be around her with a gun. Only Jocko would. "He's my guard. What was happening in the market?" She asks, softly. But, she can guess: Treeko.

[dredefulchilde]

Joss turns to Ginia, still holding her hand. “You misunderstand me. I’m not afraid of losing Romeo; I’m afraid of Romeo losing me.” He knows, acutely, the pain of watching a loved one slowly age, then decay, and finally losing them to either disease, or accident, or age. He knows what it’s like to be stuck, unchanging, while the rest of the world moves on without him.

And the thought of Romeo having to endure that agony for his sake is more than he can bear.

“A twilek,” he muses, trying out the new word on his tongue. “Is he called a twilek because he’s blue, or is it the...” he releases Misa’s hand to motion vaguely at his own head, imitating the fall of the head tentacles he’d seen.

“I think...I think someone was trying to take you. You cut them with a rather strange knife.”

[sensitiveapple]

She smiles a bit. "He'll never lose you. You might leave, but you'll be with him always." She says, leaving her hand with him.

"Twi'leks come in a lot of colors." She shrugs. "Hurog is darker than Jocko. And several others in the house are different colors." She takes a deep breath. "But it's the lekku, or head tails that define them."

Take her? She snorts. "Treeko. He's the head of another group of... well, his people are whores, not courtesans." She stares at the hot water, inhaling the steam. "He's been trying to kidnap me since I was six." She admits. "That knife is a vibroknife. I have a pair on the train."

[dredefulchilde]

“Since you were six?” Joss looks horrified. How can she treat it so casually?

“Christ, Misa.” He looks concerned. “No wonder why you have those knives.”

He goes quiet.

“My mother was a whore,” he says eventually. “My real mother, the one who gave birth to me. My father bought her from a whorehouse in Calais when she wasn’t much older than you are, and took her back to England with him as his mistress. I was born sometime later. My mother was so small and young that she couldn’t have any more children after me, so my father threw her away—he said to a nunnery, but I’m not sure I believe him. I don’t know what happened to her after that.”

[sensitiveapple]

She stares at Joss. "She wasn't." She says. "She was a Mistress. Whores are... something else." There's a hierarchy. At least on Cantonica. She wishes more people knew that. "Discarding a Mistress is harsh thing to do. Most patrons don't want children with their Mistress. That's what their partner is for."

Her world is very, very narrow, but she understands how it works.

[dredefulchilde]

Joss's voice goes soft, his eyes downcast.

"My father made it very clear what she was every time I made a mistake." Whoreson was the most potent insult in his arsenal any time his youngest earned his displeasure.

[sensitiveapple]

She sighs. "Well, he was wrong." She says, firmly. "There's a hierarchy. She was a Mistress, and he made her one." She understands how things are done. She sighs, swirling her feet in the warm water. "That's the way it's supposed to be done. Mistresses, those who serve a patron are the highest ranking, followed by the Mistresses and Masters of Houses." She waves. "There are others, but they don't really matter." She says to him.