Memory Cave

[voidtreckermods]

After the passengers see a glimpse of a life that is not their own they appear in a cave. It is light, a strange moss glowing on the walls and ceiling illuminates the cave nicely and it is large enough for them to pace around in without trouble.

They are not alone. In the cave with them is another voidtrecker. Maybe someone they know well, maybe someone they have only seen in the aisles of the train. But they are together in this cave together.

The cave has no exit, at least not yet. They know that it will, eventually. When the time is right.

But for that time to come, they first must talk...

(OOC: For reference: memories!)

Comments

[singerofspells]

"Same here. To be honest, I probably should have asked around, since I don't have the visionary gift, and it was... well, I've tried some shape change spells, but I don't know human societies like someone raised in one. But, I was a bit distracted by the ocean."

And so many other things. And it had been so nice to consider taking a vacation, even if it was for a few days.

[burntlikethesun]

Rose rolls her eyes. "Even humans don't know human societies. You're not missing anything."

Maybe she should have pursued her own inquiries, but seeing something isn't much of a surprise after seeing everything. Even years after her first encounter with the time vortex, glimpses of other times and places would creep into her dreams or her waking hours occasionally. As long as they weren't followed by headaches and death, she wasn't terribly bothered.

But these last two had been weirdly personal in a way that the others had never been.

She pauses at the casual mention of spells, staring as a theory starts to form. "Magic doesn't exist in my universe." It can be generally explained away by Clarke's third law or a miracle of biology. "But it did there."

[singerofspells]

"Wizardry does exist where I'm from. We'd say a 'sheaf' of universes, though I'm borrowing a human metaphor there for the word in the Speech. I... I'm not sure I'd consider it the same as magic, but it appears the same. Maybe to humans who aren't wizards, they wouldn't make the distinction -- human wizards try to keep their practice obscured."

"DO you recall what you saw? Or at least, would you recognize something similar if you saw it again?"

S'reee is getting her own theory.

[burntlikethesun]

Rose cocks her head, wondering if they're really going to debate magic versus wizardry when their starting frames of reference are literally universes apart. She also wonders if she should correct the assumption that she's human.

Whatever; she doesn't care enough to crack open that particular can of worms with a stranger, but she can at least offer a bit of an explanation for her own word choice. "Generally, if they're not a guy waving a special stick at it, we don't call them a wizard."

She takes to pacing along the cave walls on her side. "The second one was the only one where I noticed any wizardry. We were swimming down, looking for a spot to tether a spell. Working together, drawing patterns in the water. Speaking--singing?--power into them. Trying to convince the ocean to let it take. Succeeding eventually." She stops, turning back to face her. "Sound familiar?"

[singerofspells]

"Yes. Were you with a human... a girl a bit under the age of adulthood?" S'reee knows how Nita compares to other humans, and she was her most typical spell-partner. "Or a boy, about the same age? Or another whale?"

[burntlikethesun]

Ah, nice to see that they're on the right track. She hums thoughtfully. "It's hard to say exactly without knowing the species and culture, but yes, I would say that that was an adult-ish human-shaped male."

[ Let me know if I've chosen poorly regarding Kit. ]

[singerofspells]

[He's more like 15 or so, but given whale vision, it might not be clear]

"That could be K!t. Kit," S'reee corrected, trying to add a bit of the Speech to clearly enunciate the human name. "It is a bit unusual that you saw me with him alone and not h'Niiit. Nita."

"In the vision I had, I was with a man. Human, or human-shaped at least." S'reee knew of several species that were close enough that she wouldn't trust herself to identify them from a brief vision. "Somewhere cold. Standing on a frozen sea." She'd seen her own world's Arctic, but it hadn't been that.

[burntlikethesun]

Rose shrugs. "It'd be interesting to know why it was that particular memory. Are the three of you often on ocean clean-up?"

She sighs. "Sorry, but that doesn't really narrow it down. I used to travel a lot, often with humanoids, though not always. Was there anything else you noticed?"

[singerofspells]

"An aurora, and some kind of shed." S'reee considered, remembering the things humans paid attention to. "It was blue."

"And, it's a regular thing h'Niit and I work on. K!t is her partner, and better with machines than either of us. We all have our individual projects, but I live offshore a lot of large human cities, so there's always clean up and... getting the people in the water and the people on the high and dry to some sort of accord. Usually without humans being aware that we are people, per se. No one knows how the general population would handle that."

[burntlikethesun]

"Unless you lucked into a kinder and gentler version of humanity, experience says poorly." Rose grimaced, remembering. "Very, very poorly."

"A blue shed? That's almost certainly the TARDIS, so the man..." There were a few candidates for who the mystery companion could was, one of which had been a fellow passenger not too long ago, but based on sheer time spent together there was a clear leader. "The Doctor, probably." Never mind that the man in the memory neither looked nor sounded like the one on the train.