middleofsomewhere | The Mountain Top: Grasshopper 25

The Mountain Top: Grasshopper 25

After the strangeness of their second day on the island for some, with memories and conversations in a cave, the third day goes calmly.

At least until mid afternoon. As the day winds on into evening all of those who have been sharing memories with others will feel a pull.

A pull to climb the mountain in the north. It is a good feeling, that mountain is where you need to be. A sense of belonging, friendship, camaraderie. You don't need to be alone, just climb the mountain.

For those that climb they will find worn wooden benches spaced around the lip of the caldera in concentric circles, the centre set up like an amphitheatre. The Jema syrup spills from crevices around the edges, running down from the peak in well-worn grooves and channels.

The sun sets slowly on Jema’grethy, slowly sinking into the ocean over a period of a couple of hours. During that time pairs of Voidtreckers will feel drawn towards the syrup, to touch the surface.

When they do they will receive a memory and find themselves back in that cave once more. For those watching it is as if they are in a trance, lasting a few moments.

People feel moved at different times and so there are always people aware, sat around the mountain top. It might be that there are other friends they wish to speak to about what they see. It might be that they wish to sit silently and avoid everything, if only their friends will allow it.

But it is a place to be together nonetheless.

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She sucks in a breath, as if to calm herself down a bit more after thinking about that awful, awful place and the way it haunts here even now.

But as she looks at the other girl, Alice does look a bit calmer. This is what she finds so interesting about this young girl, after all. It's obviously that she's nowhere near the way other children are, yet she's not actively malicious at the same time. After all, if she was, she may have enjoyed the story rather than think it was stupid for Alice to get locked up in the asylum.

"True. Many stupid things happen to us while traveling around with this train." That much she can agree on. Though it isn't all bad - or maybe Alice's standard is just really low after everything that happened back home. "But it's rather hard to find anyone to punish for that. There is no clear culprit."

"Yes it do no be being like we can be punishing the train, it do just be being a stupid train."

It would be like punishing a mop because you hated scrubbing floors. Useless. Also the train was where they lived, they had no where else to be.

"And if this mountain to be being to blame for what we did be seeing, then we can no really be punishing it either."

Mountains were hard to punish.

"Exactly."

Even though it had been difficult to punish Bumby back home, considering their difference in social standing, there was still something to be done about it, although in an unconventional way. He was still just a person, after all. Just flesh and blood, so incredibly squishy when it came down to it.

But a train? A mountain, or even an entire island? What could you even hope to do against those? They don't feel pain - not in the way humans do, anyway. It makes it hard to find anything to aim your anger at.

"And yet you're still mad at it, aren't you?" There's no judgement in Alice's voice. After all, she herself is mad. She knows emotions aren't that easy to stop or control.

"Yes."

She can admit that she thinks. That's not a dangerous thing to admit. It's normal to be angry. The mountain was stupid. The train was stupid.

"It should no have been showing things. They do be being inside our head for a reason."

Not to be shown to the outside world. The only way to keep a secret was to be its only keeper.

That's a sentiment Alice can understand very well. She herself is so private - if it wasn't for the fact that her memories were shared with someone who already knew about most of it, she would probably have threatened them into silence somehow. Those things aren't to be shared, especially not involuntarily.

But at least directing her frustration into finding a way to help out this girl is making Alice feel a bit better. She's always felt better with purpose.

"How about we try to deal with that anger then, hm? Do you perhaps want to go break some rocks? Breaking things always makes me feel better whenever I'm angry at something." Is this really what you should be teaching a child, Alice...

"Breaking rocks?"

Breaking things did sound good. She wanted to break things. But she knew if she made even a wrong move it could all go wrong, Mami knew too much, she had the power to destroy everything.

But if it was Alice's choice and an attempt to deal with the anger... she nodded. "Yes we should be breaking rocks."

"It helps a lot. Trust me."

Of course Alice has no idea of what's going through the girl's head. All Alice knows is that it's a valid way of redirecting your anger when it has no proper target available, and the last thing she wants is for the younger girl to have to live with this anger until they get back to the train - and beyond that, perhaps.

So Alice stands up, ready to lead the way.

"Come on. Let's go do it somewhere where there won't be any ignorant people around to ask annoying questions." Like 'why are you breaking rocks'. Some of us have anger management issues, Jan!

"Yes, questions do be being stupid." She doesn't want to explain why she is breaking rocks, she just wants to break rocks.

"Down the mountain do be being better."

Far away from everyone.

She nods before leading the other girl further down the mountain. It's a fairly silent walk, considering how much Alice has to think about, but once she finds a good spot that's out of the way enough for everyone back up on the mountain to not overhear them and wonder what's causing demolition noises, she stops. Especially since she sees some decently sized rocks, ready for crushing.

Good.

Alice glances from them towards the girl. "Do you need to borrow anything to break them with?" It doesn't exactly look like the girl is armed with anything like a hammer or something, after all.. And she does remember her being all interested in Alice's ability to pull weapons out of nowhere, so she doesn't think the girl has any similar hammerspace abilities. Unless the young girl has some secret superstrength powers that Alice herself didn't know about until now.

She has a lot to think about as well, so the silence isn't a bad thing. She has never been one for using lots of words, she isn't Peter. She can keep her words from leaking, just as she keeps her eyes from leaking.

She nods with a nose wrinkle, a dagger is no good for breaking rocks and she could stomp on them, but that would be an exercise in frustration most likely.

"Can I be borrowing something?"

"Of course."

Especially since Alice is pretty sure at this point her weapons are just unbreakable, considering the kind of stuff she's done with them and they never did break..

So she holds her hands in front of her, and a moment later her big metal hobby horse appears in them.

"This should do the trick." Alice holds it out towards the girl. It looks like it ought to be way too heavy for even Alice to carry, let alone a girl much younger than her, but if she takes it, she'll find that while it's heavy, it doesn't feel impossible to swing around. Like it somehow scales to the young girl's own strength, despite its appearance.

She grins when she sees that hobby horse. It is the weirdest weapon she has ever seen but it looks heavy and perfect to break rocks with. She is even more pleased when she takes it to find that she can swing it around despite how it looks.

She does swing it around, a couple of times just to practice and then without warning brings it down on the nearest rock. The rock shatters and her grin grows. Alice was right, this was a good way to deal with stupid feelings.

She swung again, towards another rock.

At first Alice's gaze is very neutral. Like she's observing the younger girl, trying to see what she'll do, how this will unfold.

And the sight of a little girl grinning so gleefully while shattering rocks maybe shouldn't be a good thing. There definitely are people who'd argue that. But Alice doesn't think it's so bad. Everyone needs coping mechanisms, right? It's not like the girl is hurting anyone by breaking some rocks here, so this isn't even a bad coping mechanism.

So even the corners of Alice's mouth may be starting to tug up at this point.

"How does it feel?"

"Good." She nodded as she swung the hammer around to smash another rock. The shattering of it made her grin more. Again and again she swung the hammer.

"This did be being a good idea."

Alice was good at knowing what to do, breaking things was satisfying and the movement of swinging the hammer around made her feel powerful.

Considering how powerless her memory had made her feel, it was a good thing to feel so strong.

"Of course. It's what I always do when I'm annoyed at something."

Well, annoyed at something she can't hurt in place of something inanimate, anyway. Which happens pretty often outside of the missions where they are actually helpfully provided with things to whack until you've taken out all of your anger and grievances on them.

"I'm glad you're feeling better." Perhaps it's a little more sappy than the sort of things Alice would usually say, but.. it's just true. It's a relief to see the other girl sulking less and grinning more. Alice understands it very well. Sometimes you just need to feel like you're in control somehow, even when you're not. When everything feels too overwhelming.

"You do be being smart." She told her and smashed another rock. She was feeling better and she had Alice to thank for that.

She hadn't forgotten about her being dangerous, but dangerous or it was good of her to help her like this.

Everything was confusing but she could at least understand smashing things, it was easy to understand. Swing the hammer, smash the rocks.

Forget about all the stupid stuff.

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The Mountain Top: Grasshopper 25

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