The Endless River

[voidtreckermods]

On the morning of day twenty one of the month of Kazoo there is a message on the ICP screens around the train. Their SCA's will light up the colour of the Void and show the following information.

World #398050 is a void nexus known locally as Tshering. As a void nexus this world has strong links with the void and the connection through worlds. World #398050 is home to the Endless River. Legends speak of this river being powerful enough to send thoughts from one heart to another across any distance. All that is needed is for you to know who it is you wish to reach.

On-board

The dressing carriage is open, filled with clothing best suited to a pleasant spring day. Light, airy and in a rainbow of joyful colours and florals. One closet is entirely filled with wide-brimmed hats bedecked with ribbons, feathers and ornaments. A stack of picnic baskets and containers filled with an alarming variety of passenger-suitable foodstuffs and flasked drinks sits in one corner, next to rolls of thick, weatherproof blankets in the four team colours.

The large box marked Do Not Use Yet, filled with small, empty jute bags, is hopefully still sat in the Luggage carriage, ready for passengers to grab handfuls of its contents as directed by the announcement.

Upon landing (after an appropriate countdown), the train remains on the surface, its carriages partially curved to form a gathering site for the day. Welcome to Tshering, the eighth void nexus!



A Day for Picnics

Tshering, system #398050, is a strange place, only habitable by grace of the passengers' SCAs. The sky is shot through with colours, a cascade of sunsets, and through it, the void shimmering through it in seams like a child's painting of the milky way. Still, there's a beauty to the chaotic mash of colours that soaks through its landscape, and in the shelter of the forests of towering funghi that dot its surface, the Void can go unseen by its visitors.

The temperature seems mild, suitable for the provided clothing, and if there are weather patterns around the world they've taken the day off. The funghi are sturdy enough that what air flow there is doesn't disturb their stalks, and carved grooves and holds in some of the larger examples indicate that climbing them to sit atop their glowing crowns is eminently possible, and, in fact, encouraged.

the Endless River

The Endless River is a font of pure chaos, flowing from a multitude of small rivulets across the area to a central reservoir, from which it pours directly upwards, away from Tshering's surface and out of sight, beyond the world's atmosphere.

Anything bagged and placed within the Endless River will also flow upwards and soon be out of sight, passing, presumably, into the Void. Scattered across the surface of Tshering are small, glittering pebbles, as described in the announcement.

The stones are pleasantly cool to the touch, and all passengers need to do is feel. Messages can be in any form that the Voidtreckers wish. Perhaps words, perhaps feelings, perhaps an image from their mind into the stone. Perhaps a mixture. Once they begin their message the stone will glow slightly and continue to glow as they secure it in the bag and cast it into the river. They will feel, almost instinctively, that they need to focus as they do so, thinking of the person they wish to reach all the while.

There are plenty of bags and many more stones; passengers will not be limited in their sendings.

Comments

[oceantier]

"I touched it." With no apparent intent for sudden movement from Alice, the Gem's stance eases further, the line of her shoulders easing, her foot slipping back into place. "It . . . isn't normal water." Her lips press together. "It burns."

This isn't a good plan, and she knows it, but again, with the possibility there . . . how can she also just ignore it?

A hand lifts towards the river, beckons. A curl of water separates, swirls towards her -- though evaporates even before it makes it to her.

"I can still manipulate it." She stares at the space where the water had been. "I thought . . . maybe."

[irrationally]

There's no surprise on the young woman's face as she sees the water move at the motion of Lapis' hand. Controlling water is very low on the list of powers that would still surprise Alice at this point, after all, even though she hasn't seen anyone do it before in person like this.

".. they do say curiosity killed the cat." Alice wanders closer towards the water herself as she says it. She doesn't bend down to reach out to it, let alone to try and touch it, but she does stare at it. Wondering what it'd be like.

Water burning away at you, until you're nothing.

"Would you really want to risk being eaten alive?"

[oceantier]

Memory: A green lake stretching in all directions, as far as the eye can see, its surface swirled with deeper green like oil slicked on water. Her feet braced, arms taut, yanked downward by the chains coiled around her wrists. Each link means something lost. Each link means being pulled closer to what lies underneath, waiting, hoping for her to slip.

Hungry.

She shakes it away, pulls herself back. Focuses on the other woman as she peers down at the river. "There's someone I owe. I promised."

Even so, she doesn't exactly look eager at the prospect of going in. If there were any guarantee that it would work, she would in a heartbeat. There's no such guarantee, though . . . and then what?

[irrationally]

"How would that person feel if they knew you got yourself killed for that promise?"

She stares at the water, rather than at Lapis, as she speaks.

Alice sure is saying a lot for a person who claims she's not all that interested, huh. But she can't help it. No matter what she says, or no matter what she feels on the surface, there's that hero complex deep down that slips through, that messes with what she thought her initial intentions were. (A complex that, just maybe, is tired of seeing people die in front of her.)

[oceantier]

That question touches like a falling droplet rippling through water.

No, Steven wouldn't want that -- would never have wanted that for her. Steven is good. He wants the best for everyone, even when it's at cost to him.

His face lingers in her mind, earnest. Hopeful. The ghost of small arms wrap around her waist. Stay.

Her shoulders feel weighted. Her arms creep around herself, holding tight.

Tries to hold him there. Tries to hold herself. In that moment she feels like blown glass, where just a puff of wind might crack her apart.

"I owe him." The words come at last in a thread, hoarse. "Am I supposed to just leave him?"

[irrationally]

It's a little hard when Alice knows nothing about the situation is refering to. She doesn't know the person Lapis is talking about, doesn't know what sort of promise they made, what kind of relationship they have. And Alice could make guesses, sure. But there are so many possibilities that any guess would just feel like a meaningless assumption.

So she doesn't.

"You're not leaving him. Is any of this our faults?" After all, that sentence makes it feel like Lapis is putting some fault on herself. It's nothing she's doing. It's nothing any of them are actively doing. "It's all that dumb train's fault for taking us away from our worlds in the first place. Rather than risking your life, wouldn't it be so much more satisfying to instead fight whoever separated you in the first place?"

[oceantier]

She's quiet at that. For long moments.

Because what this woman is saying makes sense. A lot of it.

She hadn't chosen this. She'd chosen the world where she had been before, but not this. She'd been scooped up without permission, transplanted, stolen. She'd never have left if she could help it.

It's just felt like she's going against her promise if she isn't doing everything in her power to get back . . . including diving into a river that burns -- that feels like it could scald her alive.

It would be more satisfying to fight. Let that whoever understand what it means to be trapped.

Let them understand exactly what it means, and the full brunt of the weight that comes with it.

Before she takes it apart.

"When?" The question comes with a measure of hope that Alice knows who this is, that this is something that can happen soon. She can't hide the thread of eagerness that twines into the word. She doesn't have time to waste.

[irrationally]

She recognizes the feeling behind that question, as simple as it is, just one word. Alice understands it, has felt it before herself - the eagerness to fight to get what you want, no matter who it is you have to fight, no matter how big that fight is.

And in Wonderland that had been easy. There had been a clear goal, even if it was incredibly hard to reach, even if it required fighting entire armies by herself? But in this place?

There's no such guarantee.

"I'm sorry," Alice slowly says, and something about the shift in her tone seems to indicate she means it. She'd love to do nothing more than just tell Lapis how they can fight, who they can fight.

But..

"We still have no idea who is behind all of this. No one has shown their face just yet. And any attempts to attack the train itself haven't gotten anywhere. All we can do is bide our time and wait for the right moment to strike."

[oceantier]

Her mouth firms a little at that revelation, because she definitely does want this now. She trusts the ones that she left in her previous world, trusts them to do all that they can, but she still feels the pull of every minute, every hour, where she's not where she promised to be. Time feels like water rushing through her fingers -- except not water she's able to control.

But she can hear the honesty in Alice's voice, and there's something about the other woman that lends credulity, truth.

She has to wait.

Fully accepting that, actually making some measure of peace with it is something else. But it's a beginning.

She closes her eyes a moment, tries to tug back some measure of balance.

"What is known?"

[irrationally]

"Well.. Explaining that may require a little bit more time."

It's easier to explain what they don't know compared to what they do know, after all. The latter involves a lot more specifics. And with how serious Lapis seems about all of this, Alice doesn't want to give some dismissive half-answer, the way she may have done if she were less invested in the conversation.

She glances behind them, at a bunch of the giant mushrooms nearby.

"Let's go sit there while we talk." Mostly since Alice wants to rest her legs, but it has the nice upside of keeping Lapis away from the water. Just in case. Alice isn't going to watch anyone else potentially die again.

[oceantier]

Her eyes do slip back to the water briefly. She knows it isn't likely a good option, not with the way it feels or acts, but it's still hard to give up on the possibility.

It only lasts for a moment, though. Her shoulders ease a little, and she dips a nod, heading towards the indicated mushrooms.

[irrationally]

Once she spots the other heading in that direction, Alice turns to do the same thing. She takes a spot underneath one of the big mushrooms, sitting at its base like this is nothing too special. (After all, it isn't to her. She's been sitting among giant mushrooms just like this before.)

It makes it easy to stay serious in the moment as she opens her mouth to explain.

"It's hard to find a specific place to start." Since they do know a lot of various things, even if it's little in the greater picture. "But for one, we know that this train seems to have drawn us to itself because it perceives us as heroes who have to save the various worlds we are sent to. Or so the train itself says, either way."

Because they ought to take the words of something that kidnapped them in the first place with a grain of salt, Alice thinks.

[oceantier]

Settled under the mushroom, erect, her skirt pooling around her legs, she listens.

"I'm not a hero." The response is immediate, eyes slightly narrowed with scorn. If the train expects to find one in her, it's going to be sorely disappointed. The only reason she'd left Earth had been to find Steven. There'd been no interest in saving anyone else.

Heroes are supposed to be selfless. She knows she isn't.

Her brow furrows a little, sorting through the rest. "How can it make that determination? What criteria does it use?" A pause. "And why can it make that determination?"

Things that are normally inanimate aren't normally sentient, after all. Not able to make decisions.

Unless.

Unless.

. . .

No. Doubtful. It couldn't be the same. It's not a Gem. It doesn't work by the same rules.

Also, she's angry at it; it doesn't deserve any sympathy from her.

[irrationally]

"We don't know."

Not even a single one of those things. How it knows so much about them. What criteria it uses. How it can think for itself.

Or if anyone has figured it out yet, Alice sure doesn't know.

"But its definition of a hero seems to be.. odd." To say the least. Alice won't even say anything about herself here, but.. "There is at least one person on this train who has murdered a child in cold blood and still doesn't regret his actions. I have absolutely no clue how a person like that could be called a hero."

[oceantier]

She takes that in for a moment, eyes shifting to a neutral point on the grass.

Then, quietly: "Has everyone here done something like that?"

Because if so, maybe the idea of being "heroes" is dressing it up. Perhaps it's more as she originally expected -- a prison, or a punishment.

[irrationally]

It renders Alice quiet for a moment. Because she can't claim that she's any different. Well, perhaps she's slightly different, because there is no way that she would murder someone innocent, someone who didn't deserve it, but.. she can't deny that her hands are stained with blood as well.

But she's only one example. Alice knows that she skews towards the worse side of the train population, so she shakes her head.

"No, there are people here who.." She pauses. It feels weird to say this, to display such belief in people, but she wants to be honest here. Especially since Lapis does seem to be attentive. She seems to be taking all of this very seriously. "Who are genuinely good. People who constantly want to help others without asking for anything in return. There really isn't a consistent type the train picks."