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

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Someone from my past who seems to think he's entitled to all my attention," Koumyou sighs, wetting the cloth he'd been wiping his face off with, with some bottled water. And then back to wiping he goes, trying to make his face feel less crusty and stiff and sore.

"He seemed to think murdering my son would leave me all to him... and, well. I do have a history of standing by and watching people I care for die. It's the only Buddhist philosophy I ever taught; muichi motsu, 'hold nothing'. Essentially, enjoy things and people while they're there, but let them go when they invariably die. Don't fight to save them. Don't get weighed down by their memory. Embrace absolute impermanence."

So Ukoku's gambit may not have been the worst plan, on some level. Koumyou had stood by and watched Goudai die by Ukoku's hand, hadn't he? Why wouldn't he stand by and watch it happen to Kouryuu, too? He hadn't known the kid for as long as he'd known Goudai, after all.

Ukoku had even sent in a group of youkai to give himself plausible deniability, but Koumyou hadn't been fooled.

Koumyou's gaze is on the damp fabric in his hands, now lowered to his lap. He folds it over itself one way, then the other, back and forth.

"...I couldn't do that with Kouryuu. Not my son. I abandoned muichi motsu, and I took the attack meant for him onto myself. I couldn't... I couldn't let him go."

[yondu]

"I guess there could be a lotta arguments for selfishness in decidin' to live when you could stop someone else from losin' their life, or for nobility in savin' someone. But I ain't a priest. I'm just a daddy and I think you did the right thing. Bein' a holy man ain't as important as the other."

Neither was being a captain, and he should have figured that shit out sooner and figured out a way around.

"To hell with that guy what killed ya in front of your boy. Kid's probably carryin' a whole lotta that with him now." And that's worth all the messages.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I have no doubt he is. And now he's a Sanzo priest, at thirteen..."

Gods. Koumyou rocks back out of seiza, and hits the ground with a thump as he sits down on the dirt in a less formal way.

"I was the most hunted man on our world in my lifetime, because I guarded two of these," he plucks at the sutra on his shoulders, "killing me meant twice the reward, but with the same risk -- I could only kill an attacker once, after all.

"And now that's him. He's my heir, he's Genjo Sanzo now. They're going to come after him from all directions, and they won't stop until he's dead, too."

[yondu]

"If you did the same for him that I did for Peter, he'll make it a good long time." Yondu says it doubtlessly. And he's pretty sure that Koumyou would have done what he could to make him strong enough.

Thirteen though, damn. He'll have to face a whole lot real quick. "Both of us know you can fight like hell at thirteen. Don't make it right. But we know you can."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I didn't teach him as much as I should have," Koumyou admits quietly. "But hopefully it was enough."

He hadn't been able to bear the idea of hurting his kid, and his own training had been brutality on top of brutality. How could he be any different as a teacher from his own abusive instructors?

It's only now that he's starting to try to teach at all, with Devero. Koumyou fully expects it to backfire spectacularly, and just hopes the big guy will still talk to him after.

"I'm sure he'll surpass me in ways I can't even imagine," and he really is sure of that. His kid's amazing. "I still wish I could help him, though. And that he didn't have to see me die like that."

[yondu]

"I wish we could check on 'em. Even if they don't give us the right timeline, I just..."

He sighs.

"I wish we could see one where they made it. Give us the best damn result, universe. ...It's gonna be real heavy on 'im. But I still think you wouldn't do wrong by 'im."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Yeah," for sure, Koumyou would have been thrilled to find out about Genjo's three traveling companions. His friends--!! Even if the cranky blond would deny the use of that word.

"Did you send any messages to your kid?"

Yondu had said he didn't trust himself to say more than he had, but did that include any messages from today?

[yondu]

Friends made the liklihood of survival go up even more. Yondu's even more confident of Peter's success because he knows for sure now that Rocket and the Twig are on his side.

"Nah. Didn't send any to nobody."

Yondu frowns, a setting his face is just made for.

"Ah... the day before I died... I ran into Stakar. I think I told ya about 'im. He um..." Yondu stops to lick his lips, collect his thoughs, before finishing it. "He told me he'd not mourn me when I was dead. That I broke his heart. All their hearts?" He winces at it, the words still sting deep. They ache. "Thing is, I still love 'em. Can't bring myself to force my memory on 'em if that's how they felt."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I guess I can see not dropping them a line, then," Koumyou agrees with a sigh. "I sent messages to a lot of dead people, too. Who knows, maybe they're also traveling around on inter-dimensional trains."

Weirder things have clearly happened.

Koumyou digs around in his sleeve and produces his long kiseru, already packed with fresh tobacco. He lights the tiny bowl with a fingertip, and takes a drag.

"At least the planet's nice? If very... fungal. I've never seen such huge mushrooms."

[yondu]

He'd had that sentiment, too. That he hoped his crew was out their on their own trains. At least the good folks on it, the ones that did right by the code.

He doesn't spoil it again by mentioning that the mushrooms, the gaudiness, reminds him of Ego. Instead he tips his head back.

"Makes me miss travellin'. If this train has the slightest bit of sympathy for me an' I can find it in me to try again? I'd get me a ship and just go an' go an' go."

[its_dad_sanzo]

Smoking is helping to sooth Koumyou's mind after ripping open that grief. The grief is still there, waiting, a wound that won't heal. But the tobacco is warm and strong.

Koumyou holds in a lungful after that statement from Yondu, thinking about having that much freedom. It really is quite the thought, isn't it?

He lets the smoke out to reply, "If one can't go back, then one must go forward. But no one's stopping you from taking the scenic route, hm?"

CW: Depression/life-hating talk

[yondu]

"I sure hope I can get the chance to take whatever route."

Even if he's starting to care about people on the train, he still wants to go. But at the same time...

"Gonna tell ya somethin', between you an' me... It's real hard to keep goin' forward." And he's pretty tired of it.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I know that feeling, that's sort of how I was before I met Devero," Koumyou, at least, isn't judgemental about it. He takes another drag from his pipe, holds it for a few long seconds, and then declares softly, "Life is suffering."

[yondu]

"I think that's the part that kills me. Life ain't so much sufferin' for some people. It's just inconvenient an' all that."

He just shakes his head in wonder at the notion that life is actually fine for some people. Some people even get loved or have a birthday or...

Well, part of his suffering he brought on himself, didn't he?

"Mn. Ain't got much of a right to complain though."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Why not? You're alive, aren't you?"

Complaining is also part of that whole living deal, in Koumyou's mind.