middleofsomewhere | The Endless River

The Endless River

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was the music that drew Lea's attention, and he approached with a bit of a smile. "Dodging a vacation, Demyx?", he said jokingly. "That's a new level of procrastination, even for you."

Demyx chuckled lightly at that, letting his fingers move over the strings without stopping.

"What do you mean, I'm sitting out here, right?" He grinned, teasing him a little bit.

"Well, yeah, but you're still skipping out on all the activities," Lea said. "Picnicking, mushroom climbing, message sending, teasing Vexen by trying to swipe his giant sun hat..." He grinned at that last one. OK, so it wasn't an official activity, but it should be.

He chuckled appropriately at that. "I guess, but I'm not really interested in any of those things." He admitted with half a shrug.

"Who am I gonna send a message to?"

"Even if you didn't want to eat anything at a picnic, you're still welcome to hang out," Lea said. "A lot of people are doing that. Especially since some of them are visiting more than one picnic, and that'd be a lot of food, you know?"

"And you could send a message to Ienzo. Let him know you're OK and maybe what's been happening. He's probably worried after you just kinda vanished into thin air sans Dark Corridor."

"I guess." Demyx said, but he didn't look like he was going to move. "I don't really have many friends here or anything." He'd been kind of isolating himself, what was that saying, once bitten, twice shy? He'd managed to connect lately with a couple of people, but for the most part...

He was laying low and flying under the radar.

"Nah." Demyx said after a moment. "Ienzo's going to assume I went home or something. Better than telling him I got kidnapped." He glanced away. "He's got bigger things to worry about. I don't even know if he would consider us friends."

"Well, up to you I guess," Lea said with a bit of a shrug. "Just figured I'd let you know it was cool if you did want to come hang out."

"As for Ienzo though, it'd probably still be a good idea to send him a message, even if you're not sure, since we don't know when we'll get another chance. After Vexen ran off to play double-agent without even leaving a note or something, he'd probably be worried about anybody else vanishing. And the worst that can come of it is nothing, so you've really got nothing to lose by trying."

"I can't really argue with that." Demyx said honestly. "There probably is nothing to lose."

If Ienzo didn't want a message from him, he could just toss it away, couldn't he? He looked like he was thinking about it.

"I think you're making me out to be more important than I am." Demyx observed a little wryly. Wouldn't it be normal to assume he just wandered off?

"And I think you're selling yourself a little short," Lea said. "Whatever else can be said about you, you do tend to make an impression on people, even if it's just 'who's that weird guy with the giant blue sitar?' Plus you've got some pretty unique magical skills; I don't think anybody else would've thought to use music to make and control clones of themselves made of water. That's actually pretty awesome, and useful too. I mean I can make shapes with my fire, yeah, but it's just for show, and there's no time for getting fancy in a fight."

And there was something else too, something Lea had been thinking about off and on, regarding all the former Organization members. But he wanted to mull it over a bit and maybe run it by Vexen before he made it generally known.

"Not really a position I thought you'd take." Demyx admitted with a bit of a wry chuckle, but he looked like he was thinking. "Considering how we're opposites and all that." The two of them fighting each other had the potential to be messy and do damage on both sides.

"I don't know if the way we do our magic is different or not. I have access to a lot of water." Didn't Axel have that for fire? Or rather, he was Lea now, wasn't he, and had a keyblade.

"Then again, I guess we're not really doing the same thing anymore."

"Just because it'd really hurt if I got hit with it doesn't mean I don't think it's cool," Lea said. "Besides, it's a lot easier to appreciate creativity and stuff with a heart."

"Honestly, I'm not entirely sure either. Magical theory has never been my strong suit, but I know I've never really had any trouble generating as much fire as I need for a situation. Explosions are doable, but really difficult, since I'm trying to both cause and control it at the same time. That's why I usually save them for my limit break; they're kind of a last-ditch move."

"And if you mean the whole Keyblade thing, yeah, that's new," he said. "But aside from that, I'm still doing mostly the same things I was before, at least back home. Training, kicking Heartless butt, that kind of thing. I'm just doing it for my friends, rather than for the Organization or just for myself."

"I'll take your word on that." Demyx said with a bit of a more shy, sheepish smile as though he wasn't sure what to make of the compliment that he was creative. It was a really high compliment, he thought.

"I guess I get that, but I'm used to summoning and controlling water at the same time. Maybe it's different training we were doing?" He asked, with a bit of a headtilt.

No, he didn't just get his powers and never practice them. Like his music, they needed to be in tune as much as anything else did. The water came easy, but the control came with practice.

"I'm looking at trying to come up with cool new stuff. I did some combos with Reno, that was...fun."

"Maybe," Lea said. "I know our fighting styles are really different, but I dunno about training styles. I'd have to watch you train sometime to see how it compares."

Yes, the powers came more or less naturally. But controlling them took work, especially when one wasn't used to using magic. Young Axel had found that out the hard way.

He nodded a bit at the mention of Reno. "Yeah, I've met him. Haven't really talked to him much since, but he seemed OK. And I can't help but like his hair." Lea grinned and combed the fingers of one hand back through his hair, which was every bit as red and spikey as Reno's.

Demyx let out a delighted snicker at that and move to flick one of Lea's locks with his finger.

"Yeah, you would." He smirked. "He's not a fire guy like you, he's electric." He grinned.

"Way less bitchy than Larxy, but our powers are pretty compatible."

Lea laughed but brushed the lock of hair back into place. "Yeah, water and electricity sound like a pretty good combo under the right circumstances," he said. "All you'd get if we combined our powers is an instant sauna. Which I guess might be good if you needed a smokescreen, but not for much else."

Demyx snickered at that. "What makes you think we don't need a sauna?" He grinned. "I think there's one in the spa anyway."

He hummed a thoughtful noise. "I don't know if I can control the temperature of the water I use. Never tried it."

"Well yeah a sauna would be good for relaxing," Lea said. "I meant in a fight though; it wouldn't really be much good for that."

"You should sometime, if only to see what happens. I keep meaning to see if I can control things like bits of glass or metal that I've melted the same way I can fire, but most stuff I could try it with on the train is stuff we need, belongs to someone else, or both."

Edited 2021-05-31 06:00 (UTC)

"You know, like a smoke screen!" He waved his hand a bit with a bright smile.

"I guess, yeah, I haven't really done much with my powers since coming back."

"Wanna hang out some time and just mess around with our powers a bit?", Lea said. "If we took notes, we could even justify it as doing research, so Vexen couldn't get mad." Screwing around with magic; fun and educational! Kinda.

"Yeah, sure, we could do that. They might go together better than we might think." Demyx said with a little chuckle.

"You can do the notetaking, I'd rather just block out the lecture."

Lea chuckled. "OK, then," he said. "Avoiding a lecture or not, it might actually be useful to have stuff like that written down; never know when it might come in handy. But I can do it for both of us easy enough; before I was on the train I got forcibly sent back to school, so I got some practice."

"School?" Demyx made a face. "That sounds like literal torture." He commented dryly. "Why would they make you?"

"Mostly because when we arrived there, any powers we had were replaced with that world's magic," Lea said. "Which wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't have the nasty side effect of painfully bursting out of you with potentially lethal force if you didn't learn to use and control it. So yeah, magic school was actually the better option."

"Ugh, that also sounds like a nightmare, hey, remind me not to visit that world sometime." Demyx commented with a little amused huff.

"Sounds horrible."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Endless River

Music

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject