voidtreckermods: (train)
VoidTrecker Express Mods ([personal profile] voidtreckermods) wrote in [community profile] middleofsomewhere2021-04-10 06:25 am

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.
bakegarasu: (brooding like a demon)

[personal profile] bakegarasu 2021-04-23 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
How do people talk about their kids? Otoha has to think on that for a moment.

"... What are you the most proud of, with him?"

That's a good starting point, right?
its_dad_sanzo: (I see you)

[personal profile] its_dad_sanzo 2021-04-23 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
"His spirit," Koumyou doesn't even have to think about that. "He has a stronger personality -- and will -- than any of the rest of us. Always has, too. He's amazing."

Even at thirteen, that inner strength of the kid's is damn near palpable.
bakegarasu: (heroes rise again)

[personal profile] bakegarasu 2021-04-23 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
"I'm sure you has a lot to do with that, too. I can't imagine any kid of yours not being strong-willed."
its_dad_sanzo: (father and son)

[personal profile] its_dad_sanzo 2021-04-23 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
"I don't know about that. I pulled him from the river as a newborn baby because his voice was so loud in my head, so insistent. It dragged me right out of the temple and out to the riverbank."

He'd been a bold little thing right from jump.
bakegarasu: (ooh what you say?)

[personal profile] bakegarasu 2021-04-23 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
"... Wait, in your head?" Excuse you what the hell.
its_dad_sanzo: (ciggy hand)

[personal profile] its_dad_sanzo 2021-04-23 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
"That's right," Koumyou takes his smoke from his lips to tap the ash off the end, then replaces it. "Or maybe my heart, it's hard to remember exactly."

Koumyou doesn't have the vocabulary for it because it's not a known phenomenon on his world, but his son had been born an Empath. Of the magical variety.
bakegarasu: (can you feel the sunshine?)

[personal profile] bakegarasu 2021-04-23 01:18 am (UTC)(link)
"... Huh." Weird. But not the point right now. "... Wht did you like to do with him? For fun, I mean."
its_dad_sanzo: doujinshi art (orange paper airplane)

[personal profile] its_dad_sanzo 2021-05-04 03:18 am (UTC)(link)
"We flew orange paper airplanes in the blue summer skies. We roasted sweet potatoes in the piles of leaves he swept from the courtyard."

Koumyou knows temple life is far from glamorous, technological, or exciting.

"Things like that."
bakegarasu: (little child be not afraid)

[personal profile] bakegarasu 2021-05-04 07:44 am (UTC)(link)
It still sounds nice to him. Even if he'd hate to grow up away from a city... it's not the same sort of life at all.

"... Is sweet potato his favorite food?" Just keep him talking. It's nice to hear.
its_dad_sanzo: (life is smoke)

[personal profile] its_dad_sanzo 2021-05-09 07:23 am (UTC)(link)
"Nothing like that, it's just something we do with all those leaves."

Something he'd started doing as a student, himself.

"He likes meat, when I take him traveling with me... and stale ramen with mayonnaise."
bakegarasu: (i hear you)

[personal profile] bakegarasu 2021-05-09 08:14 am (UTC)(link)
"Meat, huh... didn't think a priest would be allowed to eat that." Then again, when did Koumyou Sanzo ever listen to anything people did or didn't want him to do? But... uh.

"Stale ramen with mayonnaise sounds pretty gross..."
its_dad_sanzo: (serene)

[personal profile] its_dad_sanzo 2021-05-23 11:03 pm (UTC)(link)
"Or smoke tobacco, or drink alcohol, or date anyone," Koumyou points out, of the things he's not allowed to do, before taking another drag of his cigarette.

"It's not so bad, but I had him try it one time and he got hooked."