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]

She watches his movements, but doesn't follow, turning her own crane in her hands. The silver paper catches the light along the fragile length of the neck. The river will dissolve it, wash it away.

"Could I keep it?"

This is a strange impulse, really -- she's never owned anything until her previous world, and even then she felt no impulse to collect. But here . . . there's a place for storage next to her bed, and there's nothing in it that's hers except for the poster she brought with her.

It would be nice to have a few things to call her own. Somehow, especially this -- something both pretty and something that she's made.

Not that she still intends to stay in this place. But for now . . . she likes the idea of something that's hers.

[worthallthis]

Aw. Soldat remembers, with a kind of homesick clarity, asking almost the same thing of Misty the first time they made an origami crane. Because they hadn't really understood ownership, at the time; it had just been sad, thinking of it disappearing into the lake. "Of course. You can do with it. Whatever you want. It's yours."

[oceantier]

A nod, small, and she cradles the crane a moment more in her hands, that lingering shadow of a smile emerging again.

"I would like to learn the boat." If they're still offering.

While she's still skeptical of it helping, she liked learning this . . . and if there's a possibility of it helping, she'll take it.

[worthallthis]

Even if it doesn't help her for grief, it's still useful for keeping the hands and mind busy. "Then you'll learn the boat," they say, willing to sit here until the train is ready to go, teaching the art of folding paper, if that's what somebody wants.

They offer her another piece of origami paper, this one purple and blue.