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's not used to providing comfort or reassurance -- to having anyone hope for that from her. She doesn't know if she's good at it or not; it often feels like she's groping in the dark, hoping to touch, hoping to make connection. Being around others, witnessing their points of pain, feeling others try to provide some balm to her own aches, has made her want to try. She was helped in Vista City -- so much more deeply than she ever thought she would be. She has to give some of it back.]

[Her chest gives a little flutter of surprise as he leans in, buries his face against her. But . . . maybe this is okay too. Her fingers smooth the tendrils of his hair, sliding gently between the strands.]

[Then he asks his question, and she pauses. There's a pause of her hand with it, brief. It's not a secret, really. But some of it is attached to things that are harder for her to talk about. Things that linger in her mind like the dark spot from earlier, lurking and hungry.]

I was . . . in two different places before. First on a planet called Earth. [Even more hesitation.] That wasn't . . . by choice. But. There was someone there who became important. When I learned he'd been taken to another world, I promised him I would go. That world was like this one. It drew people from all kinds of different places -- different universes and times. I'm not sure if I could have gotten back to Homeworld if I'd tried.

[cycledsingularity]

[So places like the train were common enough to stumble on multiple times for some people? Still the start of the story has some unsettlingly familiar beats to his own.]

"Went after. Someone too."

[It had been the first thought on Mono's mind. All he could think of the instant he hit that clearing. Why had that been? When they were taken away, he vowed to get them back. To fix things. Be anything other than the child who cowered when others needed him before. And that was only Lapis' story for one of them. She named many more. She truly did make friends in her journey towards saving her important one. Maybe that jutebag could be important for someone. He shifts to look at the hand holding it.]

"Gonna. Say anything?"

[oceantier]

[He went after someone, which means they were important enough to follow in the first place . . . but he isn't sending a stone of his own. Something happened to the someone -- maybe they were killed, or managed to get away on their own, leaving Mono behind. Or maybe something happened between them, damaging the connection.]

[No matter the reason, he's alone.]

[. . . This is something she understands.]

[She hesitates, then says softly,] Someday . . . I'd like to know the story.

[When he's ready to give it.]

[As for his question, her expression slips a little, recalled back to the small collection of stones piled in her lap. Just as soft,] I don't . . . know what to say.

[How can she convey all that she needs to -- wants to -- give? What happened to her, what she learned from Lesedi's room, a request for their forgiveness, that she's not sure when she's coming back, if she's coming back.]

["If" is a word she doesn't want to confront.]

[And the even more impossible, if "if" is a reality: What they mean to her. Have meant to her. That she has to give; she owes it.]

[But she's not sure if she could readily say those things. Or what the words should be if she could.]

[She balances the stones on her palm, watching the colors shift in the light. They're so small, but they seem very heavy.]

Nothing seems like enough.

Anything I could say . . . is not enough.

[cycledsingularity]

[Lapis is considerate. Mono knows what she means, it's the same sentiment Della shared only if he 'wants to', only if he's 'ready.' Only he doesn't know if he ever can be ready. Admitting it happened to someone made it seem more real. What if just mentioning it in its full truth shattered the blissful illusion he currently found himself in? Mono doesn't know if he could take that but then, it was his choice to bring it up. Perhaps some things aren't so easy to let go of. Much like the issue Lapis is facing.]

"Don't need words." [She doesn't have to 'say' it, Mono wants to specify. There was a second option. He places his hand upon her own, atop the stones, in what he hopes is a reasurring manner.]

"They said. The stones--" [He fidgets, mentally sorting through how to sort a more complex sentence.]

"The stones. They send. Anything." [Or so he had overheard. Before the train, Mono managed to get on mostly without words and Lapis clearly had plenty to say, so...]

"Send feelings?" [What is something Lapis wanted her friend to feel?]