remote station

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis tel Jobont is not living up to her lantelis.

She had been en route to her usual position after a rest-and-resupply period. Instead of the expected uneventful trip, somehow she loses her anchors, falls through a bizarrely shaped storm, then finds herself impossibly over land instead of water and with her upper antennas chopped off like they were never there.

She was able to stabilize with only minor damage to the uninhabited land, but she cannot hear a single intelligible signal, and a hundred other things add up to this is no place anyone has ever seen before. Or rather, reported seeing before.

So here she sits in the sky, relaying nothing, thinking about everything.

Comments

[synchrosyntheses]

“My — puramem, my” — it runs out of vocabulary and makes a human figure — “come to your house to learn, it can?”

[calescent]

"Yes."

[synchrosyntheses]

A less cartoonish human figure descends, by no visible vehicle or path, from the central part of the floating thing.

As she gets closer, a haze around her proves to be some kind of elaborate structure, very detailed construction in glass and wood and less identifiable materials, forming a complete cylinder around her; the top and bottom are more opaque and thick. She floats in the middle, making occasional motions that seem purposeless and habitual. Her clothes appear to be well-made of cloth, but have only hems and neither seams nor fasteners.

She is followed by another latticework box which has some protrusions like those on the talking-sphere. The two merge together.

She approaches Kiribel, at the same height without the benefit of horse.

[calescent]

"...Hello."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Hello.

I — say how — it is good for me that you help me. I go with you.”

[calescent]

"Okay. Do you need all that stuff?"

[synchrosyntheses]

She seems upset, or afraid, at the question.

“This place is strange. I separate now; I do not separate all now.”

[calescent]

"...I don't understand, but if you want the stuff, you can bring it. My house is this way." She turns her horse. Aleko scrambles on to his to follow.

[synchrosyntheses]

She follows behind Aleko, as close as does not alarm the horses.

[calescent]

The ride takes about twenty minutes - they speed up a bit once they're out of the wheat, assuming Teytis can keep up.

The house is big and fancy and low-tech.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis has no trouble moving at any speed that might be required of her.

She seems to find the details of the house interesting but does not volunteer any thoughts on it.

[calescent]

Aleko puts the horses away and Kiri invites Teytis and all her stuff inside.

[synchrosyntheses]

Some of Teytis's latticework shifts and folds and slides and overall shrinks to allow her to fit into doors sized for unaccompanied bodies. The rest of her follows along, keeping out of the way.

[calescent]

Kiri leads her to a room which looks like an office. "You can sit... if you sit. Teaching you Welchin might be faster if I teach you to read and write it."

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis moves to a reasonable place for a chair to go that does not actually contain a chair, and settles to the ground (outside) while still floating (inside). Her box of other stuff settles into a corner.

“I will read Welchin will be very good to me.” Slight nervous smile.

[calescent]

So Kiri goes over the alphabet, the sounds the letters make, some of the words Teytis has learned, and some vocabulary added from objects in the room, especially stuff with regular spelling.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis continues to be good at learning things. She reproduces the alphabet on mysteriously floating tablets, and writes sentences and asks if she got them right.

[calescent]

Kiri is very curious about the mysterious floating tablets, but willing to focus on language tutoring for now. She can correct the sentences and supply vocabulary defined in simpler terms.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis seems to be content to follow Kiri's lesson plan.

[calescent]

And here are some books that were not expressly designed to be introductions to Welchin. Kiri will hand them to the telekinetic stuff.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis smiles. This time, the book is conveyed through a temporary opening in her cylinder, she rearranges the space she's in for a comfortable reading distance, and she reads.

There does seem to be a person in that cylinder.

[calescent]

Yes, there does. By warmth, anyway, Kiri's staying out of range until she can explain mindreading.

She fills in gaps in Teytis's ability to read the book as they come up.

[synchrosyntheses]

When she's done: “Do you have any books on — kinds of events that might have caused me to be here?”

[calescent]

"I don't know what could possibly have caused you to be here. It does not sound like anything that has ever happened."

[synchrosyntheses]

“It is not anything that has ever happened in all the history that I have, either. Is there anything close, or things which are not well understood in their nature and their causes? What are the strangest things that are known to happen?”