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]

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?”

[calescent]

"...Well, there's people like me..."

[synchrosyntheses]

“You are strange to other people here? How so?”

[calescent]

"Watch."

And Kiri holds out her hand, and a little flame ignites in her palm.

[synchrosyntheses]

Pause.

“I could do that, but it would burn me. How does it not burn you?”

[calescent]

"I'm a prime. I'm the sweela prime. Sweela means fire, and mind." The fire winks out.

[synchrosyntheses]

“How did you come to be unique?”

[calescent]

"The last prime died. The new one is someone in the family, with the right personality, but no person chooses them, it just happens."

[synchrosyntheses]

“You were undistinguished, and now you can set your hand on fire? Or, I suppose, other things as well. Well, I would be more surprised ordinarily, but seeing as I am here due to an inexplicable selection of almost exactly myself...”

[calescent]

"But you don't belong to a prime family, and your telekinesis isn't one of the five kinds of prime magic we have here. There is one who does wood, but no one does glass."

[synchrosyntheses]

“How oddly specific. We can — do — any solid or liquid material we choose to.

“What is the next strangest thing after primes? I suppose this is a hard question to answer, seeing as you do not know what is strange to me, but your first thing was quite interesting.”

[calescent]

"Probably the next strangest thing is blessings. They're hard to explain with vocabulary you have... there are extra letters, that mean things by themselves. If you put all the letters on objects in a bowl and pick one without looking, it will be the right one."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Stranger indeed. How much can you ask them?”

[calescent]

"Not very much. They're abstract concepts; no 'yes' or 'no'. But they're nice to have."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Do you think they could help me learn about how I came to be here? Even a hint?”

[calescent]

"Maybe. We can try it." She gets up from her desk.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis lifts off the floor and follows. “If you showed me the symbols then I could make them, but I imagine that would interfere with picking them.”

[calescent]

"It might not, but it's faster to go to the place where I already have some. ...Keep about that far away from me. If you get too close I'll read your mind."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Read my mind?”

Teytis is now distinctly farther away. Still following, though.

[calescent]

"I haven't yet and I don't want to. Just don't get close."

[synchrosyntheses]

“I won't.” (She makes sure of that.)