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

[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.)

[calescent]

The chapel is small, but not too small to allow them personal space.

"Just take one at a time. I'll try to say what they mean."

[synchrosyntheses]

She thinks, and reaches past the coins visible on top and pulls one out.

[calescent]

"Intelligence. ...Fast mind good at doing mind things. It's one of the first three I got." Kiri taps her blessing jewelry.

[synchrosyntheses]

“That could describe me, or what I am doing, as well.” She takes another in the same way.

— It also matches one of Kiri's, now that she knows to look.

[calescent]

"...Power. Being able to do many things or big things."

[synchrosyntheses]

“But now it seems more probable that these are only matching yours.” One more?

[calescent]

"Clarity." Her last one. "Knowing what to do, not thinking about other things that aren't what you want. I'm not sure this works for you."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Now I wonder if you could actually read my mind. Not enough to try it. Perhaps all of these things do not work for me.”

[calescent]

"You don't have to try it. I can feel your warmth from here, though."

[synchrosyntheses]

“My warmth?”

[calescent]

"Warmth is -" Well, easy to demonstrate. The room warms up a few degrees. "That. The opposite is cold." The room chills. The room returns to normal. "I can feel when things are warm or cold, from farther away than I read minds."

[synchrosyntheses]

“All right. Would you care to tell me about the next strangest thing, or perhaps ask me some questions of your own? I do appreciate your taking the time to teach me.”

[calescent]

"There aren't any other really strange things, the way I think of strangeness, after primes and blessings. How does your telekinesis work? Is it only you who can do it?"

[synchrosyntheses]

“Before I came here, I would have said anyone can do it, but everything I have seen since arriving here suggests that it is unheard of here, and I don't see how no one could have lankored accidentally in the history of this world.”

[calescent]

"It's something you could do by accident?"

[synchrosyntheses]

“It would be hard to live a life without doing so, unless you carefully avoided being good at anything or ever reusing a tool.”

[calescent]

"...People here do not avoid those things."

[synchrosyntheses]

“That would seem to settle the question.”

[calescent]

"So this is something anyone from where you are from can do, but people here can't. And you can't do blessings. I think you got the good stuff."