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]

"That's an interesting sort of work."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Indeed, I found it to occupy myself completely. And I have nothing to do now, other than to learn about this world, and thus find every scrap of information I can about how I might eventually be able to get home. Er. Not that you haven't been welcoming.”

[calescent]

"I understand. Well, I have a lot of books. And I'd love to hear all about what you can teach us to make, or use your stuff to make for us."

[synchrosyntheses]

“If you would care to show me your library, then I could occupy myself for a while and you can get back to whatever you wanted to be doing before, I can only assume, alarmed people told you about the strange thing in your sky.”

[calescent]

"...It is pretty out of the way where it is, but might alarm fewer people if you put it on the ground, tucked between some hills. Library's this way." She leads the way.

[synchrosyntheses]

“I — all right, that is reasonable in the situation.” Teytis follows.

Teytis also (if anyone is looking) descends to the ground, reforming her outer ring until she's a mere strangely-made white and orange tower shorter than the nearby hills, and not apparently defying gravity at all.

[calescent]

People who are currently looking at the floating object are a little alarmed, but nobody comes to investigate right away.

Here is Kiri's library.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis looks at book spines. “Is there any particular book or section you would suggest I start with?”

[calescent]

"What are you interested in?"

[synchrosyntheses]

“Everything, eventually, but what comes to mind now: people I might meet; technology; topics something like ‘how people expect things to go’, perhaps history and etiquette and such; and more information on strange events, even the ones you’ve already told me about.”

[calescent]

"Hmm -" Kiri grabs her a book entitled A History of the Primacies. "Start on that, I'll get you some more." She sweeps off into the stacks.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis reads. This process appears to involve both her eyes and little floating black things looking at each page, and she rarely turns back to a previous page with her careful telekinetic page-turner appendages.

[calescent]

That is interesting, once Kiri comes back with more books: Developments in Trade and Manufacture volumes 1-4, Berringese Culture and Philosophy: A Comparison, The Monarchy of Welce, The Life of Ferv Satch, Seventeen Case Studies of Birth Blessings, The Etiquette Book, and Ances Lalindar's Journey to Malinqua.

[synchrosyntheses]

Read read read. Teytis appears content to read everything straight through rather than discussing clarifications or implications along the way.

[calescent]

Well, if she doesn't want her vocabulary filled in -

"I'll be upstairs. Dinner will be in two hours, and you can have some if you want."

[synchrosyntheses]

Slightly frozen for a moment.

“I — have my own supplies of food, but — if you do not mind, if dinner is a suitable occasion, I would learn by listening as well as by reading.”

[calescent]

"I don't mind. But you might not hear very much. My brothers usually sit near me and don't talk aloud very much."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Then I will read, and leave tonight to sleep. If you or your brothers want to ask me anything, feel free.”

[calescent]

"You could sleep here if you want. We have room."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Thank you, but I feel — exposed to strangeness — enough as it is.” Weak smile. “Not that I would not have been even more so if I were to eat at your table, but sleeping is another thing entirely.”

[calescent]

"Okay. Up to you."

[synchrosyntheses]

“Thank you for offering.”

Back to reading.

[calescent]

Upstairs goes Kiri.

[synchrosyntheses]

By the time it seems a suitable time to sleep, Teytis has finished The Etiquette Book and all the volumes of Developments in Trade and Manufacture, and is part of the way through The Monarchy of Welce.

She makes her way out of the house and to her discreet tower, discreetly.

There is much to sleep on.

The next day, she returns to Kiribel's house at an hour that her reading suggests is a reasonable one for visitors.

[calescent]

The Etiquette Book says that it is polite to leave at least an hour after dawn to allow everyone you're visiting to be fully awake when they greet you.

An hour after dawn, someone who is not Kiri and doesn't look enough like her to be a brother opens the door. She is only momentarily startled by the stuff gridded around Teytis's person. "...Good morning."