But Nana's going to keep the charade up a bit as she points out, ]
I mean, it's kinda obvious? If there's a living animal shoved in a jar too small for it, stuck in the basement, of course someone would try and free it. It probably just took a while because it was a frog. If there was a kitten in that jar, it would have been freed the first day.
[He appreciates the answer, thin charade or not, and his smile falls away for something more sincere, more somber.]
Maybe. But people can get used to a lot. And everyone there was stuck in a jar too small for them.
If it's any comfort...the Orlop did feel a lot like the Engine Room. Not the specifics, but...I don't know. They way it was put together, all aesthetic and oddments. And everything in the Engine Room is, it's all the barge, wearing different hats. She's alive, but she's not trapped, she's flying. And she's glad we're here.
I know it's not like that for every ship. Ships from my world were all slaves inside, and that was worth fighting, even though I didn't know the consequences. I wouldn't mind buying our frog thief a drink, even though it all went sideways.
[If they weren't a BABY. Not that Jedao necessarily wouldn't give Nana a glass of honey wine anyway just to see what happened.]
But I have reason to hope that frog was enough a part of the Narrenschiff to feel like it was flying too, right from its spot.
You couldn't buy her a drink anyway, [ Nana points out, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. ] Not until port, where there are actual stores.
[ Unfortunately for everybody, Nana's smack dab in the middle of her 'let's try everything, nothing matters' phase. Teenager can smoke! ]
And anyway, it's not like anybody knew the consequences until they happened, right? Nobody said 'hey, don't touch that frog, she controls the air.' So really, freeing the frog is a perfectly sensible option.
Normally, people would ask if it was important before taking something. But if she thought it was suffering, it wouldn't matter anyway, would it?
[The feeling of the Vidona sacrifice shuddering under his hands as he fought to pull away the knife wants to rise in him; he pushes it back down, ruthlessly, keeps his voice steady and clear. He knows, though. The moment when it doesn't matter why. It's in him, that he knows that.]
[ It's said with absolute certainty. Nana knows she was trying to do the right thing by freeing the frog. She doesn't regret doing it in the first place. What happened later...well, that might be different. But that first act, freeing Niji the frog, she doesn't regret that in the slightest. ]
People can get used to horrible things if they happen for long enough. If people who have been on the Barge for a few years get used to floods and all that trauma, who's to say that the people on the Narrenschiff aren't used to the frog suffering?
Oh, certainly. And it's very dangerous and very easy to assume something that isn't like you isn't suffering.
But the opposite of that isn't assuming the other way. The opposite would be asking. Is it suffering? If it were a normal frog, it would be. We know it's not a normal frog. How could we tell?
Anyway. If you find out who it was, would you tell her, I have some good reasons to think it wasn't. That aren't about it not being a kitten.
Hey, I know you said that there weren't any frogs in the Engine Room here like there were on that other ship, but can I visit and check anyway? It's silly to believe someone just because they say something's true, especially in a place like this. The more evidence I can get, the better.
[She took his question seriously, so he takes her request seriously. He does think she's driven by the right reasons, even if he suspects she's perfectly capable of doing something deeply ill-advised about it.]
You can't come inside it. If someone messes with it, it does hurt her, and people have tried, so we put extra protections on the room, and I'm not lifting them for your peace of mind.
But I think you care for the right reasons. So I'll let you look in from the door, or I'll show you a video tour from my communicator. Which would you rather?
Then I'll be outside the engine room in five minutes or so.
[ Nana's wearing her high school uniform as she makes her way to the engine room. It wasn't a deliberate choice, per se—it was the first batch of clean clothes she grabbed because wow does she not want to wear any of her nasty grimy clothes she wore on the other boat. But she can make it work.
When she reaches the engine room, if Jedao's not outside, she'll give a quick little knock on the door. ]
He aims for seven minutes, which lets her see him coming, lets her know he hasn't had a chance to hide things before she arrived.
"It's Nana, is that right?" he asks, as he opens the door. The room isn't as opaquely dense or as massive as the Orlop, but it's certainly cluttered with tons of mismatched looking machinery: 80s-style arcades next to banks of blinking lights and switches, crystal arrays, brass cogs, all of them contrasting oddly with the herringbone flagstones of the floor. There's an air hockey table made of bronze and marble. The steam boiler is glowing and puffing softly, and something mechanical shaped like a cat - all made of beautifully ornate, silvery steampunk-like gears - sits on top of it. She sits up and turns to look at Nana immediately.
"It's alright, Gliss," Jedao tells her, giving her a couple of fingernail taps under the metal of her chin, halfway between scritching a living cat and tapping a champagne glass with a fork. "She's just looking."
The cat - Gliss - makes a sound like if wind chimes could chirr, then hops down and walks freely toward the doorway to inspect her.
Nana looks down at the cat and gives her a little nod. "Does the cat live in the Engine Room full time?"
She then turns her attention back to the room. It looks like there aren't any frogs in there. It looks like there's not much anything alive to begin with. But Nana can't really tell, especially just from the doorway. So, making sure not to actually step inside, Nana stays in the doorway, leaning in, trying to get a better look at the Engine Room as a whole.
Of course, there's a big obvious problem with trying to stand perfectly still but lean in as far as possible: you'll lose your balance. And Nana is straight up about to lose her balance and stumble forward into the Engine Room.
She falls forward - and lands with a woosh on the plain floorboards of an empty cabin. And she'll find that she hits an invisible wall, a cylinder about six feet in diameter in the middle of the empty room, where she's completely stuck.
Jedao locks the engine room back up and walks down the hall to get her out, opening the door to the empty cabin in less than a minute.
To Nana's credit, she didn't mean to lose her balance. She looks properly sheepish and more than a little bit freaked out as she tries to push out of the invisible wall. When she spots Jedao, she asks,
"You went over the threshold, and the protections whisked you away."
He comes to sit next to the invisible barrier.
"To answer your question, yes, Gliss lives in the Engine Room full-time, although if I'm in there myself, sometimes she'll wander the hallways for a bit. She isn't a cat, you understand. She's a guardian creature, and she's proud to take care of her place. But she's catlike enough to be curious."
"She's a magic robot. She likes learning tricks. She can pretty much beat me at air hockey, at this point. If you'd like to play with her the next time I have a long Engine Room shift, we can do that, if she wants. But I promise she's very capable of clawing my ankles if she doesn't like the amount of attention she's getting. Shen Jiye made her, if you want to ask him about specs."
The invisible barrier is still very much up, at the moment.
Nana gives Jedao a little nod. And then, she positions herself so that her hands are sticking out in front of her before she takes a few steps towards the room's exit. It's obviously someone who is expecting to run into yet another invisible barrier and at least is going to make it so she doesn't run into it face first.
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Re: post October's everything
I'd love to ask why they did it, but since it wasn't you, I suppose it doesn't matter.
Re: post October's everything
But Nana's going to keep the charade up a bit as she points out, ]
I mean, it's kinda obvious? If there's a living animal shoved in a jar too small for it, stuck in the basement, of course someone would try and free it. It probably just took a while because it was a frog. If there was a kitten in that jar, it would have been freed the first day.
Re: post October's everything
Maybe. But people can get used to a lot. And everyone there was stuck in a jar too small for them.
If it's any comfort...the Orlop did feel a lot like the Engine Room. Not the specifics, but...I don't know. They way it was put together, all aesthetic and oddments. And everything in the Engine Room is, it's all the barge, wearing different hats. She's alive, but she's not trapped, she's flying. And she's glad we're here.
I know it's not like that for every ship. Ships from my world were all slaves inside, and that was worth fighting, even though I didn't know the consequences. I wouldn't mind buying our frog thief a drink, even though it all went sideways.
[If they weren't a BABY. Not that Jedao necessarily wouldn't give Nana a glass of honey wine anyway just to see what happened.]
But I have reason to hope that frog was enough a part of the Narrenschiff to feel like it was flying too, right from its spot.
Re: post October's everything
[ Unfortunately for everybody, Nana's smack dab in the middle of her 'let's try everything, nothing matters' phase. Teenager can smoke! ]
And anyway, it's not like anybody knew the consequences until they happened, right? Nobody said 'hey, don't touch that frog, she controls the air.' So really, freeing the frog is a perfectly sensible option.
Re: post October's everything
Normally, people would ask if it was important before taking something. But if she thought it was suffering, it wouldn't matter anyway, would it?
[The feeling of the Vidona sacrifice shuddering under his hands as he fought to pull away the knife wants to rise in him; he pushes it back down, ruthlessly, keeps his voice steady and clear. He knows, though. The moment when it doesn't matter why. It's in him, that he knows that.]
Re: post October's everything
[ It's said with absolute certainty. Nana knows she was trying to do the right thing by freeing the frog. She doesn't regret doing it in the first place. What happened later...well, that might be different. But that first act, freeing Niji the frog, she doesn't regret that in the slightest. ]
People can get used to horrible things if they happen for long enough. If people who have been on the Barge for a few years get used to floods and all that trauma, who's to say that the people on the Narrenschiff aren't used to the frog suffering?
Re: post October's everything
But the opposite of that isn't assuming the other way. The opposite would be asking. Is it suffering? If it were a normal frog, it would be. We know it's not a normal frog. How could we tell?
Anyway. If you find out who it was, would you tell her, I have some good reasons to think it wasn't. That aren't about it not being a kitten.
Re: post October's everything
[ There's a moment's pause before, ]
Hey, I know you said that there weren't any frogs in the Engine Room here like there were on that other ship, but can I visit and check anyway? It's silly to believe someone just because they say something's true, especially in a place like this. The more evidence I can get, the better.
Re: post October's everything
You can't come inside it. If someone messes with it, it does hurt her, and people have tried, so we put extra protections on the room, and I'm not lifting them for your peace of mind.
But I think you care for the right reasons. So I'll let you look in from the door, or I'll show you a video tour from my communicator. Which would you rather?
Re: post October's everything
When do you want me to come over?
Re: post October's everything
[So he won't have time to prepare anything; since it's about trust.]
Re: post October's everything
[ Nana's wearing her high school uniform as she makes her way to the engine room. It wasn't a deliberate choice, per se—it was the first batch of clean clothes she grabbed because wow does she not want to wear any of her nasty grimy clothes she wore on the other boat. But she can make it work.
When she reaches the engine room, if Jedao's not outside, she'll give a quick little knock on the door. ]
Re: post October's everything
"It's Nana, is that right?" he asks, as he opens the door. The room isn't as opaquely dense or as massive as the Orlop, but it's certainly cluttered with tons of mismatched looking machinery: 80s-style arcades next to banks of blinking lights and switches, crystal arrays, brass cogs, all of them contrasting oddly with the herringbone flagstones of the floor. There's an air hockey table made of bronze and marble. The steam boiler is glowing and puffing softly, and something mechanical shaped like a cat - all made of beautifully ornate, silvery steampunk-like gears - sits on top of it. She sits up and turns to look at Nana immediately.
"It's alright, Gliss," Jedao tells her, giving her a couple of fingernail taps under the metal of her chin, halfway between scritching a living cat and tapping a champagne glass with a fork. "She's just looking."
The cat - Gliss - makes a sound like if wind chimes could chirr, then hops down and walks freely toward the doorway to inspect her.
Re: post October's everything
She then turns her attention back to the room. It looks like there aren't any frogs in there. It looks like there's not much anything alive to begin with. But Nana can't really tell, especially just from the doorway. So, making sure not to actually step inside, Nana stays in the doorway, leaning in, trying to get a better look at the Engine Room as a whole.
Of course, there's a big obvious problem with trying to stand perfectly still but lean in as far as possible: you'll lose your balance. And Nana is straight up about to lose her balance and stumble forward into the Engine Room.
Re: post October's everything
Jedao locks the engine room back up and walks down the hall to get her out, opening the door to the empty cabin in less than a minute.
Re: post October's everything
"Um. What happened?"
Re: post October's everything
He comes to sit next to the invisible barrier.
"To answer your question, yes, Gliss lives in the Engine Room full-time, although if I'm in there myself, sometimes she'll wander the hallways for a bit. She isn't a cat, you understand. She's a guardian creature, and she's proud to take care of her place. But she's catlike enough to be curious."
Re: post October's everything
It's obvious Nana is pretty concerned about Gliss's welfare.
Re: post October's everything
The invisible barrier is still very much up, at the moment.
Re: post October's everything
"Um. Can you let me out of this barrier? Or do you have to get someone else?"
Re: post October's everything
Re: post October's everything
And, to her credit, Nana does just that!
Re: post October's everything
"Alright, it's down."
Re: post October's everything
Re: post October's everything
Re: post October's everything
Re: post October's everything