Slow Rider, Slow Rider, Move On a Little More

[pretendtoneedme]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: 6I's Town Hall
WHEN: July 10th
OPEN TO: Everyone who wants in. There will be one subheader for welcoming back the group and one for the actual meeting
WARNINGS: Nothing so far; please add headers in the comment subjects if something does come up that could be problematic

---

The return is, when everything is said and done, uneventful. The group who went to explore the break in the canyon walks back into the village in the early afternoon, laden down with most of the supplies they'd brought with them and without any obvious injury. There's some scratches, a couple bruises, but whatever had happened to seal them away from the village for a week definitely didn't happen to them, and they're not buzzing with any news so world-shattering that everyone needs to be collected and reported to at once. There's enough time for the group to separate and grab showers, clean clothes, and something to eat, while the word passes from person to person that the explorers have returned and that there's going to be a meeting right after dinner for them to explain what they've found and answer questions.

At the appointed time, the five of them are there, looking less ragged, and ready to talk. They've brought a few things back with them to show the others in the village, but all in all there's just not a lot to show about the other side that's different - except for that one, giant thing. But the non-changes are going to be shocking enough for most people, and decisions have to be made about what to do with the information they have now.

Comments

The Return

[pretendtoneedme]

There's not a lot of fanfare when the five of them make their way back to the village, tired and a little run down but not injured or burdened with a lot of stuff they didn't take with them on the outward journey. Whatever they found over there, it wasn't life-threatening - and it wasn't anything they could drag back easily with them. All of them know people are worrying about them, for good reason, and they're all eager to return to their temporary home; there will have to be a meeting to explain what was on the other side of the breach, but hopefully it can wait for an hour or two for all of them to clean up a bit, since it's not a genuine emergency. Still, after a week of just the five of them in the group, it will be a relief to see their other friends and family and make sure everyone's all right in the wake of all the earth shakes.

Clint

[pretendtoneedme]

He's been away from home longer than a week, definitely, but this was a different experience in a lot of ways to anything he'd ever had to do with the army or S.H.I.E.L.D. In those situations, survival skills were being taught, and tested, and that meant he'd either had a lot more equipment or a lot less. Being somewhere with other people, some non-combatants, and an entire village at their disposal but not a lot of tools to rely on had been... different. It almost makes their village seem like home after a week of being stuck in what's the next thing to a ghost town. Clint's going to return the bow and arrows he'd taken to the inn and head back to House 20, but he's looking for people he knows to reassure them that he and the rest didn't die when the tunnel collapsed, and of course other people can find him if they see him first.

House 20

[scepterschild]

Clint will find a bit of a zoo when he returns home. The chickens had been left inside due to the tremors and had been haphazardly sectioned off in one of the rooms on the first floor. If Clint were to stop and count he'd notice that there were only five in the room. On had planned a mad escape and was now being chased around by the dog, followed shortly behind by Wanda. She wasn't limping anymore but she was moving a little slower with her ankle swollen.

Half falling and half lunging she managed to stop the dog, holding him around his middle as Clint stepped threw the door. It wasn't the most dignified welcome home but Wanda tried her best to offer him a smile.

She was relieved to see what he was okay but she really didn't want to release the dog and let him scare the chicken to death... This was a moment where Wanda really missed her powers. Before now she could have forced both animals to calm down. Now she had to give chase and use more conventional means.

Bodhi

[onlyeverdoubted]

He's battered and grubby, but for the most part, Bodhi looks fairly chipper. He's a little laden down, since he insisted on bringing his samples back to compare. He's pretty sure he's right, but a few comparisons in the field are just good practice, right? So yeah, there are rocks in his pack along with supplies. His first priority is checking in with his friends (especially Credence, who he's trying very hard not to let occupy his thoughts, as though worrying would make things worse somehow), but a close second is verifying that all his rock samples match their corresponding spots on this side. Which they do. And that verification may possibly be done in the process of checking in with people and making his way home.

He doesn't hesitate for a moment heading there, even unsure of the extent of the damage from the quake as he is. Having a home is weird, sure, but somewhere along the line he made that connection and he isn't letting go of it easily. Home features his first shave since arriving here (the overgrown hair and beard actually managed to get in his way over on the other side) and his second mysterious box.

After everything, this gift doesn't shatter him the way the last one did. It feels like a challenge. Maybe not one he's quite up to, but one he's prepared to accept. When he heads back out, it's with his beard and hair tamed back down to quirky shaping and in a Jedhan-style tunic, headscarf, and cloak ensemble that would have struck him as silly and old fashioned not very long ago.

house 39

[3ofswords]

"You could have just told me you wanted to do it yourself," Kira doesn't quite chide, "instead of slinking off mid-lie about errands you never do." It's nice to see Bodhi again: it's nice to see Bodhi under the layers of hermit-scruff, closer to the man he invited to live in his house months ago.

It's a strange thought: he's known Bodhi longer than he'd known Casey. Longer than he got to know Ren, almost as long as Jyn. He might even be starting to understand him.

Just starting.

Kira's sitting at the righted kitchen table when Bodhi returns from his grooming. The clothes make sense--not in a familiar way, but as a gift, and Bodhi seems much improved by his trip across the divide. No weapons or running from magical badgers needed, it seems. "Would you make some of that stronger tea," he asks, rather than getting up to offer food and something made with the regular kettle. There's still a wheeze in his chest from a cold he caught in the rain, and this time he's not going to overwork himself into a bout of pneumonia.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"I didn't really want to do it myself until it was in my way," he says pithily, holding onto the certain wave of self-satisfaction. He doesn't want to risk letting go of the mood, because he can't imagine it'll come back easily.

Asking for tea is a good way to keep it rolling. Soothing and satisfying, and he'd been wanting a cup for himself anyway. With a nod, he pulls the set free, setting out the bronze pot and all its little accouterments. One of the cups did crack during the quake, but the cups were never as important as being able to go through every step the right way. His whisk is a little bent and one of the brazier's little legs has a slight wobble to it now, but it's a small issue, easily worked around. That happens. As he efficiently snaps every piece onto the table, he asks, "Spiced, smoked, or fermented?" For a moment, he sounds so much like his father (or maybe it's just that now he's dressed like him) that he alarms himself a bit, but he tries to ignore it.

[3ofswords]

"It's always been in your way," he argues, shifting to curl up better in his chair now that he knows he doesn't have to move from it. The sleeves of his red sweater are stretched out--all of it is stretched out, loaned to people taller and wider and eventually put back on him in the chilly nights after the quake. "In the way of people knowing I shack up with a handsome explorer who makes tea, instead of some hermit I coaxed out of the woods."

Flipping the ends of his sleeves over his hands, he sinks his chin into them over his knees, sighing like it's been very hard to live with the blow to his image.

"Spiced, please."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi snorts quietly. "Sounds like it was in your way," he says as he examines his bricks of tea. The spice one is the most depleted by a narrow margin. He already made a rule for himself that he won't horde the stuff, or he'd be afraid to ever touch it. The bricks would sit wrapped and perfect and utterly useless. If this is the last taste he or anyone else will have of Jedha (even if it's imaginary, created by whatever hands send the gifts), he wants those tastes frequent and widespread. He snatches a bit of smoldering wood from the stove for the brazier and snaps off a corner of the tea brick without missing a beat. "Anything exciting while I was gone?"

[chirrutsluck]

Once Baze hears the whole troupe of them is back in town, of course he's going to check on Bodhi. He's pretty sure someone would have told him (someone being Clint) if anything terrible had happened, but he does like to see with his own eyes. He shows up at the house again, though hopefully this time Bodhi hasn't locked himself in the basement so he'll actually see the man, and when he knocks it's less of a demanding pound than last time.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi isn't surprised at the knock and, holding onto his buoyant mood for dear life, opens it without waiting to see if Kira'd rather be all together and functional for him. He's not really expecting anyone in particular (maybe hoping for Credence, a little), yet he's still surprised to see Baze somehow. He would have expected to see the man eventually, but right away? He's faintly pleased, if a little embarrassed.

And then realizes what he has on. He refused to even hesitate, fought off the urge to sob in the woods again for a while with every ounce of will power he possesses, and he's rather proud of it. This is who he--Well, not exactly who he is, maybe a little of who he would have been in a better world. The Imperial pilot's uniform draped on the bed in his room is testimony to how many might have beens there could be. All that logic doesn't hold up quite as well when he's standing in front of the only person who'd be able to recognize it. "Hello," he says as evenly as he can, ready to be judged pretty hard.

[chirrutsluck]

Baze's brows go up, but honestly, it's less at the content of the costume change and more at the fact that there was one at all. He does pick up that Bodhi seems nervous or guilty about it, but he doesn't put together that it's because he's defiantly not wearing an Imperial uniform anymore. So what he asks, somewhat skeptically, is: "You found new clothes on the other side of the canyon?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

"It's, oh, has no one--There are these boxes that sometimes turn up. It's like the fountain." He shifts to lean against the doorframe to chat, realizes it's a bit rude, and corrects himself mid-lean to hold the door open so Baze can come inside. It feels a bit daring, but Kira always wants him to act like the house is his, too, and he's never invited a guest before. Well, unless you count Johanna turning up to steal food, but that's not really a matter of invitation so much as not feeling it necessary to chase her off with a broom like the other raccoons. "Sometimes there are useful things but... But usually it's just strange. This is my second one."

The Meeting

[pretendtoneedme]

When the meeting gets going, Bodhi, Clint, Helen, Mark, and Ned are at the front of the large gathering room in the town hall, looking better after a little rest, a little food, and a change of clothes. None of them are grim, which at least bodes well for nothing horrible being outside the canyon, but all of them have things they looked into and discovered, and so all of them have things to think about. They'll each speak their pieces, answer questions, and let the next of the company go. Guaranteed there'll be some surprises, which some people will be happy about, and some people probably won't, but what's new in the village?

Clint

[pretendtoneedme]

"We're gonna have to figure out a way to make some saws, or get real used to chopping down trees, if we wanna reinforce that tunnel. Given the way the earthquakes happened last fall and a few days ago, we can probably guess that they'll keep coming, so that's a big question as to whether we wanna use it or not." Clint's not anything near an expert in shoring up rock with wooden beams, but it's the only idea he's got that'll be of any help in keeping the tunnel clear, and at least most of it is fairly stable and the pieces that were shaken loose in the recent series of rumbles will be easy to move.

"There's a village over there - just like ours, only backwards; if a building faces east here, it faces west there. There's all the same buildings, only nothing's been broken or destroyed. Land hasn't been cleared for fields. River's there. Should be viable to live there, but there's always the risk that it'll be cut off from this side and everything we've established over here." It's not a decision he wants anyone to make lightly; food will be scarcer in the other village with the fields and gardens all on this side, medical help won't be easily available unless one of the doctors makes the move, and being cut off if something else goes wrong is a distinct possibility. But they all know that people will be thinking of picking up and moving there, especially with the sea and the fact that buildings are slowly becoming unlivable on this side of the canyon wall.

[theintercessor]

"Couldn't we use beams from the destroyed homes," Jude suggests, as if he hadn't been trapped in a cave-in for two days, and should maybe avoid them in the future. Cave-ins are a fact of life. Anyone afraid of falling rocks or the dark had no business going into a cave or tunnel in the first place. "Or chart some path over it, if the ceiling isn't too high?"

Fresh homes and resources sounded decently worth the risk, but it would be a big diversion of time and energy to clear and reinforce a tunnel. Firewood and building lumber diverted to making beams; field hands diverted to clearing rubble; harder work making for hungrier people; accidents diverting medical supplies.

"We don't even know the quakes are over, it might shake itself open or completely closed before the end of summer."

Bodhi

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi has visual aides. On the way back here he made a few quick stops and he's set out mineral and rock samples from the current village and the newly discovered one side by side, as close to identical as his crude tools and imperfect record keeping allows for. He's not sure whose theory he's proven, but it's definitely information. He's excited; simply learning things will do that, and he can't help being a little pleased with himself. He's also feeling generally shored up. He's not dead weight. And having shaved and clipped his hair and beard back down turns out to have helped after all. He's also traded out his customary faded scrubs for a traditional Jedhan outfit, though he's left the robe at home, just a few layers of sash and tunic in becoming dark blue and soft red, with the scarf at an angle one could describe as jaunty. He's having a good day.

"It's not--It isn't just the buildings that are the same. Anyone could do that. Couldn't they? It's identical down the the bedrock where it's away from that lake. Volcanic, um, it's all, like I thought, well, I knew that, but that makes sense, with the hot spring and earthquakes, doesn't it? But, I mean, whether you think it's just a hologram or some kind of program or..." He waves a hand over his assorted shiny rocks with a rusty but satisfied smile.

[withoutahammer]

"Is that unusual?" Neil doesn't know much about geology- rocks exist- so it's a genuine question. Anything that gives a hint to the nature of this place is welcome. "The two sites are... reasonably close together, yeah? Would there be a lot of difference in the geography of it all?"

He looks at the little selection of samples- they do look very close to each other, from what he can see with an inexpert eye.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi isn't really an expert. He's just enthusiastic and good at logic-ifying things. "The same sorts, sure, but the same veins in the same places, that, that's different. Not normal. Things like, well, cracks and fissures open and fill in with precipitates--It isn't quite at random, because the rocks have their own, well, it wouldn't happen exactly the same way, same place more than once."

[withoutahammer]

"So even if it started out the same, it wouldn't go through the same things- it wouldn't look so similar now." Neil thinks that's what Bodhi's saying, at least. He puts the rock he's holding down and glares at it like it's personally responsible for whatever is going on here. "Can one bloody thing about this place make some bloody sense?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

"It makes a lot more sense, actually, I'm pretty sure." He looks faintly smug about it. Being right is a nice change. Or, well, somewhat closer to right. Further justified in a few theories. Whatever. "Things like the... the way the sun was behaving. Before the quake, I mean. There's--it's--A real planet that reversed rotation would have catastrophic issues, certainly not be able to sustain a lot of delicate, complex life. It's just more evidence that nothing here is exactly real."

[theintercessor]

Jude doesn't recognize the man as the rangy hermit he'd seen on his way out of the fountain. Truthfully, the encounter is almost entirely gone from memory, a tense thing with rocks at the ready and paranoia crawling his skin that had built into a headache, strobed into a dance of shadows on the wall, cast by a sun that wouldn't set--and ultimately disappearing from his mind.

He's back in the hall, his injuries mending well enough and his strength returning with sleep on an actual bed and regular meals. There had been an actual sketching pad in the supplies strewn against the back wall, and no one had challenged him when he picked it up, or the set of colored pencils. A tired young man had watched him for a moment, then shrugged, telling him to at least put them to good use.

He doesn't know if sketches qualify, much as they're the point of the thing. It's a sturdy volume, one he might recreate with his paper project if he could find some twine and salvage the covers off the destroyed books. He'd have to make two, he thinks: one for Sam, and one for Credence.

The thought is almost stranger to him than what the man is talking about. Jude has taken a seat nearby, not entirely to listen--the same rocks, it's ridiculous, and falls squarely in the I don't want to think about it pile, but Jude's been drawn over by the man's clothing. It has a drape and color that he finds interesting, certainly more so than scrubs, and he likes the way it moves with the man's gesturing arms. The book open on his lap, he has more than one sketch to fill in, the man in pencil and his clothing in its respective colors, graceful lines implying the shift of the cloth.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi chatters enthusiastically as long as he has an audience, but that does tend to ebb pretty quickly. He's convinced of the significance of what he has to say and he, well, he can see there being a difference of opinion when it comes to how interesting it is. There's a lot to hear and only so many people here. He still did good.

In one of his breaks between people willing to hear about bits of opal, he realizes the man he annoyed weeks ago has been there for a while. He steps away from his carefully arrayed samples, a bit shy in his approach in spite of whatever good mood he's holding onto. He doesn't feel like he made a good impression last time. Kriff, he's not even sure he got the guy's name. Hopefully not, because he doesn't remember it. He comes around to the other side of the table, resisting the urge to peer at what the man's working on. No one likes to have their shoulders peaked over. Metaphorical shoulders. He gets an impression of color but keeps his eyes up. "Hello."

[theintercessor]

Having looked down to fill in a bit of red on a sash, Jude missed the shift of his subject. He doesn't quite jump for the revelation. He learned at a young age to hold that kind of thing in, just set his eyes straight and finish the breath he was on when someone came up on him like that.

Slow, deliberate, he sets the pad flat on the table. Turning his head, he looks up--getting a closer look at the man he's spent the last hour sketching, but still missing what about him might be familiar.

Maybe a vague resemblance to some far flung part of Parker's family, and even that's just categorizing on appearance. "Hi," he says back, just as deliberate, no more understanding of the attention. "Can I help you?" His hands rest on the table, colored pencils standing up stuck between fingers.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi handled the poor stranger with kid gloves on their first encounter, and Bodhi trying to be extra gentle is a sort of avatar of the concept of baby bunnies and scented candles. It didn't work all that well, and since the man seems to have settled in okay, he doesn't see the need to be so careful. The canyon's weirdness must have had time to sink in. In other words, he doesn't bite down on his native snark this time.

"Well, you've been there long enough. Should I go over the thing about the chalcedony again, because I'm not completely sure I got the crystallography right, but I could try making some charts." Being chipper about boring people is pretty serious backsass from Bodhi.

Eddard

[learned_to_die]

Ned allows the others to speak first, more than glad to take a bit of a backseat in terms of leadership. Though his inclinations and experiences lend themselves to making him a ruler, it is a burden he never truly wanted and was never supposed to have. His mind is still processing all of the information from what they'd seen through the canyon to begin with, and taking a few moments to gather his thoughts and what they'd all explored is a welcomed pause. After a bit, once some of the others have given their recounts, Ned pipes up.

"There is also no spring, not one that we could see. The village there, as Clint has previously stated, appears to be a bit of a mirror image of this one - but there are certain landmarks and such that are missing. The one I noticed first had been the spring. The pods that were somewhat recently discovered, as well as the ruins are also absent, which is a curious difference. It lends itself to making me believe that perhaps our inhabiting this village has had some significant impact in terms of development. The lack of villagers there perhaps have kept it somewhat neutrally sterile."