sixthiterationlogs | Slow Rider, Slow Rider, Move On a Little More

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Slow Rider, Slow Rider, Move On a Little More

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.

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Information that clearly makes Bodhi more upset, not less. He has some experience with being stuck in a hole for a few days, and while he imagines it'd be better to be thrown in there by uncaring nature than a bunch of fellow sentient beings, he's not really interested in testing that particular theory. And he's still guilty about the whole thing, and not only because of Credence. There must have been a lot of people still badly off. He twists the end of his ponytail in his fingers, fidgeting in a relatively contained way. "That's... I was hoping, um, that everyone who was still, well, unaccounted for was--I just thought I'd be more useful on the trip, but, um, there should have been more active search parties. Our communications are so bad here, and..." There wouldn't really be anything to stop a worse disaster if someone got stuck and couldn't dig out.

"It's not like anyone knew where we were," Jude points out, looking up from the dark cover of lashes and brows to match whatever is in the man's voice to his face. When he looks back down, he picks up a darker pencil, adding lines to suggest the end of the ponytail over one shoulder. "Credence said something about the cave not even being there, last time he saw that part of the wall."

Jude doesn't like to acknowledge much about this place, but he isn't unaware of it. Someone was going to get stuck there, one of them just happened to be some kid the whole place wanted to look out for. "We handled it," he assures the man, pencil stilling against the page. "Where I'm from they teach us about cave-ins, I knew what to do. If I don't blame anyone for not getting us out, Credence sure as shit won't."

"Credence doesn't blame anybody for anything." Pot, meet kettle. He leaves his hair alone but only to fiddle with the ends of his sleeves instead, channeling restless self-recrimination as best he can. "It's not much of a metric. We didn't get a lot of practical--Cave-ins weren't much of a problem up on the plateau, and building collapses are different enough that... alright, I probably wouldn't have managed it, but someone should have."

"Given another day, they might have," Jude says with a shrug. Another day was probably all they could have managed--it was more luck than skill that the aftershock that slid the pile sent them out instead of back in. "Guess it wouldn't hurt to check the walls after the next one, if people are up for it." There are a lot of things that could have gone wrong, but like the canyon itself, he tries not to dwell on them. Shifting piles, worse injuries, panic.

"Credence did a good job, I thought he'd panic more. I don't get half the stuff people say about him."

"I... Wouldn't expect panic, no," Bodhi says, considering. He doesn't really know what people say about Credence (or, before now, that people said anything at all, given how quiet his friend generally seems). "He's smart. It's common sense stuff." And nobody's fault, aside from their unknowable captors'. That's always a sticking point for Bodhi, and he and Credence often seem to come to the same conclusions. He can fly through any weather conditions, but if someone's shooting at him, he falls apart. Things are much more upsetting when they have agency. "Search parties would be nice, but I'd be satisfied with just... making sure roll call happens, for a start."

Common sense being uncommon is a thing Jude's always put stock in, just watching the world grow and fuck up around him. He doesn't even practice his own across the board, making exceptions for Parker, his mother, his own escapist desires--but there is no escaping, here. Just getting out of the dark, sometimes. Just getting to the end of a day.

"Didn't they have that? There was a whole sign-in thing, when we got back. They'd been looking for Credence all over." Credence had even said something, before it all happened--that the crack in the wall was new. "I don't think you can call a thing broken just 'cause it didn't do what you wanted, one time."

Bodhi doesn't miss that Jude specifies people looking for Credence, but he decides not to approach that too closely. The man has a point, after all. He frowns, looking away half sheepishly. "I... I know we do our best, but I hate to think--It'd be so easy for someone to fall through the cracks, especially someone, um, new." Or just antisocial. Bodhi's pretty sure that Kira, Johanna, and maybe Baze would notice he was gone if it happened, but not much of anyone else. Even Credence is a little absent most times and has a lot of people to occupy him. Also, Johanna would think it was funny. "Maybe I'm just missing reasonable technological options. There'd be holos all over the neighborhood back home after a raid or an accident if someone was unaccounted for. And decent chances to scan for life signs."

"That's a little more than we had even where I'm from," he admits, trying to let the strangeness of it wash over him in a wave, then roll back out like a tide. It's weird. He can't change it. Move on. "We had sirens at least, but--someone set them off because they knew a cave had gone in, and that's about what it told us. People in mines makes sense, kids in caves--well that also makes sense, but you don't watch for it constantly."

None of it was perfect. None of it took them back in time and got the cave opened faster. They got unlucky, then they got lucky--that's how the place goes. "Here it's like, you need to aggressively get to know people, if you want to keep track of them all."

Bodhi figures that's the difference between a mining operation and a war zone, having lived in both (however briefly, in the former case), but that's some heavy conversation to bring in at the moment. Instead he snorts lightly, a wry smile creeping out of his uncertain frown. Because Jude's absolutely right, and that's at the root of a lot of his problems, immediate and otherwise. He's not really part of the place, doesn't have the energy or the ease that'd let him worm his way in properly. "Well, I'm karked," he says flatly, amused despite himself.

In the context, Jude can't tell if karked is some kind of future expletive, or the guy's name. It feels like he should know that--but he's forgotten so much of the last two years, a name with a face he only half-recognizes is small change.

At least if he's wrong, it's the kind of joke that can seem like it's done on purpose. "Hey Karked, I'm Jude." It's the kind of shit Charlie would say, just to make him roll his eyes, but rolling their eyes at bad jokes is better than talking about how one of them might die in a ditch with nobody knowing. Laying his pencil flat on the pad, he lets the sketches be done, and admits a bit of their purpose. "I'll at least keep you in mind," he promises, "next time something happens."

That surprises a laugh out of him--a quiet one, but while he manages to be content enough to smile often enough, really laughing is rare. It's more than the line really deserves, more to do with the kind of reflexive, comfortable ribbing he remembers from his uncomplicated piloting days. Even the timing is right, a stupid crack to plaster over the underlying terror.

And it's a good move by Jude, since not much else would have reminded him to actually introduce himself. "Well, now I feel like I missed out on my true name. I'm Bodhi, and I promise I'll check for you next disaster, too." Not that he'd necessarily be able to do anything.

"I mean I can keep calling you that if you prefer it," he says, guessing the actual meaning from Bodhi's reaction. The list of people who might notice him missing is growing, and he's glad of it. This place had been something to put in compartments and barely deal with when he arrived, and it hadn't felt very ugly until he walked in the doors of the hall and watched the number of people welcome Credence home, only a couple of them even knowing his name.

Bodhi's isn't familiar, but the face still is. He's seen those eyes before, he's heard that voice. "Did we meet, before," he asks, squinting a bit like he's getting a second, third, or fourth look. "Sorry, if we did, my memory--isn't great. This kind of helps," he adds, indicating the sketch pad with a sweep of his pencil.

With one sweeping statement, Bodhi has an explanation for most of what's been off about this conversation and finds himself more at ease. Memory problems, constructing yourself a crutch or two out of what's available, the weirdness of this place in general. Check. He doesn't even turn away from Jude's scrutiny, though he does use his favorite trick of fake eye contact. "You were really new at the time. Just out of the fountain." His own memories of that time are a bit fuzzy, actually, but that's probably because he almost drowned on his way up.

Both brows creep up under a dark flop of hair, putting this version of the man together with the odd hermit who had found him next to the fountain. What a difference the number of days makes--not just in Bodhi, wild hair cut and tamed, clothes switched out for something new and interesting. But Jude is more at ease, more ready to deal with someone who looks like a ghost crawled out of a photo of the mines.

Last time they'd spoken, he'd been ready to smash his head in with a rock, if it came to it. Or he'd thought he might be, he'd picked up the rock. Now they're agreeing to keep an eye on each other. "I guess the clothes do make the man," he says with a snort. "Sorry--just. It was a lot, all in one night."

"Hm?" It takes him a second, but he does get there--with some help from Kira's witticisms. He still doesn't think it was especially bad, but he does remember that the heat wave made a mess of everyone. His choice of associates probably colors that perception. Johanna was practically naked as often as she could manage it. Besides, the latter point is more salient. "Getting here is definitely... It'd be stranger if it weren't overwhelming." He made the transition pretty smoothly himself, but only because his entire life had become a sequence of mad happenings for a while there. This seemed to slot right in.

"I try not to let it be either, anymore." Every day is taken one at a time, and that day by its hours, whittled away with whatever work he can put his hands on. Fixing up the house after the storm, making fresh batches of paper, filling that paper with the things he's observed. It's easier than trying to really think about it all.

If the fifty or more people who came before him, some of them with--some kind of superpowers? If they couldn't find a way out, there's not a lot of sense throwing him into it. He explores the caves because he's always explored caves, not with hope in his heart or his head full of questions. The less he thinks about it, the less he stresses out, the less he has those tics where the world smells like peaches or rot, or his strings get cut and he goes sprawling on the floor. "Just try to stay calm and get enough sleep, enough to eat. Hierarchy of needs or whatever."

While the phrase is new, the idea certainly isn't. Bodhi can't help the feeling that a lot of his life was lived that way. Leaving aside the fact that lately he's pretty bad at it, prone as he is to forgetting to do things like eat and sleep, or just plain avoiding them, anyway. It was a way to avoid thinking about his willing participation in Imperial atrocities back then, thinking from warm bed to strong drink to holovid distraction. Not much different. He frowns despite his active effort to get along with Jude this time, which feels mostly successful. "That... can be a kriffing lousy way to live. I--It's not that I don't see what you mean, just... It's, um, it's not very... sustainable."

"Yeah," Jude says, animating enough to tilt his head, let the hair fall out of his face and aim a look at Bodhi. It isn't even his hackles up, it's just--a prelude. An assessment of whether or not he should bother.

Whatever he did in Hollow Creek, whatever Parker dared or needled him to do, Jude doesn't like to indulge anger. Any feeling, really. Even temper, even pulse: even life. He's sustained it this long, even with winding up here. "What do you think I should do," he asks, "if it's such a bad idea?"

While Bodhi isn't great at reading people precisely, he has an overdeveloped sense of danger, and he backs off immediately. "I didn't mean--I know it doesn't really work for me, and this place is a lot easier for me than, um, well, most people... Okay, a lot of people didn't die before they got here, so, well, making my peace with it is... I absolutely understand staying busy." He's capable of conflict but pretty bad at it, especially when it feels like his fault. Especially with someone he's inclined to like. His fingers twist in the trailing and of his headscarf as he tries to backtrack.

"I didn't die," he says, defensive for having been pressed by Credence. For not being able to remember precisely what did happen after he crashed the truck, only that there was something. Which means he survived it. "This is not some place for the dead."

But to rule that out, he has to think about what it could be, what it might be, and there's nothing to support any real idea. He can't have smaller hallucinations in a big one, surely. He can't see maggots that aren't there or smell peaches that don't exist if he's also just--seeing and hearing everything and everyone else around him.

Settling all of his possessions on the table, he doesn't lash out, but he does pull his hands in, containing himself fully in his seat. Jude turns his head to one side and lets it be the end of even the start of an outburst. "Sorry, it's not--you. If you have some kind of advice, you should just give it, it's not like any of us really know what we're doing."

"I know not everyone did." But he hopes Jude's not inclined to deny that some people did, because that tends to bug him. With luck, they can just let that statement lie. "I... I wish it was as useful as advice. I just, well, I just existed for a long time after I got here, and I think that, well, um, I think that made it worse, not better. What I'm trying now--I'm trying to live here for real, like I would have... way back home. Pay attention to what's going on, keep track of people. But that, uh, that isn't advice yet because... I don't know how it'll work out." He finally releases the twisted-up end of the scarf, feeling, well, not secure, but closer.

He doesn't know what it is--maybe just the series of bad starts, between them. Maybe the way Bodhi's body broadcasts his discomfort, in what should just be a conversation. Jude wonders how you teach someone to hide that, if Bodhi would want to learn. It doesn't sound like it, but even if what Bodhi says makes a kind of sense--his head pushes back. They're not the same person, they're not from the same kind of place. "Maybe it just doesn't work for you," Jude says.

But he doesn't want to leave it at that. He doesn't want to leave Bodhi rejected with no idea why, when things were almost good. Biting his lip, Jude lets it roll back out slow from his teeth, and he still doesn't quite look at Bodhi when he explains. "It gets harder to remember things, when I'm that stressed out. Or know if this place is real. I can't think about it too hard or I'll just lose it anyway."

Bodhi's silent for a few beats. Not, for once, because he doesn't know what to say, but because the transition from general sympathy to a very specific empathy is sudden and rough and not even necessarily welcome, because he wouldn't wish that kind of issue on anybody. But he does feel on solid ground again when he does find his voice. "Well, that, um, I do have advice for, for what it's worth, but... Probably best to do whatever you know works, yeah." Sometimes it isn't practicable or safe to strive for a best solution. Whatever basically works can be all the lifeline you have.

What he expected the response to be, he isn't sure. Issues with memory or motor skills, issues with--keeping reality in its lines--aren't something he ever admits to lightly. It has to seem necessary, and usually it's only in the face of having an episode in front of the person, or being called out on something he's forgotten.

With the latter, sometimes he's just shrugged it off, stayed silent, and lived with the ire of the person he's let down. Bodhi isn't any of those things, and maybe that's why he seems to take it in stride. Maybe it's related to having advice. Jude tips his head back up, focusing in on Bodhi's face again, searching it for a reason not to ask. Finding none: "I mean, if you have some, I'll hear it."

"I don't know if... Well, maybe it can't hurt. I, um, I try and focus on... This'll sound weird, but some of the few--the memories I do trust. They have to be strong and only really be about me. Get something in there like my parents or... basically, the more ingredients, the worse it works. A strong impression, a person I recognize being me, and I can, well, ground myself a little bit. It doesn't usually fix what's wrong or, um, what's missing, but sometimes the stress kind of... Everything else gets easier." It sounds stupid spoken out loud by that, his own little mindfulness exercises falling away into nonsense if he tries to actually express them.

Slow Rider, Slow Rider, Move On a Little More

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