primrosella | Quest 211

Quest 211

[Accidental Video | Open Action]

[Rosella is sitting in one of the quieter, more secluded parts of the beach, perched comfortably atop a fairly large outcropping of rock and silhouetted against the rapidly setting sun. Her hair drifts lightly in the evening breeze as she settles back onto her hands and crosses her legs at the ankles, apparently contemplating the view. Across her lap lies what appears to be a flute; nearby, on the surface of the rock, sits a somewhat tattered paper notebook and pen. The video is at the wrong angle to see what might be written in that notebook, but its pages are covered in jotted notes, arrows, and some heavily-underlined question marks.]

If so needed, only in need...but what makes one need greater than another? What makes it a need at all?

[Like everyone else in her family, Rosella has a bad habit of talking to herself when she's alone, and especially so when she is trying to think; this, apparently, is no exception. She glances down at the notebook at her side, shifting her weight and raising one hand to tuck a wisp of stray hair behind her ear, and then settles back into her position again.]

Coin and cloth...and stone. Stones, new stones. Old friends, new stones, dark places...

[There is a pause, and then a sigh as she lets her head fall back in exasperation.]

Oh, drat it all, I don't know.

[She makes a face accompanied by a low murmur of frustration; though the video is at the wrong angle to capture the expression, the microphone does catch the sound. Then, shaking her head, Rosella sits up and raises her flute, apparently tired of musing for the moment, and opting to play a little instead.]

[OOC: So! Strange things are afoot in the City these days, and it's bugging Rosella something awful. So, tired of hanging out in the Warehouse and thinking up a storm, she decided to get out and go to the beach to muse a little, just for a change of pace. Feel free to action her up if you'd like, and Network for everyone else! But be advised--she'll probably deny that she's got heavy stuff on her mind. She's trying her best to stay upbeat these days.]

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Summer always goes by too fast.

[Well he doesn't quite hop but gets a footing on a lower part of the rock and pulls himself up on the heels of his hands, twisting to get a seat next to her. Now he can see the debris of her thoughts, over to the other side.]

Especially when you're on schoolies. December was always over before it began. Now I take most of my time off in the winter.

You had summer in December?

[She looks intrigued, and perhaps a bit tentative; Chase does like to make jokes, and it's not unusual for them to go over her head, so she's not entirely sure if he's teasing her now, or if he really means it.]

Then it must not be unusual for you at all when the City reverses the seasons every year, mm?

[He does mean it, although the opportunity to confuse someone with honest facts isn't something easily passed up. Take Caspian and the platypus. But Chase's humour has been on the wane recently, and speaking about home softens his edges still more.]

It's one of the few times it feels normal at all. What shape is your world, do you know? Mine's round, like a ball.

[Arm resting on his thigh, he curls an empty hand around the outlines of an imaginary globe.]

Is it really? That must make it very hard to stay balanced on. [A slight grin.] Ours is flat, of course. And Daventry is on a continent close to the middle of it, so we're not too near the edges or about to fall off or anything like that.

Have people sailed to the edge?

[Not that he's doubting you, Rosella, just your world's level of self knowledge.]

Our ball has a tilted axis, so it rotates like this [And his hand twists to show, while he raises the other fist, balled up into another planetary force] around our sun. When it's on this side of the sun, this part of the ball is closest and hottest. Six months later it gets to this side, and the other part of the ball gets its summer. The city here is just biased toward the first side of the ball.

Well, if not all the way to it, then they've certainly gotten very close. But there are monsters that live far out the deepest parts of the oceans, and it's dangerous to go if you aren't sure where it is you're heading to. And of course, there are always people who go off looking for the Land of the Green Isles and things like that, but those sorts of expeditions are usually never heard from again, so.

[She watches this explanation closely, trying to imagine a ball big enough to hold a whole world of people without any of them slipping off down the side--not an easy prospect.]

You really mean to say that your whole world moves around that way? My goodness, do you have to tie everything down to keep it from breaking as it goes?

I see.

[Perhaps too knowingly. Of course he doesn't know the geographical layout of her world, only that it's a fairytale and fairytales can be anything they want without rhyme or reason (well, sometimes with rhyme). He gives up his makeshift strophysics lesson, folding his hands in his lap.]

And nope. Everything on the surface of the earth is caught in it's gravitational force. We're moving along with it, so we can't see or feel any movement. I've flown from the top of the ball to the bottom, and you can't even tell you're flying in a curve. I'd take a bet this City is on a curved world, too.

Now that sounds like magic if I've ever heard it. Really, I can't even imagine what that must be like.

[But the mention of the City and its nature gives her pause, and she shoots a look out over the ocean toward the setting sun. There's a barrier out there somewhere, she knows, even if it can't be seen. Is this really a world so big that there's no discerning its curve? That would mean that there's much, much more out there besides just the City...and perhaps, then, that's where she'd manage to find some answers to her questions, after all...]

What makes you say that? About the curve, that is. How can you tell either way, without seeing it for yourself?

[It's going to take another demonstration. Chase leans in, bumping his shoulder with hers and smiling as he stretches his arm out ahead of them, hand straight to form a long, flat plane.]

Can you see to the end of my fingertips?

[After a minute to check, he curls his fingers under, holding that invisible ball again but with his palm facing down.]

And now? You can't see beyond the curve. Now, look out at the ocean.

[She tilts her head a bit in response, watching closely despite the fact that she's really not sure where Chase might be going with this.]

I think I see, yes...

[Her brow furrowed, she does as he instructs, turning her attention to the ocean once more.]

Watch one of the boats, next time there's a curse. We can't sail past the horizon, but they get far enough. If they get smaller and smaller they're still fully visible, the earth's flat. If they look like they're vanishing from the bottom up while they're getting smaller, it's because they're tipping over the curve.

[He pulls his knees up, toes curled over the edge of the rock.]

I spent a long time watching boats, the weekend you were a pirate.

Why, I never noticed that! But...when they tip over the curve, they're not falling off? It only...looks like they're falling off, because of how we're sitting?

[All this business about round worlds is terribly complicated, in her opinion. Flat worlds seem to make much more sense, and they're much simpler about it all, besides. But Chase is one of those people that Rosella trusts as a veritable fountain of knowledge, and if he seems to think that it's a certain way, she's hardly about to question it.

She is, however, going to chuckle a little at the mention of that particular weekend, and her face goes a bit pink with embarrassment.]

I spent most of that weekend hunting treasure and, er, menacing innocent passerby, I'm afraid--much less time on a boat than one might think, for a pirate. And I'm much better at swimming than I am at sailing, anyway. What were you watching them for, if I might ask? Just something to do, or...?

Exactly.

[And that's probably enough hypothetical explanations for now. Whether this world is a globe or a disc or a cube remains ultimately unprovable. Chase would bet on globe because he still feels somehow the constructor here - a sentiment he rarely voices - and doesn't credit his own creativity to produce anything anomalous. He drops his hand, again, rubbing some of the grit off his knees.]

I lived on the beach. I had a place just around the corner, past the mossy rocks over there. [Still has, in fact. That's where he's come from today.] Try and forget that next time you turn scallywag on us.

Oh, were you a hermit? [Because that would certainly explain the jumpiness, as well as the, er...appearance, on that occasion.] You needn't worry, though. I doubt even a good pirate would go out of his way to bother a hermit keeping to his own business, and goodness knows we all were really rather bad pirates altogether.

[She glances over at Chase, giving him a light nudge and flashing an amused grin.]

We never did find that treasure we were looking for, you know.

I was a... some kind of diver. I wasn't a hermit. [Cue a dubious look from the corner of his eyes, nudging back] You were all mermaids and pirates, how was I going to be a hermit? Hermit crab, maybe.

[He turns his gaze back out across the sand, from the breaking tide to where another line of rocks cut it off in the distance.]

The city probably created it, if you believed it existed. Could be buried out there right now. [And a beat.] What's your puzzle?

Hermits live on beaches! And they can be friends with mermaids, too. And they tend to be shy and don't like being bothered by anybody. You could've very well been a hermit, crabby or not.

[But the mention of the puzzle brings a wistful look back to her face, and she wrinkles her nose and sticks out her tongue in the direction of her notebook. She's not getting anywhere with it and she knows it, but admitting defeat is something she's loath to do.]

I'm trying to figure out how to call a deity, if it's even possible at all.

[That seems like a curious thing to do, for several reasons, but particularly the most obvious.]

Don't people just leave a message on the network?

Those aren't the deities I'm interested in, I'm afraid. I'm after one of the ones that outranks them.

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Quest 211

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