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Who needs an excuse to travel? (Moonstruck)

Started by Wrathwyrm, October 26, 2017, 01:57:10 PM

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Wrathwyrm

The city of Uthlyn was essentially Connlaoth's university town, a place of higher education.  Those of the modern century - so far away from this era - might call it a college town, as it was essentially a large campus with a tall tower and numerous other buildings around it for students to gain an education and even live in...plus the all the shops and things made essentially to support commerce around it.

Right now, let us focus on the buildings of business, specifically...on top of one.  She had been working at this a while, but thanks to some inspiration from a doctor called Faraday, it was finally perfected.  Well, hopefully...  She still had yet to test it.  The young lady was not dressed as young ladies DO in Connlaoth.  She was wearing a shirt and pants, and work shoes...largely due to the amount of work done around the house.  She was brown-haired, brown-eyed, and holding an unusual pistol.

The pistol was a special wheel-lock/grape-shot emsemble she made for herself, loaded with a grappling hook that was attached to a line of...spider silk.  Additionally, there was a belt with spare line, spare hook, and all the things required to make the thing fire.  And you know?  Today was such a nice day...  Why not spend it swinging around these several-story buildings?  It'll certainly be a novel thing for the people of Connlaoth.  This is the first Grappler Gun in existence.

So saying, she fired off at the top of another building and...leapt!  Almost immediately, she suspected too much line was let out for this, and so the first swoop was low enough that she could actually run along the ground, but that's okay because she didn't lose speed enough to run up the next building with the momentum she had.

Well, almost.

She got up the wall, grabbed the edge, hauled herself up so that the roof's edge was under her armpits, and then...stopped.  No, not stuck.  Just thinking about what just happened there.  Our innovator here had a few odd habits, like not worrying about the fact that she was technically dangling from a two-story building while thinking about the timing and the amount of line she had put out.  So, she was doing calculations in her head now...

Moonstruck

Sesh disliked being in Connlaoth. She suspected that she always had. Her tall, slender frame dwarfed every other woman in the street. This was what led her to believe that she was forgein, though she had no idea as to where her six year old self had stumbled in from.

The only place in Connlaoth that she could enjoy was Uthlyn. It was for learning, and learning was what she needed the most. Sesh's great wish (for now) was to fill her head with knowledge. Learning normality was important to her.

Sesh couldn't claim to be an expert, but surely this wasn't normal.

Everyone else in the street kept moving, kept learning and observing, but all Sesh could do was stare in confusion at the girl who swung through the air and hung off a roof edge.

Wrathwyrm

Yes, that was a little strange.  It had to be,.  I mean, if other people were staring at this in confusion, then there must be some truth to the idea, right?  Of course, a number of people around town actually knew who the girl was, so the surprise had been mixed in with them wondering 'What the hell is she up to now?'.  Meanwhile, up there...

Alright, so it seems I forgot to compensate for the flexibility ratio of the line, as we're talking about a series of stretchable spider threads woven into a rope and treated to last as long as conventional rope.  I just need to reel in a little.

So saying, she flicked a wheel device on the other side of the pistol's wheel-lock part.  This was reel, which she fashioned herself, based upon some seamstress equipment.  Essentially, in order to invent this Grappler Gun to its proper potential, she had also created an efficient fishing reel.  Flicking a switch, she got it to pull in some line automatically with a spring-loaded device.  It had a lock to stop the line and everything, so when she kicked off of the building again and swung...

"It works perfectly!!"

...she was able to get herself up to another part of the building's roof while still over people's heads, swooping up again to get herself on top of said roof.  She'd spent alot of time studying pendulum clocks to figure out how to do this.  She reeled in, reloaded, and looked down at the people looking up, which probably included Sesh.

"Behold!  A gun that makes climbing anywhere easier, by far!"

Well, that started a commotion.  Lots of talking and clamber, and maybe a few people who wanted one.  If Sesh listened carefully, she might hear her referred to as 'that Bellows girl'.

Moonstruck

Sesh tried to put the 'Bellows girl' out of her mind, but it wasn't quite that easy. She wanted to know how she'd made that device, and how she'd figured it out, and why she had that much time on her hands. Now the sun had set, and people were eating evening meals or going out for drinks, and Sesh was meant to be working.

Only she couldn't get the 'Bellows girl' out of her head.

Sesh tipped the last of her coins out to pay for dinner. Unless she managed to swipe something tonight without anyone noticing, she wouldn't have anything to eat tomorrow morning. But her mind was elsewhere, and she didn't trust her judgement.

Having finished her meal, she asked the bartender if she knew any way to find the 'Bellows girl', then ran off to make use of her new information.

Wrathwyrm

The bartender was all too happy to supply the desired information.  Part of it was no doubt due to his having been paid for the meal prior to asking questions, and the rest of it was likely due to the fact that lots of questions get asked in Uthlyn, it being Connlaoth's center of education and all.

"That's an easy one.  You go out to the college campus - That's the area around the big tower, if you're unfamiliar. - and then you head around the edge of the property, where campus meets town, on the east side.  There, you'll find a state-owned stone building with 'Bellows' in the name slot.  It was issued to the Lady Bellows and her daughter for improving the cannons or something.  They build stuff, both are kind of eccentric."

Armed with that knowledge, she would find it with relative ease.  On the east side of the campus edge, there it was, as promised.  It was a two-story stone building that looked like a few others nearby, but this one was marked with the name in the slot.  Apparently, the work of Lady Bellows had impressed either a lord or a general or even the Grand Duke himself, and she was awarded this place to continue research in either improving existing things or making new ones.  Attempts to gain entry would show that the sturdy wooden double-doors were locked and that knocking produced no answer.

The reason for this was...that she wasn't back yet.  After a bit of playing around - Because who wouldn't play around with that a little? - the girl had remembered that she would need to eat at some point, and proceeded to buy meat, muffins, raw carrots, and a bottle of apple cider.  All of this would find its way into a sack held over her back, except for the big muffin that was currently in her mouth.  Said muffin-mouthed Bellows girl now approached the house in what can be described as a hungry and winded condition, because she'd used a fair deal of energy and was munching on that muffin before she even got indoors.

She also forgot to remove it before talking to the person standing at her door.

"Mmmf!  Mmf mmf mmmf mmf mmf mmmf mmf mmmf?"

Uhhh...she seemed to want a hand with something, holding out this big sack of what was probably food and gesturing at the door with her head.  It...might be that she needed her hands free to open up the place and she needed to have someone hold onto her stuff while she did it.  Rather trusting of her, no?

Moonstruck

It didn't take Sesh more than a few seconds to reach and take the sack. Almost immediately she could smell the food, and her stomach growled. Yes, she'd already eaten, but certainly not as much as she would've liked. And she had no money for tomorrow. Momentarily, Sesh considered running. She was slightly taller than the girl, who was eating, and Sesh was probably faster and good at hiding.

But the girl was opening the door and waving her in, and Sesh was reminded of her fascination. How did this girl work out the things she did? Could she show Sesh how? Despite her nerves and her instincts telling her to take the food and go, she followed the girl inside.

Wrathwyrm

She really couldn't.  Outrun her, that is.  Not when she was able to navigate this city so well, was in good physical condition, and had the world's only Grappler Gun.  Still, Sesh had decided to go in, instead.  Oh, and today's facinations wouldn't just be with the gun itself.

Behind the double doors lay...another door, a metal door that required another key that looked like it was used to wind up a clock.  Sesh would never have seen something like this before, but the superbly rish of Connlaoth had these.  It was a vault door, essentially.  The Bellows had installed it - probably built it themselves - at some point.

Anyway, once inside and the doors were shut - the vault door was opened easily enough from inside - the girl with the Grappler Gun headed left, through a modest dining room and into a kitchen, where the muffin was thoroughly eaten by then and its owner realized something with wide eyes as she looked at Sesh.

"Oh no!  Did I make you carry that all the way in here?  I'm sorry, I just stopped thinking, since I'm basically famished right now.  Please, put it down.  I can take it from here."

Of course, she had no idea who this was or why she was here, but it'll be certain to work out.

Moonstruck

Sesh's cheeks turned pinkish almost immediately. Still keeping her mouth thoroughly shut, she set the sack down. Her stomach growled loudly, and, absentmindedly, she went to shush it, before realising that she was in someone's house. Someone who was clearly very interesting and clever, and who Sesh did not want to judged harshly by.

Her face transitioned from pink to red.

Looking around the room, Sesh wondered if it would be too weird to just leave, and make tonight a working night. She could leave the city tomorrow, and would never have to think about this evening again. Then Sesh glanced at the girl, and remembered her swinging through the streets like the pendulum in the clock in the house they said she'd lived in, remembered her gleeful exclamation from the rooftop. She'd never get a chance like this again.

Steeling her nerves, she crossed the remaining floor space, and held out her hand.

"Hello, I'm Sesh Ankar."

Wrathwyrm

The girl still had on the belt with the gun.  Sesh had probably seen other people with the normal pistols.  They'd have the pistol, the black powder horn, the wadding...  This much was not much different from the norm, but the rest of it looked like it'd been crossed with mountain-climbing gear.  Now, after Sesh had put down the bag and turned pinkish-red, along with that growling, the girl immediately thought she too was starving and was embarrassed by the fact.

She must be a really hard worker to stand something like that.  I wonder if I've seen her in town somewhere, and I never noticed.

Couldn't be further off the mark if she tried, but as brilliant as this girl was, she didn't exactly know people.  Her visitor could've been a robber, for all she knew, and she might not guess it because she was being manifestly good.  At any rate, Sesh introduced herself, and this delighted the girl to no end.  She'd made a friend!  ...why was she here again?  Oh, nevermind!  She took the hand and shook it with two hands and a smile.

"I'm Katherine Bellows.  You can call me Kate, if you like.  Are you hungry?  You look hungry.  I worked up such an appetite earlier that I just had to buy something."

Well, she seemed nice.  Of course, she'd achieved 'That Bellows Girl' talk among people for good reason.  She was also a little strange.  Ladies definitely don't behave this way.  She was obviously living well, but she dressed and acted more like someone for whom hautiness was other people, and she had eccentricities, no doubt.

Moonstruck

A bubble of laughter rose up through Sesh's throat, and burst through her lips in a short burst. This was undeniably the strangest thing she could remember (ignoring the fact that she only had a few months of memory). This girl, Kate, seemed completely unaware of the strangeness of it all. Sesh tried not to laugh again.

Instead, she answered that yes, she was hungry, and hoped to the heavens that her stomach wouldn't decide to agree with her. It didn't.

"I suppose you're wondering who I am. And also what I'm doing here."

Wrathwyrm

She laughed, but Kate merely attributed it to her mood and energy being rather infectious.  People say that if you laugh and carry on silly-like, other people will laugh even if it's not funny.  Sesh's hand was released after she acknowledged the hunger that they both shared, and immediately Kate stepped around her to take the bag to the smaller kitchen table that was used to prepare food, and upend it.  Stuff came out in a pile.

"Well, it's ready to eat.  I couldn't stand to wait.  Not when I've done so well!"

When Sesh brought up the matter of her identity and purpose in being here, Katherine had quickly stepped upon a stool with some rather nice agility and balance, crouching on the thing while she rested her head on her hand in thought.

"That had occurred to me.  Usually, the people who come here are officials and nobles who want to talk with mother, but now I guess they'll want to talk to me now too..."

That last part...she wasn't sure how good that was, exactly.  She shrugged it off, for now, and gave Sesh a look of some interest, like she'd found something worth giving all her attention to.

"But you're a townsperson, maybe even a traveler.  Student?  It's like when Dr. Faraday showed up.  You're a normal person, aren't you?"

She was saying 'normal' like they were actually the special ones.  Maybe nobles were just sort of blah to her.  Seemed to fit, wearing clothes like she was a day-to-day worker.  She was obviously fit and physically active.   We won't say that it's unheard of in Connlaoth, but you'll see less of it here than in Serendipity, that's for sure.

Moonstruck

The way she said normal made Sesh smile and feel almost bad. More than ever, she wished to claim normality as her own, instead of observing it from the corner, if only to make Kate smile.

"Awfully sorry to say I'm not. Normal, that is. Unless my situation is common, which I highly doubt, since, by all accounts, no one knew what to do either time it happened." Sesh took a breath and rearranged her thoughts, "I'm sorry, I'm rambling a bit aren't I."

Sesh reached out and gripped the table, trying to evade the only memory that she didn't cherish. Opening her eyes to her eyes to the rain, feeling it (or was it tears?) on her cheeks, grass between her fingers and nothing, nothing in her mind.

Looking back up at Kate, Sesh smiled again.

"I'm here to learn. About anything and everything. You seem like a good place to start."

Wrathwyrm

In response to her mention of rambling, Kate made a 'So-so' gesture with her hand.  She knew rambling.  She wasn't just a recognizer of that particular type of person.  She was a member.  Sesh was in good company, the kind that didn't worry about talking too much, per se, unless the word needed to get in, edge-wise.  When Kate wanted to hear, though, she was all ears.  Her face lit up brilliantly when the other girl declared that she wanted to learn.

"So, you are a student!"

Pause.

"You know, you could've tried enrolling at the campus itself."

Another pause, then a shrug.

"No matter.  I can help you.  Let's talk, and eat.  Still famished, remember?"

Onto the table goes the stuff in the bag.  So follows a knife or two to cut things with.  Kate was already making use of one of the knives and putting stuff into her mouth, while still slicing off more of whatever was in the bag for use.  Her impulse had operated thus, and she wasn't about to apologize for it.  She began to talk, though, undistracted by her handywork.

"It's good that you want to learn so much.  I have the same attitude about things.  However, you have to start somewhere.  Everything is everything, and that's alot.  What do you wanna learn about first?"

Moonstruck

Sesh grabbed an apple, bit into it, chewed and swallowed.

"I'm not a student either. And if I knew what I wanted to learn first, I would have enrolled. I don't know what I like, or what interests me. So I thought that, since you're clearly both fascinating and intelligent, you could teach me about something you find interesting."

Sesh took another bite out of her apple, and then looked up at Kate. There was a brief moment of silent eye contact.

"I'll explain. See, when I say I'm not normal I do really mean it." Sesh paused, breathed, and beckoned the memories, "Try to imagine waking up in the rain. Imagine having no idea where you are or what you are doing there or why you are crying. Imagine meeting a man who seems to know you, who calls you by a name you don't know, and whose face falls when you ask his name. Imagine being told that this has happened before. Three months ago that was me. Since then I have being trying to reach my memories, and it's like trying to climb up a steep slope made of smooth marble on an icy day in socks. I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I need help. So help me. Please."

Wrathwyrm

It's worth noting that, at no time, did Kate's hands make any sort of errors while cutting.  She had some sort of precision memory and calculating motion at work with this, even while Sesh stated that she was not a student, at least not in any traditional sense.  To Kate, that just meant...

"Well, I would say that anyone who wants to learn in earnest is a student of some kind."

And then, it all came out.  The innovator practically stared in silence as the girl explained the full impact of what exactly made her abnormal.  She'd had...some sort of mind thing happen to her, be it of her own doing or because of magic.  Kate understood the former, quite easily.  She'd certainly been there.  Never with a loss of memory.  More of a...buried personality, or disassociation of self.  She just seemed to stop right there, put down the knife, and spoke quietly for a moment.

"I will help you."

Taking a seat at the table, she pulled out the Grappler Gun.

"If you saw me earlier, then you saw me using this.  My mother got us this house for helping out with the refinement of cannons, guns, and plumbing.  Do you know anything about these things?  I should ask what you do know, if that's alright, Sesh."

Moonstruck

Sesh's face spilt open in a wide grin when Kate said she'd help her, and followed her to sit at the table. But when Kate asked what she knew, her face fell. She hated relaying that her head was full of longing, but not much more.

"I hardly know where to start, since there really isn't much. It's mostly dishonest tricks: pickpocketing, lying, how to find a fence who won't ask too many questions. I know normal things as well. Things you learn as a child, and some things that everyone knows about the world. And if I ever talk to myself in some strange language, I've been doing it since I was six, probably longer. But I can't get a job because I just don't know enough."

She bit her lip and looked at the floor. For the last couple of months, she'd been forcing herself to not take on the guilt. She'd hoped that something would return, some little skill to help her on her way. She'd discovered she had a talent for lying, but not much else.

Sesh started to turn red again, and then she looked back up at Kate.

"I want to learn how that thing you showed off earlier works. I want to learn how to make things like that. And, I want to learn about clocks, and all things with cogs. I want to take them apart and put them back together again. I did that before I left where I lived before, though I didn't manage to put it back together again. And I want to, I really do. It just feels right, for some reason."

Wrathwyrm

Kate began to get the picture.  Because she didn't know anything, Sesh had to live on the streets and do anything she could to survive.  She was basically knowledgeable, but she didn't have any real education or expertise.  And with a problem like that, it was easy to see why she didn't just enroll here in Uthlyn.  Essentially, she just didn't have options, because if she had a past, she doesn't know what kind that is.  One thing that Sesh had going for her, it seemed, was a definite desire to learn, especially about inventions, the new things coming to the world.

Had to wonder, though...  What was that strange language she was talking about?  That made her curious.  Maybe there was a way to figure that part out.  Maybe...  Well, at any rate, Sesh wanted to learn more about her Grappler Gun.  Kate saw nothing wrong with that.  In fact, she was all too eager to have a friend to talk to things like this about.  And if she wanted to learn, like an apprentice or something, even better!  So, she gestured to the gun on the table now.

"Well, this is the device in question.  It's a gun that I've had to carefully handcraft so that it has a solid stock and grip to work with the grapeshot barrel.  The reason for that is because firing a gun itself is already high in the return stresses, so when you're talking about firing this grappling hook so it flies out and grabs a ledge or something...it can be demanding on the gun itself.  So, this is a wheel-lock pistol works basically the same way a gun does, only it shoots out this hook on a line that gets played out from this spool..."

The line went from its tie on the grappling hook, through some eyelets, and to the metal spool on the other side of where the wheel-lock on the gun was located.  You could actually crank it to reel in, like...like...like what they do with the rope on a catapult or a drawbridge or something.

Moonstruck

Sesh instinctively leant forward, eager to understand the workings of Kate's invention. Half of what she was talking about went straight over Sesh's head, but she stored it all in her mind, with a mental note to ask questions later.

In that moment, all that mattered was knowing it. And that someone was teaching it to her. This was new, and it was the best thing of the last three months.

Sesh looked up Kate and smiled.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Wrathwyrm

"No problem at all.  I think I like having people around.  When Dr. Faraday was here, he's the one that put me wise to the use of this kind of line on the spool.  It's gonna be hard for them to get to keep making these, but it's worth it because it's strong.  This is spider silk, woven spider silk that works just as well as rope."

Knowing it was one thing.  Understanding it was another.  Kate had actually missed where Sesh might've looked confused, because she really liked having someone to talk to about things like this.  Having an avid listener who wanted to hear was great!  She could really learn alot here.  She even...hmmm.  Okay, now there was a question.

"Sesh, can you read?  I mean, I know you can't remember being taught, but we have a bunch of books and such.  You could read them if you remember how."

Moonstruck

"I can read, yes. I don't think I'd have left home if I couldn't."

Sesh didn't mention that she had stared at the pages for an hour before she recognised the letters again, or that that was what happened every time she tried to recall something she learnt as a child. Her strange language was all she knew without problems.

She started to tap her fingers on the table.

"I'd like to read whatever you have."

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