[Witches' Horses] Chevalier de Grammont
Title: overload
'Verse/characters: le Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont, Sinclair
Prompt: 91D "drown"
Word Count: 490
Notes: before they meet up with Martin Vedunov the first time; slightly before a name.
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She'd expected . . something. Something not this, witches and storms and lost colts in the dark, the noise--
"Turn the gain down," a human voice cut abruptly across the cacophony, speaking to her inner ears and not her outer, and she obeyed without thinking, because when one was compromised another should be able to speak--
Oh. She could breathe again, the information streaming around her in radiation, magnetism, electricity and a hundred other ways of getting between two places, instead of drowning her in the noise.
She stilled her shaking, trembling internal gravity with an effort, corrected her slow forward tumble to rest in-line with most of the communication streams.
"You didn't tell me humans were so noisy," she said aloud after a moment.
"You didn't tell me you had your ears turned up so high you'd hear a system from anywhere near this far out, I think we're even," he replied, a little breathless.
When she looked at her memories of the last ten minutes, she discovered she'd been screaming half of it, and he'd tried four other phrases--including what she assumed was a curse in a language she didn't understand--before he'd happened on the words that had helped.
"I . ." she started, then rewrote the sentence a few times before she finished "I think I should stay out here for a while, to get accustomed to the difference."
"Not a bad idea," he agreed, as she suspected he would not have to her second version, which had been "I want to know what I'm dealing with before I get closer, human."
"Do you need a mark, to find me again?" she asked, after another few hundred cycles of examining herself for potential damage and beginning to build correlation tables for the sudden surge of data points she now had access to.
"No, I'll mark a map when I leave to fetch supplies. You remember, we discussed some of the systems human keep on horses for their use?"
She swayed a yes with her body, before remembering to use the verbal, because he couldn't see her.
Then she hooked the first minnow out of the information stream--the weather forecast for several planets, along with launch windows and congestion reports--and started revising her half-built tables. So much to learn to process--more that she'd ever even imagined.
How did humans handle this?
"We can't see a tenth what you do, mare," the human in her head said, in the tone that she was beginning to parse meant amused.
"I didn't mean to say that," she admitted, tracing him down from the engaged speakers in order to see him with her nearest eyes, noting several nearly overloaded spots on her way.
"I rather assumed so. We're in no hurry--take your time processing. I'm headed back to bed--wake me if you need help spot welding."
"I--yes. Thank you."
"It's nothing," he replied, visibly by rote, but she thought he meant it, too.
'Verse/characters: le Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont, Sinclair
Prompt: 91D "drown"
Word Count: 490
Notes: before they meet up with Martin Vedunov the first time; slightly before a name.
---------
She'd expected . . something. Something not this, witches and storms and lost colts in the dark, the noise--
"Turn the gain down," a human voice cut abruptly across the cacophony, speaking to her inner ears and not her outer, and she obeyed without thinking, because when one was compromised another should be able to speak--
Oh. She could breathe again, the information streaming around her in radiation, magnetism, electricity and a hundred other ways of getting between two places, instead of drowning her in the noise.
She stilled her shaking, trembling internal gravity with an effort, corrected her slow forward tumble to rest in-line with most of the communication streams.
"You didn't tell me humans were so noisy," she said aloud after a moment.
"You didn't tell me you had your ears turned up so high you'd hear a system from anywhere near this far out, I think we're even," he replied, a little breathless.
When she looked at her memories of the last ten minutes, she discovered she'd been screaming half of it, and he'd tried four other phrases--including what she assumed was a curse in a language she didn't understand--before he'd happened on the words that had helped.
"I . ." she started, then rewrote the sentence a few times before she finished "I think I should stay out here for a while, to get accustomed to the difference."
"Not a bad idea," he agreed, as she suspected he would not have to her second version, which had been "I want to know what I'm dealing with before I get closer, human."
"Do you need a mark, to find me again?" she asked, after another few hundred cycles of examining herself for potential damage and beginning to build correlation tables for the sudden surge of data points she now had access to.
"No, I'll mark a map when I leave to fetch supplies. You remember, we discussed some of the systems human keep on horses for their use?"
She swayed a yes with her body, before remembering to use the verbal, because he couldn't see her.
Then she hooked the first minnow out of the information stream--the weather forecast for several planets, along with launch windows and congestion reports--and started revising her half-built tables. So much to learn to process--more that she'd ever even imagined.
How did humans handle this?
"We can't see a tenth what you do, mare," the human in her head said, in the tone that she was beginning to parse meant amused.
"I didn't mean to say that," she admitted, tracing him down from the engaged speakers in order to see him with her nearest eyes, noting several nearly overloaded spots on her way.
"I rather assumed so. We're in no hurry--take your time processing. I'm headed back to bed--wake me if you need help spot welding."
"I--yes. Thank you."
"It's nothing," he replied, visibly by rote, but she thought he meant it, too.