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 ( Read more... )
[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 ( Read more... )
He hasn't been in the water but his hair is wet with spray, salt and sand flecking his skin, with his bare knees and calves having accumulated the worst of it. It's a far cry from the buttoned down (if brightly coloured) appearances he keeps up at the office, right down to the bare feet kicking up the beach as he jogs along the tideline. He doesn't notice he's in company until he hears it, looking up and around to find the source.]
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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.]
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[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.
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[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?
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[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.
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[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?
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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.
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I think I see, yes...
[Her brow furrowed, she does as he instructs, turning her attention to the ocean once more.]
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[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.
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[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...?
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[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.
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[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.
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[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?
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[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.
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Don't people just leave a message on the network?
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