Getting ready turned out being mostly a matter of agreeing about things, which given Lia and Alicia’s current moods, was a bit harder than planned. First there was the matter of finding a good rock “vessel,” then there was navigating it to a spot where it would have a clear shot across the gap. Then there the was the question of the rope, which became an unexpected sticking point.

“We’ll do no favors to nobody by getting tangled up in that thing,” Lia dismissed the idea when Alicia had suggested they’d connect by a rope around the waist.
“It may do us one hell of a favor,” Alicia bristled. “If anything goes wrong out there and we get sent careening, it’s in our own best interest that we go in the same direction. Thus, the rope.” She held out the nylon cord rope Lex had conjured up for the expedition. She hadn’t gotten around to unwinding it yet.
“If anything ‘goes wrong out there’ we’re as good as dead, and you know that Exalted.”

Alicia sighed, for as harsh as she may sound, Lia probably wasn’t wrong. “Maybe we are,” She said. “But maybe taking some precautions can widen the band of outcomes that we actually survive. I’m not saying it’s huge, I’m just saying we should take what we can get.”
Lia scouted out into the gap, she didn’t reply for a while.
“I don’t like this, Exalted,” Lia’s voice was calmer, there was honesty to her voice which made Alicia feel like she got to peer deeper into the secret that was Lia in that moment. “This gap wasn’t here before, when we scouted this place on. It’s… not so much that it is there that bothers me, it that I do not know why, and I do not know what I could do to find out.”
“Yeah I get that,” Alicia said. “Back on earth, getting information was so easy. Maps, history, pictures, all at our fingertips. Being out here is… very different.”
The older woman made a soft “huh” sound as she peered into the darkness of the void. A moment of contemplative silence passed. “I suppose there’s nothing for it,” Lia said as the moment passed. “We’ve observe the area for a while now, and we’ve seen nothing of note happen… well, it is possible that whatever caused this gap was an one-time thing.”

Once they were finished getting the vessel into position, Lia spoke up again. “We probably should, uh, use the rope. Just in case.”
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say,” Alicia said as she got to uncoilng the rope. The rope felt strong enough, but it was curiously soft compared to the other ropes of its kind Alicia had ever encountered. Seeing as Lex had conjured it, Alicia was forced to conclude that Lex had experience with less rough ropes, she made a mental note to ask them about it at a later date. Not that she needed ask, she figured she had a decent read on the kind of things Lex liked by now, but it felt more polite, somehow, to confirm such suspicions. Besides, it was the kind of knowledge that could be applied to future endeavors.

Once they were tethered together and braced with their backs to the vessel and feet on the largest rock they could find, it struck Alicia exactly how much of a shot in the dark this was going to be. For one, they could not see to aim while producing thrust, not that there was a lot to see, then there was the imprecision of their strength. Alicia had a decent idea of how far she could launch herself, and a halfway decent understanding of Lia’s strength, the main difference between deep song users were a question of control rather than one of degree, but there were so many unknown factors. How fast would they be able to propel themselves? Going too slow obviously wasn’t ideal, but going too fast would kill them for sure, as they’d have no way to adjust speed at all mid flight, and bailing at too high a speed would kill them dead just as much as riding the vessel into a high speed impact would. To make things worse, all of this was dependent on there being an other side of the gap. Eventually they’d hit something. Detritus, hell, maybe even Thereafter if they were uncommonly lucky, but there was no telling how long that trip would take, or what shape they would be in after it.

“This is risky,” Lia said, as if sensing Alicia’s very reasonable threshold concerns about this whole plan. “But I am convinced it is the best of multiple bad alternatives. Are you ready?”
“Yeah… Let’s go.” Alicia wasn’t ready, but that didn’t really matter. Whether Lia thought this plan was the best in her heart of hearts or merely chose to encourage Alicia here on the precipice to disaster, Alicia couldn’t be sure, but even if it was the latter, the fact that she had put in the effort to calm Alicia should count for some kind of something. Together, Lia and Alicia took a deep breath and, with synchronization that surprised Alicia even as she was doing it, kicked off from their launchpad rock.

The debris field they had been transversing for what felt like days shot away from them, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that they shot away from it. Alicia got the impression that questions like these could lead to some long and passionate explanations from Lex, and tucked that thought away for the next time she’d need something to divert Lex’ attention, or combat the occasional dark moods of her beloved nerd. For now, there were other things that required attention.

“We’ve got liftoff,” Alicia said, for her own sake if not for anything else.
“No big disaster yet,” Lia observed.
“The flight is still young,” Alicia quipped as they started to climb around to what they had decided would be the top of the vessel to scout for what destination might exist. “I still have no idea how the landing’s going to go. Except it won’t be a landing exactly. No gravity or air resistance to slow us down, so it’ll be more of an impact.”
“That does sound scarier,”
“Quite a lot scarier yeah,” Alicia agreed. “All things being equal we should try to let the vessel take as much of the impact as possible.”
“You’ll hear no argument against that. Rather it than me, I say.”

The “vessel” flew through the void at a speed that Alicia felt like surely must be increasing, although she was pretty sure that was impossible. It probably was how she was used to thinking about how things behaved in an atmosphere. Out here in the void, things were simpler in a way. Once things got into motion, they stayed in motion until something got in the way, or it got close to something with enough gravity to catch it. Alicia was pretty sure that’s how it worked. She hadn’t seen anything big enough to do such a thing, but she assumed that The Calamity had not managed to break the rules of physics, at least not in any lasting capacity.

Even though they’d taken breaks and all, this silent flight through the black was the first time since the disaster Alicia could slow down and process. She really was in the middle of one hell of a problem right now. The resources she’d brought along were on the light side even for a medium-length hike and here she was braving the depths of the void on a wing and a prayer. She didn’t really have any idea of how far they were from Thereafter, and unlike many of the things she didn’t know, she could actually figure that one out if she was willing to ask Lia how long it had taken the scouts. She was, however, not willing. Not because of pride or anything, or even the kind-of-fight she was in with Lia, no, it was more out of fear. It could be that Thereafter was impossibly far away, weeks worth of freshly rested scouts traveling and teleporting back to town after their shift. Even if it was just a couple of days, though, their resources were plainly not sufficient. They would need to scavenge for food. Find some kind of solution for water. Mind their body heat. This wasn’t to say distance was irrelevant. Increased distance meant increased travel time, and increased travel time meant more chances for things to go wrong. It wasn’t just a linear increase either, Alicia figured. Tired people made more mistakes. Hungry people made more mistakes. Tired and Hungry and Demoralized people made way more mistakes, and the further they got in their journey, Alicia suspected, the more they would be in the latter category.

Alicia had never been what you’d call the Outdoorsy type, but she had grown up in a home that at least occasionally enjoyed an adventure in nature. While she hadn’t grown up poor, it would’ve been a mischaracterization to describe her family as particularly well off. They were the kind of family that could take vacations, but usually to national parks a state or two away, the kind of adventure one could afford if you had some decent camping equipment, or at least the opportunity to borrow some. Once they had gone all the way to Yosemite National Park, whose wild untouched beauty had been mostly lost on pre-Steppeworld Alicia, who was very occupied with her “aloof teenager” act at the time. Looking back at it, Alicia felt bad for not getting more out of the experience, but now that she was old enough to appreciate the truth of the saying “youth is wasted on the young,” it was one of those things she didn’t lose much sleep over.
There were, perhaps, a world where Alicia got really into camping and survival skills rather than fitness and the faustian wilderness that was The Internet, but then again, there was no shortage of things that “could have happened.” Alicia could, for example, have come out of the closet at least ten years earlier and, god willing, gotten some real life experience with queer dating before Covid made everything stupid for everyone. She could also have learned to cook, or any number of other skills that would come in handy. It was the kind of thing that one could drive oneself mad with the speculation over, and Alicia had seen a very good movie not too long ago that delivered a compelling case that that kind of madness in particular was folly.

Neither Lia nor Alicia said anything during the first part of the traversal. They were tense, readying for the unknown. In truth they were probably too focused on peering into the darkness of the void, looking for approaching salvation or creeping doom. Alicia didn’t feel like she stopped paying attention at any point, like her attention slipped into a hole in itself and disappeared, but at some point it must have happened, as Lia’s calling out made her snap back to conscious focus like she had just woken up from a particularly lifelike dream.
“Detritus cloud ahead,” Lia said, the excitement clear in her voice, given an extra flange by the draw of the Deep Song. Alicia was pretty sure she was drawing on it solely for the increased focus and heightened senses, because in their current situation increased strength was of marginal utility.

It took Alicia a good minute to find what it was Lia was talking about, but eventually she spotted the specs in the distance. Judging by their size, they were still a bit of travel away, but that was perhaps for the best, after all they had to prepare for the landing, or impact as it were. “Huh yeah you’re right. Good eyes, Lia.”
“My dad said I should’ve been a falconer weren’t it for that I’d give the birds a run for their money,” Lia quipped.
“Funny guy. I hope he meant it as a compliment?”
“It could be kind of hard to tell with him. He wasn’t very open about things. He got a little bit better about it in his later years though. It’s kind of a cliché among my people that strong people, men in particular, don’t develop much mastery in the social skills before they’re well past their prime, physically speaking.”
“At least they get there in your neck of the woods, well, got there I guess,” Alicia mused. “Around where I’m from they just buy more expensive status symbols and date progressively younger women.”
“That does sound worse,” Lia agreed. “But from what I’m told the gender situation over there is… complicated, like in a worse way?”
“I’m not going to lie to you, that is very much the case,” Alicia sighed. She was aware that she should be starting to plan for the landing, or impact, but there were some deep frustrations in her that was stirred by this conversation, and try as she might she couldn’t quite let them go. “There’s just so many things you can’t do because you’re a woman, it’s stupid. Like, I want to be stronger than I am currently, but that’d make me look… I don’t know, wrong from a societal perspective?”
“Looks is important I take it”
“Immensely, and as a woman in particular, there’s this very narrow band of what is acceptable. You can be fit, but not strong, you can be smart, but not clever, and so on and so on, it’s frustrating. Especially when coming from Steppeworld, let me tell you.”

“Huh,” Lia said, suddenly pensive at Alicia’s little rant. “For what its worth,” she said after a while, and it felt like a thought that had percolated for years, maybe decades, in Alicia’s brain and soul. “There are ways being of the Steppefolk tethers you as well. Not a lot of ways to be vulnerable. Peaceful is kind of a bad word, despite my best efforts.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it has been my main project as a Deepspeaker to make peace seem like less of a vice, but it seems that the restless violence of the Brother War is still in our nerves.” Lia shook her head. “No, that’s too easy. It’s been centuries, and it’s not like there’s been perfect peace for most of that time either.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured.”
“Now don’t get me wrong Exalted,” Lia said. “From what I’m told the Brother Wars was a nasty brutal time compared to the now, and then there’s that whole regrettable business with the Nameless One of course, but trust me, we have been getting into plenty of wars and violence on our own.”
“I’m starting to suspect that’s human nature,” Alicia said with a shrug. “But whether it is nature or frailty we kind of have to work against it, right? The world is better when we try, and all that.”
“That it is. We also should perhaps try to prepare for what we do once we hit the over there?”
“Ah yes,” Alicia agreed, a slight blush rising in her. Here she was philosophizing when there was a very real tangible problem to work right ahead of her, approaching at speeds that however slow they were on a cosmic scale, sure beat the hell out of walking. “That is probably for the best.”

Author’s Note: This chapter feels a little bit on the short end, but I think that’s just the part of me that really wants to include the… conclusion of this little journey. I opted to make the actual launch and transversal a chapter on its own in part to give the characters a little mandatory downtime, and get to a theme thing I’ve been meaning to prod at for a while. The whole thing that Alicia don’t notice the societal flaws of Steppeworld as much because her personality fits more smoothly in there, as well as because she was but a child when she actually experienced them is a pretty important idea to Thereafter as a whole, and while there clearly is More Stuff going on with her an Lia, I found this a nice way to resolve a bit of that. In other words; More Nuance Let’s Go.

Catch you next time when our intrepid heroines make an… interesting landing and gets some scavenging done.

VSD