Try as she might, Alicia couldn’t help but feel a bit self-conscious about the awkwardness of the encounter with the void-dwellers. If neither side could understand the other, that would be an entirely different case entirely, it’d be one of those scenarios that humans had prepared for in one way or another since the 50’s, and there were a number of ways one could establish mutual communication that didn’t require mutual understanding of language. Always understanding but never being understood, however, was quite awkward, and Alicia wasn’t sure how to begin bridging that gap, or even communicating that there was bridging to be done.
“I am Alicia,” Alicia said, putting a flat palm on her sternum. “She is Lia” she gestured to Lia.
Silence passed between them for a bit before what looked like the oldest of the void dwellers spoke up.
“I can’t understand them, can you?”
“No,” his younger companion answered. “But if I didn’t know any better, it does seem a bit like they understand us somehow?”
“How…” The elder tried to ask for clarification, but Alicia couldn’t stop herself
“We can! We do, it’s complex magic, I don’t know how to explain it to you how it works because I don’t know it myself but I can understand you!”
“You may be right… hell if I know how though… hey tall lady…”
Alicia pointed at herself, as to ask if he meant her.
“You, yes. Can you be a dear and raise your right hand if you understand what I’m saying?”
Alicia did not particularly enjoy being a dear, but in the interest of continued communication, she did raise her right hand.
The two void dwellers exclaimed in apparent surprise. If the exclamation was anything other than a grunt-like exhalation, the translation field didn’t catch it.
“Yeah that makes sense. You two seem to talk just fine despite speaking way different, so I guess it’s magic?”
Alicia raised her hand again, just a casual wave this time but it was unmistakably an agreement, or at least so she hoped. She didn’t think much about how strange it would seem to have clearly different languages just communicating seamlessly like that. She was thankful for the translation field, but part of her wanted to hear the steppefolk language. It was, from the little she could remember before the ritual’s equivalent translation function kicked in.
“Magic… I still don’t like it” the elder void dweller grumbled.
“If it works it works, I say. Anyway, we’re heading back to the Camp, if you want to join us.”
“Not like they had much of a choice by the look of it,” the elder added. Alicia raised her hand. Whether these void dwellers’ camp was in the right direction or not, they were badly in need of some supplies, and Alicia wasn’t going to lie, she was mighty curious about how people could live out here. There was something encouraging about how Thereafter wasn’t the only speck of life out here, but with that excitement came also some less-than-calming thoughts. Thoughts of raids on the city, humanity, well sapience, returning to its less civilized roots. While Alicia was pretty sure she’d do decently in a situation where the strong preys on the weak, on account of being pretty strong, she didn’t like it.
“Say,” the elder void dweller said as the rock sphere started moving through the void through means Alicia could not discern. “The short one, she reminds me of that one guy back at Camp. You know, the guy with the furs and the shitty attitude? You know the one that the Spheres don’t like?”
“Enkh? Yeah, same uniform by the looks of it.”
Lia perked up. “Can it really be?” She said, seemingly mostly to herself.
“Do you recognize the name?” Alicia asked.
“Yes, Enkh son of Zaya, he is, was… is, I guess, one of the Elder’s Guards. Formidable man, but not the most… diplomatic of disposition.”
“Short one kind of sounds like how he talks when he swears don’t you think? You two from the same shard?”
Lia raised her hand. Alicia assumed “shard” was some kind of word describing the pre-Calamity magical worlds. It was perhaps more dramatic than the “realms” they spoke of in Thereafter, or it could simply be the translation field editorializing somehow. Alicia didn’t offer the magical effect that made communication in Thereafter possible much thought. It worked well enough, Alicia figured, that she’d be forgiven for coming to think of it less as actual magic and more the feeling that the magical worlds beyond our own all spoke English for some reason. Even now that she was faced with an actual situation where the field didn’t work, or didn’t work flawlessly at least, it was hard for her not to think of the situation as these two void dwellers just not hearing what she said somehow. Alicia had no idea how she’d do such a thing, but part of her wanted to disable the field, to hear how everyone actually talked, to hear if there was any hope at all of communicating without it. Even if she knew how, though, she probably wouldn’t. The fear that futzing around with it would break the magic somehow would be too great, and while Alicia was curious about the possibility of teaching Thereafter and Camp English, she really didn’t relish the thought of having to do so.

Time passed, Alicia had no idea how much. Without the artificial sun cycle of Thereafter, or the tiredness of her body to count by, Alicia was steadily losing track of things. It didn’t help that the void was rather sparse around them as the sphere traveled through it. One could see the odd piece of wayward rock or ice, but overall it seemed emptier than Alicia had ever seen it. Alicia wasn’t sure if it felt like the space had been purposefully cleaned, or if it merely inhabited a region that was mostly free of world-pieces.

The rock sphere, too, was a mystery within mysteries. It hummed with a slight vibration, but otherwise produced no sound and no light. The void dwellers didn’t interact with it in any way Alicia could see, but all the same she was decently sure that the younger one did control it in some way. It could be that he was the only one who remained standing, as the elder, and eventually Lia and Alicia, had sat down, but there was something more to it. It was how he shifted his weight, it was a very conscious and deliberate thing, and it reminded Alicia a bit about how one would turn a wheel while driving. If she had some way of actually communicating with them, two-way, she’d ask, but for now she’d have to keep to the speculation.

They could see the light of the camp long before they got to it. It wasn’t as glowing of a star as Thereafter, in fact it was spread out more, and had a nebula-esque glow to it. Once they drove closer, Alicia could see the source of the glow. Stone spheres, tens if not hundreds of them by the look of it, arranged in a loose cloud around what Alicia had to assume was the camp. It was hard to tell at a distance, but most of the spheres were bigger than the one she was riding on, some quite a bit bigger Faint lights shone from some of the spheres, and the way the lights appeared and disappeared, Alicia came to understand that there was a spot on each that glowed, but was obscured by rotation or other things getting in the way. As the sphere cloud grew larger in her vision, Alicia could see that the glowing spot was in fact a hole, and judging by the way she could see humanoid shapes dart in and out of the holes, she had to assume the spheres were hollow. While the sight was impressive, Alicia couldn’t help but feel dread creep into her mind. There was something about these spheres that set her teeth on edge, although she could not quite say what or why.

“The Round Pastures form the outer perimeter of Camp,” The elder void dweller said as he gestured towards the cloud of spheres. “They’re dear to us just like our people are, but they can take way more of a pounding.” He laughed at that, Alicia had to assume that it read as some sort of joke.
“Never mind him, he’s an old pervert,” the younger void dweller said in what Alicia had to describe as a dismissive tone. “But he isn’t wrong. The spheres keep us safe and they keep us fed. Not sure what we’d do without them.”
The sphere closed in on the cloud, and slowed down, Alicia instinctively recognized the prowl of a vehicle looking for a parking spot.
“Ah, you’re too fuzzy about this again,” The elder complained. “Just leave it along the perimeter, they’ll send us out tomorrow same as today.”
“Tidy and clean makes a good perimeter.”
“Yeah yeah, just don’t take all day, I’m hungry enough to eat a beast.”

Alicia wasn’t quite sure of what the rules governed this perimeter, as the sphere passed multiple spots where there was enough distance between two spheres to fit a third before finding what was, apparently, a worthy spot. Once the sphere was in place, the “driver” swayed in a quick circle, which seemed to somehow lock the sphere in place.
“Once we’re done with them they don’t move,” the elder explained. “They’re easier to deal with than people that way.”
“If you remember to put it away,” the driver chided. “If you don’t it can get quite messy.”
“Yeah yeah, tell it to the boss. Come, otherwheres, we’re going to meet the Circle, and if that human disaster in furs is awake we’re going to get some translating done.”

“I get the feeling Enkh isn’t very popular,” Alicia observed as she got up. Lia was somewhat slower with the process, struggling somewhat to get her legs under her. Alicia offered her a hand, which Lia ignored.
“I’m not surprised,” She said. “Steppefolk men in particular can seem standoffish to outsiders.”
“I’m not entirely unfamiliar with the type,” Alicia said. “But I guess we’ll see huh?”

The driver took the lead, leaping from sphere to sphere until they reached a small sphere connected to ropes stretching towards what Alicia assumed would have to be the center of the Camp, where she faintly could see some sort of arrangement of mostly circular rocks. The driver took the lead, grabbing one of the ropes and climbing toward the center. Alicia followed suit, and while it felt weird to climb downward, it wasn’t difficult exactly. It was just one of those motions that felt slightly illogical to the body. Climbing got you higher, and barring some sort of weird reverse pull up exercise, or being underwater, there really was no sensible reason to climb down. Then again, sensible reason here in the realm of magic wasn’t what it was back on earth. It only stood to reason, seeing as the rules of everything were also in flux. No, the miniature voice of Lex piped up, the rules are different but consistent, or at least we are forced to assume this if there is to be any meaningful we can learn about the world. Alicia wasn’t as sure as this miniature science imp she had constructed for herself, but the argument at least made sense to her.

As they got closer, Alicia could see the life of the settlement that was named so unimagitively. It looked like maybe a hundred people lived in Camp, like in Thereafter there was a healthy mix of humans and various humanoids. A couple of dwarves, or potentially scandinavian-style elves, at least two elephant people, and a smattering of human-shaped people with skin colors not seen anywhere on earth, cat eyes, or other small differences. It was interesting, Alicia figured, that the human form was clearly most common, whatever magic, god, or natural processes had shaped the people of the magical realm, it had to have been anthrocentric in some way shape or form, as even the clearly nonhuman sapients were following the “human design” as it were. Alicia was sure this had some sort of relevance or implied something about the world, or the worlds, but she couldn’t quite put it together. If the worlds were created it made sense, that the designers preferred a humanlike form for this or that reason. If it had emerged naturally and all of these humanlike sapients had just evolved that way, that was considerably stranger. It could be a magic thing, which felt, to Alicia, like a sort of in-between of a conscious divinity and the emerging design of natural evolution, but this, she reminded herself, started to sound like the kind of talk that got STEM departments firebombed. It didn’t matter much, Alicia supposed. For now they had bigger fish to fry, namely the amateur anthropology that they had to get into to establish peaceful, or maybe even prosperous relations between Thereafter and Camp.

Alicia couldn’t help but notice that the centre of Camp, a large stone slab on which there were lit various fires for cooking, seemed to be preparing some sort of meat. Alicia was, in a way thankful for the lack of an atmosphere. If she could smell the cooking meat she wasn’t sure she’d have the fortitude to inquire as to the meat’s origins and sourcing before digging in. It wasn’t that Alicia suspected or even feared cannibalism, she told herself, but it was always possible that they had come upon some sort of funerary rite. She also did not want to entirely rule out the manhunting angle. Fresh meat was just such a rarity in Thereafter it was hard to imagine a steady source of it, even in their wildest dreams the hydrophonics setup Lex and Felipe had worked on would never be efficient enough to produce feed for livestock. Not, Alicia couldn’t help but notice, that it looked like Camp had any good sources of water like Thereafter had.
“I see Elder Omon is at the hearth,” The younger Camper spoke. “You’ll have to tell him what’s happening, he doesn’t get my brouge.”
“You don’t enunciate, that’s your problem,” the older one answered with a snort. “If you put a little effort in he’d get you no problem.”
“Psh, I think he’s selectively deaf when it comes to younger folk, just see him instruct the younglings and you’ll agree.”
“No respect…”

Once they touched down on the smaller slab that seemed to function as a nexus for a series of ropes stretching out into the dark, the attention of the settlement turned on them. The sphere riders approached with their palms out, as to signal good intentions on the guests’ behalf.
“We come bearing guests from the Void” The elder rider spoke “We can not understand them, but they can understand us. We believe they come from the Shining Star”
Spirited whispers broke out at the sound of this, too distant for the field to pick them up, but Alicia could see the hushed exchanged, it reminded her of the scuttlebutt at the parties her parents would host on occasion. Gossip, it would seem, was emergent to the sapient soul.
“I’m guessing the Shining Star is what they call Thereafter.”
“Huh, so we are visitors from a star. Aliens, then.” Lia quipped.
“I should never have taught you about that. You’ll be raving about green men for weeks.”
“They’re GREEN? That’s fantastic!”
“And here we go again. Smile and wave, eh?”

A broad-shouldered man arose from the huddle around one of the campfire. He wasn’t very tall, but he was built like a brick wall, and a face full of scars told any number of war stories on their own, although, Alicia had to concede, it could also be he once owned a cat with emotional regulation issues. His facial expression was unreadable, and from his clothes and general emotional inaccessibility, Alicia surmised that this was the emotionally unavailable steppefolk man Enkh.
“You are deepspeaker Lia,” Enkh’s speech sounded somewhat unsteady, like he was dipping back into a second language, but there was no mistaking the fire in his voice. There was anger in there. Old anger by the sound of it, the kind that would fester into hatred. It was just about the last thing you wanted to hear from one of the last of your tribe. “…and you are a traitor to your people!”

Author’s Note: I forgot to add one of these last time. Would have sent one end-of-year thing, but other projects (and, of course, the holidays) kept me busy.

To wildly summarize, 2025 has not been kind on your humble author, so I hope for better things in 2026. On the topic of Thereafter, we’re getting into act 3 with this chapter, and while I AM very excited to start on the hot mess that will be the Felipe-helmed book 3, I am also very excited to reveal more about Camp, our dear Lia, and, of course, what goes on in the Void.

Happy New Year dear readers, and here’s hoping there are good things waiting for us in 2026
VSD