After a very satisfying feast, Alicia and Lia was shown to one of the smaller sphere rocks, with what appeared to be a manhole-sized entrance part.
“The light in it is quite weak,” spoke their guide, an olive-skinned teenager who seemed equal parts excited to interact with the shiny new strangers and disinterested about everything in the way of her fellow teens. “Whistle to get it to disappear. Or clap. Any sharp noise will do it really.”

Alicia couldn’t help but smile at this kid, she just seemed so achingly familiar. She had known this kid back in junior high, hell, under the right conditions she had been her. Another parallel between the fantasy worlds and the “real” world. Alicia had spent much of her life thinking that the fantasy worlds somehow had been fundamentally different. In one way, they were, as the different levels of technology sure weren’t irellevant to these matters, but in others, she wasn’t so sure. People, it seemed, were people, for better or worse.
“Thank you,” Alicia thanked the teen, receiving a rolling of the eyes for her troubles. The kid hadn’t understood her, of course, but she didn’t have to. The tone of thankfulness couldn’t be too difficult to pick up, and even if much of the detail was lost, very little about the situation hinted at anything outside the purview of casual eye-rolling. Then again, few things genuinely existed entirely outside the purview of casual eye rolling, Alicia seemed to recall.

The process of entering the spherical rock turned out to be somewhat harder than Alicia had anticipated, as the intuitive way of doing it would be to use both of her arms and simply climbing inside. With one arm not only out of the running, but immovable and probably best to not disturb, the puzzle became all the more interesting in that particular understanding of the word that was easily confused with “maddening.”
Eventually, Lia took the initiative to enter the sphere first. Alicia briefly considered politely rejecting the hand she offered, but she had to be honest with herself, the three-dimensional puzzle that was getting herself through this fucking hole was already wearing on her patience, not to mention whatever capability of conscious thought still remained within her.
Lia didn’t yank her inside, but there certainly was a bit of impatience to the pull that got her through the hole. Inside, this ‘resting cave’ had a radius of about six feet if Alicia had to guess. With it being a near-perfect sphere on the inside as well, this made the entire construction roomy in a way that Alicia’s sense of spatial reasoning was ill-equipped to make the most out of. The inner walls of the sphere was covered by some kind of moss or other growth that Alicia figured would be pretty comfortable to lie on if the state of gravity allowed such a thing. Light seemed to come a bit from everywhere, and while it did unsettle Alicia a bit, it was undeniably handy.

“You doing ok?” Lia asked. “Hand still bothering you?”
“Uh, yeah,” Alicia said as she drifted in the low gravity of the sphere. There felt like there was a slight drag towards the walls of the sphere, but not enough that she couldn’t easily defeat it with even a regular hop. “I mean it doesn’t hurt too bad still, that Deep Song thing still works just fine. It’s just inconvenient and I’m tired of having to figure out how to figure out how to do everything one-handed. There’s a voice in the back of my head that wants me to just tear this bandage off and grin and bear it with the pain.” Alicia nodded at the new bandage and splint applied by their hosts in the wake of dinner. “I know it’s a bad idea, TERRIBLE idea actually, but it doesn’t stop the urge y’know?”
“I know the feeling.” Lia nodded. She had busied herself with unpacking the bedrolls they were given by their hosts, in practice not more than two wide blankets to wrap around oneself to minimize heat loss. “It’ll start sounding more reasonable as you heal, but it’s still in your best interest not to listen to it, even when you’re almost sure it’ll be fine. Learned that the hard way.”
“Oh?”
“It’s the reason I never extend my left elbow fully,” Lia said, raising her left arm until it started shaking. “That’s as far as it’ll go, because I was a damn young fool and thought I knew better. It doesn’t hurt as long as I don’t fuck with it, though, so that’s a mercy.”
“That sucks,” Alicia said. “When did that happen?”
“Five years ago, maybe six? As I said, I was young and dumb.” Lia winked, vulpine guile glinting in her eyes.
“Huh,” Alicia said with a shrug. “Being a mere infant myself, then, I suppose I defer to your judgment in this case.”
“Whippersnapper,” there was no venom in Lia’s words. In fact, Alicia realized, they sounded almost affectionate.

“So,” Alicia cleared her throat. Her tour of the ‘sleep cave’ was over, not that there was much to see. “What’s Enkh’s deal, if you don’t mind me asking.”
Lia visibly deflated at the question, it was almost enough to make Alicia regret asking, but only almost. She had to know what was going on here, if Enkh’s vendetta was a potential threat to the fresh diplomatic ties between Thereafter and Camp, Alicia needed to be ready for it, or at least so she told herself.
“I wasn’t lying back there,” Lia said. “Or being rhetorical even, although ‘Calm your ass down and tell me what’s actually wrong’ is considered a very powerful gambit among the steppefolk…’
“Figured as much,” Alicia nodded. “It’s meant to deflate the bluster of anger, right? Like force the allegedly insulted party to put their grievance into words to dull the intensity of the emotion in play?”
“Yeah, that’s more or less the logic. Anger is considered a very powerful emotion among my people, but it’s a bit like fire. If properly applied and managed it’ll keep you warm, keep you safe, forge your weapons, If you fuck up or fail to respect it, though, it’ll destroy everything you own and hold dear.”
“Right, makes sense,” Alicia agreed. She had a similar perspective on anger herself, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because of her time among the Steppefolk, or if whatever had called her there had called her because of her latent understanding of the concept. It was a question that by its very nature couldn’t be answered. Not by her at any rate. Maybe someone dedicating their life to the Calling Rite could figure it out, or at least someone studying magic could make an educated guess. “But you weren’t just playing word games, were you?”
“Right,” Lia said. “I don’t know exactly what Enkh is mad at me for. I have some ideas, but I do not want to lean too hard on assuming either one.”
“Fair enough. Could I ask you to name the top three, just so I have an idea of the picture here?” Alicia knew this was a big-ish ask, but she had gone through too much with Lia to be over-considerate, especially when the topic was so possibly important as this. The glance Lia gave her told Alicia that they were in agreement on the ask being big, and that while Lia was hesitant, she was not outraged at the request.
“I suppose,” Lia said, Alicia assumed it was to mostly buy herself a moment to come up with something sensible to say. It was a strategy she wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with herself. “We were both in the Grand Camp when the Calamity hit, but probably opposite sides of it, I was in a rest tent at the time, and I’m assuming Enkh was with the other Elder Guards. This is what I know, so this next bit is mostly guesswork.”
“Right.”
“So when the Calamity hit, I assume the Elder Guards would rally to assess the nature and severity of the danger, which is a decent first step in most cases but probably didn’t help since the danger was absolute and came from everywhere, basically.”
“Right. I’m not… personally familiar with the Calamity,” Alicia said. “But I get the impression it was chaotic?”
“You could certainly say that,” Lia’s chuckle was humorless, more an acknowledgment of the inherent futility in trying to describe the indescribable. “Back in my side of the camp, I first became aware of the whole thing when the screaming started. ‘It’s in the sky’ someone screamed. ‘It is eating the sun.’ There was a frankness to the screams, didn’t sound like hysteria at all, and as more joined them, I hastened out to see what was happening but by then it was already too late.” Lia rubbed her eyes, there was a shaking to her hands that hadn’t been there before. “I apologize, it gets a little vague. I can remember… like… slices of time, like one might in a dream. By the time I get out of the tent most of those who screamed were dead. By their own hand or by the act of Seeing itself, I don’t know, but the sky is pitch dark, and the ground is shaking. Cracks are forming in the soil, through the rocks too. I draw in the Deep Song, and I draw it deep. I had no idea what’s going on, I don’t think anyone really did, even now I have no idea. The ground started breaking up, falling into the blackness that I now know to be the Void. Large parts are disintegrated. People and livestock too. Reduced to ash, or dust, I do not know which, if any, fits. Through all of this, only one thought goes through my mind. ‘We have to get out of here…’ and even if I don’t quite know who ‘we’ are in this context, or exactly what ‘here’ entails, I get to work. I grab a still-burning log from a destroyed bonfire and start gathering up as many still-living people as I can on the Allthing Meadow, where the democratic part of steppefolk politics are discussed, well, used to be discussed. People are scared, panicking really, but I can’t answer them. Don’t have any answers, don’t have any time to give them if I had any, so I move onwards, faster than I ever have. I snatch up anyone who looks even vaguely alive. One of the survivors tells me they had to toss the false positives off the meadow-island, to make room for actual survivors. Somewhere in the middle of this mad dash I see… something. I see the something that might be the cause of all of this but it’s not a survivor or supplies so my brain all but ignores it…”
Lia took a deep breath, causing Alicia to remember that she, too, needed to breathe.

“I still see it some times when I close my eyes, you know,” Lia said. “It’s like… an inverse dust devil made of… some kind of light. I can’t decide if it’s the color you see when you close your eyes after looking at too-strong light, or some impossible color that I can’t even fully comprehend… and at the top of that ever-churning spiral of impossible light… I don’t know, it’s a sphere, but it feels hollow, if that makes sense? Like there’s something contained within it, or protected by it, or maybe a bit of both?
“Hey Lia…” Alicia found herself asking. “Are you ok? You don’t have to…”
“Nonsense,” Lia interrupted. “I survived experiencing it so I’ll survive talking about it… Anyway” she continued, but her tone told Alicia that Lia had accepted the out, at least from talking further about the Calamity. “Hours pass, and eventually my world has broken up so much that getting around, even with the Deep Song, is a challenge. The survivors on the meadow-island insist I rest, claiming it’s been over a day at this point. I don’t believe them, but feeling my legs collapse from tiredness under me, I accede to their demands all the same.”
Alicia doesn’t know what to say, so both she and Lia float in silence for a bit as the aftershocks of Lia’s story hit them both.
“That whole time, I don’t see Enkh a single time, which has led me to two possible explanations for his anger.” Lia continued as if nothing had happened. Alicia suspected it had taken her until then to be ok with getting back on the story. “Either, he saw me and I missed him, thus making him personally angry at me for not rescuing him which is… fair, I will say, or he was on a similar errand as me, and so blamed me for not helping him. It could be that he managed to gather some of his Elder Guard and attempted to rescue his wards, the Elders, in which case the fact that he’s the only Steppefolk around these parts tell me it didn’t work out all that well for him, which could be a failure he’s now choosing to lay at my feet. That could be justified, or it could be the man attempting to cope with what happened to him, I do not know his story so I couldn’t say.”

“I see,” Alicia said. “So that’s two reasons. Is there a third possible one?”
Lia sighed. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s stupid… and a little embarrassing, while I’m being honest here.”
“Huh, ok,” Alicia found herself hesitating. It felt absurd after the frank discussion of what probably was and forever would be the worst day in Alicia’s life, but there was something about crossing this particular border that felt prickly. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to… and I’m not just saying that. If it’d make you uncomfortable to share it I’d rather you didn’t, I promise.”
Lia shrugged. “It’s not that big of a thing, not really… but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to share it.” She took a deep breath. “Me and Enkh, we also have a bit of a history.”
“Go on?”
“Nothing big or dramatic by my reckoning, only reason I even bring it up is because I know scorn can draw deep markings in young souls, especially so with men.”
“Right. I feel everyone has had at least one encounter with a good example of that.”
“Well, mine is Enkh. We pursued the same woman once. Ita. She was strong as the very roots of the mountain, that girl. Grew up with Livestock people, which made her both tough and a bit unapproachable… my type of girl back then and it turns out Enkh’s as well.” Lia laughed at this. “Of course it didn’t go either of our way. Ita didn’t particularly care for romance or tent-sharing of any variety, and while I think she did enjoy the attention of early courtship, there really wasn’t an end goal she really wanted for herself in there. In the end I believe she joined the Surveyors, an organization whose job it was to measure up grazing land to ensue it was distributed equally. It’s important work, and due to how crucial impartiality is to them, joining more or less tells the world that you do not intend to share your tent with anyone. I don’t know if she did it because of me and Enkh, specifically, or if it just overlapped enough with her interests to be an agreeable path for her.” Lia shrugged. “Ah young infatuation. It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
“You tell me,” Alicia found herself saying. “I spent the summer I turned 18 getting really into dirtbiking… that is using a machine to move really fast on low-quality roads, because of a guy, and then he introduces me to his boyfriend and I’m like ‘well fuck.’”
Lia laughed at that. “I take it that having a -friend like that excludes you from courtship in your neck of the woods?”
“Y… no, not really,” Alicia caught herself. “I mean having one partner is a strong preference, and that partner being a different gender than you generally is taken to mean whatever you’d want to happen isn’t going to happen, although I suppose it doesn’t have to be that way… but I’ll be so real with you, I did not have the vocabulary, or bravery to start that discussion in the early aughts.”
“Unlike now,” Lia observed. “You and the other Exalted Heroes sure seem to be in a tent-sharing kind of relationship.”
“Well, yeah,” Alicia couldn’t help but blush, “but it wasn’t me getting it started. It probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere weren’t it for Lex. Whatever else can be said about them, they are very direct and open about that kind of thing.”
“For what it’s worth,” Lia said. “It looks like it’s doing all of you good. Well, I don’t see Exalted Michael much these days of course…”
Somewhere deep in Alicia’s soul arose the desire to ask Lia to join their polycule. She had, or so she told herself, no idea where this came from, or even how she would go about asking. Hell, she wasn’t even sure about the “rules” under such circumstances. She was pretty sure she’d be fine in initiating a relationship with an “outsider,” per the group discussing that early on, but should she talk to them first anyway? Would that be considered presumptuous or would not doing it be bad form? She could vaguely feel the silence growing long between her and Lia, and she had no idea what to do about it, or herself.

Lia cleared her throat, breaking the spell holding Alicia’s tongue and brain in place. “Anyway,” she said, Alicia was 90% sure she could hear that Lia had thought some kind of something about the whole thing, but vibe interpretation wasn’t exactly an exact science. “We should get some sleep, don’t you think?”
“Seems wise…” Alicia agreed.
“I overheard some of our host talking about a medicine man or shaman or something coming back some time soon. Here’s hoping he’ll make it a bit easier to communicate, heavens knows we need it.”
“We do…” Alicia said, acutely aware of the irony as she started wrapping herself in her two blankets. If there was a method to it, she sure didn’t know how, and as such made more of a disorganized blanket bundle than any cohesive sleeping setup, but fortunately she was entirely too tired to get very self-conscious about it. “Good night Lia.” Alicia was pretty sure Lia responded in kind, but before her brain got too far into interpreting that, she was, blissfully, asleep.

Author’s Note: This is the first chapter in a while that’s late going out. Not by much, granted, but I am nothing if not willing to torment myself over small things. Ah authors, aren’t we a dramatic lot? Anyway, with this chapter we learn just a teensy tiny bit more about The Calamity, which is always a treat because writing stuff going wrong in a Lovecraftian fashion is just very enriching for yours truly. I’ve never quite aligned with this idea that the end of the world should be comprehensible or even a learning experience, see how basically every word for the end of the world basically means imparting/revealing knowledge (with the exceptions being the plain End Of The World and, arguably, Doomsday.) I, for one, see no reason that the end of the world shouldn’t be as confusing and open to interpretation as the everyday goings on of the world, and that basically is the idea behind The Calamity, although, admittedly, overcharged a bit by my love of writing about The Incomprehensible just in general. What can I say, you grow up reading enough authors who spend page after page talking about how impossible something is to describe does something to your brain on some level.

Until next time

VSD