Ik landed in an entirely different way than the last time Alicia had seen her. While the last time was ethereal and bewitching, almost like she was navigating under water, this time had a decidedly more “pissed-off superhero” to it as she shot to the ground with apparent haste. Alicia would have had a difficult time keeping up with the mad scrambling climb-jump across the wall of stone spheres, she suspected, with both hands and some time to practice to boot. As such, Alicia witnessed the landing, and the immediate argument, if it wasn’t a fight, that broke out as soon as Ik came within shouting distance of the Hearth. It was between Ik and some of the youths in the periphery at first, but quickly escalated as adults, and even one or two of the elders joined in. Judging strictly on body language, those who joined the fray initially considered themselves impartial, but were quickly overwhelmed by the passion, or vitriol, of the situation. Before long they were all shouting, and even if Alicia could hear the din from quite a distance, it proved to be outside the range of the translation field, if the sheer volume of data to be interpreted didn’t entirely overwhelm it, that was. Able now, for the second time in months to hear a language she wasn’t instantly familiar with, Alicia couldn’t help but feel a little bit more alone. The Language, as they had called it, was an odd duck. Alicia obviously didn’t understand enough about it to start interpreting, but there was a quiltlike quality to it, as if parts of various languages had been hewn together with little concern for the overall tone and feel of the language. In a way it reminded her of how English could seem to a non-native speaker with its wild messes of etymologies, inconsistent pronounciation rules, and other “messy features.”

The Language, Alicia imagined, sounded a bit like a language like English would sound like if the changes were made over a short time with no sense of oversight or adaption to ease transitions. It made sense that it was an Emergency Language, put together to facilitate a wide group of peoples. Similar processes, or so Alicia had been taught, happened to imported chattel slaves in the Americas, as members of disparate tribes desperately searched for community and connection in the wake of their forced diaspora, being purposefully batched with slaves from different tribes and cultures to prevent networking and rebellion. Alicia was no linguist, but if The Language was anything like that, she had to assume it would become a cultural wonder if given the time and the grace to expand and evolve. Perhaps Camp had the right idea, and Thereafter’s Translation Field was one of the reason Thereafter hadn’t really developed much art or anything of the sort. Of course, there were no shortage of emergencies going on, but if history had taught her anything, other than simply not trusting the federal government if that at all was an option, it was that humans, sapients she had to assume now, just never stopped making art, no matter which disasters they were facing down. What then did it imply that a city full of people with nothing better to do than create art had so precious little of it?

These, and other thoughts were rotating in her brain as Alicia landed, a comparatively clumsy effort by comparison, and if she was honest with herself, as a rule she tried to, she was mostly keeping them going to distract herself. This new situation was unnerving in ways she couldn’t quite explain, and approaching the by now shouting and agitated crowd, Alicia could barely keep her cool. She didn’t know what they were fighting about, and even with the proximity allowing the translation field to catch at least parts of it, there were entirely too many voices to make sense of. Some of them went on about the worry-free wonders of youth, others seemed deeply involved in an argument about morals and ethics. All she knew was that all of this, somehow, was triggered by talk about the accident that had stranded her and Lia out in the void. It was difficult, therefore, not to think of it as her fault, although, Alicia reminded herself, it didn’t have to be the case. There was just one thing to do about it. Alicia steeled herself and tried to summon up the energy she had when she got really mad about something, but failed to catch the wayward embers of it in the turbulent wind of her soul.

“Excuse me…” She said. A voice in the churning sea of voices, lost like signal among infinite noise. She was steeling herself to speak again, when she heard someone step up behind her. The steps weren’t quite familiar, but it didn’t take Alicia long to sus out it was Lia, if nothing else for the coarse skin on the hand Lia put on her shoulder.

“I don’t think you heard her, but she said” Lia spoke plainly before her voice grew. Not in volume, not in intensity, but in vastness. “E X C U S E  M E ” The two words hit like a freight train, not because it was loud, although it certainly wasn’t quiet, but because the words were given an extrasonic vastness, hitting not so much like a simple two-word phrase as a shockwave, a wall not only of sound, of vibration, but of absolute Intent. This must’ve been, Alicia caught herself thinking, how Moses felt talking to the burning bush, what Mohamed may have heard on the mountain. It stood to reason that whatever Lia just had done was some kind of Deep Song trick, but knowing it wasn’t divine intervention did little to stymie its impact. The experience left Alicia shaken, but not without purpose.

The crowd had fallen silent, every bit as dumbstruck by the words that had etched themselves into reality, if not more, as Alicia. Most of them, she realized, hadn’t even understood what had been said, or maybe some level of the Deep Song working had imprinted the rough outline of the phrase in their consciousness. The way they looked at Alicia and Lia expectantly certainly seemed to suggest something of the sort. She wasn’t quite sure if it was her imagination or not, but Alicia certainly felt like the space of Camp had constricted in some way. The wall of spheres, somehow, felt closer. Alicia cleared her throat.
“I apologize for interrupting,” Alicia said, “we are mere strangers here, but it is clear to us that something about our circumstances is upsetting to you. We wish to discuss this matter with you, as it is of utmost important to us and our people to establish friendly, constructive relations between our respective populations.”
Much to Alicia’s surprise, she saw more than a handful of heads nodding in response. The heads were attached to old bodies. It seemed that the elders, at least, had been given the means to understand them. It wasn’t ideal, obviously, but Alicia figured that if she was to attain information and establish friendly relations, the nominal leaders of Camp were the right people to talk to.
After a few seconds of careful consideration, one of the elders responded. It was an elderly hare-woman, whose kind aged face, cute ears, and relaxed posture only partially hid the signs that she, if pressed, probably could kick the ass of anyone present, and that quite possibly included both Alicia and Lia.
“We too seek friendship with the people of the Shining Star,” The hare-woman spoke. “Pardon our argument, the topic Ik brought up is somewhat fraught… but it also concerns you, our guests. Many pardons for not including you in the proceedings. We will have… a moot.”

A Moot, as it turned out, was a bit of a communal thing, a meeting for people not fond of the modern interpretation of a meeting. After the announcement, the younger members of Camp dispersed, finding a number of excuses and reasons to go elsewhere. Some spheres disappeared from the wall as their riders took them into the void. Alicia wasn’t sure if this was because the younger members of Camp were not allowed to be present during a moot, or if they merely preferred to go elsewhere and do other things. She made a note to ask about it later. The elders, Ik, Lia and Alicia found themselves sitting around the hearth in a rather tight circle. The circle being closed seemed significant to the ritual of it all, or maybe it was just done this way to make it easier to be heard. As they sat down, preparing for the Moot, Alicia could see a handful of elders shake an armband of small runestones out of their sleeves. Something about the extra attention heaped upon the accessory made Alicia suspect they were new, perhaps even the translation bracelets Ik had been working on. That certainly would explain why the movers and shakers of the tribe could understand her now.
“It is, I believe, time for introductions seeing as we now can understand each other.” The hare woman spoke. “I am Lobelia Barrow-Digger, pleased to meet you.”
“I am Alicia Thorn, also called The Mountain Wind.” Alicia spoke in answer.
“I am Deepspeaker Lia,” Lia chimed in. “If you wish to speak to me outside my title you can call me Lia Strong-Back or Lia of the Southern Marshes.”
The introductions continued, confirming Alicia’s suspicion that there were as many cultures among the denizens of Camp as there were in Thereafter. After the round of introductions were done, a brief moment of silence reigned before Lobelia spoke up again. “Now that we are all introduced, we must speak on the topic of the recent quarrel,” the Hare-Woman spoke, sounding remarkably impartial for someone who not half an hour ago had been among the loudest and shoutiest voices in said quarrel. “Runemaster Iki, you claimed to know the circumstances surrounding our guest’s predicament?”
“I believe so Elder Lobelia,” Ik spoke. Her voice wasn’t quite grave, but there was a focused calm to her that made it her seem needing and putting active effort in to be serious and not shout at anyone. “The people of the Shining Star go into the Void, looking for food and supplies, did I get that right?”
“Yes,” Alicia said. “We are many, many more than reside in Camp, and since we are still trying to find a way to grow enough food, we are forced to go into the Void to look for resources to make up the shortfall.”
“That sounds perilous,” Lobelia opined, “but without the Spheres we would perhaps do the same, and so it is no affront to us. We must, perhaps, reach an agreement about ice rights and that, but such matters we can solve once the basics are in place.”
The elders around Lobelia murmured their agreement. Alicia felt an immediate need to explain that Thereafter had no interest in void ice as they were more than set for water, but the more prudent part of her told her to keep mum on that for the moment. There were, after all, a potential for consequences to full freedom of information.
“It was such an expedition,” Ik continued, “that got our guests stranded here, far from the Shining Star, when an object of considerable size and speed destroyed the artifact that was supposed to bring them home. Do I have that right, Mountain Wind?”
“That’s right,” Alicia said. She regretted letting Camp in on her title, it felt weird to have Lia use it, but it was a weird she was used to by now. We do not know what caused the destruction that stranded us here and killed… at least two of our compatriots.”
“I grieve for your loss,” Ik responded, it sounded like she meant it. “And I am afraid I know the source of your accident, although some parts of the full picture still evades me.” Ik motioned for the wall of spheres. “The Stone Spheres is the lifeblood of our society. We use its Inner Sun for melting ice to make water to drink, the moss and lichens that grow in them feed the beasts that give us their meat, their milk and their hides.” A murmur of agreement rose from the Elders. It was no denying these Beasts were very important to Camp. “And those that have the knack for it can ride them into the void, to look for survivors or lost spheres.” Ik finished. “I am not sure how, but I believe a dead Sphere may have been awakened and sent hurtling towards our guests, although I will concede I do not know how such a thing occurred.”

Alicia could feel some kind of theory come together in her mind. The “eye” that she saw could easily have been a stone sphere without its central light on. As for how it had gotten sent their way, the part of her that had been hanging out with Lex entirely too much was starting to form a hypothesis.
“Forgive my ignorance on the topic,” Alicia found herself saying. “But can you please let me know… what sort of magic powers the spheres? From whence does it spring.” Alicia was decently sure that “whence” was Lex’ doing somehow. Well technically it had been the translation field picking up on Lex’ almost painfully precise wording, but Alicia tried not to think about the philosophical and linguistic challenges that thought could lead to, and so chose to sidestep it entirely.
More murmurs. Ik was the one to respond. “We do not have a good word for it,” she said. “But it is a power that exists in all things, in people, in the rocks of the void, in the worlds that dwelt in the void, everything, it seems, but the Void itself.”
“That doesn’t sound altogether too different from what we call The Deep Song,” Lia made the connection that Alicia had sensed. “We, that is to say the survivors from the land known as Steppeworld draw on what we understand as the energy of creation that is inherent to all things to power and repair our bodies. Like I did to make my voice heard prior to that meeting.”
“Ah,” Ik said. “That, I suppose, explains a lot. It sounds like your traditions have a wider range of applications than we do, but it stands to reason that the Spheres may react to the Deep Song similar to how they react to our calls. Did you draw on this power on the day of the accident?”

Lia fell very silent, and that made Alicia realize something. She wasn’t the only one who had drawn on the Deep Song back then. She’d been too angry and too stressed, not to mentioned too desperate and in pain in the aftermath to puzzle it out, but Lia, too, had been drawing on the Deep Song back before the accident. Neither of them, she suspected, had ill intentions, but it was still embarrassing to think that this entire sorry affair had been set out by them getting too caught up in their anger. Embarrassment, however, wasn’t the end of it. The deaths of at least two people were on their hands now. It wasn’t a happy thought to have, but it was true.
“We were,” Alicia said, hoping her voice didn’t quiver. “Unfortunately we were quarreling, and in our anger we drew on the Song. Do you figure that’s what caused the accident?”
“In part,” Ik said, briefly pensive. “But you must understand, Stone Spheres are carefully made to be responsive only to its rider, and while the Deep Song has potential to be more powerful… I struggle to see either of you drawing on enough of it to attract a sphere, especially all the way from Camp. If you did, it’d cause localized fires and shock-waves, at the very least.”
“Pardon me,” one of the youngest of the elders spoke up, a hunchbacked man with ponderous eyes. Alicia seemed to remember his name being Ivan. “I may hold the missing piece to this sad mystery.”
“Elder Ivan?” Ik said, sounding a bit surprised. “I didn’t mean to imply…”
“No, no Iki, I take no offense,” Ivan made a placating gesture with his hands. “We certainly have clashed on such topics before, but I speak up today only as an act of contrition. I am afraid my domain, too, has a share of guilt for this whole encounter.”
“How so?” Alicia asked, feeling a need to understand as much, probably even more so, than she felt like finding a way to combat her guilt.
“Ah, Mountain Wind, pardon me. My responsibility is dealing with the refuse of Camp. Finding ways to collect it and transport it away from anywhere it might cause harm. It is not the most glorious of jobs I will admit…”
“But important!” Alicia found herself speaking without thinking, but she did mean it. As a person who had endured a garbage man strike or two, she knew few things were more important to civilization, especially large-scale civilization than sanitation.
“Very important,” Ik agreed.
“You honor me,” Vlad made another ‘steady on now’ gesture before continuing. “All of this to say I also am responsible for the rare and mournful job that it is to dispose of dead or broken Stone Spheres.”
“It doesn’t happen often, thank the void mother,” Ik added, “but on occasion a stone sphere will rend itself inoperable due to a fault in how it was made, or fluctuations in the magic that powers them that we do not fully understand. For some time, we kept the spheres around Camp, in case some similarly unexplained phenomenon should render them operable again.”
“Yes,” Ivan agreed. “Much of the strife we’ve alluded to between me and Iki was over this subject, as she favored that approach, while I, in my zeal, argued for storing them in Deep Void together with the rest of the refuse, primarily for safety reasons.”
“In the end,” Ik continued “we did not see any of the dead spheres reactivate, and after a few almost-accidents with the dead spheres, we made the decision to follow Ivan’s plan, where we would take the spheres to deep void and smash them into as fine gravel as we could to make sure they didn’t cause any harm.”
“True,” Ivan said, there was a sadness to his voice that made the ‘weren’t it for’ inherent to it audible before he even got that far. “I am, however, afraid we have gotten complacent. Some of the youths who assist me in this task have been taking liberties. The process of getting a dead sphere out into Deep Void can be quite slow and tedious, and I have gotten reports from scouts about dead spheres being disposed of a number of places they shouldn’t be. It doesn’t take a tremendous leap of logic to assume there was an abandoned dead sphere in the area that wasn’t quite as dead as we expected.”
“I suppose we haven’t tried reactivating a dead sphere with this Deep Song,” Ik mused. “Please, before you leave, let us test this possibility.”
“We are glad to help,” Alicia said.
“Very kind of you, especially considering our culpability in the disaster that had you stranded here.”
“We were also at fault,” Alicia said, not even bothering to consider the diplomatic implications. Honesty would have to serve in this case. “As we’re growing to understand, the accident was something we can learn from, and we hold no grudge toward you regarding it.” This was again true, but Alicia wasn’t sure she’d let go of the grudge toward herself on the topic of the accident. Stranding herself and Lia had turned out to be a mixed blessing of sorts given the discovery of Camp and, indeed, the possibility of life in the Void, but the cost of at least two deaths made it more complicated in her mind.
“We will endeavor to learn from it,” Ivan agreed.
“I believe we will need to contemplate how to move forward with this knowledge,” Ik said, taking on the apparent job of meeting closer.
“Yes,” Alicia agreed. “But before we end this moot, if it pleases you, I have another question.”
“Ask freely,” Ik responded.
“You mentioned Ice Rights. I take it that access to fresh water is a challenge out here?”
The moot, collectively, chuckled. It appeared that Alicia had asked one of those “is water wet” questions.
“You could say that, yes. Six of every ten Stone Spheres are occupied with melting water, and much of our labor and our struggle is in filtering it properly to ensure it’s drinkable.” Ik motioned toward the concave wall of spheres. “The remaining spheres house our Beasts and our people, it’s a constant struggle finding the balance.”
“And make sure we wash beast spheres before expecting anyone else to use it,” Ivan added, a clear joke for levity.
“I see,” Alicia felt a plan form in her mind, but she also recognized the need to be a little bit tactical about it. This meant both knowing what to do ahead of time, and knowing when to do nothing. “And if you had access to water some other way, how would that change things for you?”
Another chuckle spread, but this one more in bafflement than humor.
“It would change much,” Ik said, displaying her talent for understatement. “For one we could field such massive beast pods I’d struggle to imagine what we’d use all that meat for. We’d need to salt or dry most of it so we’d have a chance to eat it all before it went bad, and that’s without getting into the hides, the horns, and the milk. Surely we’d find ways to grow our numbers and spend some of the extra sleeping space for more comfort.. I don’t see it happening though, if anything we have to use more spheres now than before. Less pure ice out here means the melting jobs only grow in scope while decreasing in yield.”
“I see,” Alicia said. “We too would need some time to ponder this information. I thank you for this very informative moot.” It could be that she merely cherished the distraction from the thoughts of the accident, but there was no denying this chance encounter had the potential to be nothing short of huge for both parties. Now Alicia just had to not fuck it up.

Author’s Note: A topic I keep coming back to in my writing is how much could be solved if people would just sit down, through using their words, offering each other a little grace, and as frankly as is possible, talked through their problems. It feels like the most outrageous and unrealistic element of my stories in some ways, and considering how much wild stuff is in here already, I feel like that’s saying something.

V.S.D