People In Glass Houses...

[neclectus]

Who | Timaeus Nadir and guests
What | Timaeus is hosting a picnic get-together/catch-up.
Where | The picnic will be taking place in the Tropical Habitat Dome.
When| We'll be using a bit of wibbly time so that people who want to attend can.
Warnings/Notes| None as of yet.

(This is an opportunity for me to make some new CR as well as catch up with ongoing relationships, but I also want to encourage tagging around between characters! Feel free to do whatever you like in the setting with whoever you like! Also I will be backtagging this so don't feel you've missed the boat if you haven't tagged in immediately <3)

Timaeus certainly knew how to organise a gathering- even if it wasn't an outrageously opulent celebration to be held on one of his own yachts. This one was to be held under the expansive dome of the Tropical Habitat- the entire location rented out for the day to Timaeus and his guests, a loosely private affair- formal invitations as such hadn't been extended, but those welcome knew they were. Naturally, all tributes and victors were included in this group.

The Dome was a beautiful piece of architecture in itself, though antiquated when compared with the technology used for the Arenas. Rather than invisible forcefields, the climate of the interior was separated from the outside by elaborately curving steel and glass. Inside, tropical plants of all types thrived- there was a still, green pond and, deeper inside, a cascading waterfall. Butterflies in hundreds of colours, sizes and shapes flitted about, tropical birds swooped between the trees, brightly coloured fish darted in the water.
Blankets and cushions had been scattered in the main clearing with hampers of food, but there was plenty of space for the guests to break away from the gathering if they so desired- the dome was full of winding paths through the greenery- some even climbing around the trunks of the largest trees and leading to viewing platforms above. In a temporary gazebo in the clearing, a string quartet played music that wasn't quite the classical pieces Tributes were familiar with. 

Timaeus himself seemed in a brighter mood than he had been for months, more than happy to make conversation with anyone who approached him- though he was certainly keeping an eye open for particular individuals. Some that he'd met, some that he'd lost and had returned to him, and others still that he had yet to meet.

Comments

[asklepian]

"You've learned in about ten minutes what it took the rest of humanity centuries of bickering to come to a consensus on, I think you're doing quite well."

If anyone knows anything about lives being lies, it's Julian Bashir. He's pretty sure you're fine.

[acroodawakening]

That was at least slightly reassuring. Guy took in a deep breath and sat up. His cheeks were still flushed from embarrassment.

"It's just, when I was kid, I..."

It was a sensitive subject but it was also part of his reality so he carried on. It certainly wasn't the first time he'd talked to strangers about it, after all. During those years when it was just him and his pet sloth, Belt, the families and tribes he'd occasionally run into wondered what a lone teenage boy was doing wandering around on his own. They'd asked questions and he'd gotten used to answering them.

"I, uh, lost my family. I was about seven." He added by way of brief explanation, "Tar pit. It's - just don't say anything about it, people always say they're sorry and - it's okay. I found peace with it a long time ago. But the last thing my mom and dad told me was - they told me not to hide. To live a good life. They told me to follow the sun and that if I did, I'd make it to Tomorrow."

Somehow the capital "T" is there even in how he says the words.

"I think they just meant I'd make it to the next day but but I thought Tomorrow was a place, some special place I could get to if I traveled far enough. I came up with this whole crazy theory that it had to be in the days after today, very far away. I figured if each sun went across the sky and got stuck up with the other stars, if I could ride on it'd let me jump to it, a place where - where things were better."

His nodded slowly his gaze distant, and then he turned to Julian.

"I needed it. I was a little kid all alone in the wilderness. I needed to think that -" He cut himself off and looked at the floor.

"Anyway, about two years ago, when I was traveling, the ground started to break up and there was lava - and I thought that was the end of the world. Whole bits of the land were cracking up and sliding into nothing! I met my new family during all that and we made it up to a mountain where the sun set and we almost didn't make it. The ground broke up in front of us and blocked the way but then Grug, my dad - well, my mate's dad but now he's my dad - he threw us across the divide. Everything collapsed and we thought we'd lost him but then he found a way over himself."

He shook his head.

"The place where we all crossed over - the dust covered the sun and it was filled with bright light behind the clouds so all this time, I thought we'd ridden the sun. To Tomorrow, to the world of a new day. And when I was little, I thought I was following a different sun each day and it was the same one the entire time. Just...going around the world in a circle."

He twirled his finger vaguely.

"Tomorrow wasn't a place, it was just..." He trailed off. "I feel like an idiot."

[asklepian]

"Don't. Really, depending on your perspective, tomorrow can be a place as well as a time. You didn't get there the way you thought you might--but you did all the same."

It seemed a very romantic concept to Julian, riding the sun--which he knew to be so incredibly hot that even starships going near it could be vaporized, or torn apart by the sun's gravity. He knew it wasn't possible.

A short while ago, he wouldn't have admitted as much as he was about to to anyone. He'd told the Chief, in a heated moment, right after his world had come screeching to a halt and he was very near to being kicked out of Starfleet. Elaborating on it was not likely to happen. But...

"You know, when I was younger, for the life of me I couldn't tell the difference between a dog and a cat." He'd all but literally been another person, then, but it was the truth. "It seems rather obvious now, but at the time..."

(Of course, at the time he'd also been struggling with everything he tried to learn, not just the difference between small domesticated animals.)

[acroodawakening]

Circumstances like these had a dramatic affect on human relationships. Attachments had to be made or else you could spin off alone into the dark and that sometimes meant opening more quickly than the usual.

Guy seemed amused by the idea at first but then he thought about it and wondered if maybe something had been wrong. He tended more towards empathy than mockery.

"Why couldn't you? Didn't your parents teach you?"

What parent didn't teach their kids types of animals? (Or in the case of Guy's world, the parts of animals that showed up across all the different hybrid animals?)

[asklepian]

"They tried, I simply couldn't understand it." Julian shrugs. Of course, it had been a problem--in their eyes at least, Julian still wasn't sure and wasn't certain he'd ever be. "There came a point where everything seemed to click, though, and after that I was fine."

Well, more than fine. And the clicking had been artificial--but he had enough issues with that to realize when he was going to veer into melancholy and there was quite enough of that around here without him adding to it.

[acroodawakening]

"I guess how that's how we all are. Children until we're old, trying to learn the entire way."

He sat forward and clasped his hands together, resting his elbows on his knees.

He felt a little bit better. He had a lot to think about, though.

"How do you know all this? It must have taken people where you're from so long to learn all of that..."

[asklepian]

"Well, I'm from a time where all of that was figured out quite a long time ago. 2374 by the way we reckon years...judging from what you've said thus far, there's millions of years between us." Julian smiles slightly, that is certainly a lot to take in. "I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly. Even the best technology we have can't judge time that accurately."

"Even so, there are things we still do not understand. It's exciting, how much we have left to discover."

[acroodawakening]

Guy's smile widened again and his voice rose in excitement as he asked Julian questions.

"So you just - you just fly around in the stars? All the time? Do they keep a doctor there in case people get sick while they're exploring?"

[asklepian]

"Exactly so. In case of illness, or accident--sometimes things do happen, after all."

Guy's excitement was more than a bit infectious. Julian's smile feels far more natural on his face now, not forced like it had been before.

"I've been living on a space station until recently, which means the starships usually come to us--traders, explorers, and the like." Also soldiers, which he's not about to get into now. And DS9 is in the hands of the Cardassians once more, anyway. For the moment.

[acroodawakening]

"So you stay in one spot? In the stars?" Guy said, trying to wrap his head around the concept. "But all different traveler - they come to you? So you can meet all different people from all different places in one place."

He looked absolutely thrilled now to know this existed somewhere. He leaned forward.

"What are they like? The people? The ones from other worlds. What are those worlds like?"

[asklepian]

"Well, one of my friends is a Cardassian--they're from a world called Cardassia Prime, which is very hot and humid. Cardassians themselves are more reptilian--they're bipedal, like we are, but they have grey scaled skin and ridges at the neck and on their faces, around their eyes." Julian traces where a Cardassian's ridges would be around his own face--the eye ridges, the one down the center of the nose, the two going back over the forehead.

"Then there's Kira, she's a Bajoran. They look human, almost entirely, the only visible difference is a set of ridges on the bridge of their nose. Their world is a lot like Earth, they have ancient and beautiful cities. The people are very spiritual, and also very proud."

"There's hundreds of worlds, hundreds of species out there--and many more that we've not even met yet."

[acroodawakening]

"Does everyone get along? Because people mostly get along in my world but when people are different, like if some are nomads and some are cave-people, there can be problems because of not understanding each other."

He raised his eyebrows. "It's not the worst. My mate and her family - my family now - they're cave-people, so, uh, obviously, people can get past it, but all these different peoples must be so different. And Hawkeye told me about that thing called 'war' where different peoples act like bananaheads and fight over ridiculous things. Do you have that or do people get along?"

[asklepian]

"Mm...no, we unfortunately don't. We try--there are people called ambassadors, whose job it is to talk through things with other people, negotiate peace. But sometimes it just...doesn't work. Humans don't go to war with each other anymore--we did in the past, there were some very terrible things that happened."

Julian picks at his sleeve, he's still willing to say whatever struggles they'd gone through, they'd still ended up better than this place. It had been a long road--but humanity was at peace, exploring the stars, fighting only when they had to.

"And we're at war now, back home. The galaxy is a big place, and not everyone in it is friendly."

[acroodawakening]

"But all the people in your home, they're at peace. That's still a whole world. Some of the people I've talked to here talk like - like the peace we have back home is just because there aren't many of us. But I think it just means that some people can find peace more easily than others."

He bounced in his seat slightly.

"I am so glad I met you. Now I know - everything is so big. In a good way, in the best way. Being brought here made me realize that but in a bad way."

[asklepian]

"It can certainly be good, or bad." Julian shrugged, it was something to think about--and not something comfortable to think about.

"It was a long road--and some of the events of the past in my own world are likely just as terrible, if not more so. But we managed to come through it on the other end. Which, I suppose, is the important thing."

He smiles then, it's hardly an easy thing to think, that any world has its horrors to overcome, its own darkness in the past.

"I'm glad you're getting another perspective."