Penumbra: Long Way Round

The following takes place in the year 3002...

ISS Orphic - Penumbra's Quarters - Penumbra's Roaming Cavalcade of Mysteries

The private sanctum of Ian Penumbra, proprietor of Penumbra's Roaming Cavalcade of Mysteries, is perhaps the largest personal space in the entirety of the ISS Orphic. Built into the steel blister that bulbs out from the port side of the cargo hauler, the cavernous chamber features a massive transparisteel window offering a view of the stars, a large bed covered with black satin sheets and comforter with thick pillows, a personal data network station and tall shelves packed with actual bound paper books collected from all over the galaxy.

"All set up, Mister Penumbra," a human technician says to Ian as she finishes plugging in the last of the cables to activate Penumbra's connection to the shipwide data network. Ian nods, thanks the young woman, and off she goes to the next task necessary to get the Orphic up and running. As she's leaving, Ora is arriving to find Penumbra standing at the broad window and its view of the purple-and-blue Tomin Nebula. The ship itself is currently in orbit of the nefarious planet Tomin Kora ... a supplier of some of the less-reputable crew and more colorful exhibits.

"A mixed blessing, no?" Ora's distinctive voice floats through the room as the Timonae pauses not far past the entrance, her eyes wandering over its features thoroughly before she even bothers to glance toward the vista outside the windows. And whether simply absent-minded or deliberately obscure, she leaves her question hanging without further explanation in a typical mannerism that is quickly becoming familiar to all who have regular contact with her.

"Nothing mixed about it," Penumbra replies, clasping his hands behind his back as he turns to cast a broad smile toward the Timonae woman. "But, then, I don't put too much truck in blessings, anyway. Turns out you were right, though." He jerks his head toward the data network station. "Miranda was checking the link to the infomatrix. Turns out someone managed to stop the Moebius Effect."

"Good, because there will be fewer once your voyage begins," Ora continues serenely, though there is the distinct impression that they are commenting upon two completely different trains of thought. Her gaze turns to him at his movement, and his smile prompts one from her as well before she steps toward the wide viewing port, bare feet soundless upon the deck plates, unafraid of the chill or any hazards that might have been left about. "And of course I was right." Alienly-exotic eyes flick toward him and she tilts her head cheekily. "If I was wrong, it would not have mattered."

Penumbra laughs, shaking his head as he goes back to staring at the rocky planet below. A cargo freighter departs the docking bay of the Orphic and arcs toward Tomin Kora, bound for the still-intact, not-yet-ravaged by the Royal Naval Service bombardment, still-run-by-Grim domed city of Shadowheart. "Don't suppose I can argue with that logic. If you can call it logic. Maybe I should just chuck that away as an Ora-ism."

"No, no, they should not be thrown away," Ora protests in that muted way of hers, hands fluttering up like sleepy butterflies to herd her truisms back. "Each is costly, Ian, in their revelation and their worth." A tilt of her chin upwards with a lazy lowering of her lashes to express a humor which she does not oft express verbally, and then she is musing, "Ian. Ian. I like that name...it is like Ora. Short, it does not try to describe too much and chain what it is to represent. Full of vowels...it is soft and malleable...letting one shape it how they will..." Her hands frame the space between them, a graceful sweep around the shape of his face in the air.

"You," he replies, turning from his observation of the planet to regard the taller Timonae, "are an *odd* woman." Ian grins. "Luckily, I don't have much truck with the normal kind." He shrugs, considering Ora's analysis for a few moments. His smile fades a bit before he concludes: "Won't argue with the truth that chains don't really suit either of us, one way or another."

"Luck," Ora echoes, even softer than before, her amusement and curiosity damping as she turns pensively back to the view of the graceless rock below. "She has been difficult of late. Mixed blessings...there is always a balance to maintain. The universe exists upon the balance of terrible forces. Luck led me to that place when you needed a charlatan..." She turns a contemplative look upon him. "I wonder what else she will lead to me after I have grown comfortable with this seeming windfall."

Penumbra shrugs. "You look for luck and blessings all you want. I'll take the good while it lasts and deal with the rest of the crap as it crops up. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I'll try to enjoy myself, because, one day, when the good stops coming and the rest is just ... a grave or an ash-filled urn or," he nudges his head toward the stars, "the cold forever, well, when that's all I've got left, it's too damned late to worry and it's too damned late to have any fun." Ora sighs, her whole body shifting with the simple exclamation to turn her back toward the hatch leading to the rest of the ship.

"You are too depressing," she decides for him, already stepping toward the exit. "Come show me your fantastical craft."

Penumbra blinks. "*I* am depressing?" He laughs and shakes his head, but his feet are already moving to follow Ora as he goes on: "You talk about terrible forces and fate and luck and what comes next to balance out a 'windfall,' and you call *me* depressing?"

"I speak of terrible forces and fate and luck and balance." Ora glances toward him from beneath half-lowered lashes. "But you speak of the end of things." A musing half-quirk of her mouth, and then she is adjusting her long, fluid strides for his shorter ones as they pass through the hatch.

Penumbra rolls his eyes, passing through the hatchway rather easily while Ora has to duck. "Maybe that's what you hear. But it's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying time's finite, we don't have forever and, so, I plan to enjoy myself while I can. That's all." He scratches his cheek as they pass through his office. He stops by his desk, where a sealed metal box sits on the otherwise uncluttered mahogany surface. "Of course, you're a Timonae - and by Timonae standards, my idea of a lifetime's like a housefly's, probably." He starts fiddling with the lid of the metal box on the desk. "I don't *dwell* on my mortality. I *accept* it. Makes me appreciate the time I do have a lot more. It's actually pretty liberating."

"Hm. Refreshing," Ora comments after a moment's thought while she watches him curiously, reflex half-turning her so that she can pretend disinterest though she has become familiar enough with him that she does not bother to hide her observation altogether; not as she would for a potential mark.

"I actually have this little keepsake around to remind myself just how short life can be," Ian says, lifting the lid and setting it aside before drawing out the object formerly confined within the box: A glass jar containing the mummified head of what appears to be a black-haired Qua male. He sets the jar on the desk, then returns the lid to the box before turning his attention back to Ora. "What would you like to see first? Amusements? Oddities? Mysteries? Or the bridge?"

Ora's brows rise, and she actually sweeps her hair aside with a lift of her hand to peer more closely at the jar and its contents, unperturbed by the grisly sight. "Refreshing," she repeats herself, this time with a definite tone of amusement and interest. "To need the antithesis of life to remind yourself that you are living. First? You shall tell me the tale of this artifact. Then, you can show me the rest in alphabetical order."

"Well, I keep it around as a reminder, yes, but I also find that the Chief here is my most trusted and loyal confidant, one who will hear all my concerns and never, ever, ever stab me in the back. No arms, you see," Ian grins. Then he walks around his desk and settles into his chair. "The Chief's tale isn't a very happy one. I'm not even sure it's entirely true. But it's a good one, I'll grant that much. I got him from an Odarite merchant last year."

"Truly?" Ora murmurs, eye-to-eye with the chief now through the murky translucence of the preserving liquid. "I must work my way into his good graces then."

"He knows you as well as I do, so you've got nothing to worry about," Ian replies, smirking. "He thought making you my consigliere was a fine idea." He sighs. "Anyway, his story. His real name, the Odarite told me, was Jon Falling Bear. He was a Qua chieftain back during the bad old days, around the turn of the 29th Century, when the Kretonians were still lording it over the cosmos. Jon Falling Bear was a Mystic sympathizer. He gave them shelter and aid. He led Qua warriors against Centauran and Kretonian extermination squads. A real hero." He leans forward, resting a hand atop the jar. "Enemies, he had no problem finding. Trouble is, he did a piss-poor job of picking his friends. One of his top men, William Hawk, took a pretty practical view of things. The Kretonians owned everything. It was just a matter of time before the Centaurans dealt with the Mystics. No one had a clue the Nall or their friends were going to rise up and do some exterminating of their own. So, Hawk went to the Kretonians with a deal: They spare his life, give him some cushy lackey job like a Centauran, and he'd give them Jon Falling Bear. They took the deal. Hawk sold his buddy out. The Kretonians took Falling Bear's head as a souvenir. They had respect for him. They didn't keep any of William Hawk. They let the Centaurans slurp up his remains. Even the Krets had some standards about backstabbers." He takes his hand off the jar, lacing his fingers together on the desktop. "The Odarites found his head in the wreckage of one of the old Kret warships on the Line of Pain. Now, he's here."

Ora smiles slowly, baring a line of fine, white teeth and nothing of mirth at all, though there is more than enough appreciation of varying sorts as she stares at the wizened head. "A good story," the Timonae confirms before she straightens, laying her fingertips gently upon the jar's cool surface. "I might even allow myself to believe it, if I were in a charitable mood. He makes a fine partner. Amusements, then?" she prompts with a tilt of her head toward the rest of the ship.

"Now, see, you said you want to see things alphabetically, which is just a mite impractical," Ian counters, getting to his feet now that story time is over and his gig as tour guide is about to commence. "You could shoot a bullet from a sniper rifle from one end of this ship to the other with all the hatches open, so it's not like we can do much round-abouting. Straight shot from this segment, back to oddities, back to mysteries, back to amusements, back to the hangar bay. To do things alphabetically, we'd be passing through places I'd be showing you eventually, anyway."

Ora pauses in mid-stride, her weight balanced perfectly between her feet as she glances over her shoulder, one pale brow stark against her olive skin as it arches upward. "You market the odd and the eccentric, and you wish to do this logically?"

Penumbra smirks. "Fine. We'll do it your way. If I recall my book learning, we start with 'A.' Amusements." He leads the way into the corridor, then glances down at Ora's unclad feet. "Probably no big deal if you go barefoot around the forward segment, but there's still a lot of retrofitting and setup going on back in the rest of the ship. Got any slippers?"

"Slippers?" Ora blinks as she looks down to her feet, curling her toes experimentally as if to test that they are actually functional instead of merely decorations, her voice blank as if she had never heard of such contraptions before. "I have walked over Antimone, Quaquan, Sivad and La Terre without them. I would not have thought to obtain a pair now."

Penumbra shrugs. "Your call. I've seen uglier. No skin off my toes if you don't mind." As they head through the interlock and into the oddities segment, he asks: "So, you miss Antimone at all?"

Ora's brow furrows after Penumbra before she pads after him, silent as a ghost. "You are perplexing," she declares, before she replies, "Not yet."

"And what's so perplexing about me, exactly?" Ian asks as they pass one of the exhibit crates as a couple of technicians fit them into position.

"I wonder, sometimes, if I am speaking the same language as you," Ora responds while her attention wanders toward the work that they pass, completely heedless of the irony in her words. "Do you miss what you have left behind?" she asks in turn.

"Ora, darling, I can assure you that half the time, I don't understand a thing you're saying, so the feeling's mutual in that regard," Penumbra says, chuckling and shaking his head as they approach the next interlock, the one leading to the mysteries segment. "Do I miss what I left behind?" He muses for a few moments, swiveling the control wheel of the hatch and then opening the door so they can pass into the interlock. He looks up at Ora and smiles. "Not yet." Ian then gestures into the lock. "Tall, strange, inexplicable, barefooted ladies first."

The corners of Ora's mouth lift in response to his echo of her words before she dips her upper body in a gesture of acceptance, her hands folded before her in the traditional manner. "You are too kind, dear Sir," she says, quite genuinely, before she steps through before him.

Penumbra watches Ora passing through the lock, his smile waning in the shadow of her words. Barely above a whisper, before stepping into the interlock to follow the Timonae, he mutters, "Never been accused of being too kind before."

This is a prelude scene for Penumbra: Arc Kickoff: Strange Haven, which kicks off the fourth New Journeys arc.