peterverse | shaker, meet stranger

mrglam posting in

Sadde is home; it's a Friday evening, his shift is over, and there's no school. He's reading a book, lying on his bed in his small-but-tidy apartment.

He is also quite naked, because it's his place and why not?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

first_and_final

Possible reasons why not include:

The short boy with a long furry tail who just fell out of thin air onto Sadde's bedroom floor. He lands badly but rolls to his feet in the next moment, yelping with surprise and looking around wildly at his unfamiliar surroundings. His outfit would not look terribly out of place in a generic fantasy novel, and neither would the tail, or the long pointed ears that move like a cat's, or the short claws on his fingers and toes, or the slit-pupiled eyes.

From:

mrglam

Sadde jumps in surprise, dropping his book and yelping. "Who the heck are you?!" he asks.

From:

first_and_final

The boy or possibly fantasy novel character exclaims apologetically in an unknown language and averts his eyes.

From:

mrglam

Averts his...? Oh, right. Sadde grabs his pillow and covers his bits with it. "You don't speak English."

From:

first_and_final

He says something else in his unknown language.

From:

mrglam

Sadde sighs. What on earth is he going to do with a neko teleporting parahuman who doesn't speak English?

Start with the basics. Point at self: "Sadde." Point at him...?

From:

first_and_final

"Ashras." He bows in Sadde's direction, although he still avoids looking at Sadde's pillow area.

From:

mrglam

Sadde feels like his privacy has been violated, so he doesn't much care if his state of undress upsets the other boy. "Why are you here?" he asks, pointing at the boy then at the spot where he landed and making confused/question-y gestures with his hands.

From:

first_and_final

He gestures at the spot where he landed, throws up his hands helplessly, shakes his head, and sighs. Then he says something else in his language, which from tone and context sounds like it probably means 'I have no idea'.

From:

mrglam

...okay. So is that how Case 53s are made, do they just appear out of thin air?

Sadde sighs again and stands up, holding the pillow there, then grabs some clothing and puts it on. There is absolutely no way they are going to be able to communicate like this. He sits at his desk and opens his laptop.

From:

first_and_final

Ashras switches from avoiding quite looking at Sadde to watching curiously around the time Sadde has underwear on.

From:

mrglam

Sadde pulls up a world map, then looks at Ashras and raises an eyebrow. "Where are you from, here?" he asks, gesturing at the map.

From:

first_and_final

He looks at the map. He looks at Sadde. He looks at the map. He looks at Sadde.

He shakes his head.

From:

mrglam

What.

Sadde makes an expansive gesture to indicate the room and the city, then points at where Brockton Bay is, in New Hampshire. Then he points at Ashras, at the map again, and repeats, "Where are you from?"

Because even if Ashras doesn't understand, in the worst-case he'll be getting familiar with the words.

From:

first_and_final

He considers the map, shakes his head again, and - tries to mime writing or drawing on a piece of paper, it looks like.

From:

mrglam

Oh dear.

He finds a notebook with scribbles, tears off a page, and gives it to Ashras with a mechanical pencil and an eraser, offering him his seat at the desk.

From:

first_and_final

He sits at the desk, somewhat awkwardly given the combination of chair and tail, and starts sketching maps.

Four circular maps, to be exact, with somewhat jagged edges. At first it almost looks like he's drawing two pairs that are each exact mirror images of each other - the jagged crack or cliff or something that nearly splits the first map in half is mirrored precisely on the second one, and likewise for the next two with their less impressive cracks. But once he starts adding more features, the differences appear.

It's hard to get a lot of detail at a notebook-sized scale, but if mapmaking conventions wherever he's from are even distantly related to the ones Sadde knows about, the situation seems to go something like this:

There are two disk-shaped land areas with giant cracks in them, facing one another across a shortish distance. (He does a little diagram that illustrates which side of which disk each circular map represents.) The major oceans on each disk reach all the way through it to be mirrored on the other side, but the lakes and rivers are shallow enough to vary. People live on all four available sides, but the outward-facing ones form a unit (labeled with a short scribble in an alien alphabet) and the inward-facing ones form another (with a slightly longer name).

Needless to say, none of these locations bears any resemblance to any continent on Earth.

Near the middle of one of the inner disks, close to the biggest chasm, he marks out an area and labels it 'Tarnedrae', repeating the name aloud. Point to Tarnedrae. Point to himself. A credible mimicry of 'where are you from' in English.

From:

mrglam

Sadde watches the map with increasing worry. Is Ashras from another Earth? One so distant it doesn't even have the same continents?

He looks at the boy. "What am I going to do with you?"

He thinks he knows the answer, but...

From:

first_and_final

He shrugs.

And then considers, and looks back at the spot where he appeared, and gestures at it, and starts trying to draw/mime a simple story:

He was in Tarnedrae. (If this mysterious physics-defying planet is approximately the size of Earth, Tarnedrae is approximately the size of Australia.) He went for a walk in the... extremely poorly drawn woods, or maybe his planet just has weird trees... and a giant snake attacked him, and then he was in Sadde's bedroom, helpless shrug, apologetic face accompanied by a tail-flick that's probably very meaningful in a society of people with tails.

From:

mrglam

A... giant snake. Right. Of course. Why not.

Sigh.

It's the evening, should he go to the Protectorate or...?

"Look, you're cute and all but I can't keep you, aaand I'm gonna need you to come with me to the Protectorate, they'll... know how to deal with you."

What's even the point of speaking...? He sighs and gestures for Ashras to come with him as he puts shoes on and grabs his phone, wallet, and keys.

From:

first_and_final

Whether or not he can understand, he definitely seems to be listening. He follows where Sadde leads.

From:

mrglam

So Sadde opens the door and they leave. It's an old, small, but well-kept building, and outside:

Brockton Bay.

From:

first_and_final

...Ashras seems confused and mildly alarmed by most things here, particularly the sky.

From:

mrglam

Sadde looks at him. "What's up?" he asks, looking at where Ashras is looking. Cars, alright, buildings, okay, who knows how his Earth developed, but the... sky?