Snippet #2807697

Life for Alexis was a stream of long silences between bursts of endless noise. Her world writ as a single moment as her body followed a line thrown across reality to a destination then lit into motion. The Almanac was what she read in that in-between. Though this silence was broken at the end with an explosion of endless dry chatter pelting the back of her mind. Sometimes it was an obstacle she hadn't planned for like on the way back from the outskirts of wing city after repeatedly hitting tumbleweeds. The conversations among servitors among citizens having conversations made it hard sometimes to remember to avoid landing headfirst.

Now that she'd gotten back into wing city it was hard to pick out one thing to pay attention to. Idly picking out burred seeds from her clothing and brushing off the dust from her hair. Though she'd gotten better at sorting through new happenings around the city and doing other things at the same time. Everything was different all the time here besides the people scheming about something everywhere. A constant undercurrent boiling anger into her thoughts or the faint glyph phasing into language surrounding her from somewhere else in her attention. Other times the Almanac leaked from lies she saw in advertisements on the walls as a faint outpour of paragraphs and translucent visuals.

If she sat still and focused she could listen to the other people heard by servitors that she otherwise couldn't quite pick out. A closing of her red eyes while on a bench in wing city and the world both gained and lost immensity. Amid the relative quiet of her closed eyes conversations near servitors went on undiminished by distance. Near to every table and looking with her mind's eye as memories of incongruent images and text servitors observed pours past. There were always many sobbing stories from the wing city hospital to read but she wanted something cheerful to try and sell to the humans. Some whisper that marked her place among the endless noise. Others passing complaints about ashen or the TNG's failing health. Something for later. Then a conversation among two bosses about some soiree at a new restaurant. New? No, new to them maybe in a recommendation from one to another. Too something? The servitor had passed that source by.

Alexis opened all eyes to the world again as the red eyes squinted at the flood of information. A deep breath reached down to pick up a book in her mind that was not in her life. Though she seemed to others to read and flip through an absent libram while wincing in emotion at some visualized screaming someone she had to push away. It took some time to sift through the almanac to find out which servitor heard what she'd found. A careful examination of potentials surrounding the memory of those voices she heard within the almanac. Climbing between the web of knowledge that tethered itself to branches in her brain.

Though she couldn't use a computer to look through the city for news articles and reviews. Alexis burnt out electronics rapidly and had to find the written word. Critics tended to yell loudly and that's how she found a snippet of an article from some lady. Idle watching between frozen moment between trash cans around newsstands for an hour until finding magazines. A quiet look over someone's shoulder to read a cell phone as they browsed a site. The trips along a single predetermined tether of reality left little but bootprints but left no sound.

The high ranking humankind talked differently than the everyday drone she heard and that sort of information stood out. Though to her several weeks of searching as she walks on thin strands of the basal layer. Alexis bounced from spot to spot across the city over the day searching for the magazine it came from. Though the well-to-do seemed a common thread with the ones looking at that particular blog. Alexis had been picked up and thrown out several times and couldn't well take someone on the basal layer with her. Nearly broke her nose on a forcefield she'd not realized was there trying to follow a thread past it. Instead, she remembered Bristol and that did seem about his sort of company. A turn and a consideration of her path to get there cast a thread to bristol's office. In the middle of dropping his coffee by the time she exits the thread. Bristol seemed a little put-off but answered her questions all the same. Contacts! Alexis would have to get more of those. He knew what she was talking about.

After peppering him with questions for an hour cast a thread in small shards on the way there. Though she had to make a small stop to Sybil's Lamentation Forge. Unfamiliar with either locale the last thing she wanted to do is hit a curb while on the way there then fling herself off a ledge. Just because motes in her body healed her quickly that didn't make a broken leg any less inconvenient. Under market took a bit and Sybil had to guide her there but it was a good stop to make. Everything for the Mada is made by forge master Sybil.

One really couldn't buy anything without credits so Alexis pretty much had to start with Sybil if she wanted something. Even clothes which were nearly worn through after a decade of wear, relative to Alexis's last real week at least, so at least Bristol gave her something new to wear. Other Mada didn't seem to care about joining human society but Sybil had an awareness of it. Probably more as her awareness of big daddy Emperor but that nearly got her hit with a hammer. Alexis didn't give Sybil time for percussive objections before picking up one of the smaller cognizance vaults in her forge and leaving with it. As she left the basal thread having absconded giggles in midair. Hurled forward feet over heels after tripping over a rat outside her labyrinth managed to skid hips first a bit. Then stood up to rub her sore bottom and brush off the dust.

She could hear Sybil from the walls commenting acridly, "It's a good thing you landed on your well-padded end and not your thick skull. Don't break that."

A throng of short stitches later footprints traced into existence from the labyrinth to the door of the restaurant. A small cylinder in her pale hands. They were flexible on payment. What she'd heard said they used some sort of magic cook? Alexis' eyes cooled from electric blue to their normal red as she looked about. The tattoo of her Falx writ in raised black bumps shone by the coat sleeves settling down. The new coat was clean, a nice fur and suede, her pants a robust leather but well assembled. Bristol had style at least though she wasn't sure where he got the women's clothes. Maybe more the rich swarthy boy met more ladies than she knew! Though her thoughts were scattered looking over the interior. All the things she could write an actual missive that humans could read! They one she'd read the reviews of sounded picky. The servitors were so... regular in their construction. This place had style and even artwork. A lot like the Imperial buildings but a little less violent.

"I oughta charge the thing," Said the thin Mada distractedly as she turned the vents of the small grey cylinder of cognizance vault within her hands.

Focused on charging the vault angular mica patterns layered inside served as anchor points as threads pour inside to stitch together. Entirely unaware of a doorman she may have flashed in front of at the front door. Expecting a foyer she'd stopped in the middle of the entrance. The black vault wrapped around her torso humms as the empty vessel fills with a weightless fluid. Amassed raw magical energy climbs in between a growing tangle of potentials anchored to its walls. Stable enough Sybyl said it more resembled a synthetic ley node. Seconds later she figured a mage should recognize what it was for. It held a pretty good quantity though she felt it was like trying to breathe for someone else. The warmth from her body and personal vault poured inside. A faint distortion around her pale hands and arms they vibrated the small vault in place. Her vest replacing the warmth that the small vest removed from her.