on a lark

[alicornucopia]

She combs and combs the world aside and there is another world, just ahead, and she steps in.

The combed-away hole closes behind her. She puts her comb in her pocket.

Thanjen (Unbitwise)

Blueberry (kappa)

Hivers (Rockeye)

Comments

[wind_on_my_face]

“Probably not. You usually buy it.”

[alicornucopia]

"I don't have any money with me."

[wind_on_my_face]

“There aren't any stores to sell it right here, anyway. I can give you some energy for now, or make you another engine you can hook up to, and you can get metal for yourself later. There are other ways to collect energy, too, like from waterfalls or waves or wind.”

[alicornucopia]

"I might not stay here long enough to go to a store and buy metal. Does using wind and waterfalls and waves let you do without?"

[wind_on_my_face]

(Isn't staying here the opposite of leaving?)

“Sure, if you're only using it as slow as those sources provide it. Or if you find a really big waterfall, or a dam, of course.”

[alicornucopia]

"So I just have to let things move my stuff and then it'll charge up the stuff."

[wind_on_my_face]

"Yes, and your stuff has to be trying not to move, but not so hard that it doesn't move. Like this.”

This time, the thing he gives her isn't a transparent sphere. It's an orange dumbbell.

[alicornucopia]

She takes it, frowning at it.

[wind_on_my_face]

It moves like she's trying to stir a jar of peanut butter.

It's perfectly happy to stay where she puts it in midair.

[alicornucopia]

"Is it slowing itself down?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“No, it's connected to the rest of me. If I made it stronger and you pushed hard then you could use it to push me around.”

[alicornucopia]

"Can things slow themselves down? Could I pick a thing up and then drop it and let it fall very slow to charge it up? Or not fall?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“No, you have to have something else to connect it to. If you live in one place a lot you can claim the ground and use that, though.”

[alicornucopia]

"Should I not claim ground if I'm not going to live a place?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“It just takes hours, and you can use stuff on top of the ground instead, which you can move with you.”

He points at the ring of thin glass on the sand around them that followed them down from the rock.

[alicornucopia]

"Right. Makes sense."

[wind_on_my_face]

“Anyway, give this a try. Spread out some glass, put another piece above it, and make the connection. But before you were doing patterns that were only about how far away things are. This one is only about which way they are moving, towards or away, it always pushes in the opposite direction. Both at once can be done too.”

Elsewhere on the beach, the mock-bird-people land.

[alicornucopia]

She looks at the birdpeople, but attends to the supplied exercise. Away with you, top glass chunk.

[wind_on_my_face]

“So if you've got it right, you should be able to push it around but it won't move by itself, like the one I gave you.”

[alicornucopia]

Push...

[wind_on_my_face]

Puuuuuuuuuuuuush.

If she pushes it sideways too much from the glass on the ground then the whole structure can tip over. And when she lets go it starts creeping back to where she put it to start. But she's definitely got the feels-like-it's-stuck-in-goo part.

There's also a faint feeling of something about the glass changing, increasing, as she pushes the glass around. Maybe that's what the “stored energy” he was talking about feels like.

[alicornucopia]

Huh. Okay. Push push push.

[wind_on_my_face]

As exercise machines go, this one isn't very ergonomic.

[alicornucopia]

"What would happen if I balanced something heavy on this?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“If you made sure to push back enough so it went down gently rather than bouncing, then you'd have all of the energy that was used to lift the heavy thing up. That's the simplest way to use a waterfall, actually — fill a big bucket at the top and then lower it down.”