tbos 3.2

It certainly wasn't uncommon to find Kokoparvest at open markets and spaceports, and when they did go they usually didn't get much trouble, but finding herself swamped by the sheer chaos and eccentricity of one while she was unaccompanied by any of her own kind was more than a little disconcerting to someone who had never been in close confines with so many other species before.

Flume was puzzled, relieved, and a little disappointed to note that no one was paying her any attention. She was pleased that she hadn't been attacked, seeing how unpopular her people were, but she would have appreciated a little more respect in their eyes for a member of the glorious Kokoparvest Empire such as herself.
Apart from a few people trying to sell her something, no one had given her any attention at all.

Smarmadine was curled up on her shoulder looking most displeased by the press of bodies all around her and the cacophony of merchants and their kin.  Flume stroked him occasionally, to his irritation, as she threaded through the streets searching for something resembling a spaceport.  So far the only technology she had seen was in pieces or rigged into elaborate smoking accessories.  

A little flock of chickenish birds scuttled over her feet and she stumbled, getting a hurried apology from the short, veiled person who was shepherding them across the path.  The smells of spices, animals, oil and perfumes were turning her head a little.  She rounded a corner, stepped delicately over a large, sluggish serpentine creature curled up on the ground,  passed a portly merchant hawking some stupid-looking fish, and paused for breath in front of a small canvas tent with a number of hutches and pens.  Out front was a table displaying a number of cream and tan furry creatures skittering around in a low corral.  The merchant sitting behind it took a long and heavy pull on his scrap metal hookah, turned his head, and blew it out to roll over Flume's face.

She waved the vapor away impatiently and realized what he was with a jolt.

"You're a Thresher!"
"Oh, yes I am. And you're an adorable hull rat."

The lean, bare-chested alien was almost twice as tall as Flume was, with huge heavy horns and an unruly forest of grizzled black hair.  He had bags under his eyes like magenta hammocks, a sly, lazy expression, and teeth much broader than Flume's, though just as sharp.  His crest was a small, vestigial affair at the back of his head, and his left horn was long broken.

Flume had met Thresher Kokoparvests before; the various subspecies liked to keep in touch with each other.  They were the only strain not bred from scratch, being a mix of the King and Hull Ship varieties.  Threshers occupied a small but important niche in the Empire, scattering about and gathering information on anything they found of interest. It was they who supplied most of the database on other aliens' cultures, but they were best known for those who buried themselves in cruel, repetitive and often barbaric experiments.
Flume had never been greeted in such a way, but she was too excited to be finally speaking face to face with one of her own people.

"I need help," she said. "I'm separated from my ship; I need to get home."
The other creature only eyed her calmly, taking another draft of vapor.  Between them, the little tailless rodents squealed and wheaked.
Flume felt a drop of apprehension.

"You're… you're not real, are you," she said, slowly. He blinked lazily.  "You're just another part of…"  Her disappointment turned to bitterness and she waved a hand around them.  "Of all this book nonsense."

"That's kind of a rude thing for a member of the Glorious Kokoparvest Empire to say," he said.  "You must be new here."

"I apologize. Look- do you have a ship? Or some place I can send out a call for help?"  She didn't bother telling him she could pay; both of them had unlimited connections to the swollen finances the Empire reaped in through the slave market.

"Sister, a ship isn't going to help you.  Right now best you can hope for is a hot meal."
She stared at him, perplexed.
"You're in Way Space.  Didn't you notice?"
Flume's mouth went dry.
"Or did you think the planetary backdrop was a hologram?"
"Oh God."
"Yeah."

~~~

Every so often the thousands and thousands of fragmented gods that kept the universe together grew bored or disenchanted with the general, sensible order of things and would reach in and personally build to personal preference.  Sometimes this might be an artifact, or an enlightened hero, or a fabulous city, or a planet.  The larger areas were known as Handcraft Zones, and they were easily identifiable for defying sciences and logic.  

It was said to be impossible to find it if you were trying to, and almost as hard to get back if you stumbled upon it, but somewhere in the vast void of space was a knotted rat's nest of theological sculpting that had resulted in a massive, fanciful perversion of the accepted; a place of wonder and beauty, a place so ravaged by the hands of complacent gods that the very seams were coming loose and ten thousand other existences would dribble in and people it with their own, mixing and blending into this universe' population until it was so strange and so fantastic that out of the ordinary could no longer exist.

There were accounts of the people who had been there, and who knew the way back and visited often, or people who had escaped it; mostly children on their adventures.  None of these had been proven, of course, and it was often suggested that such tales of this mystical, god-touched place were entirely, utterly true, but that no one was ever allowed to leave, and it was the gods themselves who whispered descriptions of their playground back to the races outside.

It was a place for people on their way to anew life, people who sought something entirely different, people who had fallen through the cracks, fallen by the way side, a place where people were weighed and measured and found out who they really were.
Way Space.

Flume shook her head violently.  "No. This is just the next ridiculous… setting.  I am not stuck here."

"That's the spirit," the Thresher said encouragingly.  "Is that shadow-loathing for sale?"

"No, you'd just cut him up.  What's the currency here?"

"Well it ain't ICDs, you're not buying anything on credit here."  He laughed at her dismay. Such a charming individual.  "Look. You'll get the hang of it."  He gestured to all the peope walking passed.  "All of these idiots stumbled over here just like we did, and look at 'em now, stumbling around like natives.  Just don't let them see you haven't the faintest idea what you're doing, and you're good to go."

"I want to go home," she said. She was almost pleading with him. "Can't you help me?"


"I'll tell you what," the Kokoparvest said.  "I'll give you something to fill your belly, since you made it all the way here."  He reached into the pen, dragged out a shrieking penny pig, and snapped its neck with two hands.  Flume didn't flinch.  She held her hand out dumbly, and stared at the gift he put into her palm.

"Don't eat anything mixed or mashed or minced up around here," he said sagely.  "They put people in the food."

"You mean Muels?" She asked, referring to a race renowned for feeding upon their own children if they weren't born intelligent enough to be considered sentient.  Muelflesh was a very expensive delicacy, if you didn't question whether the eaten was one of the brain-dead, or whether it was moral in the first place.
"No, I mean people.  Good luck finding a place to cook that; it's the kind ones here who mean you harm."