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"Another world," the strangely dressed man says, "and you can never come back. I don't know where; I don't control it. But you can send others on, as will they in turn. The sharing and the sending are one."
There are a hundred things that should go through her head. He's crazy; it's a street performance; it's a con; it's a joke; it's a prank. None of them do.
It's never really a choice.
She takes his hand—
and she's gone.
She takes a second for her eyes to focus again, momentarily disoriented as she's pulled back to reality.
"yeah.
Sounds like a plan."
She looks around at the picnic things. They seem to be mostly finished. She takes the last few bites of her sandwich, and starts to see about cleaning up.
"I can get all this, you don't have to. Cap'n is the one who's going all, grrr, get some use out of her."
"Heh. If you say so! You can help me check things over, then, and I can keep rambling about how to run a ship. It's a good skill to have 'round here."
She tries, certainly. Knots! Everybody needs to know how to tie knots. Nautical terms like bow, tailwind, leeward, and so on. What 'trim' is and how to adjust it... So on, so forth.
And checking and basic repairs on the gas sacs and engines and other things on the ship... And navigation, which is probably the hardest part. "It really really is the hardest part. Most ship crew don't need to know it."
Nod. "I'll just stay out of your way then, yeah?" Attentively, though; no reason not to start learning early, if it's so complicated.
"She's leaving things out, isn't she? To be fair, a lot of it is hard to put into words. How to sway with the ship. How to tell that leather's wearing through... What all the ship's little noises mean..."
"Honestly I'm not sure I'm keeping up with what she isn't leaving out, already. I figure I'll pick it up in time, or at least get to the point where I can ask the right questions, you know?"
"Quite. I was a clumsy, inquisitive brat my first couple months sailing. Very much of it is just experience."
"Well, I certainly mean to try."
...hmm. She never actually got around to mopping the floor, did she? If there's a lull in the action once they're underway, she'll look into that.
A lull appears. Walta goes to her room and sleeps and Nick sits in the bridge making little notes in his book and nudging the controls.
There's a mop and a bucket and drains in most of the rooms' corners. Apparently they go to a brownwater tank and get reused as ballast.
She sets to it.
It's nice. Straightforward, repetitive, concretely productive. Almost meditative, if there weren't so much physical exertion involved.
Her mind wanders.
(She doesn't notice herself humming quietly.)
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