The three-day journey through the void takes him to a portal in a crowded neighborhood of the sky, dozens of strange asteroids performing an elaborate dance of some kind. He ignores them and gives what looks like a twisted region of space a wide berth, heading for the bridge to another reality.

He emerges from the portal far, far above a seemingly endless sea. It blurs away in the distance, but directly below him is an irregular speck of light, what looks like an island. He accelerates downward towards it, judging the distance and accounting for gravity's pull. Down. Down. DOWN. Turnover... NOW. He begins decelerating.

...And ends up at a stop rather higher than he expected to, a few miles above, still. Air resistance, right. He can see the strange ocean-city sprawling around more clearly now, though. A twisted dream of commerce and industry, a city on a sea. Huh.

So he drops like a stone the rest of the way, pivoting to a glide above canals and boulevards as he watches this bustling place from above. It's new and different! And he thinks he sees fruit and fish! Things to taste that aren't weird varieties of dream-radiation!

He's radiating a softly chaotic aura, a lot of different essences mixing- Earth and the stable cave, mundane enough to almost be ignorable. Rorch itself, hardly noticeable here. A vast open space, a polite and restrained-feeling place, a hint of grim inevitability, something reminiscent of oil and metal and gems, and a faint hint of fairytale forest.

As Sable and Eva walk to the mall, arm in arm, Sable abruptly stops and looks up. Is that a zoomy conduit she feels? It certainly feels like soft connections to worlds zipping through the sky. To conduit senses, she feels like a similar otherworldly connection like his own, but to fewer worlds: the vast space, this one, a kind starlit forest, a seemingly endless and deep ocean, Earth, and the stone place.

Eva's gaze goes skyward as she feels the sudden presence, her body pivoting and her eyes searching the clouds. To conduit senses, she feels like peace, stability, a deep ocean, and a faint undertone of corruption.

"Do you feel that?" She asks Sable. 

"Definitely," she replies with a smile. "Feels like a conduit, maybe. Bridges aren't supposed to move, and it feels softer than a bridge, so probably a conduit."

She grins and tilts her head playfully at Eva. "New friend, hopefully?"

Thaaaaat's a new dreamsensation? What?

He gets an impression of Ocean, and of the cave. Also an echo of the fairy forest and his space playground. The rest is muddled.

What is up with that, dream? What are you trying to tell me?

Momentum carries him out of range, and the sensation fades out. He accelerates up and back, doing an aerial loop and slowly approaching the bit of sky he just flew through, looking for the odd contact to come back.

Her head whips around, following the probable conduit through the sky, until they slip out of range. "Aaaand they're gone. I wonder who they were."

But a moment later the sense comes back. "There they are again. Sensed us and came back, maybe?"

Eva finally picks out the tiny silhouette against the sky. 

"— Another conduit, yeah. Do you want to take the train up to meet them?"

Unnecessary. He's zhooping quickly in their direction, having identified a vector. A man, wearing a ragged, oily T-shirt and jeans and tennis shoes and badly shaven facial hair, carrying shiny black and cloudy red glass bottles on a woven metal cord around his waist.

He settles, crosslegged, on top of a nearby power line. Warily.

"Looks like he'll come to us," she replies.

Then, looking up at him with a smile, she calls out. "Hello, fellow traveler!"

"Christ, this dream is getting weirder all the time. Though I suppose it's not a dream anymore. It's been weeks. Hi?"

"I thought it was a dream too at first. Then I nearly got eaten by mermaids. Welcome to Rorch, you're a Conduit."

Sable grins and bumps Eva's shoulder with her own, briefly glancing over at her. "I'm really glad you didn't get eaten by mermaids."

Looking back up at the newcomer, she calls out, "I'm Sable, she's Eva." 

"Nick."

With a sudden zip of carefully calculated acceleration and deceleration he 'falls' to the street below and walks towards them.

"Nobody deserves being eaten by monsters. Conduit, hm? Is this place going to try to kill me? So far I've got steel wasps, space debris," (he indicates a hole and a bloodstain on the lower leg of his jeans), "and zombies. He bravely turned his tail and fled..." He singsongs.

Sable winces at the hole and shakes her head. "Seems like a normal-enough cityscape, as least from what we've seen so far. We're just getting some supplies. Could explain things while we walk and shop, if you'd like." She glances over at Eva.

"You mind, sweetie?"

"Oh, don't let me intrude on your date. I can poke around, see things."

Eva shakes her head. "I don't mind. And I did some reading about this place from the library, so I think I know more than you here, Sable."

She smiles at Nick.

"Stay away from the water and you're pretty much safe. There are tsunamis occasionally, but they're pretty rare according to Journeys of a Conduit. If you get into, like, a serious line of business where you're pushing out competitors, you might have an assassin sent after you about it, but as a tourist the biggest danger is that some of the local fish might think you look tasty."

"And it's only a date in as much as girlfriends going to the department store and the hardware store together counts as a date," Sable adds playfully.

Eva smiles and swats Sable lightly. "It can be a date if we want it to be. I mean, we're getting to explore a whole new world. Prime date material in my opinion."

She rubs the back of her head. "That said, meeting strange new people and hanging with them is totally part of the appeal of a date in a foreign city, so please, Nick, feel free to come along. I'd love to hear your story; if it's anything like us two's I'm sure it's a fun tale to tell."

He raises his hands in mock surrender towards Sable. Then kicks off the ground in a suborbital arc long jump to close much of the remaining distance. He bows.

"I shall have to gracefully oblige. I haven't really been able to talk to people. If the entities I saw are, indeed, people. Tell me, do you think a space rock can act like an excited puppy?"

"If you've seen one that does I'd love to hear about it."

Sable smiles curiously, nodding along with Eva.

"My favorite world so far- Though it's kinda close- Is the one I just came from, and I plummeted a hundred miles or so to get down here. It's a great void- Outer space, but weirdly crowded for outer space. Asteroids, comets, thick clouds, odd warpy bits- All moving and lighting up in their own strange patterns. Somehow I was fine in the vacuum and without eating or drinking as long as I hung out near bright areas, but it seems like a me thing- Anyway, I just danced among the celestial bodies for a while. The bigger ones seem smart. It's almost like they're playing chess with each other, from a distance, though I can't make heads or tails of it. But the little ones might be - babies, I guess, because there was this one I call Minimoon that's almost a perfect white sphere that follows me around and jousts with me. It's remarkably puppy like and loves when I actively accelerate towards it in a circle, as if I'm trapped in its orbit. And it's ticklish to lightning. Or at least also seems to enjoy it. Surprisingly cute! I just regret I don't have a picture, my phone is super dead."

"That sounds adorable!"

"I've heard you can get back to Earth eventually if you try. Maybe pick up a solar charger or something like that? I haven't had the opportunity, my appearance changed when I turned into a Conduit so I have no legal identity back on Earth."