SHIP'S LOG:

The Sadie Hawkins

Armando Lupiz 1/21/2020 10:08pm

The Toothless Old Hag has invited me to her tent. It's a bunch of fabric and poles sticking out behind a floating boulder. It seems to be on our way everywhere we go.

"Mrrrrrawhgh! Mrrrwawawrawa?"

More of her wretched earthy tea. Ugh.

"Garwwwuemawawawaru. Bwawwawamargu."

She's certainly been a lot more calm since we've been marooned in this dimension. Quite happy here, actually.

"Mwanheny dataykee daflaflaiverfuffy. Verfuffy!"

She presents me a small box. It's familiar, but probably in the way all small gift boxes are.

"Guhooney. Malarfafarfarafa!"

I open the box, and there, buried in cotton...

"Deeeeleeever eeeeeet! U! Deeeeeeeleeeeever!!!

A chrysalis. A plasma moth chrysalis.

"U deeeeeeleeeeever Hetteeeeeeee."


Captain Armando Lupiz
(The Sky Wolf)
onboard the continuous merchant dirigible Sadie Hawkins

billy nails 12/16/2019 10:11pm

This is the life, ain't it, kid? I'll admit ol' @Billy Nails enjoyed the notion of the C in the C.O.D. mail run, but not when it turned out to be some kind of trap! There wasn't a better moment for that toothless hag to hijack the Sadie Hawkins into this peaceful, purple dimension. Can't quite say I've ever seen gravity work this way, what with the floating islands, inverse rainbows, and the like. Waterfalls seem to fall forever, and the starlight is bright enough to read by. And I'll admit that this old airshipman's eyes teared up watching Sparkleshine meet its kin folk. I've never seen a swarm of giant plasma moths frolic and play in the thermals before, and let me tell you you may not see a sight more tender for quite some time! And the strange folk who inhabit this land are so generous, loading the ship with food and fine goods every time we make a mail stop. These folk value their communications, and it seems their options for delivery are slim in these parts, relying instead on a thin network of clotheslines strung from floating island to floating rock, through which they operate a simple pulley system to take a bucketful of mail one at a time across the chasms. Why haven't these people mastered flight? Makes ol' @Billy Nails want to stop and think for a bit...

Starry Skye 10/30/2019 8:01pm

I've never seen Hettie so frisky and alive. Her swoops, her dives... I've never seen the chitin of her wings so strong and healthy, and the hairy scales that make up her coat are extra bouncy and resilient. Especially when I scratch her behind her antennae.

There's no doubt it's the... dimension that the old toothless hag has brought us to. She gave up the bridge as soon as she brought us here, and hasn't shown any more interest in directing our course. The Captain has no real idea where we are. So we keep safe distance from the fantastic outcroppings of landscape and slowly explore.

Hettie flits busily between the waterfalls, rainbows, and twisted knots of floating stone and trees, picking up and dropping off the envelopes with the great curly silver writing on them by the bucketful. And we make our rounds without needing to Pweeet the purple plasma bursts. No need to rip through the skein of space to deliver the mail: we're already here.

Armando Lupiz 9/21/2019 11:58pm

"Please, old toothless hag. I'd really prefer not to break down this beautiful antique mahogany door!"

The hag continued to cackle, locked inside the bridge. Perhaps we should have been keeping a closer watch on her.

"If you're concerned about the mail delivery, I'm sure that we can work something out. We're happy to take a whole basket off your mail out right now! Luna and @Starry Skye are ready at the bomb bay doors, and even @Billy Nails agrees. He WANTS us to stop the pen pal deliveries. We're happy to take your silver letters again. Just open the door and let us back to the wheel."

The Sadie Hawkins took a hard turn larboard, followed by a flash of purple, sparkly light and my stomach rising up through my chest as we took an impossible free-fall, spiral drop.

"Gaaaaahaaaahaaackaha!!!! Gaaaahaahaaahaahaa!" cackles the toothless hag through the door.

Captain Armando Lupiz
(The Sky Wolf)
onboard the continuous merchant dirigible Sadie Hawkins

Billy Nails 8/20/2019 10:50pm

Have you started to sense the pattern, kid? Where all these Psyhigh penpal mails are landing? No? Well, you'll get a feel for stellar cartography as you go, but take a look at my wall. Yes, it's ok if you move the curtain, kid. There. You can see I've pinned the location of every address we've dropped one of the Lilx letters off at, and then I connected them with golden yarn. Yes, it is a bit like string art. But that just helps point out how the distribution is *too* regular. Now, a random distribution of penpals would tend to bunch up, in accordance with population density. You'd have some clusters here and there, and a lot of space between them. But here, every node is equidistant from their surrounding nodes, and, because of the yarn, you're able to see they're all at 45 degree angles from each other. And if you extend the yarn? Through the center? Yes? See what I'm talking about? That's right--you can predict where our next bunch of letters is bound to be delivered--right up there in the NW quadrant. And once we connect the last of those dots in real space, it closes the whole ring up like a big tiara.

Somethin's fishy here kid. That's all I'm sayin.

Starry Skye 7/20/2019 11:50am

Since we’ve begun letting Hettie smell the mail, our destinations have taken on a more familiar flavor. Rickety painted ladies on craggy outcroppings under a full moon. Mid-century moderns in desserts. Rooftops of aging apartment buildings in limitless cities.

Our transactions have become more mundane as well. @Billy Nails has lent me a messenger’s cap to avoid confounding stares as recipients open their doors to this ex-cat burglar airship waif and her giant Fire Breathing Plasma Moth. “Special delivery!” I say in my sweetest sing-song voice. Our delivery fees are starting to add up.

The only one who’s grumpy is the old toothless hag. She searches through my bag for new silver envelopes then hisses and spits when she finds nothing new.

There’s a mean look in her eye, but I feel sorry for her.

“Hrrrrrrroooom?” Hettie agrees.

Armando Lupiz 6/21/2019 10:45pm

We've discovered that letting Luna, the giant space moth, sniff the mail allows her to jump to that specific destination. This makes mail delivery far more efficient.

Old @Billy Nails insists on prioritizing our mail from @Lilx, ahead of the additional mail that @Starry Skye brought back, and the toothless hag drools over. The rest of the crew agrees, given that it's paid work, and they're all here to send their young ones off to school on some better world.

Luna doesn't so much as smell the mail as she caresses it. Her feathery feelers come down and roll the silver envelopes around. She gives it tiny tastes and kisses with her lips and proboscis.

"Pweeeeeeeeet!"

And she's off again, with a puff of ozone.

Billy Nails 5/22/2019 10:36pm

First time sorting interdimensional mail, kid? Yeah I can tell. It's less about trying to figure out what all these scribbles mean and more about just a feeling. Like that one. Hold it in your hand, close your eyes, and take a breath. Is it near or far? If it's far, though it over there. If it's near, drop it right in front of you. Now, how near? Nearer than the last one? Just trust your gut. The thing is, we've got Lilix's mail from that Psychic High School, and now we've got an increasing amount of crazy mail that Starry Skye and Sparkleshine keep bringing back from their little trips. And yes I know that Starry Skye says the moth's name is something different but I already told you what I know about names. The point is, the mail from Lilix is something we're getting paid for, and get paid on delivery for as well. Half up front, half on delivery, that's the deal. But this other mail is what they call pro-bono, and no matter how much that toothless hag drools on it, I don't count half-cooked eel as payment! So let's figure out which of these letters are for paying customers, and make sure the captain doesn't forget we've all got bills to pay.

Starry Skye 4/22/2019 9:43pm

"Pweeeeeeeeet!"

Hettie's sonic blasts are hyper-directional--super focused straight out of her mouth--which means they don't hurt your ears at all if you're riding her. You don't want to have one pointed at you though.

"Pweeeeeeeeet!"

Similarly, the puff of purple plasma that accompanies each one adds to the dimensional tearing effect, but the little bit that blows back on you is barely enough to singe your eyebrows.

"Pweeeeeeeeet!"

It's unclear how our targeting works. What prevents us from slicing a hole in our universe and ending up in a sun's nuclear core? Or the bottom of an ocean of methane? The worst we've encountered is a bit of a gale. Hettie must have some sense of what's beyond as we flitter from dimension to dimension, dropping off mail and picking it up. How does she even know where these letters are addressed to? It's almost as if it doesn't matter, like we're just scattering some kind of informational pollen throughout the neighboring universes. Rocky spires floating between moons, mushrooms the size of mountains. We find eager recipients wherever we go, flagging us down, going through our saddle bags for the silver-inscribed envelopes and replacing them with their own.

Back on board the Sadie Hawkins, the toothless hag pours through the bags and cackles.

Armando Lupiz 3/23/2019 11:21pm

Mighty happy to have @Starry Skye back in the fold. And her descriptions and maps of the lands beyond the Fields of Cairn are an invaluable addition to the Sadie Hawkins' nav banks.

After all her time away, Starry was happy to spend a night in her cabin, and take dinner in the mess.

"I really didn't have a lot of experience camping out," she says between bites. "I was a city girl, before I met you all. And Hettie."

"Hettie?"

"Yes? The Giant Plasma Moth?!?"

"Oh, I thought her name was Luna."

"You mean Sparkleshine," @Billy Nails offers up.

"Uh... right. It's Hettie. Sleeping in the saddle's a new experience too. But frankly Hettie's more comfortable than most beds I've been in. Moth fur is the softest."

"Pweeeeeeeeet!" Luna dives past the observation window and peels off a sonic plasma blast.

"Still," Starry continues, "we both need our space now and then. I can tell Hettie holds back a bit when I'm riding. I don't think she's had a chance to really see what she's capable of yet."

"And this portal you entered at the Fields of Cairn... how exactly did you discover that?"

"Mrrrrrawhgh!!!!" says the toothless hag. She insisted on accompanying the sack of interdimensional mail that Starry brought back through the portal. She offers us more eel, but no one's eating it but her. We're sticking to the waffles.

"Well," continues Starry, "I'd assumed it was a localized phenomenon, something about the Cairn, or just a thin spot in space. But when we came back, it felt more... intentional. Both Hettie and I knew we were ready to return, and suddenly, we just jumped."

"Pweeeeeeeeet!" Luna dives past the observation window again, but this time disappears into plunk of purple flame, like a stone thrown into a waterfall.

"Kinda like that," Starry says.

Captain Armando Lupiz
(The Sky Wolf)
onboard the continuous merchant dirigible Sadie Hawkins