[closed to S72 hosts] mental link

[polyphonos]

[Hosts have returned to Station 72. It's the most populous this place has been for some time, but the dull ache of missing links - the numerous comatose individuals now carefully tucked back into their respective pods on the Nesting Deck - looms like a shadow here. It's quiet and still and strangely barren. The distance which stretches between the Hosts here and those who chose to remain on Hyrypia is a physical presence as well. It's as a curtain between two rooms, two slowily turning mirrors on different rotations, infrequently capturing eachother's reflections. In the gap, in the waiting stillness, Cathaway's mind is a steady, rythmic drip of cool water into the mirrored surface of some greater, unmoving body of water:]

( Should you need to reach out to anyone left behind on Hyrypia, we will happily assist. Find us if you need us. ) [There's no image projected along with the words, just the certainty that if someone came looking then they would inevitbly find her.] ( If you have questions or require anything else from us, feel free to ask after that as well. We're here to help. )

[There's a bizarre texture to the shape of the thought: it wavers and shifts, malleable and untethered as if for a split second she is uncertain. Then that two turns, solidifies. Curtly:]

( Welcome back. )

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[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ It's... good, being back on the Station. Sam'd say better than he expected, but he knew it was gonna be a relief to be here again, even with the uncertainty in his mind.

There's only two of his brood left, and he hates that they're fractured - hates that one had needed to stay and one had needed to come back. Hates that he could have stayed and kept them together, that part of him feels like he should have stayed.

Sam's not actually sure why he seeks her out. To remind him of what he said he was never gonna be, maybe, or to feel a vicarious connection to those left behind, or maybe both. He'd just felt like he needed to, and there's definitely a jumble of questions in his mind that he wants to ask about staying on the Station and helping, about new Hosts and missions, about the comas. He can't quite settle on where to go first.

He figures he'll have it sorted out by the time he finds Cathaway, but when he gets to her - all he can think about is Katie and Shiro, and the way they're more distant from him than they've ever been. ]

How far do you have to reach, to be able to connect to them more than - this?

[polyphonos]

[He comes looking for her and the Station leads him through its twisting belly at last to a small central chamber with pale mottled gray walls and a mirrored floor which absorbs so much sound. The small anteroom leads to a narrower corridor still, and beyond that is an intimate circular room filled with low, mismatched furniture and muddled with a thousand small creature comforts, and in whose floor is inlaid brassy golden lines and circular points: a map of some sky, both familiar and alien.

Cathaway is seated on the low sofa, wreathed in comfortable but worn looking pillows and draped in an elaborately knit, gauze thin blanket. A small cup and saucer balances on her knee, apparently forgotten. It's clear her mind is--

Elsewhere. Distant. She wears a far off expression, and for a moment she doesn't answer him at all.

Then something in the room or the air or the space between spaces shifts. She breathes in, drawing closer to this place like a kite being reeled in by its string, and at last turns her attention to him. She offers him a bare smile that doesn't quite change the lines of her face and pats the space on the cushion beside her invitingly.]

It isn't a matter of distance in the way you might think of it. It's one of...relation. Of knowing how to navigate the link.