[Video]// forward dated to after the dungeon rescues

[neverfeltthatway]

I have the list of Travelers who are missing, who have gone out of ambit.

[He takes a breath, bracing himself for it.]

Cass, Jason, Steph, Alexander, Melisande, Jessica, Roronoa, Inana, Lucifer, and Anzu.

[He's quiet for a long moment, solemn and respectful, giving people a change to process the list before moving on.]

Does anybody know anything about the Arcana who were involved in the jaunt, or who it was that won? I didn't learn much about the situation from my overlay.

Comments

[neverfeltthatway]

You're welcome. Any way I can help. [He admires those who raise their children like Wash and Zoe do anyway - though in truth he's never known many of them - but doing so while Traveling is on another level altogether.]

[dino_zarf]

I'm still so amazed at everything she can do. I don't know what I was expecting, even when Travelling came into it, but it was never quite this.

[neverfeltthatway]

I guess it makes sense, if you think about it. The Arcana make us more liminal, more... malleable in order to play their game. And children are already far more malleable than we are when we get older - they learn about the world and how it works so quickly. In this case, she's just learning a little more broadly than the rest of us.

In her world, gravity isn't objective. Is it any surprise she learned to walk on walls? [It's not that he thinks he's saying anything Wash doesn't already know. He's just talking. He really is a little awed by Rose, and he's allowing it to show.]

[dino_zarf]

She just thinks this is all normal.

[The only person in the entire weird network of universes who can say that. THe ARcana not apparently being people]

Her native language is telepathy.

[neverfeltthatway]

Right. [He's quiet a moment, a small smile on his face and his eyes a little distant.]

...I can't imagine what she'll be like when she grows up, but I hope I'm there to see it.

[dino_zarf]

Yeah, me too...

[neverfeltthatway]

[Armin notices the shift in tone, but it takes him a moment to put it together with what he's heard about Wash back on his own world.]

Oh! That... I'm so sorry, that was insensitive of me.

[dino_zarf]

It's... not something I'm thrilled about. But I've decided I'm going to make the most of the time the Arcana stole for us.

[neverfeltthatway]

I understand. It turns out it worked out differently, but for several months there I thought I was dead back home, too. If it's ever something you need to talk about... [Come to think of it, Armin could use someone to talk about it too, but he's not going to mention that is Wash isn't interested.]

[dino_zarf]

I'll keep that in mind.

It's really Rosie that makes it hardest.

[neverfeltthatway]

I suppose it's something to be glad of, in all this chaos. It's nice to know that some good comes out of all of this.

[dino_zarf]

I didn't realize how much I was going to love being a dad until I held her.

[And the rest is extensively documented in the psychic archives]

[neverfeltthatway]

I can't even imagine. I... haven't really known that many parents.

[dino_zarf]

Not well or... at all?

[A lot of worlds out there with too many orphans]

[neverfeltthatway]

[Armin is quiet for a long moment.] I knew my own parents until I was 7, and Eren's until we were 10. I knew my grandfather for a year more. After that... I was a trainee. Surrounded only by others my own age, and soldiers, until I became a Traveler.

[And while some Travelers are parents, few are in the context of Traveling, with their children also present.]