Welcome to Gaia! ::

Each handled, cloth grocery bag had a selection of goods designed with 80$ a week and feeding 2 active people or 4 sedentary in terms of caloric expectation. There was a handwritten weekly meal plan, with recipe cards in each. Personalization felt like a gift compared to a handout, a lingering doubt learned from dealing with Hitch. Less guesswork and hopefully less stress about food preparation—a fact learned while reading up on meal plans, budgets, and the merits of soylent while he was designing the bags. Allergy allowances came later, when or if anyone made use of the service. For the price in dollars, there expected sweat equity of roughly 15 minutes. Nothing required refrigeration. Staging the bags in the safety and anonymity of the Safe-house, where powering up to carry them couldn’t be associated to the CatFe, recalling limitations of electricity, running water and access to refrigeration or utensils was easy. Circumstance, necessity, or choice would have to be carefully considered and phased in. But as it is, it has taken these two years to glean the funds and supplies themselves to do this. The first go at a candletower.



Finally, Quenton opened the window-entry, powered up, and picked up the bags- two per hand- before looking to his companion sponsor Mauvian for the evening, and offering his shoulder. “Ready, Faust? It will take time for others to trust this or respond. Do you think we’ll have anyone show up tonight? I can send the notification out once we’re on location and have the candle lit. “

“T’was once widespread custom. A candle in the window of homes whose family had gone to war, or a welcome for travelers. In the 1940's, many department stores sold out of their electric candles because of the popularity of the look of the custom, established to the holiday season by Colonial Williamsburg. You are probably right. “

“I doubt people put the electric ones in their windows thinking of welcoming travelers, offering aid, or of homecoming for weary soldiers. Or memorial for the slain. “ They probably didn’t think much of anything at all, beyond liking the aesthetic. Faust’s heft on his shoulder, familiar, and the tickling, ever softening puffs of black fur soothed and smoothed anxiety of the outing away from non-expression into non-existence. It would be how it would be. “If putting them up is no thought...seeing them while out and about is the same.”

Quenton set to crossing the distance from University grounds to a neighboring residential area which mixed 2-3 bedroom student apartment properties and early 1900's pseudo-estates. He’d chosen one of the earlier properties, a socialite’s weekend retreat of 1880's vintage that had gone derelict in the 1970's. It remained in semi ruin and legal limbo after a purchase and subsequent abandonment in the early 2000's. The developer had wanted to tear it down, but the historical society had stepped in with some letters and now the place just sat again in it’s lurid, remembering, richly detailed ruin. Old enough to lack surveillance, obvious enough to be accessible, private enough to avoid cops, embroiled in legality enough to avoid mundane drugs or squatters, it was a good choice to keep hosts and comers safe. For being made with stone, the structure was sound and nonthreatening of danger from collapse. Standing in the shadows of its carriage house was enough privacy to safely transform, and allow Thraen to hop the wrought iron fence to approach the flagged patio and rotted arbor. “Strange and dated custom…”

There were no signatures nearby that he could sense. He set the bags down on the retaining stone wall of a raised planter and summoned out his phone. In order to thumb out the message, “There might be mice or squirrels for you to practice your moves on? You seem a little stiff and slow tonight.”

Light teasing and hope for catly indignance.

Here goes, with nervous lightening and Tesla's dreams usurped in history's lies of the last thousand years. Mauvian technology.



The message sent out the network, Thraen used his hand to smooth out the dirt of the top of the planter into a crude palimpsest. Long index finger then traced out large letters in upper and lower case: T - u - n - a

“If your mind hungers, small task it be to feed it. You have need of further practice with your letters.” Of which a good method was connecting letters and words to concrete concepts. For Faust, food items weren’t a bad starting point. There was something of the old 1962 Miracle Worker scene with the pump water about it. Or at least, Thraen hoped eventually it would have something of the same dawning effect. “If we get through all five of them, the sixth you compose can be what you get for dinner. Let’s start with this. “

“Name each of the letters, then read the word. What does it say?” I’ll get the candle lit in the meanwhile.

“Reading and writing means you can organize fireteams for tactical strikes on the Negaverse. Messages are needed to arrange time and place and who is showing up. You need letters before and after battles. During, yes, it is probably too much to use them. “ And easy and logical rebuttal to too-adorable, puffy resistance.

“T - u - what is it - a. Which of the 26. What letter there would spell something of the sounds you know. Sound it out: Tuuu-ah? And now is a good use of time just spent waiting, otherwise. Unless you want to practice boxing. “

Which was equally cute with the massive, tufted black paws. “We must train mind and body both, to be efficient soldiers.”

“Yes, it is ‘Tuna.’ So what is the letter that you were missing? “ Thraen would not abandon this point. One had to say and think of the thing clearly, use it at least a number of times, to grasp and retain it. Simultaneously he started spelling out another set of letters below the first- S - o - l - e.

“We must expand the list of what we are good at. ‘The Best Senshi’ must be good at combat, tactics, organization, research and first aid. ‘The Best Mauvian’ cannot be limited to awakenings, only. “

If he has any sort of competitive spirit with the others. I wonder how many of them do, or if any. Such competitions, though, can only ever be friendly if they will be helpful. We can’t afford more fractious spirit than we labor under as is.

There were yet no text messages incoming, no chirrups from the senshi phone, and no aural energies signifying Chaos, Order or otherwise in the direct field of the Eternal Senshi's awareness. As expected then. This vigil and many more may be very quiet.

"At the least, you are the fluffiest. Well done, " It did no harm to offer compliments to Mauvians, as to regular felines, when they had either cooperated or indeed accomplished something. Reading was hard, as much as humans with standardized, public, modern educations took it for granted compared to the ages before 1750 in the Unite States, the Elementary Education Act of 1870 in the United Kingdom, and other such legislations across the world. Learning to do it as an adult, which Faust was in normal cat years, was a feat of dedication. How did Mauvians age?

"An hour. Staying still so long without aural blocking, " since the Mauvian hadn't started yet, "Would draw too much attention, possibly, from Youma otherwise. Not begrudging the chance to draw them off civilians and dust them. Prudence for two alone, when charter conditions called for a second member other than a Mauvian to assist Candletowers. We have to husband our strength in drought. "

Thraen traced out another four letters for the Great Puff: C-a-r-p.

“In 2015, two researchers at Texas A&M put distance of light and the average human eye to the test. Horizon lines, buildings and all other obstacles like buildings and trees are factors for practical application. They used how the eye detects the photons of stars. Of Vega. They came up with 2.76 kilometers or a little over one-and-a-half miles. Mathematically. There’s been other studies with actual eyes that pick up just a few flashes of few photons accurately, at further distances, so more needs to be done to nail down averages. But yes, the expectation is that the knights and senshi will receive the message to know that there is one happening and the general location, and then locate the actual spot when the arrive in the area, within a mile, and can locate the candle. “

I wonder if there’s a Senshi of Vega out there somewhere. Sailor Vega, Senshi of what…. Flashes of the Street Fighter Character where really all the came to mind in answer, though. “Reading practice. I can sense auras far enough out if something decides to check us out. “

He tapped the smoothed dirt under the letters, “What is this one?”

‘because Science’

The dismissive abridgement managed to be hilarious, clever and endearing in a way ‘TL;DR’ entitled privilege never managed. It held all the same frustrations of answer that ‘Because Magic’ did for Thraen in dealing with most of powered life’s missing explanations and expectations. Clarke’s Third Law, after all. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The possibility, or probability, of all the magic turning out to be quantifiable, and feasible for problem solving, is dismal.

“And the second letter? You’ve seen it once in this reading session already. ” He pinched up some of the dirt and sprinkled it on the flank of flopped Puffs.

Where and from whom did you learn about Taco Bell or Border Regrets. Did someone feed him tacos?

“It takes at least 4 to seven minutes for most to run a mile. Long enough for us to prepare a reaction, without dampening. As you were saying, a C and then? You’ve gotten two, already. Unless you want to end up eating Taco Bell instead of premium seafood.“