To be honest, it was partially because she had already seen it. There was something to there only being one structure at all on the world, and none of her memories gave her any inclination that she could breathe underwater or she was otherwise crafty in her locale choices. Richtersveld was the only one really allowed in her small cabin beyond people who needed an emergency landing, but even they were only allowed in the small front area with a mediocre bed and a wash station.
Which was hilarious to consider, considering on top of that, her cabin was small in the first place. She lived a very minimal life.
That tracked, with what she had figured out thus far.
Richtersveld moved to a small closet, realizing the door was hanging off and there was a small hole under the Code. Hm. She lifted the Code piece out of it. "Hey, buddy. What happened under you?"
Maybe this exercise would restore what was under it. She didn't have any lumber skills. Nemyi could probably figure it out, considering any new thing to hyperfocus on was usually briefly their favourite thing long enough for one (1) problem to be resolved, but...
Well.
She took the code piece back to her slightly less minimal single bed and held it in front of her.
"Tell me what you're expecting, alright?" Richtersveld sighed in the quiet that was her response. She remembered what the cornerstone said.
-----------
Somehow, every day seemed a bit quieter.
Perhaps, she was expecting the quiet. Taking on a post on Pluto was a bit of a death sentence in that way. The home of the isolated gates of time wasn't exactly a popping place for other people to visit, and she was never expecting it to be. The people who did visit were mostly desperate, trying to find answers to things that had happened to them or might happen to them or the ones they loved in the future. She could provide that, in its limited scope, in the depths of her oasis.
The stream of people, though, had turned into more of a trickle, these days. Then, from a trickle, a drop.
On occasion.
She could time out the last time she had seen someone on the wonder besides herself. It wasn't too difficult to do when the passage of time was supposed to be her purview. That was why people came to a place this remote, right? Perhaps she was simply no longer needed?
That would be ideal in many ways, but it seemed unlikely. She had never known people to stop needing people. They were all innately social creatures, no matter what their background out in space had been. That was why she had seen the numbers of people she had, types that perhaps she would have never estimated before entering the Knight Academy. She knew, but she hadn't known.
And they were all the same, in the end. Social creatures, right?
She had long adjusted to the solitude of her wonder. It was what she had signed up for, right?
This long-term solitude, though? The solitude that resulted from no one setting foot where she called home for days on end (forty-five days, by her estimation, and in Plutonian time that oft had its own definition) had not been what she had signed up for. She did not consider herself a hermit.
She had not considered herself a hermit, anyway.
Perhaps her goal posts had moved. Perhaps, it was time to accept that moving to a place like Pluto, and accepting this role as her role, destined her to this life. Perhaps a lull in visitors was expected. It wasn't as if there was a prior knight to go talk to about this.
Quietly, she pressed the journal closed, looking up and out the singular window of her cabin.
In front of her, it remained just as quiet as it had been.
-----------
"...Ah."
Was this what being a knight of Richtersveld meant? Was this what she was to expect? Was it an echo to her own current life, where she listened, and listened, and listened, but did not oft think to seek out someone who listened to her in turn? Or was the thought that that was what she was seeing a bit too lofty for the reality that she was watching in front of her?
The Code piece seemed happier for that, and her cabin seemed less disheveled, but she wasn't certain she appreciated the thoughts it gave her being about ... well, loneliness. Irrelevance. Abandonment.
"Thanks, b*****d," she murmured, carrying it back to its home and resting it where it belonged.
She didn't expect whatever cosmic force was at work here to be a paragon of sympathy, anyway.
Her eyes turned toward the singular window. It was still quiet, she observed. Quieter. Her wonder hadn't much in the way of life. There were some trees, she supposed, but the water was murkier than it had been in her memories of this place. The animal life wasn't much more sparse, to be honest, but she hadn't seen much in the way of creatures in the first place.
She glanced to the side, seeing the journal that her past self must have kept on the desk. There was a part of her that thought about picking it up.
Richtersveld didn't. Not now. Perhaps later, when she didn't have the pressure of helping stabilize a great cosmic ball of light so her fellows could still access their magic in a way that actually worked. This was about stabilizing it for everyone and not just herself, wasn't it? (If it was just for herself, Richtersveld was not entirely convinced she would have been driven to do this for the sake of only herself. It would feel too self-centered, too conceited. She needn't the magic. She was aware of the war now, and was fine with being in her civilian support role if necessary.)
Speaking of being support.
It was time to go figure out how to help her brother out, she supposed.
