|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 1:06 am
itspao_ if you want any of those things to be available, pls do make them so lol might be easier for her to get the info that way "I guess," she said skeptically. "Is there anything that's like - in Mercurian? Can you even read Mercurian like that?" This, with a bit more interest, half-turning to Ekstrom as she asked it. "Or maybe it can read something aloud?" she suggested again, poking the text with a finger like she could provoke it into performing. She kept scrolling, though, after saying it, as if to continue hunting for exactly that. But she paused, slowing down as the text gave way to images, and then fell completely silent as she looked them over. The Garde was already, in its way, a beautiful place. But there was something entirely different about seeing it in its full grandeur - all the painted walls restored, all the tiled floors pristine, the walls and windows thick with banners and tapestries. And more than that, to see it in a way that looked alive: racks of weaponry in the bailey arranged as if for immediate use, doors half-ajar as if to indicate the person that had just gone into them and dogs running to and fro, smoke trailing up from busy outbuildings and a deer being dressed in a bright red splash of a vibrant life recently ended, to fuel more lives being lived just out of frame. "Oh," she said after a long moment, her voice sounding numb and strange. "It's pretty."
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2025 12:27 am
"Barely. I'm still learning, so right now I can only recognize a few words and symbols, but lemme see…" she said, tone a bit apologetic as she tried to piece together something that hopefully made sense. "The read-aloud thing might be something I can look into, actually," she commented on the idea of a reading feature for the system. It's possible it was a thing at some point in the past, so maybe all she had to do was find the program in question that did it… Tucking the thought to the back of her mind for revisiting later on, Ekstrom pulled her focus to try and translate… something in the text. "Uh…well," she started, pointing to a string of symbols. "I can't read all of it, but what I can make out sounds pretty positive. Like in this sentence," she ran her finger back and forth across the screen to highlight the sentence she was talking about first, and then pointed to each symbol as she explained. "Has 'good', 'well-liked', 'the people', and 'treated well'." Pointing to another string of symbols, she then also pointed to the folder name that had a matching string, "This is probably 'Joyeuse Garde', and it's also at the beginning of the same sentence I pointed out earlier. So, I mean. From that, maybe it's safe to guess that the opinion of the Garde at the time was really good? Or maybe that the Garde treated the people really well and was generally well-liked by them as a result?" She faltered slightly as she combed through the text again, a bit disappointed that, while it was something, it all felt so stilted and unclear that she wasn't sure if it was of any help to her friend. She might have wallowed in that for quite a bit longer, too, and maybe lingered on the text if it weren't for the images that started coming up as Joy continued to scroll. And oh, the Garde was beautiful. "Wow," was the first word that came to mind, and then, "yeah, it is."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 7:14 pm
She was quiet again, scrolling back and forth - looking for something, maybe, that wasn't there - and clearly thinking about what she'd just been told. "I always kinda figured they were a necessary evil," she said finally, folding her hands together in her lap as if suddenly afraid of breaking something if she touched it further. "Like - like law enforcement, or something." Cops, as Grieve called them. Joy did not have a positive opinion of the police force, and it had, maybe, colored her impression of Gouvernail's work, and the work of those that came before him. "What was Ekstrom like back then?" she asked abruptly, turning to her with a curious expression that was not without a certain sharp quality.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2025 12:27 am
"I wish I could read more," she said softly, glancing back at the monitor again in the hopes of seeing more. Unfortunately she got nothing, so she turned and leaned back against the edge of the desk. "But it doesn't sound like it from the little that I could read."
She'd been about to comment more about possibly trying to learn the ancient language the information was written in, and offering to bring to her Wonder as often as she could manage if she wanted to keep studying, but the question about her Wonder cut those thoughts short. Ekstrom met her eye, an uncertainty in her usually bright and vibrant blue eyes that reached into the very depths of her person and had been running amuck with her emotions about her own Wonder.
"Mmm..." she started, gaze shifting to their feet just before she continued. "I mean, from the pictures and little bits that I could read from my own folder, I could tell you that it was a locked research facility. A massive one from the maps I've seen, so even after all this time I've just barely grazed the surface. But if you're asking about anything more personal than that, I have almost no idea."
A sigh slipped past her lips then, and she thought back to that conversation with the Code. It felt like she'd been at a stand-still since then. To say she was having a mild identity crisis was more than a little bit accurate. And after the events over the past month, she'd been trying to make her peace about the whole thing for the sake of moving forward, but the operative word was trying.
It was more of a struggle than she cared to admit, so she'd been leaving it on the backburner and just...waiting it out. Maybe for some natural solution to come to her? Or for everything to just somehow click into place one day in her mind, and she'd just be okay with things and be able to finally get past it.
"I don't have...my own...memories of this place," she went on, "so other than it being big and very high security, and probably pretty successful at developing various technologies, I'm not really sure what it was like back then."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2025 11:56 am
"Sorry," she said after a long pause, and it was a no-frills, blunt, and very sincere apology. "I forgot that you don't have memories like that." It was as close as she was willing to get to the touchy topic. She let it pass, unwilling to wound her or introduce the awkwardness, and reverted to the screen, waving a hand at it vaguely. "Is there any way to save these - send them to the ring app, somehow? Or should I take pictures the old fashioned way?" She added, almost impulsively: "I like to see it how it looked once. That sad old ******** was kicking around in there ignoring it. Someone ought to appreciate it. It's the only thing it's got going for it."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 11:05 pm
Her smile grew slightly at the apology but waved as if to say that it wasn't needed, and was more than grateful when she very quickly changed the topic. "Probably the old fashioned way," nodding down at the USB. "Knowing the security of this place, I doubt there'll be a way to copy it to anything else, but I can definitely look around for options. This place is huge, there's bound to be something. Maybe a printer?" It certainly was something that never occurred to her, probably because she had the easiest and most direct access to the USB. The way she spoke of her ancestor got a little amused huff out of her, though, and her mood lifted some. "So if I find a way print it, I'll definitely let you know."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2025 11:47 pm
She paused. She couldn't exactly power down to whip out her cellphone. So she let it pass, with a vague wave of her hand. "If you could figure it out at some point I'd be grateful for it," she said, with a sudden decisiveness as if choosing to abandon this project, although she cast another glance back at the screen and all that untranslated text with a pang of longing. "But there's no rush for it." She hesitated. "Useful thing, if you could read more of it," she observed. "Maybe useful anyway. Your ancestors must have really gotten around, if they had information on multiple planets. I wonder who else is in there. And what the research was about, exactly." Her mind was busy, her voice abstracted, clearly pursuing some internal train of thought as she spoke. "I feel like," she said, "whenever I think about everything we lost - even the knights that weren't researching things - it's like a million libraries of Alexandria burning all at once. What a waste," she finished flatly, sounding vaguely disgusted.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2025 1:17 am
"You got it." Summoning her journal, she jotted down a quick note to make sure she would remember to look into it when she next got a chance. "And yeah, I definitely agree with that. I'm learning little by little," she said, finishing up her note and sending her journal back to her subspace before continuing. "It's a lot slower than I was hoping, but a lot of people in my life have told me progress is still progress, and to just keep going. So I do." It was simple enough advice, and only asked for the bare minimum. Just one step forward, no matter how small. A quiet sigh escaped her as Joy went on, again nodding in agreement. "It really is. It's one of the reasons I'm trying to learn to read any of this. Since I have access, how could I not? Not that I think I'd find the answers to the universe or anything, but there's bound to be answers to some things." "And when I run into my ancestor I will have a long list of questions." She scoffed at that. "Believe me."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2025 5:35 pm
There was a temptation to meddle, there, but she refrained. It wasn't for her to dictate other people's priorities, even if she badly wanted to at almost all times. "Better to ask him than the Code, probably," she settled for. She leaned back, pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes. "Thank you for showing me this," she said. "I think I needed to see it. I hope we can figure out how to get the rest of it off of there, somehow. What a useful little thing to have," she added, with a vague sense that her own life might have been easier if the previous keepers of the Garde had left her something similar.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
