estimated time of arrival

0. FACES PLACES

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THE LANGUAGE OF WEATHER was something they were well-versed in, with one detail indicating an entire future plot within the smog of a cosmic storm. The wind batters your skin, the dew point measured at the tip of your tongue, eyes on the moons watching them wax and wane and turn the tides. Every cloud, every degree, every waterfall of light━━everything had its reasons, and those reasons could sum up to natural precognition.

(          In today's climate, though, that skill was fairly useless in an abundance of places. But Nee wasn't thinking much about that. Her head was elsewhere.        )

They watched the flurry fish, skipping on the water and extending what people had dubbed their 'wings,' as the ship rode along the waves swimmingly. Reaching a hand down, she let her fingertips skim the salty, blue surface, feeling the coldness of this arctic front settle in on their way home. She looks out into the distance, filled with fog and remnants of the first snow falling upon the icy floors that floated by the actual land, the frozen expanse melding into their dirt with ease and sewn into tundra roots.

Just two more days, the head navigator came up behind her to say, and then we'll be back to your beloved port to regroup with your Mamma. This head navigator was her father━━the teacher of weather and the moon, backbone of the entire crew. And she was merely his student, but after all these years, she could easily say the weather was her first language. It taught her everything she needed to know, enhancing her perception and allowing her to be free and reassured by the elements and order of things throughout her childhood.

These two months had been her first expedition, from the sea to space and back. Little did she know it would be her last, for two days could pass by in the blink of an eye.

The vessel began to rock, the waves becoming stronger, and the flurry fish soon dove back into the sea water frantically. Behind the head navigator and his child, something colossal began to rise. . .

"NEE? Miss Nee~. . . Are you awake?"

The soft thuds at the door━━the lightest of knocks, plush and unassuming━━somehow disturbed Nee from her rest, waking her up before the most important part of her dreams would've taken place. It always happened like that, didn't it? As tense and as brutally momentous as a frozen painting's depictions.

For a moment, she had forgotten where she was. Her exhaustion clouded her memories, and it took her a while to identify the clean sheets and gold-framed windows that this was her new bedroom. This was the Astral Express, and it must have been the conductor knocking on the sliding door.

Consider her lucky. She hoped for something sweet rather than the salted cod and boiled eggs in a cup she had so often.

"Come in," she eventually said. She felt her throat run dry from the morning.

The conductor was, in fact, not human. In her eyes, Nee compared them to a navy-blue hare with comically large eyes in a conductor's suit: in other words, a sentient stuffed toy. She wasn't exactly sure what they were, but they were one of the most efficient conductors she had ever encountered.

They held a tray in their hands of food, adjacent to a waiter in some manner as they smiled adorably. "Good morning. Pom Pom prepared you a nice breakfast for your first stay on the Express!" They explained. They waddled on over to her bedside as to not let her move an inch out of her sheets. "Simple, but most of the crew enjoys the pleasure of waffles and berries. This small glass container is the syrup, and this is a cup of juice."