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[After searching around for roughly an hour, Rowan ends up in the library.

It took him very little time to figure out what happened; he may have disdained most popular media concepts, but he knew what spaceships were. He knew people claimed to be kidnapped by them, or cows were kidnapped.

It took him even less time that this ship was doing something to him. Rowan tried to shift, trusting to his wolf senses more than his human ones in situations like this, and failed.

Each time.

Thus, the need for answers. He did not find anyone else to ask, the computer was very unhelpful, and the library is the last avenue he could think of for answers.

The pile of books laying haphazardly on the tables demonstrated well that this avenue wasn't giving him much in the way of answers either.]

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[This was amazing. There were large metal boxes in the food preparation area. You shouted directions at them and they provided. Yesterday she'd asked for food and had received strange, curved yellow fruit in answer. It had taken ages for her to work out how to eat them but after finally separating the sweet inner fruit from its sour rubbery shell, she had decided: these were the greatest things this metal beast had bestowed upon her.

She'd asked for more and it had dropped a whole bunch in front of her. She loved this metal thing.

Banananananas in hand, she went back to exploring. With each turn this place revealed new wonders. An indoor lake, a modest selection of breakfast wines, and now-]

Holy shit, [she cried out as she happened upon this latest discovery] this is the biggest library in the world!

[Rowan stops perusing his latest book, hidden in a corner of the library, to cock his head at the noise.

There was a person in here? Or a new computer making noise, but it sounded like a person.

He stands up and walks in the direction of the door again, still holding the book in his hand. It's a history of a race he had never heard of before; he's reading it to see if they were the ones to create this ship.]

Hello?

Oh, you're here too. [Don't get her wrong. She doesn't mind Rowan turning up on her amazing metal dream. He's the only person in the world who doesn't think she's worthless and stupid. But if he's here, then others might get here too. She doesn't really want to see anyone from Balfour ever again.] I found these yellow things. They're good. Do you want one? [She doesn't sound enthused about handing them over.]

How long have you been here?

[He's here too? Rowan shakes his head at the offer of bananas, watching this woman.

Strange clothing. Treating him like she knew him. She was a cause of more questions than of answers.]

A few hours. You?

[Mari frowns and steps towards one of the book shelves, lifting a time and flicking it open.] I don't know. Days? [Probably far longer than that.] I don't care. It's nicer here than it is at the Hour. Even you have to admit that.

['Call me Ishmael,' this book began. It looked long and fictitious.] Have you read any of these?

[The Hour? Rowan debates with himself whether he should admit to this girl he isn't who she thinks he is or continue the act to learn more information.

He decides that she likely has no information required, if her clothes are any indication. She looks as if she just left a renaissance fair but did not have the money for an expensive costume.]

What is the Hour?

[Mari turns her frown from the book to him, putting it back and pointing at him with the banananana bunch.]

Come off it. Alright? The place where you got mauled by a werewolf.

[Was she threatening him with bananas? No. Or, if she was, it was not much of a threat.

Rowan tries for diplomacy. It was what he was chosen for and if other people appeared on the ship, it would stand him in good heed.

He couldn't help, however, to note that whoever he was supposed to be, he was around werewolves. Her statement implied he was not one, however]

I'm sorry, I think you have me mistaken for someone else. [I am a werewolf, he almost says, but remembers the Oath of the Moon. He would not admit to it until he absolutely had to]

[Mari's face collapses briefly. She puts it back together after a moment, forcing her eyebrows to lift up.]

Oh, right then. I won't bother you, in that case.

[More for the sake of having something to do she puts the book down, then goes to a different shelf, walking away. Well, that's no good.]

That didn't mean I didn't want to talk to you. [She was the only person he has seen so far, and Rowan did not like being alone. At all.] Two heads are better than one at figuring out why we were kidnapped by a spaceship.

Maybe so, but, [Mari reads up and down authors. Trying not to act overly agitated when she spots her father's name on the spine of one of them, she removes it. How Green Was my Valley. Yep, she's taking this.] I don't particularly care why. It's nice here. I don't even think this is a ship. I haven't felt any rocking, or water.

It's a spaceship. It flies through space, not water. [More and more sure he dated her correctly. What sort of situation was this that dragged in people from wildly different time periods?

He sits down by where she is and watches her. It's more predatory than he assumes; it's easy to forget that sort of thing among humans.]

What? [Mari throws a look in his direction. What sort of boat flies through fucking space?] First you don't know me, now you're speaking of flying through space. Did you hit your head?

[Rowan points with his chin towards a window in the library.] Those stars out there indicate we're on a spaceship. Try looking through it to see any ground.

[The question was why. Experiments? Unlikely. They were on what looked like a cruise ship. An expensive cruise ship, complete with a library.

That was a pretty big question in of itself. Who spent the money on this, and then let it just go roam the universe idly?]

How would it even get up there? Don't talk nonsense. [Mari went back to the books, pulling out interesting looking ones, reading the front pages and then slipping them under her arm.] It's probably just night.

The ones I know of use rockets. I don't know how this one works. [He continues to watch her. Was she just going to leave with all the books under her arms? Wouldn't surprise him, from the interaction he's had with her so far.]

Why are you so sure it's nonsense?

I don't know what that is. And that's easy. If chickens, with their wings, can't fly due to misattribution of body weight, how is a far less air-capable boat supposed to fly through the air high enough that it can reach space? Not to mention, as the Greeks tell us, getting too high up would result in the sun setting us aflame, just as it melted Icarus's wax wings before he could get too high up.

[Who is this Simone de Beauvoir? Whatever, Mari is taking her too. There's an M. Llewelyn, but it turns out to just be a Margaret.] I'm many things, but stupid isn't one of them.

Edited 2012-06-19 11:56 (UTC)

The Sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth. It isn't the heat that would kill one, but the atmosphere. No oxygen, no gravity. This is like a very advanced plane. [He thinks a moment, then adds] A large metal object that flies in the sky rather like this.

[Rowan looks at the books and ponders searching for something that shows pictures of a plane. He is sure there is something there, but finding it within the frame of this conversation would be impossible.

Then he remembers the computer in the corner, where he spent a fruitless hour arguing with to define where they were and where they were going.

It failed at that, but he figures it can show her what an airplane is] I can show you.

[Mari flips open a book, nodding distractedly. Obviously, this Rowan is disappointingly insane. At least this way she can get around his weird possessiveness.]

Whatever you say. [Crazy] What is it? Wings?

A big, enclosed metal boat. [Rowan leads her to the corner, when the computer was sitting. It was refreshingly user-friendly; the computers at home were nowhere near as nice and usually infested by some spirit that wanted to cause problems.

If this had a spirit, it was unusually helpful]

Airplane.

A boat made from metal would sink, [Mari kept her voice slow, as though speaking to a child.

Bananananas in one hand and books in the other, she raises an eyebrow as the computer projects an image of what looks like a cross with bits attached. In its quiet, gender neutral, expressionless way, the computer explains things to her. 'A fixed-wing aeroplane is a transportation vessel. It utilises thrust from an engine or propeller to gain flight. The Wright brothers are internationally recognised as being the first to create sustained and controlled flight in a machine heavier than air in 1903.']

That date's wrong.

Why is it wrong? [This girl was a better student than any of the People that had sought him out as a teacher. The typical combination of pride, arrogance, and passion made for terrible teachers and worst students.]

Because it's not 19, something. It's 16...something. Your thingy is off by three hundred years. [Mari adjusts her books under her arm, her top lip pushing out a little.] The year's wrong.

[Rowan likes being right, even if it made this situation more surreal than it was a moment ago when he was still guessing. Whatever this was, it was stealing from wildly different time periods.

Why?]

I'm from 2012. This is history to me. [He sits back again and thinks, this time out-loud] Which means we could be in any time now.

[Mari gives him the sort of sideways look she reserves for those she thinks of as truly insane. Though, to be fair, she's beginning to doubt herself too. Herself and everything else.]

Am I in the future?

I don't know when we are. [Rowan settles back into his spot and eyes the computer again.] But I'm guessing we're in the future for you. Sixteen-hundreds?

[Wow, she's been catapulted into the future. Mari considers this information for a while, staring blankly at the talking box. Then her face sort of falls in on itself like a collapsing house and her knees fold. She hits the ground with a whump and remains still. If she's four hundred years in the future, everyone she knows is dead.

Her face soon goes back to normal. Tobias and Silence are dead, she can live with that. Moirine's death, Marijke's, those...she can't think about them right now. Even if they both hate her, the thought of them gone leaves her feeling hollow.]

Right. Sixteen hundreds.

[Rowan watches the girl collapse, not moving from her spot. In retrospect, telling someone they are now time traveling could be traumatic.

It was unsettling. However, Rowan thought it was logical that if they could be pulled from times, they could go back to the same times. He would get home, if he had to rip apart this machine to do so.]

Welcome to the future.

['Welcome to my fist on the side of your face' she wanted to reply. Instead, Mari stood up shakily and nodded.]

Right. ['Fuck you.'] Right.

[Mari gathers up her books and banananas. She doesn't look at him while she does it, deliberately taking her time about picking them up and adjusting them in her arms.] I'm going now.

[He waves idly at her and stands up himself to go back to his books.] I'll return to finding a way home from this mess.

[No point asking for someone from the Renaissance to help. What he knew about spaceships and aliens was tied to lame movies from his childhood. She didn't even have that]

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ahahaha 'set yourself on fire' just came on

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