CERESUltra

Music Nerd, Author, Yote!

  • She/they/it

30s/white/tired/coyote/&
Words are my favorite stim toy


Making-up-Mech-Pilots
@Making-up-Mech-Pilots

Mech Pilot who wants to hear the wind sing for the first time in 1000 years.


CERESUltra
@CERESUltra

The Odyssian set sail from sol roughly a millenia ago. It was hardly the first, but definitely the last. The planetary collision happened only a few years into its voyage, and the earth that had birthed them was no more. With only self-sustaining supplies, and what minerals they could loot from asteroids and small planetoids, The Odyssian survived. It was 3 centuries before any living contact from outside the ship. It was hostile, a threat, an ultimatum for wandering into a territory they had no idea existed. Hastily, repair equipment was built into defense weapons, and casualties were moderate, but the Odyssian survived. Adapted. Connected with floating civilizations, all of them eking out livings on bases built into unforgiving empty rocks, or adrift in a manner similar to the Odyssian. She became known for her pilots, for never attacking first, a floating sanctuary with the last records of the cradle from which all known life had sprung. Coveted by many, taken by none, it became one of the great wonders of the galaxy, the hanging gardens of babylon and the library of alexandria, rolled into one. It stood alone as a monument to humanity's last great achievement, what cooperation and ingenuity could achieve, unparalleled altogether.

Or so it was thought, for almost 800 years.

Upon the far shore of the airless sea, a planet was found. It had air. It had seas. It had ruins. It had, perhaps, civilization. The Odyssian crews scanned it for months, archivists and scientists working together, trying to find how a planet so far from everything felt like a model of earth. An intentional one. Terraforming was largely thought to be impossible, and indeed beyond preserved fictional works, no record of success existed, even from knowledge gained from sol's other scattered children.

4 months of scanning and investigating, and an agreement was reached. A small crew of researchers, with a mech as an escort, would visit the surface, study further, and try to make contact if any peoples still remained.

Before the call was even put out, a pilot volunteered. They were neither young nor old, tall nor short, a seasoned pilot who had accomplished nothing of any real note. They had the old texts. Anything and everything. Tales of the wind, and how it sounded. A fan was not enough, not the currents of air in the corridors of the ship, or the artificial manufactured wind of the flora preserves. They wanted to feel real wind, real air, real soil. No one found cause to object.

A spot with visible ruins was picked. A small island, sandy and grass covered, with some ruins and a wide stretch of beach deemed the least harmful to land on. Great research and care was put into prepping the crafts for atmospheric entry, something not done in time immemorial. After weeks of prep, the expedition began. With minimal difficulty, the ships made it to their intended camp. The pilot did not wait for the go-ahead. Before sensors even chirped to say the air was safe and clean, they were out of the mech and cracking off their helmet.

for the first time in millenia, a human breathed fresh air. the breeze tussled their short hair. the sound of waves, of rustling grass, the feel of it across skin. they were chastised by the other members, but they didn't care. it was even better than the stories had made it sound. they smiled ear to ear.

then they heard the singing.

a little ways along the beach, a promontory rock rose from the sand's edge. upon it, strange stone fingers jutted from the ground. when the group reached the ruins, they found stone pillars, covered in tubes, and with larger holes. each was carved and arranged to produce certain notes in the wind, like an automated flute. even minor shifts in wind direction provided new melodies and chords.

The expeditions moved on, but the pilot did not. over time, their mech was disassembled and put together as a home for the pilot. they never left the ground again, and for a very long life sat and whistled along with the singing stones every day until their last.


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