Quarti watched The People assembling for a feast. She had been to many such feasts in her punctuated times among the living.

She had been to them as an empress.

She had been to them as the poorest of servants.

She had been priest and chef and advisor.

This was a different way to do it for certain. But then again without the pressure of Terra pushing up to meet you there was a lot that would be different.

It was a filigree of branches that each curled and whorled out like the most delicate of etchings, knotwork or embroidery.

Each a pale white of bone or ivory.

As they moved closer she could spot how rather than being a single connected or grown object it was an assembly, individual pieces each like their own individual looping, branching form intermingled with the others and yet never quite touching.

A balance and arresting of momentum almost more impressive in the free flowing air then the art of the individual sculptures themselves.

They drifted along towards it in the slow fall that Quarti had noted was brought to by the subtle shifts and tugs on the platform.

Ever closer to one particular spiraling spoke.

A Branch Reaching out to them all.

This was a feast that was in many ways greater than any she had ever directly witnessed.

It was a festival on par with the largest gatherings of terra’s greatest and most over-populated midland metropolis.

What had they called that city?

Was it Central?

She didn't think so.

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Quarti was in fact now that she was shaking her soul a bit to try and bring loose the memory pretty sure no city ever named Central (which most times was never even the one city actually centred in the middle of the plate) had ever actually managed to be the largest city of Terra.

But honestly who cared? The largest city any given decade seemed to just drift around and wibble every way so it was not important.

But this feast?

It made those Terran gatherings she could recall seem like a total uncoordinated mess.

The People moved with a precision she would not even feel fit the idea of military.

The best military empires she could remember wished they could act in concert like The People.

This was the precision of dancers, the perfect coordination of the most deeply trained and comfortable of performers. But magnified, multiplied and improved so many thousands of times over.

The People came together and they moved not as one.

Not in a repetition of singular actions.

There was very little movement so feebly unified as how some Terran cultures had done it.

No, they moved Together.

They cued off of each other and filled the gaps of one another and even when there were mistakes.

For she could see errant scraps and random baubles slipping loose from some of them even from here.

Even in mistakes there was another of The people ready and able to move just so that the errant items were nudged or bounced or caught almost obliviously.

The work of the people setting up these whorling sculptures was a beautiful choreography to behold; and yet also completely improvisational.

Just like it was like when their elders had dueled her.

And truly she had to admit that she did eventually lose, more then just the exhaustion of the trials and keeping at it battle after battle.

But there were some that honestly bested her in the craft and guile of word play.

And even after she had bowed out Pylo had stepped in and matched and beat them one after another.

Even after they exceeded her own skill.

The people moved Together.

They Spoke Together.

They practically seemed to almost think together.

Again not in unity.

Not in conformity.

But Together nonetheless.

You could see it in how they gestured, how they shoved subtly for position.

But despite even the rivalries and subterfuge and so many more things that seemed like opposition they were even when opposed so united.

Their quarrels were like morality plays.

Their spite was theatrical and seemed to always be just so.

Clockwork would envy The People.

For where gears and metal would falter and fail if you smashed it with a hammer Quarti could honestly not say that she would expect The People to break even if you blew the lot of them apart.

If Pylo and their Transport were to smash through that beautiful sculpture Quarti was pretty sure that the whole thing would unfold just as beautifully as if they planned every step of it beforehand.

Which was why she found it not particularly surprising at all that by no clear cue or immediate action the little bauble around them stopped just short of a series of branches amidst those considered most Elder and Vetaran of the people already gently clinging to the particular branch around them.

She read the ‘room’ with a quick glance and saw a branch for each of them, you could tell if you let the ideas of etiquette kind of fuzz and paid attention to the spacing which ones were for the Terrans.

It helped that Elsie and Squidgie were already taking up their places on one set.

Quarti looked down at the control and experimentally nudged one of the control sticks but all that did was make one of the legs gently reach out ineffectually.

A glance at Pylo confirmed with a thrill up and down her spine what was expected and that it was safe.

So it was with all the grace she could muster to try and mirror the coordination of the impromptu and yet oh so wonderfully synchronized dance around them that Quarti launched herself from the Bubble and into the sweet and savory scents of the air.

And then after a quick huff of air she took in a lungful and exclaimed.

[https://i.imgur.com/lhqTKD4.png]

“Can I haz Cheezeburgor!?”

There, now Omega and Aleph could be as crude and clumsy as they like.

Quarti had hopefully set the bar low enough to keep them from at least some shame among this ridiculous culture of chaotic unity.

And if she read things right and the body language could carry what she sent pylo, which it seemed to, she had done so within an established custom that shouldnt lose any of her own face.