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Tunie the Course was multitude and vast, stretching in an expanse of wonder and future. She was new and fresh in every journey. Grown like a seed out of the needs of a particular environment. She was born this time from the sweeping expanse of a harsh burn, a solid time at maximum acceleration and then breaking. She would and was and had pass one star close.

She had and would and was beginning her great aether braking on the approach to another so that she could and had and was threading the needle into the secret ways.

All of this would come to pass for her. All of this was with her in an immediacy of the potentiate fulcrum of now. All of it was already long distant and forever done.

Thousands and Millions of branches of self and the consequences that would be. Her eyes all spanning every direction to fill her with futures. To Make up herself so that she could and would and had lived in this journey.

However Tunie the course was not all of Tunie. Although she was now bound and woven tightly as all she could be there were sections and cascades of herself that was not Course.

Evaluations and symphonies of her vast self tied into this passage and yet not needed to be always dedicated to the futures and pasts and the never ending impossible nows.

The parts of her that appreciated and knew and examined the sights into other memories, other sensations, other patterns for feeding and reading and knowing the future when the immediacy of course and impact were not paramount.

Later Tunie the Ship and her crew would be able to appreciate these things. Could discuss them as they were in gentle and refreshing dock.

Such an experience was never to be for Tunie the Course. She was always unwoven and made less fully herself to the point that to imagine that she would ever experience the self that was Ship was a phantasm.

But her future self, borne of Tunie the Ship and the next leaping flight would cherish that memory as she had all the ones before her. Fed and been enriched by the love and life of the experience.

And so Tunie the Course would do what she could to provide such a feast of wonder and vista for her past and next self. Drinking and dissecting every happenstance and idiosyncrasy her eyes drank up in their thirst to forge her future branches.

She was built of vision, but crystalized and honed to only the purpose of knowing which branch of herself would become the trunk, fattening and filling out into crystalized permanence and which must be left to wither away and never-be for their way was poison and stung of danger.

It was her purpose, her meaning, her very essence. To care for all that was exterior. And leave the rest for her other half.

Her Crew and Passenger Cargo were taking care of things, cleaning and preserving and giving those eyes that had been found unreliable clean bill of health to rejoin the throng and let the courses bloom wider and farther and more cleanly.

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There were momentary aberrations still but prescribed tonics of song and will and knowledge softened the interference and made it less full aberrations to require complete disconnect of an eye from vision then a momentary up of the noise filtering.

Feathers were being worn by impactors and some draining of their precious potencies. Tunie the Course leaned into her memories as the Ship and wove new expenditure patterns and fluttering folding patterns. Shielding the more depleted feathers at the prow with stronger more enriched ones. Favoring the strain of potencies to the core drive and the aft most primaries. Places that direct impactors at full cruise speed would be glancing or none-existent at best.

The transit way was solid and clear. The Current of previous vessels well away where their own velocities would be catastrophically intersecting or perpendicular.

This was long since abandoned as a major route and thus there was little to no risk of oncoming debris from an equally speeding vessel. Tunie the course was in her futures wrapped and twined into chaparral at the borders of Redweed’s influence. Open and mostly untilled by the agriculture of any Polity of note. Bordered by the deep wilds of a true forest.

It was a suicidally wasteful route by any observer that watched her and traced her contours. Vessels of Tunie’s measure and dietary needs would starve if they habituated visiting such minor and poor feeding ‘ports’ as could be found here.

The Reef chaparral and deep wildernesses beyond were the dominion for slower and less ravenous beings then Tunie the Course and her Ship self. She and her kind was bred and grown for the open voids of Stellar hollows. Where her course could be spun in great straight shots and subtly bent whorls to glide in the currents of the outer star song.

Where turns were few and the harsh pushing leaps to her optimal velocity was rewarded with deep full bellies of refined grist pooled and harvested from a half dozen or more stars and the fields that drank of them.

Only the young, stupid or desperate would habituate such wasteful journeys.

Or those with secret knowledge of hidden routes and unknown ventures.

Tunie the course was fresh and young but herself of the past and she thougth herself now were not stupid.

There was a secret way that she would slip through.

Where others knew only a tangled maze of crevices in the deeps of the solid mass of reef bone Tunie knew a path. Cutting clear through the darkness of shaded deeps and caverns and into the Deep Wilderness of the local Forest.

And within that route Tunie knew a familiar and friendly polity who always had exactly her favorite treats.

Her Crew also always had improved Morale after visits.

Tunie the Course knew she would live well.

Her life would have wonderful purpose.

And She would be fulfilled.