Aleph rallied herself while Omega fumed. But her friend apparently did not have the right skills prepped to actually manage this conversation.

She however felt on firmer footing, even though she was sitting in a 'cloud'.

Aleph shoved off to gently drift towards Pylo. Then tossed her helmet to arrest the motion and bring her to a stop near by the frankly distressed looking lips of their courier.

"Still how is it THAT much slower? Are we going AWAY from the colony right now?"

Pylo huffed again, and this time Aleph was able to watch the steam of her breath burst from every crevice and cranny, the faint scent that reminded her of a metal foundry and the wave of moist heat that reminded her of a sauna.

The air currents pulled the steam in rivulets and whorls away from the black shimmering flesh in milky rivers even as it dissipated and faded. Dragging whatever efluvients might be laced in that mist into the walls.

“The great toothy mother beast Terra hides in her cave, shunning the gaze of all around. She circles in a flaunting dance with her delicious corpulence. The passages outside are narrow and threaded with care. Beyond her nook of intimacy dance and lurk the many brothels of goods. Rock sellers and meat markets. Grifters of Grist and Courtesans of Fleshes and Fruits in all kinds. She who dances and sings the heavens with light tight around her sweet feathers must leap and shove and grind and thrust forward and back to kiss the utmost and then drag herself torpid. It starves her loveliness with every jaunt. So we Gyrate across and around to fill her hunger and stave the terrible dark of starvation as we twine and twist to make our way. Skimming and dodging the reef and it’s spore so that we are not stripped to searing bone by our passing. Stopping to satisfy our hungers”

Aleph and Omega took a moment to try and digest that. Omega ultimately found her voice before the others.

“But Terra paid you! We paid you entire lakes of water, we drove herds of cattle to the slaughter to meet the price agreed too. What you took as payment was enough to bankrupt even one of the larger and richer nations if it was not for the alliance! Surely that was enough to get the package sent directly! We beggered nations for each of the trade ships!”

The pulsing waves of steam and the hissing whistling chuffs took a moment for Aleph to realize was laughter.

“Paltry trifles and delicate snacks for she who flies in feathers! Maybe on return we will find the sweet decadence needed to make a single leg of our journey without the pang of hunger and spectre of starvation. It is sweet charity and gentle soft gifts that we who exchange the pleasures between of the reef give unto such beings as the sludgy seed discharge upon the teeth of terra transit beyond. It is so that you may grow strong and be able to truly offer things of substance to satiate the hunger of the journeys”

Aleph’s voice cracked a little bit.

“We... we got a discount? A gift? All of you? All the hundreds of visitors are ferrying us to the colonies effectively for free?!”

Pylo waggled one viney finger in a ‘so-so’ gesture that Aleph knew she must have pulled from someone’s head.

“How much would it have taken to actually pay for it properly... how much more?”

Pylo bristled a bit and made a scowling face of disgust.

“Strip you in the crib?! Rape/Defile and consume a mere infant before it’s grown and strong? Poison the seed before it sprouts?! Forbidence for such stupidity!”

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Aleph flinched that had not been comfortable, she kind of wanted to vomit just from the slight ‘tone’ shift that had come up.

“No I don’t mean you would... I just... I wanted to know how kind you were to us... how much more would it have cost to go directly to the colony?”

Pylo’s face melted into a softer expression, and then curved into a pained smile.

“Thukn of the grist that you gave onto us would suffice, But with a dænoʊsh of purk to wait for her loins and folds to squeeze and fill her feathers with the potencies”

Aleph tried to grasp the meaning that was still somewhere between the tip of her tongue and a song worming through her head until it caused a migraine. It would at least FIT in the scholar’s notation but there were pieces of inference that seemed missing from that concept.

Eventually Omega once again was faster at parsing it into something more sensible. Or she was cheating and holding onto a skillshare for the mathematics.

Even odds really.

“One-Hundred-Thousand Times! For one trip?! That... That would... we would have to drive the cattle to extinction to pay that all at once. Multiple times... We would have to work the fields to dust and then starve most of Terra to pay that... How could she even fit that much on this ship?”

Pylo shrugged her shoulders a bit then looked at the clouds all around.

“Tooth slime nestled thin and sparse is hardly scarps to make a sizable meal for she who dances with light’s song... We shared how to make better grist. More satisfying and fulfilling. With deeper stores and richer textures. Sweeter and stronger than the meats you know. Should be ready plump and ripe and juicy when we return”

The trio had grown silent.

Then Pylo cracked a bright grin and practically sang.

[https://i.imgur.com/NBcT7FU.png]

“So! Is the accommodation a firm and supple fit? Sweet and soft? Fresh in how it seeps into your chest and rushes through your limbs? Crawling beneath skin with freshness and zest? No sharp pain? All soft sweet and firm pleasures? Should I procure one of the beautiful writhing sun worms from She who sings tummy fluffs? The ones which abounded and tickled us during the telling of soft tales and intimate lies? Or perhaps be needing help with dragging the hulks of metal and dirt and caustic little toys here?”

Aleph was still trying to digest just what the people of terra had gotten themselves into. She thought of the endless parade of traders and the ‘wonders’ they had bestowed in ‘trade’.

Trade that Aleph now realized was hardly much more than charity and pity purchases to help save the pride of what she was coming around to see was the utterly impoverished nations of Terra.

They had only paid one-hundred-thousandth the actual cost to make their trip. But were being ferried around on a roundabout walk to absorb that expense. They were stuck on a journey that when it ended would be the majority of her life by a slim margin.

And they would arrive almost sixty years later than anyone expected.

She wondered what terrible short cuts the other colonists were suffering from with the miriad of strange beings that ferried them.

Pylo was alright and very accomodating and friendly.

What if she hadn't been?