Omega was the first to get caught up to what had been asked before Aleph could pull herself out of the meandering thoughts.

“Wait... did you just ask if we wanted um... the tree vine things to be brought in here? Like uh as an installation?”

Pylo sashayed a little ways back, pulling herself along with twines of those sinuous arms and ‘tails’. Body like a strange sailing float of a creature in front of them. Hanging there incongruously against the blue and white of what despite the fact that Aleph had already sat engulfed in the fluffy wondrous silky softness of the wind like fibers still looked like clouds.

“It would be desirable to knead the sights of green light drinking vanes into your eyes for paroxysms of relief and joy? And shuffling the metal boxes and working things from the terrible can to here? Where the air can soak and hug with cool fuzzy softs? Gently and sweetly instead of with shuddering bangs and thuds and thumping grinding pressing? Unless you prefer rough treatment like some times... But rest most times here for safety?”

Aleph blinked a few times, she felt slow, groggy. It was not quite as bad as the first time that Pylo had spoken to her. When parts of her mind had wired up wrong. Or when the accent had changed and everything good went inverted and rotten.

But the numbers and the facts and impacts of so much time.

The rush from it was giving her jaw a tense ache... why was she clenching her jaw? She should stop that and get it to relax.

Quarti spoke up next.

“So much niceness be onto us from thee? To help us moving in abodelike this be sweet with all the cool fuzzies in the wrapping So many things! The Temperatures! It wicks away the hot and the cool perfect like! It pulls the air! Helps the breathing and with quiets! SO QUIET! We staying here most of all defs! What next! Bring house warmth food stuffs? Hipsolovely is best!”

Pylo tilted her head there, drifting slowly into a wall, coils of her three tails and loops of her arms sinking into the ‘clouds’ so it looked like she was emerging from a storm front. Or some other cumulous.

It vaguely tickled at a memory that Aleph almost had right up until Pylo spoke again.

“Cake is Available”

Aleph blinked then looked around.

“Cake? You have cake? That’s not a euphemism for something or anything. Just actual cake?”

Pylo tilted her head before nodding slowly.

Quarti laughed whooped “Let’s get our stuff!” and jumped over to the airlock. The pit of darkness in a glowing sky of blue and white. Slipping through the membrane like a rippling pool of oil.

Omega and Aleph shared a look then shrugged and shoved off of the strangely springy clouds to sail into the passage themselves.

“Since you offered I guess we can get some things. But it’s going to take a while to move everything, the berths were not meant to be unloaded quite like this”

Pylo nodded and followed after them. The exit was a bit of a squeeze and while aleph tried to slip through she brushed one of Pylo’s tails. The almost vertebrae like protrusions running along a shoulder and cheek.

[https://i.imgur.com/pRz0jIm.png]

It was ‘soft’ almost feathery and spongy. More like rubber then solid bone.

“Ah, I’m sorry... I hope you don’t mind”

“Stroking and fondling is permissible... But I won’t yet carry your brood.”

Aleph’s face burned incandescent as she quickly pulled herself into the bubble. Thankful that had happened after everyone else had passed through the membrane.

Only remembering after she got in and Quarti was nudging her with an elbow that everyone could hear Pylo regardless of air.

“Oh ho ho! Skin ta Skin with the big hipsalicious!? Quarti didn't think it was lil innocent you all prowlin! Rightous slinker!”

Omega glared at Quarti and then offered a hand which Aleph shook off as she moved over to the controls. Pushing on the little pink control stick to try and get everything moving.

“It was nothing! I just brushed against her while trying to get in here and apologized! It’s just her weird lewd speak making more of it then there was!”

Quarti snickered and tumbled over herself.

But Aleph was finding the rush of blood in her ears made it easier to ignore the sounds. She very fixedly did not look at the glinting sweeps and curves of their alien escort as it wrapped around the surface of the bubble. Then They were twisting around and the airlock was exposed to the hallway.

She didn't acknowledge anything till they were back at the berth and settling up against the airlock so Omega could open it up.

Then she felt the gloved hand stop her from shoving off to get to work packing.

“Aleph. Are you sure you are alright? You're acting a little shaken up and really tense. There is some delicate equipment we need to manage if we really want to move ship from the berth to that chamber. The Airlock alone is going to be a problem constantly cycling it. Can't handle that stuff if you are in a mood like this”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Pylo hung over them waiting for a chance to help.

Aleph shivered a little to try and clear her head. Maybe something had gone a little wrong with her after that experience after all.

But there were more important things then that.

“I’m okay, it’s just the way she talks gets to me a bit... and well she made us a room full of sky! It’s practically like one of the children stories of an afterlife!”

Omega frowned a bit and shook her head.

“Being dead is nothing like those stories Aleph, And it’s nothing like that room you don’t have eyes to see things, you feel everything. Everything is like touch, well everything is song technically, but for a unmoored soul the song is like touch. And it’s not a safe place to stay unless you have relatives to pray to you and even then...”

"You think TERRA was not safe Big blue?! Sure you'd starve and rot like over ripe fuit in the sun if you were stupid like those dodgy hiders, But tonso souls and people everywhere on Terra, All friendly sort and sing songy nice wise! Terra was safe as can be to die, Practically none wise of the monsters! "

Omega scowled a bit and shrugged but Aleph was puzzled. It was the first time she’d gotten anything resembling an explanation about dying that actually made any sense. Or at least what came after. Most everyone at home already had lived at least three times. And nearly any records she found assumed you already had experienced it once.

“What do you two mean?”

Omega huffed and leaned back.

“Quarti here, is a bit of a survivalist I guess you could say? She went out into the wilderness instead of staying close to a family to sing to her and give prayer but- "

"And then everyone DIED!"

"-Ahem... But to put this in perspective. If she was a wilderness survivalist and everyone else is a nice stay at home city girl like me... You have to understand that human souls are practically blind and deaf. Going out away from the familiar is extremely dangerous if you don’t know what your doing... Easy to get lost and end up fading away... or getting eaten. Or never finding somewhere to be born again”

"The trick is to figure out how to eat things, and then find small things that aren't, and use their eyes from your stomach before you digest them."

Aleph blinked a bit.

“Quarti... you are using a lot clearer words and I understand what your saying even LESS... “

“Why you think I say it like I do? Ta help the young-uns follow me thinklike proper!”

Omega shrugged a bit.

“I don’t know how she does it either, But I do know a lot of souls have TRIED to follow what she did and never returned. So it’s not as easy as she makes it sound. She’s VERY old and she got VERY good at it and as she says, Terra is supposedly very safe... once you learn how not to stumble into ah... I guess you could call it a void is actually really safe... The other sideways not-void?..."

Quarti chirped in "The Less-shorter-specific Ending Direction. That Smells like prayer."

Aleph frowned.

“Now you are starting to sound like all the stuff I tried to find on how the stuff works before. But no one can explain what any of that means!”

Omega sighed and shook her head.

“It’s different for each of us, and it changes as we take on lives, I only can follow what Quarti says because we can kind of point at the same thing in song while we talk... But it’s a thing you can’t describe well without using nonsense words”

"Well even the afterlife is made of math right? I know math pretty well."

Omega scowls a little bit “The only ones I know that have delved into the equations for this stuff more than the basics are at least twice as lived as I am and their skills don’t make any sense to me. It gets REALLY complicated really fast. Supposedly one of them invented all the fundamentals of making computers, and half of what we use in cryptograpy, *by mistake* just trying to write down clearly *where* the soul is.”

Aleph blinked.

“I thought it was in our brain and spines? Resonating with our symbiotes and our neurons”

"It mostly is but also pokes out into things when you sing and when you're dead it's all over the place in all living things and sometimes in computers and rocks? Maybe? I kind of only know the basics. I did once astral project into the university servers and it was really fuzzy and I could feel all the files touching me and being me but they weren't-."

Quarti suddenly was there, and shoving a canvas bag bulging with ‘stuff’ at Omega.

The impact arresting the bag’s momentum but throwing Omega into the springy wall of the bubble with a wheeze.

“Quarti! I was trying to explain things to the kid!”

“Oiy We’s got lovely lasses waiting on us ta heave go! Less Tongue Flapping unless you're gonna do a face smash and skin grind! We’z gots packing ta do I’m noit sleeping in this stink can after THAT! And Hipsalooo lady of thick thighs promised CAKE!”