video | orchestra three, dimmed evening hours

[jingyeets]

( Jingyi flops back to be sitting on a bed (large! well, double versus the twins of the cabins, so anyone who's in the doubles carriage is already used to this, lucky buds. He gives the ICP a look after sighing, holding up his hands in a stopping gesture. He keeps his voice lower since, well, this talks into cabins and some people are likely asleep, but: )

Okay, so, right. How do people sleep alone? It's so quiet! The big bed's nice, but I'm waking myself up here.

( He doesn't do pleading as his best look, but here, have a twenty-one year old making a Beseeching Expression to the people awake enough to have noticed the ICP up and talking. )

Anyone up for a four night sleepover or something? Elidibuses need not apply.

Comments

[jingyeets]

Is that Winner as in one who is victorious, or is a homophone for something else, in your language?

( Is it a translation thing, he wants to ask, because sometimes he's run into oddities like that. It's a true question, nothing snide, Jingyi asking with a lift of his brow. )

[gundamofthedesert]

[ Quatre chuckled at the question ]

Yes, it is the same as one who is victorious. Perhaps, many years ago, before my family went to space, a variation meant something else, but now it is the same.

[jingyeets]

... Your whole family went into space?

... On a ship? Or...

( help this has only barely been covered by last mission having that whole bogus metal town in space affair! )

What exactly does it mean to have gone to space?

[gundamofthedesert]

[ Quatre nodded his head in response to that question ]

In my world, we have colonies in space. They are basically large spaceships that orbit the Earth at specific points, called Lagrange points. Long complex science explanation made short, those are points where the colonies will orbit without eventually sinking closer to Earth.

But my family traveled to space when the colonies were originally being built and we’ve been living on the colonies ever since. I had never seen Earth except from a distance until recently.

[jingyeets]

What, you haven't seen dirt before?

( earth............................... is not a name he knows for a world. and no one's talked about earth to him before. so. hello, quatre, see his look of incredible disbelief over what amounts to a translation error. )

[gundamofthedesert]

No... I have.

[ He paused for a moment to figure out how to phrase it ]

So, the planets like the ones we visit on our missions The planet that I am from and the one you are likely from too is called Earth. Not just the ground, but the planet itself. I had seen dirt, but I had never been to the planet itself.

[jingyeets]

... Why assume the whole of a world has the same name?

( He's more baffled on that point, now that the soil vs Name thing is cleared up. )

[gundamofthedesert]

It is true. Other countries might have different names for the planet, but the actual origin of the name is from a language on my world called “German”. The name of the planet is derived from the word “erde” which does in fact mean “the ground”. In fact, a lot of other languages on my world do use “ground” as their word for planet. So, in a sense, the whole world is “the ground.”

But that also doesn’t mean that the whole planet has the same name. My ancestors are from a portion of the Earth referred to as Arabia. But Arabia is only a small portion of the planet and there are many other countries.

[ Sorry… he knows a bit too much on history, geographic, and science ]

[jingyeets]

... Yeah so what did your ancestors call the whole world? Probably not Arabia, right?

[gundamofthedesert]

Honestly, I’m not sure what the ancient name would have been. Most people were not so well traveled in older days, and they didn’t know a lot about the rest of the world so the concept of referring to the entire planet and not just neighboring kingdoms would be strange. Now-a-days, it would be called al’ard.

[jingyeets]

I guess what I really mean is what word is used to say world, then? Is that al'lard?

[gundamofthedesert]

[ Quatre nodded ]

If I were to talk someone from that area today, I would use al’ard to refer to the planet.

[jingyeets]

So you're from Al'ard, also called Earth. Where I'm from, we'd say the whole is Tianxia.

( 'all under heaven.' )

[gundamofthedesert]

‘Tianxia’… That is a nice name. I like it. It is interesting to hear what other cultures call the planet.

[jingyeets]

Mm, it's nice hearing the different words. 'Cause I think our worlds are more different than people think, even when they seem so familiar... but the echoes of familiar things, those are nice too.

[gundamofthedesert]

[ He nodded ]

So far, there haven't been many who can define my world the way I do, and even then it is not the same thing. But I like hearing about the other worlds. My world has changed so much being so heavily based in technology.

[ Not that he was complaining about his world. It was familiar and he had loved having a Gundam except for the fact of having to fight with it, but there was something surprising hearing about worlds that could essentially be his world's past ]

[jingyeets]

Does that mean you've got flying swords too? Just based on technology instead of cultivation?

[gundamofthedesert]

[He paused for a moment as he thought about that]

Yes, I guess in a way they are flying swords. Certainly flying weapons that we use to travel. Heero’s most fit the description of a flying sword, similar to how I’ve seen others be able to do it here.