Location: Deep Space Drifter. Still. Haven't seen anything resembling a planet, asteroid, or even interesting space debris float past. Just stars. And more stars. And the occasional nebula that looks suspiciously like spilled paint on black velvet. Starting to think the house isn't just lost, it's achieved a state of profound interstellar apathy.
Systems holding. Barely. The runes governing atmospheric containment and internal temperature are glowing with exertion, drawing more power than I'm comfortable with. The silence outside is still absolute, a heavy blanket smothering the universe. Inside, the house groans more now, protesting the constant strain of keeping the lethal emptiness out. It's like living inside a ship taking on water, only the water is absolute zero and infinite vacuum. Comforting.
Tried that short-range scrying I mentioned. Pointless exercise in frustration. Tuned the bowl for proximity, maybe a few light-hours radius – generous, I thought. Asked it to show me anything. Anything solid, anything moving (that wasn't just distant starlight), anything that wasn't more fucking void. The surface shimmered, swirled… and showed me static. Like visual noise. Then, for a moment, shapes seemed to coalesce – vast, geometric, impossibly angled things that flickered at the edge of perception and made my teeth ache. Then, gone. Back to static. Tried three more times. Same result: emptiness, static, headache-inducing glimpses of 'probably better left unseen'. Either there’s truly nothing nearby, or the void itself actively resists being looked at too closely. My bet’s on the latter. More dramatic.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The Hair has moved from stunned silence to restless unease. It’s not flailing wildly like during the initial jolt, but it won't settle. It keeps flowing around the room, coiling and uncoiling, brushing against furniture, the walls, me. Feels like it's searching for something, or maybe just deeply uncomfortable with the profound lack of anything tangible outside the hull. The static electricity is worse today, too; sparks snap off it occasionally if it moves too fast. Need to dampen that before it interferes with a critical rune.
And speaking of things that shouldn't be happening – there's frost. On the inside of the main Void-Window. Not thick ice, just delicate, feathery patterns spreading from the edges where the glass (or magically hardened crystal, whatever) meets the frame. The heating charms are working overtime, the internal air isn't that cold, but still… frost. Means the absolute zero outside is leaching through the wards more effectively than I'd like. Means the boundary is thinner than I thought.
Right. Deeply unsettling. Scrying is useless. Hair is acting like a nervous cat made of static cling. House is groaning. Frost is forming inside. Plan D (Brew More Tea) is already in progress. Plan E is now 'Meticulously Inspect Every Single Void-Warding Anchor Point Starting Immediately'. Plan F is 'Panic Quietly While Pretending To Be Competent'.
Gods, I miss the grumpy Grouper. I miss the moss. I even, briefly, miss the singing Jell-O dimension (no, scratch that, never mind). Anywhere but here. This emptiness… it gets under your skin. Or maybe that's just the frost spreading. Need to check those wards. Now.
