fandomtownies | The beach, late Monday afternoon

Fjord... really didn't want to interrupt anybody in their reverie, or their rock-throwing personal time, or... whatever this gentleman seemed to be up to. But, so help him, his own inability to find anything useful along the shore made him feel all the more inclined to do so all the same.

"I'm begging your pardon," he said, approaching the other man cautiously. "I don't suppose I might trouble you for a moment?"

Kaidan heard the steps coming toward him and craned his head to see who it was just as the other man spoke. When he heard the question, he dropped the rocks to the beach and dusted off his hands. "Sure, I'm not doing anything. You're one of the new crew, right? What's on your mind?"

"Fjord," he said politely, offering him a hand to shake. "It's Fjord. And I was wondering if you happened to see anything unusual out here, by any chance?"

Kaidan took the hand and shook it, "Kaidan. Good to meet you, Fjord. Unusual on the beach? No, not today. Did you?"

The tone was mildly curious and a little resigned, as if he fully expected the answer to be 'yes, here's another thing that will hurt your brain'.

"Unfortunately, no. Finding something unusual on the beach was really rather the hope," Fjord replied, keeping a cordial tone even while he was clearly disappointed. "I'm trying to figure out how I ended up here, you see."

"Ah," Kaidan said after a moment, "Another random resident. I was too, just a few months ago. On a shuttle home one minute, on an island that's displaced from time and reality from my own. The island, uh, just kind of does that to people. I think it needs us, in some way. Or maybe we need it. Not real sure, but you'll meet people from pretty much everywhere and more than half of them won't be here because they originally chose to be."

Well, that was a mouthful. Welcome, new guy?

Fjord's eyebrows crept upwards a little as Kaidan spoke. He... didn't follow some of that, but nothing that seemed terribly important, at least.

"Ms. Amaya had mentioned that her last teachin' buddy also washed ashore," he noted, looking thoughtfully back along the beach. "Apparently it's a more common occurrence than I'd imagined."

He paused a moment.

"Sorry, the island needs us?"

"Washed ashore, fell out of the sky, walked through a door.. there's all sorts of ways people have arrived," Kaidan said helpfully.

Uhoh. "Has anyone told you anything at all about the island yet?"

Fjord hesitated for a moment.

"It has... electricity."

And phones. The phones were neat.

Kaidan heard the pause and nodded, "Yes. I take it that's not something you're used to?" Amaya hadn't been either, originally, she'd said.

"Not terribly," Fjord confirmed. "Not much around here is quite like what I'm used to, I'm afraid."

Kaidan scrubbed a hand through his hair, "That's true for many people here. Broad spectrum from 'I've never seen that before' to 'That's such a quaint antique'. The people that come here are from literally everywhere. This planet, other planets, other times, other realities, other galaxies."

He hesitated for a moment, "I'm human. You approached without fear - are there humans, where you're from? Some of the people who arrive here, they're from worlds without them. Though we seem to be a fairly common physiotype."

"We've got humans where I'm from, yeah," Fjord confirmed. "Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, tieflings... dozens of different races, at least, and then any number of combinations of quite a few of them. I'm not a stranger to humans. What's more surprising here is just how many of you there are."

He'd met two people since arriving here who were clearly non-human. Two. And he had no idea what ancestry either of them could boast. 'Twi'lek' didn't mean much to him, and he hadn't actually asked Peebee.

Kaidan nodded, "Where I'm from, we have multiple different species, all from different planets. It's definitely strange to be here, on a world that's primarily human - even though I grew up on one that was so similar to this it's uncanny. Where I'm from, everything you listed, except humans, don't exist except in stories. On the island, I've met at least four people from races I'd never even heard of. Some are from other galaxies, other planets. Some are from entirely other realities. Gnomes? They run the portals here."

With a small shrug, he pulled out his wallet and flipped to the Normandy crew picture. "This is the mix I'm used to." He turned it so Fjord could see the mix of very clearly non-humans among the rest.

Fjord listened quietly, looking outright shocked when Kaidan mentioned that so many peoples existed only in stories, but his expression had evened out again by the time the photo had come around.

"Those ones look faintly like the dragonborn from home," he mused, indicating the Krogans. "And... ah, there's one that I believe is like her in my class."

Pointing with one clawed finger at Liara, of course.

"But besides the humans, none of them are actually familiar, I'm afraid."

Kaidan shook his head, "No, they wouldn't be - you're not from my galaxy or time. If the girl you met today looks exactly like the one in the picture, it gets complicated. If she had darker skin, more purple than blue, shorter head crests, green eyes instead of blue? That's Peebee. Same race, same galaxy, entirely different timeline from my own."

Kaidan threw him a lopsided smile, "The one you called dragonborn - he's Krogan. There aren't any of them here. He'd love that term, by the way. His name is Wrex. He's one of my oldest friends - literally, we think he's over 1500 years old."

"Like I said, you will meet people from literally everywhere, and almost every when."

"Peebee, that was it," Fjord confirmed. He didn't seem terribly surprised by the age, either. He wasn't from a long-lived race, but that didn't mean there weren't a wealth of people back home who would outlive him by centuries, easily. "Good to meet somebody else who at least manages not to blink when meeting somebody who isn't quite human. Pleasant change of pace."

Admittedly, half-orcs didn't always get the warmest reception where he was from, either. But that was neither here nor there.

Kaidan's jaw tightened. "Been getting a lot of that here?" he asked, calmly enough, "If you'd like, I could introduce you to some others who are also used to a larger variety of people. There's more than a few of us, human and non, for whom the lack of variety is not the norm. On the island, at least. Across the causeway.. all humans, all the time. The island's an anomaly, the rest of the planet hasn't encountered other sapients yet."

"Not a lot. Enough."

Insight maybe wasn't Fjord's strongest point, but it was difficult to miss the way some people were immediately incredibly intimidated just by having him nearby.

"It looks as though I'm going to be here for quite some time. It couldn't hurt to know who'll take my presence in stride. I really do mean no harm."

"On the island, it'll likely pass quickly. People here adapt pretty quickly, even when they're from monocultures," Kaidan said, "Doesn't make it suck any less right now, though. A friend of mine is teaching a Community Ed class tomorrow at the community center, where we get together and watch movies. If you're not busy tomorrow night, you could come join us. It'd be a good way to meet a lot of friendlier faces."

Right. World without electricity. "Uh. A movie's like a play? Only different, a little. Amaya will probably be there, you said you'd met her. I can't think of any of the people who'd be there who'd do more than ask you standard 'hey you're the new guy?' questions."

Which brought him back to, "Most folks will go out of their way to help you learn about the island. Some pretty weird stuff happens here. Not all of it is good, which is why I said I think the island needs us."

"You know... that sounds like a good time," Fjord noted. "I think I might have to make my way down. Meet the locals."

He hesitated a moment, and then added, "World's a dangerous place, that much is true almost anywhere. What kind of danger is here, might I ask?"

"Do," Kaidan encouraged, "It's a good crowd. Peter runs the class, he's probably the nicest guy you could meet."

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Kaidan cleared his throat, "There's two types - the first is minor and usually doesn't involve anything but occasional embarrassment. I call them jinxes, they usually only last a couple of days and they can be anything from 'hey look suddenly you're in the body and memories of your teenage self' to 'you're suddenly another species or gender'. Almost prankish? Usually no real harm. Then, there's what the regulars call 'invasions'. Those are more serious. The last one was just a couple weeks ago. Bunch of us got trapped inside a shadow barrier that nobody could get through, got to relive our worst moments over and over for three days. Until others could break the barrier and get us out."

He managed to say that calmly, as if he wasn't still dealing with the fallout.

"I guess it'd been awhile since the last one. Not sure if that was the one where it stormed sharks or not. Before my time. The main thing about the invasions is, whenever they crop up, some people might be caught by them but pretty much the entire group of residents on this island will pull together to deal with it. That's.. not something you see, many other places."

Fjord's face went through quite the interesting series of expressions as Kaidan spoke, from faint recognition when Kaidan mentioned the 'teenage self' thing - Amaya had mentioned becoming a child again - to shock over the species and gender thing.

The invasions, those didn't seem to surprise him at all, at least until Kaidan explained the specifics of the most recent one. But he absolutely spared a moment to mouth, 'Sharks?' silently when Kaidan came around to that one.

"Well," he said, when it all seemed to be said and done, "that sounds... exciting."

Kaidan caught the mention, "Er, do you know what a shark is? Multi-meter long fish, multiple rows of teeth? Apex ocean predator?"

"Exiting is a word for it," he agreed with a small sigh, "Thing is, I don't think the island causes the invasions. I think they're why it needs us. No one person seems able to break them down, it takes a combination of pretty much everyone, all sorts of different skills pooling together to put the island back to baseline." He lifted a shoulder, "I think it finds people with the skills it needs and brings them here. It would explain why there are so few human-average folks on the island, for one. Almost everybody's different in some way."

Fjord held up his hands.

"I'm a sailor, I've seen sharks. Don't generally go associating them with the weather, though." That was something he'd believe when he saw it. He was quiet for a moment, and then added, "So you're suggesting that we're the island's... defense team? Repair squad? Some combination of the two?"

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)

Re: Beach (Sithly)