If the Princess had felt anchorless next to her base ship with a team in an unfamiliar area, now she was without any fellows, coordinates, or return point. Deep space wilderness threatened to overtake her thoughts – what have I done? where am I? what did I just do? – but she didn’t allow it more than half a moment. She still had this sled; she still had blips. Yes, she still had blips. Her day was just starting.

Soleil retained her vehicle settings, trying to feel and see what she was getting at when she achieved this… jump. Effectively transgate relocation, by some totally alternate (and she hoped, replicable) means. She was in one whole piece!

There was no structure other than her vehicle, and no evident power-up besides her own motions, and whatever this was. She had been describing a shape. The shape had a kind of pulse that she was able to match. She was pursuing a connection between her control movements, the maneuvers of her vehicle, and the planar directionalities of the shape as detected by her readings. Did she eat any breakfast? Yes, she’d had a starchy roll. Vedani apparently enjoy creating their versions of human food recipes.

As expected, this cluster was different. Were these things alive? There was a living sense about them that made her feel a little cheerful – like the presence of a bird. Soleil only gave that half a moment too, as she could only really allow comfort with a rest point in sight. She imagined to herself that this would happen, that there was a good reason behind the sense of calm leaking through to her.

Play and exploration had been her catalysts for discovery, so she kept these forces forefront, pretending the sense of safety that had encouraged her. So far it was working, and she moved at a pace that she could sustain for some time.

The Princess noticed a new factor to the total. While she was wary of being misled by stresses under extraordinary conditions, she let it into her formula. There was something vaguely musical about all this – yet so vague in essence that she needed to give it clearer form. Soleil began recalling known songs to fit the musical inkling, anything she could hear clearly in her thoughts. As they bubbled up, those songs became her anchors. It felt more or less right and suitable, relations between things seeming clearer. Focusing through three layered songlines amid gyration looping maneuvers, she vaulted through again.