taxonomites | 020: Home Sweet Home [Location: the Northern Island / Visual]

The Northern Island had been a distinctive feature of the Speares district from the moment that DG had arrived in the city. The palace, frozen in time in a mountain of magically preserved ice, was very different from the artificial buildings that made up most of Taxon. It was real. It was home.

It was gone.

Anger welled up in DG's chest as she stared helplessly at an empty space that had once been hers. It was only when she picked up the tablet to contact Glitch that she spotted a familiar name on the newly configured map. Fury was replaced with confusion and, turning on her heel, DG jumped on her motorbike and hurtled towards Wilde and the shores of the new lake that dominated the area.

A few minutes later, she switched on her tablet.

"It looks like the hamsters decided it was time for a change," she remarked, addressing the camera directly before turning it to show the palace and the icy bridge that connected the small island to the edge of the lake. "The Northern Island really is an island now."

But it was still here. It was still home. She had a lot of gaps in her memories and her knowledge of the O.Z, so it was important for DG to hold on to everything that was familiar. Especially in a city as strange as Taxon. The aliens made it easy to forget where you belonged. She would never forget.

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Meanwhile Glitch had gone to check on the workshop, his home away from home, and since his sense of direction was never wondertful he'd checked the map. He found the shop relocated to Osten, near something called Bronte Beach and a suspiciously large body of water.

He sighed at the new, unfamiliar buildings nearby and was about to jot down their details when DG's message came through. The screen got a blink and a frown, then he shook his head in bemusement and replied.

"Well, they'd had the Northern part down, I I guess it's about time they caught on to the Island bit."

"And it'll be useful if we ever have another invasion," she added, a statement that wasn't quite a joke. Blocking the bridge would, potentially, separate them from whatever dangers were threatening the city. But she certainly wouldn't be staying put in the middle of a lake if her friends outside were in trouble.

"Do you know what else they've moved? Where's the maze?"

"Good point, I'll probably mention it to Paul." Multiple defensible positions were better than one and why had his life brought him to the point of thinking like that ~~again~~?

"I-I've found the shop, it's in Osten now, really close to a beach, and..." Glitch pulled up the map and muttered a bit as he looked for his own remnant of home. "Oh. It's way up north of the lake, kinda in the middle of nowhere. That's more like it used to be too."

There had been a time when DG hadn't been forced to think about that sort of thing, but it seemed like a long time ago and an entire world away.

"They can't have done it to make the city feel more like home," she noted, "That's too ... too nice."

"They did say they wanted to try and help more." At least that's what he gathered from the hamster interrogation. "But...it is kinda late. I don't want home-ish, I still want home."

Glitch was comfortable, even happy in Taxon, but the empty palace was a daily reminder of where they were truly needed.

There were times when DG felt like she knew Taxon better than she knew the O.Z. Despite the gaps in her memories, that land - that impossible land of magic and twin suns and talking animals and glittering cities - was where she belonged. She knew that. She just wished she knew why.

"They don't understand us. Any of us. Maybe they think this is helping."

And maybe they didn't pay attention when the prisoners made it very clear that they weren't.

"Maybe." Glitch sighed and rubbed his brow, feeling a headache coming on. Too much change, too much stress, too much to think about. "I-I'm going to head up there, maybe we could walk around and make sure they didn't rearrange anything else."

He really wouldn't put it past them to change the interior while they were at it.

"Good idea," she agreed with a nod, "I'll meet you on the bridge."

If they had changed the interior, DG hoped that they'd seen fit to add in a pool table. Maybe even an air hockey table. And they better not have touched her sketchbooks.

020: Home Sweet Home [Location: the Northern Island / Visual]

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