The mountain trek had been rough on Vigdis, the entire party having to adjust to her reduced pace, sometimes after less than an hour in that terrain. At one point she seriously contemplated asking J’eon for a ride, but daring herself to not insult one of their local guides, she gulped down a handful of the painkillers doc Feng had given her like they were red skittles and soldiered on.

Once they got on the boat, comfort ceased to be an issue for Vigdis. She didn’t have to [i]walk[/i], what more could she want? She’d lived in student AND military housing, in a pinch she’d fall asleep leaning against a running cement mixer and not even complain. Even sharing a confined space with someone with feathers wasn’t new to her, one of her roommates at university had been a furry. On top of that, the boat provided another distraction, Vigdis spending upwards of an hour on their first day on the barge watching the mages work the mechanism, examining it as closely as she dared approach and taking meticulous notes, muttering something about “transmission shifted under load”, “lamellar clutch”, “synchronizer gears” and “propeller” from time to time. The thought of the boat being essentially a giant child’s toy given what it was powered by was a little funny, but if it works, it’s not stupid.

[color=00AEFF]”Aircraft are used when you need to move something fast. Ships and boats are more fuel efficient, cheaper to maintain, can carry bigger loads and their crews are more easily trained, so they still see frequent use on Earth. Mostly on big lakes and oceans though, river use is limited by dams in a lot of places.”[/color] Vigdis answered Kareet’s question, [color=00AEFF]”But Earth is the only planet we’ve colonized that has a lot of water on it. My home Venus, even the cities fly out of necessity, Mars’ hydrosphere is still in its infancy so overland trains made of self-propelled carriages are the name of the game and as far as I know no other colonized world is even capable of having liquid water on the surface.”[/color]

Then she realized Kareet only mentioned rivers. [color=00AEFF]”How much of K-A have you explored?”[/color] Have they already had their own Leif Eriksson, Columbus and Maghellan or not?