Tristan's gaze roamed over the town, snapping nervously to wherever townsfolk roamed outside, though it was the buildings he really wanted to look at. [i][color=82ca9d]I guess I'm into architecture now.[/color][/i] It was strange that it didn't feel strange. He wondered what other alterations the mask had made, and if it was done with its work, but the anxiety [i]that[/i] line of thinking generated eventually pulled the whole string out into the encircling ocean of fear that had been the first, most immediate internal change his Semblance had levied. Its defining emotion.

Silverbrook's defining emotion seemed to be happiness. [color=82ca9d][i]Though seeming isn't always being.[/i][/color] He shared the reservations of the group; they were half a collection of unnatural things wandering down the road, invoking no alarm, no guardedness. [color=82ca9d][color=82ca9d][i]Maybe this is normal here. Maybe I'm thinking about it the wrong way. But we're still strangers...[/i][/color][/color]

He touched the elegant gun at his side. If he had had a face, he would have frowned. He settled for a slow movement of his head, eyes drifting over the group, making sure everyone was still there. Counting the Ghost Girl's uncertain sheep to lull his mind to ease. [color=82ca9d][i]No way but forward.[/i][/color] Which wasn't true, of course. They could all wander as they liked, except perhaps for Oedipus. But if they did, the world would open into chaos. A memory flickered. 

[i][color=82ca9d]Edge of Lightbridge. Reading Lance's last text. The seawall, the sea...[/color][/i] He'd felt so bound up in destiny back then, so chained to the world. All the things that had kept him grounded had been cut away like blindfolds or curtains, and he could see so clearly that he was just someone else's dream, an actor with nothing waiting offstage. [i][color=82ca9d]And I thought, I could jump. Not to die, just...to leave. To swim out until I couldn't see the city.[/color][/i] But he would have died. It didn't work that way. The edges of the map were boundaries, like pain, like fate. So he hadn't jumped, and he hadn't gone swimming since.

Now Tristan was drowning on dry land, fear encircling his little bubble of clarity and consciousness. It had occurred to him that if that bubble popped he'd probably go insane. His first reaction to the Semblance - [i][color=82ca9d]if I hear that scream[/color][/i] - was not unjustified, he suspected.

But Silverbrook beckoned, and if he ever wanted to get home...his heart panged at the thought of Rani and Lane. They had to find a way. So. [i][color=82ca9d]No way but forward.[/color][/i] They needed so many things. A center. Information. And...

[color=82ca9d][i]...yeah, I'm hungry. I guess that didn't go anywhere.[/i][/color]

While he was working that over in his mind, he voiced a subsidiary thought to the others. [color=82ca9d]"Uh, I can grow food, I think. Given time. It...might be kind of intense, but if they're not willing to feed us..."[/color] He would have frowned again, settled for the eye thing again. He'd just thought of something.

[i][color=82ca9d]Fuck, how do I eat?[/color][/i]