Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who wants to walk the length of the canyon
This stretch of the Rhizome glaciated, at some point. There are longitudinal canyons deep enough to drop a moon into, hundreds of thousands of klicks long. But this, this is the Big One: a city at the foot of it, another at the head. Five million kilometers apart, give or take; geography on an absurd scale, enough to give you religion.
And that's more or less the entire reason why it's considered a route of pilgrimage, a devotional act; from one city to the other, all the long way up the canyon. Opportunist towns all along the way, transport links of dozens of kinds.
"You really want to do that the hard way?" Tok says, absently scratching one meaty buttock as they look up the canyon's length, into the misty distance.
"If it's worth doing," Dija murmurs, rubbing her thumb over a weld line in her mech's leg.
"Five gigameters. Walking."
"In a mech. Penance, not insanity."
"Are you sure about that?"
She smiles thinly. "I'm more smart plastics than person, at this point," she says, rubbing smooth synthetic hands together. "The anagathics will keep me ticking for centuries. What am I supposed to do, keep spilling blood for all of it?"
"So do something else."
"This is something else."
"Is it?" He shrugs. "It's not keeping at it, but is it doing something else?"
"Well. Maybe it's time off, then. And I'll know what comes next, by the end of it."
"Walking five million klicks."
"What?" She laughs a little, bats his incredulity away. "People are always saying that, when they're looking for partners, aren't they? Like long walks. I'll be such a catch, when I get there."