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There should not, by all accounts, have been a horse in the Void. That much could be agreed upon by everyone present - even if ‘everyone present’ (taking the horse into account) totalled at 6.
The horse did not seem to consider impossibility an obstacle, however, and remained, floating through the Void and dressed perfectly for the occasion in a top-quality HASA suit tailored for equine usage. The horse was not particularly fond of its current circumstances, and neither was his owner, the similarly-suited man who floated behind the horse, reaching for the lead that drifted idly out of his reach. So much for space cowboys.
The scenery presented so far outside the windows of the Offworld Escapes rocket (now generally and uncreatively referred to as the Boatem Void-Boat) had been an endless expanse of black, so dense that one could imagine the ship was buried with its passengers, yet so thin that one felt suspended in a starless night sky. Considering this, it was a lucky thing that anyone was looking out the windows at all. Had Grian not been engaged in fogging the window with his breath and drawing parrots in the resulting condensation, the horse - and his owner - may have gone unnoticed.
“Uh, guys?” Grian called in a rather high-pitched tone that requested attention, rubbing the fog (and his most recent flock of parrots) from the window in order to see better. As was usual, the majority of the ship’s crew was gathered in the community room. Impulse, Scar, and Pearl were engaged in a needlessly fierce game of Texas hold ‘em which Grian had recently vacated after accusing Scar of cheating (‘ace of cats’ was not a real card as far as he was aware).
“Hush Grian, I’m winning,” chastised Scar automatically, not looking up. Impulse also made it a point not to look up, eyes fixed on Scar for traces of trickery, but Pearl answered obligingly, “What’s up?”
“Horse,” was all Grian managed as a response.
“Horse,” agreed Scar in a placatory tone, rearranging his hand of cards.
“Horse?” Pearl echoed, standing to join Grian at the window. Horse, indeed.
She looked for only a moment before moving back towards Scar and Impulse, shaking Scar’s shoulder to draw his attention. With the four standing at the window, the equine anomaly and his now-visible companion captured attention. It was Impulse who snapped them out of their reverie, with a shout of recognition - “It’s gotta be Tango! We have to help him, Scar!”
This was a course of action agreed upon without a word, and there was little difficulty in manoeuvering the ship towards the castaways and ejecting a propelled tether for Tango to grab. The train of tether, Tango, and the horse made for a peculiar spectacle. Eventually, however, Tango and his equine companion were brought into the safety and glorious gravity of the ship. Tango collapsed to the floor immediately, reverent in his ability to do so, and quickly, wordlessly set about divesting himself of his HASA suit to reveal the black bodysuit underneath. Tango was always a slight figure, but he looked thin and drawn now, brittle in opposition to his characteristic birch-switch extremities. When he looked up, his scarlet eyes, usually so fiery, were wary, dull with exhaustion and haunted, shaded by dark eye circles. He was ashen, lips dry and showing signs of the anxious biting of fangs, his hair slicked with sweat. Impulse hugged him without a word, and Tango crumpled into the embrace, shoulders shaking with silent, long-subdued sobs. The crew were shaken, and the two held each other for a long time. With a warning look that told them to save the interrogation, Impulse escorted Tango to the ships restroom to get properly clean and changed. Next to the broad figure of Impulse, Tango looked even more diminished.
With the two departed, the others set about caring for Adequate, who was revealed to be equally thin, his coat dull and eyes wild. He huffed nervously and took some calming down, and once he’d been properly divested of his suit, Pearl tied a makeshift bridle about his face and led him to the cargo hold where the ship’s other equine passenger, Diamond Hooves, resided. Grian mounted the ladder to the sleeping deck to fetch Mumbo, and upon his return the three stood in a huddle by the window, discussing the situation in low voices.
“I thought he had a ship! Why was he alone?” Grian commented, aghast.
“And how long do you reckon he was out there?” Asked Mumbo, still bleary-eyed from sleep. Scar didn’t join in their conversation and instead sat at the table and gathered the half-played poker game, shuffling the deck of cards pensively.
“Scar, what are you doing?” Grian exploded, tail flicking angrily.
Scar regarded him coolly. “Nothing will happen until Tango comes back. We can talk when he’s better.”
Grian admitted to seeing the logic in this and relented, suggesting that they should prepare some sort of food for their unexpected guest. The three proceeded to the ship’s kitchenette to raid the shulker boxes - their food supplies consisted solely of provisions bought from the enigmatic Pass n’ Gas, most of which were packaged sweets, snacks, and biscuits. They made do nonetheless, preparing their most luxurious offerings: a tray of rather watery hot cocoa made from a box bearing the proud title xBCocoa-d, and two slices of toast topped with fried eggs. In addition to this, Grian generously opened a packet of his treasured Pesky Birds (a Grian-themed syrupy-waffle-biscuit bought from the liminal Pass n’ Gas).
Mumbo was surprised and rather touched to see this, as he knew Grian to have a raccoon-esque tendency to guard his biscuits as though they were diamonds. Granted, it was the equivalent of a cat bringing their owner a mangled dead thing (weirdly sweet, but not tempting), as most people found the biscuits to be overwhelmingly sweet, but it was the gesture that mattered.
When Impulse and Tango returned, chatting amiably, it was to find the other four crew members playing cards to pass the time. Tango had changed into sweatpants and one of Grian’s many red jumpers. His sun-blond hair was still wet and even more spiked than usual from the shower, and he seemed closer to his usual bright temperament, though his imperceptibly flicking tail-tip told of residual distress. He raised a neatly-clawed hand in greeting.
“Tango!” Scar exclaimed in greeting, “Feeling better?”
“Not much, but it’s nice not to be constantly thinking I’m going to die alone,” He summoned his familiar sly grin and sat at the table.
“Hi, by the way!” he continued, “Thanks for saving us.”
“We were hardly going to leave you out there!” Grian said. He pushed the plate of food towards him and distributed steaming cups of cocoa as the group settled.
Tango’s eyes seemed to glow at the prospect of food and he attacked it with relish.
“I’m afraid the food options aren’t the best,” Mumbo said in an apologetic tone, “Scar didn’t seem to consider food a necessary supply, so everything we have is from the liminal Pass n’ Gas.”
Even as Impulse opened his mouth to explain this, Tango, halfway through an egg, exclaimed in excitement, “No way! You saw the Pass n’ Gas too?”
Looks of bemusement were exchanged between the Boatem Crew.
“Uh … yeah?” confirmed Mumbo in puzzlement, “We saw Etho there.”
“Etho? When I went, Keralis was cashiering.”
“He said Keralis hired him …” Grian trailed off, and Pearl cut in, polite but insistent. “We can talk about that later - Tango, what happened to you?”
Tango paled slightly as he crunched a crust of toast. “My rocket was hit by an asteroid while I was on the moon,” he started, hesitantly. “Then the controlled explosion I was there to conduct, uh, got out of control. That sent me and Adequate flying out into space, and I thought that was the end of us. We had no tether, no ship, no ground - not even a world to go back to. I was up there when it … when it happened. The moon exploded and asteroids destroyed everything - it was like a giant ball of fire, and there was nothing I could do. It was awful.” His voice was dull, but shook slightly as he continued, “I thought you all died, and it was kinda my fault.”
Murmurs of consolation were uttered, and Tango went on: “That was days ago. I have no idea how long - no way of keeping track. Obviously, I didn’t have anything to eat or anywhere to go, and without a ship, I couldn’t even move properly. The HASA suits have inbuilt hydration and oxygen, but it was only a matter of time till those ran out. When you guys found us, I was on the last dregs of oxygen - the only question was whether I’d die of starvation, dehydration, or suffocation.”
He chuckled humourlessly, “When I first saw your ship I thought No, Tango! Don’t go towards the light!”
Mumbo looked pensive, even engaged as he was in dipping a biscuit into his cocoa. He sucked the biscuit thoughtfully, then said “but how on Earth did we find you here? You were in space, yeah? We left through the Boatem Hole!”
He’d gestured the difference using the hand holding his biscuit, and the damp part of the biscuit released its hold on unity and fell to the table with a wet thap, followed by Mumbo’s regretful gaze. Grian snickered into his cocoa and spluttered at inhaling a fair amount.
“I have no idea!” Tango said enthusiastically, experimentally dipping a biscuit into his egg yolk, “I guess it has to do with the Void being kinda a lack of space, right? So if I left the atmosphere of the moon, I must’ve gone to the Void, right? I guess it’s still luck, but that explains how we ended up in the same place. Or not-place, rather.”
“So the Void is infinite and infinitesimal,” Mumbo conceded in fascination, stroking his moustache thoughtfully. Grian let his head fall to the table with a thud, a reaction typically generated by conversations regarding redstone, and Scar leant towards him, whispering “What does ‘infantesmal’ mean?”
“No idea,” mumbled the heap of Grian.
Pearl, as wary of a long, physics-oriented discussion as Scar and Grian, took pity and suggested sleep. Tango had finished eating, and she imagined he’d be damn tired, all things considered.
“We’ll show you around when we’ve all rested, alright?” She said to Tango with a sideways smile, “No offence, but you look half dead.”
He grinned, but was even then overtaken by a yawn.
“You can take my bed, Tango,” offered Mumbo pleasantly, “I was napping when you were heroically rescued.”
“My hero,” Tango replied dryly, and with a cheerful ‘goodnight’, followed Impulse up the ladder to the sleeping deck above.
The sleeping deck was a very simple affair, arguably not very well thought out by its designer. The round room held 5 beds (thoughtfully colour-coded by occupant) in intervals like the spokes of a wheel, while shulker boxes provided storage for its inhabitants, a lantern atop each one.
“Nice place,” commented Tango. He spotted Jellie sleeping on Scar’s dishevelled bed and rushed to her with a high-pitched exclamation of “Kitty!”
After cuddling a disgruntled Jellie, Tango sat on the black blanket of Mumbo’s bed and thought how wonderful it was to be somewhere safe, with company, and food, and warmth. Impulse walked by him and tousled his hair briefly, saying “I’m really glad you’re here,” his tone gentle and heartfelt.
Tango leapt up and hugged him, jubilant even for the chance to hold someone. “I’m happy I’m not dead too!” He replied.
At last, 4 of the ships 6 human passengers were abed, and the sleeping deck was dark and quiet - Tango had practically passed out after curling under the covers. In the cabin below, Pearl and Mumbo played a furious and predictable game of stat poker, each having no stats whatsoever.