it's mine because it has my name on it

JACK

Melita shrugs - a gesture that's about as innocent as it gets for the Honeybee - but poor privy-to-her-thoughts Jack ends up staring a hole in the back of her head for her trouble. Couldn't promise him that his ass. Already reconsidering his generous offer to let her vandalise an obsidian phallus, Jack clears his throat and glances back to the view below.

"Sounds delightful," he rumbles with a scrunch of his nose, only to raise an eyebrow back at her. "Sorry, did I just hear you say you're glad about somethin'? In the Hollowed Grounds? Pinch me, I fell asleep." Already the captain is preemptively raising his hand to slap away Melita when she (inevitably) does try to pinch him.

"Should be at that Inner Quarter in another hour or two," he guestimates. "Unless you wanna glare at every tree, or watch for invisible monsters, ain't much else to do up here."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Oh, she would’ve gone for more than just a pinch. Maybe a punch. But her nose wrinkled in turn as he pre-emptively swatted her away, so she only gave a very long and sullen eyeroll. She’d save it for later.

“Yeah well, could be worse,” and she shrugged again. Like with banshees streaking towards them, or whatever the hell lived under the bone bridge (she never bothered to find out – but could imagine some stark possibilities), mud monsters, another demon…

The guesstimation made her cringe too, because she wouldn’t know what to do to fill the time. Taunt and be annoying seemed to fit the moment. “Want to hear about some of the traumatic events here?”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

JACK

Mentally adding a reminder to barricade the fuck out of his cabin door before sleeping that night, Jack is already deciding what he's going to do to fill his time before they arrive at the Inner Quarter, when Mel's continued thoughts dance along the webs of his telepathy like static fireworks. Clenching his jaw and offering her a long eyeroll in response, the captain leans against the side of the ship to regard her.

"If anyone ever asks you to read a bedtime story to their kid, say no," he mutters, taking a second to make sure they're absolutely moving away from the lightning storms, before figuring why the fuck not. Mel will be thinking about them even if she isn't flapping her mouth. "Go on then," he drawls. "Gimme your nastiest Hollowed Grounds tale."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Truth be told, no one had ever asked Mel to read them any bedtime stories, so she shrugged her shoulders, unbothered by the sentiments. There were always dozens of traumas to share anyway, and most were never given any voice.

So she snorted at his drawl, rolling her eyes towards the darkening horizon. Pressure was on. But what she found horrible and grating might not have bothered the Captain in the least. Scratching at the top of Fangorn’s head, she looked out over the breadth of sky and expanse of scenery, biding her time. “We used to have a festival here called Fiat Lux. Something to celebrate surviving LongNight, and all of that.” Associated with the gods, with the coming of spring, with merriment, with mirth. Images flickered and burst, one right after other. “One year there was some kind of…mud creature. So while we were dancing, singing, and playing around, we didn’t notice what was going on.”

Out of amusement, Jack might have enjoyed the mental imagery of Sunjata, in whale form, stuck within the beast – but everything thereafter ached in ways she couldn’t quite describe. “There was a group fighting it, but they couldn’t stop it in time.” Shards of ice, of rock, of muck, of grime, shattered against the outcroppings, and the youth frowned, fingers twirling along the gourd’s vines. “A lot of people died. More were injured.” Her own leg snapped, and she could remember dragging herself through the field, damned well not going to be the one smothered and doomed. “So there’s quite a few of us who don’t…enjoy those events.”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

JACK

It's true that, ruthless as he often is (and downright evil at times), the tale of widespread death and destruction isn't the stuff of nightmares it really ought to be for Jack. That being said, however, his magic often fills in for him without his permission - almost like some cruel deity thought it would be funny to force empathy onto him - and so as he listens to Mel relay the events of Fiat Lux, they come into bright focus behind his eyes.

He doesn't just see the bodies, the suffocating grime, the shards of bloody ice; he swears he can feel something sharp shooting down the length of his leg, like the vibration of a bone unbroken. Gruffly clearing his throat and keeping his eyes pinned on the patchwork fields below, Jack hurriedly closes himself off to the Honeybee's continued thoughts. "Shit like that leaves a mark," he agrees, almost under his breath.

"Torchline's only equivalent is when Apopo erupted, I guess. But that was stopped in time."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

She waited for the rebuttal as she stared out over the horizon, fingers beginning to tap on the wood. That it wasn’t a big deal. That it was nothing to fuss over. But she knew the truth of it, what stirred in her memories, what slunk and scarred well past the embers and fire scorching in her form. For herself, and many others, who’d endured long enough to hightail it from the Grounds as soon as they could.

So her head swung when the Captain acknowledged the trauma, blinking stupidly as if she’d heard wrong. Baffled into silence, she listened as he strived to find a parallel. Only thereafter did she give anything else a voice. “I heard about that. I think Sunjata and Nate got themselves involved.” Snorting, the Honeybee shook her head. “No major casualties?”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

JACK

Overcome with the sudden urge to sock Melita in the arm with a sullen shut up, Jack ends up biting at the inside of his cheek and shoving his hands in his pockets, staring a hole in the horizon so he doesn't have to look across at the Honeybee. "Mm, they did," he says of Sunjata and Nate. A few others, too, had played hero that day.

"No major casualties, no. Someone had the clever idea of lettin' the lava ooze down and into Rae's Fingers. Fucked a lot of shit up for the black market for a bit, but it was better'n bein' dead." And isn't that always the case? Nodding out towards the Inner Quarter, that doesn't look much closer but probably is, the captain considers the area.

"You reckon you'll see any familiar faces there?"

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

She’d waited for a comment about Nate or Sunjata, but with nothing incriminating came forth, she let it lie. Eyes to the horizon, snaking along the familiar, and not so, portions of the Inner Quarter, she tried to imagine volcanoes bursting, running through the valleys she knew as Apopo. The ash had always been there any time she arrived, but a world full of blistering embers and rampaging lava wasn’t difficult to construe.

“And you bounced back, I’m sure,” came her wry comment, snicker embedded along her mouth.

The question caused a narrowing of her eyes though, mind flickering through a multitude of faces from her time in the Grounds. Some had journeyed elsewhere. Some had perished by other means. Some had simply disappeared. As for who might remain, she could only surmise one or two. “Darkeye, probably,” as he’d been dedicated to the cause of raising the Hollowed features towards something substantial, even when the Ascended reigned. “And Bart, maybe.” Gaze lingering on a few islands nearby, she eventually twisted her head back to face the Captain. "Do you know anyone here?"

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

JACK

"Like a jack-in-the-box, obviously," Jack replies with a crooked grin, his own pun not lost on him. Glancing over his shoulder, he accepts a flask of liquor from one of the crew as they pass, taking a long pull from it and offering it out to Mel. "Just made the Fingers a little more interestin' for a while, is all." What with the drippy lava and the new dead ends and openings and such.

The name Darkeye has him snorting - and Mel really should have expected it - the captain raising his eyebrows at her. "And is it?" he wants to know, about the (presumably) dark eye of the man. Neither name rings a bell, though, and he shakes his head in response to her question.

"Nah. Or if I did, they're all dead now, or moved away." Much like Melita, Sunjata, Nate, and the other demigods and colourful characters that had passed through Torchline. "Based on what you said, though, can't say I blame 'em. Who knows, though - might be somethin' worthwhile there." He nods to the Inner Quarter.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Melita made a disgusted face at the pun alone, ensuring Jack would see it as she twisted her head back over her shoulder. Only hearing that inspired a drink, and she snagged the flask from him without preamble, taking a long slog before handing it back. “Oh yeah. The fiery octopuses and all that,” since the Honeybee had assisted in fighting those off too – those were the days.

She couldn’t recall actually staring into Darkeye’s…well, eyes, but a mental image of the much older man drummed up in her head, and she shrugged. “Sure.” He was nice, if a bit weird on his philosophies, but he’d never done her any harm. Not that he could have, but that was besides the point.

Jack not having any connections here struck her as strange – figuring he had a finger in every kingdom – but that made sense too, in a way. The Grounds was just that hollowed out and dead. “If you want to snag some books from the Atheneum,” and there she cackled, imagining the Captain over a tome. “Or check out the Temple.”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

JACK

"Aye, and those," Jack says of the flaming squids, taking it upon himself to look very smug indeed at knowing he'd annoyed her, accepting the flask back and taking another pull from it before handing it to a passing sailor. "Sounds fascinatin'," he drawls about Darkeye and his maybe-dark-eyes, snatching the image of the older man away to lock in his memory bank but offering no further questions about him.

Giving her some truly bombastic side eye at the cackle that escapes Mel's lips, Jack shoves her for good measure and heads away towards the prow of the ship. "Books and holy places. I can't wait," he calls, sounding bored to death already. "Maybe there'll even be a tour guide."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Overall, the experience had been exactly what Melita expected.

She rolled her eyes again at the semblances of boredom simmering over the ship, even as he began to wander off. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to come here.” She hoped he regretted it. Especially after all her warnings. And the warnings after that.

Snorting lightly and picking at a piece of speck along the wooden railing, she merely shrugged er shoulders. She doubted about the tour guide though, but didn’t say as much. Wasn’t worth it.

Instead, the youth would wait (impatiently) until they arrived at their next destination.

{FIN}

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun