strut when you're bluffin', double or nothin'

JACK

The ground is slick and waterlogged as Jack hikes up to where Safrin's shrine basks beneath the starlight - not that those stars are remotely visible tonight. But the Captain goes anyway, a little buzzed, perhaps, a little too deep in his thoughts, dragging the moisture from the waving grass and sleeping flowers as he goes to give his steps more purchase against the soft earth. He lets it all flood back in his wake to leave the ground untouched where he passes, making it seem as if he's simply appeared at the top of the barrow.

"Safrin," he greets, voice low and stripped of its usual bravado. Lighting the candles all around the altar with a pulse of magic, he spends a little time clearing it of dead leaves and debris from the downpours and chill winds, even if the offerings remain untouched by the elements. Speaking of offerings, his own comes in the form of a gilded bottle of champagne that shimmers with edible gold, Jack setting it down alongside two empty flutes inlaid with silver filigree and mother of pearl.

"It's been a while, I know." He shrugs out of his coat to fold and set it down nearby, leaving him in a midnight blue shirt that almost seems black in the darkness, embroidered with twinkling constellations only visible when they hit the light a certain way. He spends a moment rolling his sleeves up before taking a knee, one wrist turned up to show the celestial compass inked across his inner forearm.

"Was wonderin' if I could catch a moment of your time though, if you've got it." His telepathy lays bare and expectant in response, mental defences entirely lowered, as if the colossal swell of a goddess's mind might be a wave he can break himself against, stripping his mind clean for good.

---

Jack would like to quest to improve his compass! If he fails his roll, I'd like to use MP to pay for a quest pls <3

Compass Rose Tattoo | A celestial tattoo on Jack's inner wrist that will teleport him to his cabin on the Ark. Range: within the same board.
Type: Grey | Style: Other | Level: Basic | Cost: Action

With so many spirits around you, you attract the attention of the gods when visiting a shrine. Roll with advantage when praying at a shrine. (In order to use this, make sure to note the ability at the bottom of your shrine post).

Regional Score bonus: +3 in all shrine visits, drops, PQ+s, KQs, etc. (You must post this at the bottom of any post where a +3 should be included). Residents cannot be cursed at shrines in this region.

Abandoned roll with -10 at all shrines. Include this at the bottom of all shrine posts.

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Safrin

Starlight gathers long before her body does; a slow, deliberate unfurling of brightness that pushes back the gloom as though the night itself has been waiting for her permission to shine. The damp grass dries beneath a widening corona of violet-white light, and the flowers around the altar lift their heads as if roused from dreaming as Safrin steps into existence at the center of it. Her hair spills down her back in a fall of constellations that move in their own ancient rhythm, each strand a thread of night sky pulled into shape just for her.

"Jack," she purrs, her voice curling around his name like starlight around a blade. "You know you don't need to be on your knees for me."

Her thoughts greet his telepathy in the next breath—not the full force of her divinity, not the devastating, infinite intellect that could drown him in galaxies—but a distilled version, pared down like a star dimming itself so a child might look up without being blinded to make a wish. Still, even subdued, the sensation is overwhelming in its beauty: the hum of nebulae forming, the tug of planetary tides, the slow heartbeat of an entire cosmos exhaling.

A single stray ribbon of her awareness brushes the edges of his mind like the caress of warm silk, testing, tasting, finding what he’s offered her and drawing it closer. "If you wished to be stripped bare," she adds in a murmur, "you only had to ask."

Her gaze slides to his forearm then, to the compass inked into his skin, and something sparkles in her eyes. Safrin steps nearer, close enough that the air around him fills with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and golden warmth. One hand rises, fingers trailing over the compass rose in a gesture that is gentle and possessive all at once, tracing the lines as if she’s following routes only she can see. "Well then," she murmurs, thumb brushing over the centre point, "would you tether yourself somewhere new? Or just extend the reach of what you already have?"

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

Safrin appears and the world seems to exhale a breath it's been holding since she last graced it with her presence, and Jack does the same. "We both know that ain't true," he rumbles with a soft thread of laughter in his voice. Whether it's via the overwhelming force of being so close to her or for other far more obvious reasons, Jack ends up on his knees before the goddess either way.

This way, at least, it might be seen as a voluntary act of respect.

Warmed within the crown of celestial light, he turns his face up towards Safrin much like the sleeping buds she's roused, and as the blaze of her mind - what little she permits him to taste, anyway - grazes against his magic, it's like a fever he can't break. Doesn't want to any more, in fact, content to let the starfire and cosmos burn along the frayed, taut lines of his telepathy until there's nothing but the goddess and her desires.

"Ain't much of me worth lookin' at these days," he says apologetically; fun as it would be to prostrate himself before her, the mask he wears to be out in the world is useless against a goddess, and all he has to offer is bloody-minded effort and bitter survival, a man gripping a knife by the blade because it's the only thing left to hold onto and keep from falling.

Inhaling the scent of her as she draws closer and offering his arm for her perusal, the answer to her question is an easy one at least. "The latter, if it ain't too much trouble. I don't find myself wantin' to be anywhere else, most days."

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Safrin

Safrin only laughs again—soft, shimmering, indulgent—and the sound curls through the starlit air like a warm breeze. She shakes her head slowly, sending constellations sliding over her shoulders in a bright, lazy cascade. "Need, want, and self-preservation," she muses, "are such very different things, Jack." A grin ghosts across her lips, wicked and fond in equal measure. "You’ve never been terribly good at telling them apart...but then, that is part of your charm."

She doesn’t move away when he looks up at her; she stays exactly where she is, allowing the intimacy of the moment to settle around them like a veil. Kneeling as he is, Jack’s lips fall level with her navel, her silhouette framed in the glow of candles and the halo of her own starlight. The effect is deliberate, with every inch of her presence telling him he is meant to look up.

Her hand lifts, slow and regal, before cupping his cheek. The warmth of her touch is impossible, heatless and bright all at once, and her thumb sweeps across the faint lines carved into his face by sleeplessness, strain, and heartache. The gesture isn’t pity, but something softer, something almost maternal in its confidence that he will bend and not break. "No one chooses to sail through rough seas," she murmurs, the words spun in that honeyed cadence that makes even advice sound like seduction. "Only the ignorant or the foolish crave storms. But you.." Her thumb drifts lower, brushing the edge of his jaw. "You know better than anyone that the sea does as she pleases. You can curse the waves, you can toss your anchor into the deep, but the waters will not calm simply because you’re tired of fighting them." Heartbreak, unfortunately, was no different.

Her gaze sharpens, luminous and mercilessly beautiful. "You will find that immortality will wear on you if you cannot learn how to sail through these waters." For a moment, she only watches him, her hand still on his cheek, her thoughts brushing against his in a steady pulse of constellations and heat and dark delight. "Even so," she continues, her voice slipping into something velvety and knowing, "there is no rule that says you must weather the storm alone." Her thumb glides once more along the hollow beneath his cheekbone, a gesture as gentle as it is calculated. "If the only place you wish to be is with your ship...then perhaps she need not remain merely a vessel you command." The words purr into his mind as much as his ears, a ribbon of suggestion unfurling through his telepathy like warm tidewater.

A vision brushes the edges of his thoughts, not a voice, not a face, but an impression: a cascade of wild curls whipped by wind in a familiar shade of maroon, eyes the colour of the sea, and a mind honed sharp by storms and survival, clever as his because it has lived the same waters and been shaped by the Captain's own over the years. 

With a small shrug Safrin will let Jack do with the iea what he will, before her smile returns. "Of course it isn't too much trouble." She leans down, the fall of her starlit hair brushing Jack's shoulders as she lowers herself close enough that her breath stirs the tiny flyaways at his temple. Her lips hover just beside his ear and she tells him what it is he must do.

---

Jack has been given a quest! He must

1. Help someone get somewhere faster than normal
2. Witness longer range teleportion (either coming or going) whose range extends outside of just one board
3. Sail the Ark through an entirely new board, somewhere he's never been before. 
4. Leave the Ark an entire board away, considering what it's like to be that far from her

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

The backhanded compliment has the Captain's brows furrowing despite himself; he's never been good at telling them apart and he's never been good at being told he's not good at something, but this is Safrin and not some random on the street, so he swallows the critique down without comment. And he does indeed look up at his goddess, head tilted back to feel the strange, fae warmth of her hand upon his cheek.

It's a moment as overwhelming and intimate as he'd almost hoped it would be, if not less chaotic than he'd expected. There's no celestial fire burning out the ache in his chest, no nosebleed from the pressure of trying to swallow a star whole; it's just Safrin's soft touch and the unfamiliar comfort of her voice, luring him to the heart of its meaning like a siren song.

His lip curls in the reluctance of agreement to hear that he'll not last long enough to become myth if he doesn't weather this storm, but as he's finding, it's a lot easier said than done; time might be a healer, but it still takes... well, time. He's still mulling over that fact when Safrin plants a seed in his mind that, while it will take its time in the sprouting, may end up changing the course of his life forever. And she does it so quietly, so easily, that he doesn't even notice, taken in by the vision she paints behind his eyes.

"Mm? Oh... thank you," he says as she leans in close, remembering himself enough to give gratitude, before falling silent to listen.

It won't be his quest he's thinking of when he leaves the shrine, though, as Safrin is probably all too aware.

~FIN

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!