JACK
Jack hears her as she speaks - hears the petulance, the mean girl mask that she adjusts as if she’s at some elegant ball and all of Torchline is the dance floor, the brush-off she gives him without ever saying as much. But more than that, he listens, in the way that only he and (as far as he knows) only one other can. His expression remains passive, perhaps quietly interested, while the fingers of his magic caress the weeds that have grown in Flora’s mind and the words that must have fed them.
And if Jack had been in a mind to reconcile, to lay some part of a new foundation away from where the cracks had formed, her response dissolves any appetite he’s got for it. Too much to do, too many real problems on the horizon. ”Maybe you forgot, while I was gone,” he says slowly. ”Maybe too many people fed you all the things you wanted to hear. But everything that happened is because of you - your choices, your decisions, plans you made and secrets you kept.”
The captain shakes his head and shrugs. ”I play the villain in a lot of stories, Flora. Not this one, though. This one’s on you, love.”
Assuming there will be some last word hurled at his back, as Jack turns to walk away through the throngs of people in the marketplace, he’s all but waiting for it, and the way the reactions of the merchants will spread like ripples in a pond.
And if Jack had been in a mind to reconcile, to lay some part of a new foundation away from where the cracks had formed, her response dissolves any appetite he’s got for it. Too much to do, too many real problems on the horizon. ”Maybe you forgot, while I was gone,” he says slowly. ”Maybe too many people fed you all the things you wanted to hear. But everything that happened is because of you - your choices, your decisions, plans you made and secrets you kept.”
The captain shakes his head and shrugs. ”I play the villain in a lot of stories, Flora. Not this one, though. This one’s on you, love.”
Assuming there will be some last word hurled at his back, as Jack turns to walk away through the throngs of people in the marketplace, he’s all but waiting for it, and the way the reactions of the merchants will spread like ripples in a pond.
you are a quiet god
and your hunger is cavernous
and your hunger is cavernous
- Secret Telepath
- Functionally Immortal (Forever 35)
- Two small star tattoos beneath his left eye
- Click for The Ark!
