i look fly, i look good

JACK

If there's one thing that Jack resents about Stormbreak opting to commit suicide - other than missing the ability to hide things among the rock and stone of its underbelly - it's losing the staggering array of businesses that had lined its main streets. The Castaway Exchange has plenty to offer, sure, variety and colour and even a few unexpected surprises, but compared to the metropolis of the (formerly) floating city, it's a bunch of shacks tethered together by rope.

Nevertheless, it's what they've got and Jack is sure they can make it work.

Quite what they're making work is something The Ark will have to tell him, or show him rather, from the little barge boutique he's waiting outside. The Captain is leaning casually against a dock post, a cigarette between his lips and sunglasses shading his eyes, looking for all the world like a carefree spectator in the marketplace. And he is, he supposes, telepathy sharp for trouble but otherwise fairly mellow, enjoying the babbling streams of thought and desire and intrigue around them.

Occasionally, of course, he does glance towards the boutique, probing at what's left of the tailor's mind after being in close proximity to The Ark and wondering how long he might have left to wait.

you're the last of a dying breed; write our names in the wet concrete
I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me

Code stolen from Queen Sky