I've been trying out the high road, and I hate it
The Ark’s mouth twists wryly as Jack promises thermals and warmth, her blue gaze sliding back to him with the kind of look that might’ve passed for mild if it weren’t for the hunger tucked behind it, all teeth beneath silk and saltwater beneath glass. "Perhaps we’ll wait until the majority are in bed," she murmurs, nodding towards the deck with her whiskey glass before letting her eyes drift across the unsteady rhythm of boots on her boards. "They’re already walking as if the world’s swaying beneath them. I’d rather not have half of them tumbling over my rail just because I’m cold." She might’ve been made flesh enough to stand with fur around her shoulders and whiskey burning pleasantly down her throat, but the rest of her still lies beneath them, dark and wooden and alive, and cold or not, she won’t trade even one of her crew to the water for the sake of chasing heat through the sky too soon.
Jack’s explanation has her attention sharpening in another direction altogether, genuine surprise passing over her features as she looks at Sunjata anew, curiosity slipping beneath her smile like a current under calmer water. That he knows what Jack can do changes the shape of him, not enough to make him dangerous by itself, but enough to make him worth looking at properly, and The Ark’s gaze lingers with a new, appraising brightness before she leans into Jack’s side with a pride too smug to bother hiding. "Most men wouldn’t even think to ask," she says, one shoulder rising beneath the thick black fur, her crooked smile aimed between them.
As Sunjata speaks of King’s End and the cold, The Ark raises a brow over the rim of her glass, the motion elegant and nearly lazy, though there’s nothing soft in the thought that follows. Torchline sits in her like a warmer tide even now, all salt-bright air and heat-drenched docks and waters that know how to hold a ship without trying to freeze her into stillness, and the mention of it draws a slow smirk across her mouth before she takes another sip of whiskey that burns all the way down. "I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to you," she says, lowering the glass only once the heat has settled behind her ribs, "that I think a vacancy could easily be made in Torchline if you wanted it." Which was just to say that newly minted demigod or not, the Ark did not hold a high opinion of Torchline's current ruler, least of all when measured against a man like Sunjata.
Jack’s explanation has her attention sharpening in another direction altogether, genuine surprise passing over her features as she looks at Sunjata anew, curiosity slipping beneath her smile like a current under calmer water. That he knows what Jack can do changes the shape of him, not enough to make him dangerous by itself, but enough to make him worth looking at properly, and The Ark’s gaze lingers with a new, appraising brightness before she leans into Jack’s side with a pride too smug to bother hiding. "Most men wouldn’t even think to ask," she says, one shoulder rising beneath the thick black fur, her crooked smile aimed between them.
As Sunjata speaks of King’s End and the cold, The Ark raises a brow over the rim of her glass, the motion elegant and nearly lazy, though there’s nothing soft in the thought that follows. Torchline sits in her like a warmer tide even now, all salt-bright air and heat-drenched docks and waters that know how to hold a ship without trying to freeze her into stillness, and the mention of it draws a slow smirk across her mouth before she takes another sip of whiskey that burns all the way down. "I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to you," she says, lowering the glass only once the heat has settled behind her ribs, "that I think a vacancy could easily be made in Torchline if you wanted it." Which was just to say that newly minted demigod or not, the Ark did not hold a high opinion of Torchline's current ruler, least of all when measured against a man like Sunjata.
I've got a lot of sins, but you're my favourite
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
