her fight and fury's fiery, oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing
As Jack shifts above her, The Ark’s gaze follows him with the same mingling of affection and appetite that has always made her attention feel like something one might gladly drown beneath. His hand closes around her jaw, and her smile blooms easily into the space between his fingers, blue eyes brightening with mischief as though his permission has merely given a name to the trouble already waiting at the surface. "Do you know anyone in Torchline," she asks, letting the question linger a moment before widening it with a slight tilt of her head, "or anywhere, really, who can simply know what abilities another person has?"
Her brow rises; the answer is likely no, or at least no one they’ve ever had reason to fear in that particular way. Someone like that would have made keeping Jack’s telepathy quiet a great deal more difficult over the years, and neither of them is in the habit of overlooking dangers that obvious. "If the rumour mill wants something to chew on," she says with a lazy shrug beneath him, "I’m sure we can find ways for it to hear about abilities I may or may not have." There is truth beneath the lie, of course. Healing has been gathering in her for some time now, something warm and insistent beneath the surface of her skin, but she sees no particular reason to give the world an honest account of where her strength begins and ends. Let them make their own maps, and let them be wrong.
Her smile sharpens. "Suppose word got around that I could clear poison from any drink before it was swallowed. It might at least spare you the effort of having to listen for it every time someone decides they’d rather solve a problem with a bottle than a blade." Jack’s telepathy catches such things often enough, but it means casting his net wide and waiting for the thought to surface. A lie like this might make poison less tempting in the first place. One less route toward murder. One less danger that has to reach him before either of them can stop it. "Or we could always let the grapevine guess at whether or not wedding bells are in our future." By which of course she means the crashing of those set to ring for a certain queen and her jester.
Her brow rises; the answer is likely no, or at least no one they’ve ever had reason to fear in that particular way. Someone like that would have made keeping Jack’s telepathy quiet a great deal more difficult over the years, and neither of them is in the habit of overlooking dangers that obvious. "If the rumour mill wants something to chew on," she says with a lazy shrug beneath him, "I’m sure we can find ways for it to hear about abilities I may or may not have." There is truth beneath the lie, of course. Healing has been gathering in her for some time now, something warm and insistent beneath the surface of her skin, but she sees no particular reason to give the world an honest account of where her strength begins and ends. Let them make their own maps, and let them be wrong.
Her smile sharpens. "Suppose word got around that I could clear poison from any drink before it was swallowed. It might at least spare you the effort of having to listen for it every time someone decides they’d rather solve a problem with a bottle than a blade." Jack’s telepathy catches such things often enough, but it means casting his net wide and waiting for the thought to surface. A lie like this might make poison less tempting in the first place. One less route toward murder. One less danger that has to reach him before either of them can stop it. "Or we could always let the grapevine guess at whether or not wedding bells are in our future." By which of course she means the crashing of those set to ring for a certain queen and her jester.
sweet and right and merciful, all but washed in the tide of her breathing
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.
