THE ARK
"The wet isn’t the problem," The Ark counters, her brows rising by the barest fraction as her eyes move back to the tar. The pit rumbles and belches beneath the cache with a slow, ugly patience, its surface breaking and closing again as if nothing thrown into it would ever be given back. Water is clean, even when it is violent. Water pulls, yes, and drowns, and breaks whatever is foolish enough to think itself stronger, but this is something else entirely. Sticky. Ensnaring. Patient in a way that makes her mind tighten around the image of being held fast.
Jack’s quip earns no real answer, only a look dry enough to make one unnecessary. Where someone else might have promised not to leave him, or insisted on coming after him if things went wrong, The Ark merely nods. There is no bravado in it, no performance of loyalty required between them. If the mire turns treacherous, if the branch gives way, if the pit decides it is hungry after all, they can both be gone from this place and back aboard the safety of her deck before the swamp has time to close its teeth. At least, that is what she tells herself as she keeps her hand braced against the trunk and her boots balanced carefully over the roots.
She has not been landlocked long enough to know all the ways danger announces itself away from the sea; storms change pressure, reefs whisper through the pull of the tide, sailors go quiet before a fight, and ships complain in their bones before something breaks. Here, the Feverlands offers no language she trusts. It breathes fog and rot and heat, and somewhere above the hanging cache, something pale shifts against the gloom, too slight and too high for her attention to catch while her focus remains fixed on Jack.
Instead, she returns his wink with a small tilt of her mouth, the gesture warmed by a thought she does not quite let become softness. "I know I wasn’t actually born," she calls, still watching him more than the branches overhead, "but what would you say to a party in LongHeat? Not just for me, but for the whole crew."
Jack’s quip earns no real answer, only a look dry enough to make one unnecessary. Where someone else might have promised not to leave him, or insisted on coming after him if things went wrong, The Ark merely nods. There is no bravado in it, no performance of loyalty required between them. If the mire turns treacherous, if the branch gives way, if the pit decides it is hungry after all, they can both be gone from this place and back aboard the safety of her deck before the swamp has time to close its teeth. At least, that is what she tells herself as she keeps her hand braced against the trunk and her boots balanced carefully over the roots.
She has not been landlocked long enough to know all the ways danger announces itself away from the sea; storms change pressure, reefs whisper through the pull of the tide, sailors go quiet before a fight, and ships complain in their bones before something breaks. Here, the Feverlands offers no language she trusts. It breathes fog and rot and heat, and somewhere above the hanging cache, something pale shifts against the gloom, too slight and too high for her attention to catch while her focus remains fixed on Jack.
Instead, she returns his wink with a small tilt of her mouth, the gesture warmed by a thought she does not quite let become softness. "I know I wasn’t actually born," she calls, still watching him more than the branches overhead, "but what would you say to a party in LongHeat? Not just for me, but for the whole crew."
everything I want you know i'm going to get it
whether it's your fame or your cableknit sweater
you might've done it first but I know i'll do it better
whether it's your fame or your cableknit sweater
you might've done it first but I know i'll do it better
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.
