start where you are

JACK

Listen - Flora had said for The Ark to make herself scarce, or something. And, okay, maybe Jack has forgotten to take Melita along with him as she sets out, but hey. Some things are time sensitive. Like... mEmOrY MuD, he guesses. He's had to take the 'long way' around to get to the Hollowed Grounds compared to a ship that might be able to fly at all times of the day, alternating between hopping across land masses by moonlight and traditional sailing once the sun rises.

But he's here now, despite all else, having anchored the ship off the coat of one of the many Outer Islands so he might begin his search.

It's a breezy day, a pale sun shining overhead, but the way his boots sink into the wet earth suggests that it hasn't long stopped raining. Too tanned for the Hollowed Grounds and too grumpy by far to put up with this sort of climate for longer than necessary, Jack heads deeper into the islands in an effort to locate the mud that might try to follow him home. (He assumes that's how he'll know it's Memory Mud, anyway).

they say I did something bad, so why's it feel so good?

Insert the gif of Flora narrowing her eyes and nodding and you've basically got the gist of the queen's reaction to seeing the Ark gone from the harbour. She'll be even less pleased when she realizes where Jack has gone, if only because she'd have given him her compass to make the trip. But whatever, that's a fight for another thread another time.

The voice that rings out of the brush is far too bright and cheerful for the sour expression on Jack's face, and yet once he's near enough the captain will feel the full weight of Charlie's warmth hit him like a slap. "Hi!" Having rolled her shorts up nearly to the point where they disappeared beneath the hem of her t-shirt in a (failed) effort to avoid the mud, the priestess appeared with a megawatt smile and memory mud coating her cheeks like some sort of expensive spa-mask.

"This stuff sure is something, huh?" Flicking her tail, the ancient grins, her mind an endless cove of golden delight and orange amusement that threatened to reach out and drown Jack such was the priestess's exuberance.

JACK

Perhaps one day Jack will realise that, as well as whatever situationship he's developed with Flora, she is in fact someone he can properly rely on. Today is not that day, though, so off he trudges through the island with The Ark at his back. He feels the Ancient's presence shortly before appears and trills at him, such that he's almost bowled over by the force of the golden light that pours from her every pore. Squinting as if she's glowing brightly enough to blind him, he turns to find a tiny Ancient coated in the very thing he's looking for.

Fortuitous.

"I wouldn't know," he says, looking her up and down and seeing her both as a threat and as nothing of the sort - which is a strange paradox, but such is Charlie. "You wouldn't mind sparin' some though, would you?" Tilting his head, he produces a jar from the satchel slung over his shoulder and gestures to it. "Unless you really want to keep it."

they say I did something bad, so why's it feel so good?

Not minding at all the way the captain's eyes take her in, Charlie stands motionless save for the flick of her tail, continuing to grin up at him. "Not at all! If you can get it off, that is. I've been trying for about an hour now with no luck." Squelching her way near, the mud sliding up her calves and thighs as if meaning to devour her whole, the priestess stretches her arms out and lifts her chin for Jack to take or touch as much as he pleases. There's mud all across her shoulders and cheeks, smeared across her stomach and hips where she'd tried to pry it off and it had simply slorped back. Only her horns and tail were free of it, and that was only by happenstance

"I'm Charlie, by the way." She purrs chipperly, raising her eyebrows until they disappear beneath the mud-tangled line of her bangs. "I don't think I've seen you around before, are you knew?" Then, with a gasp that turns the blistering sun-bright expanse of her thoughts into something practically ultraviolet, Charlie's lips part. "Are you here for Dygra???"

JACK

Under any other circumstance, Jack would probably have had an excellent time picking Charlie's brain and trying to find out what makes her tick (or moan, or scream), but alas - he's a little busy right now, given that it's right at the end of Flowerbirth and he needs to scrape off the mud coating her skin. "I reckon I can persuade it," he says, sounding confident as he uncaps the jar and approaches her.

A lick of ice frosts through the air and against her thighs and hips - Jack isn't to know that the Ancients dislike the cold that much, is he? - startling the creeping mud and half freezing it so he might bully it away from Charlie's flesh and into the container. It's a decent sized jar, too, but alas, the little priestess might still find herself covered in some of the mud by the time the captain is finished. "Call me Jack," he replies, straightening up and raising an eyebrow down at her.

"For who?"

they say I did something bad, so why's it feel so good?

The cold against her skin has Charlie's thoughts suddenly burning. When last she'd felt a cold like that she'd slumbered for decades—centuries—and no way in hell was she going to let that happen again. Rather than blasting out an arc of flame to burn the captain for his mistake, instead the ancient simply dart!ed several feet away before fire licked up the inside of her thighs and around her hips. "Hey, what the fuck?" Despite the pretty pout on her lips, the priestess's thoughts were still fairly radiant amidst the pain she felt, likely owing to the fact that a dragon slumbered somewhere down deep in her soul and if she chose, she could crush the captain with one snap of her teeth.

Liking neither heat nor cold, the memory mud began to drip down Charlie's body, seeking the relative safety of her legs and the ground nearby.

"For Dygra silly!" Taking a step forward, the fire whorling up her body before coming to rest in her palm, Charlie gives the abandoned a warning looking before dart!ing back toward him. "Our goddess!"

JACK

The burning sensation whipcracks from Charlie right into Jack, such that he has to fumble to keep hold of the (now sealed again, luckily) jar of squirming memory mud. Straightening up and raising his free hand - now free of ice too, as it happens - the captain feels the shift of something dark and reptilian lurking beneath the petite blonde's skin, and he dips his head in as much of an apologetic nod as anyone is likely to get from him. "Weren't meant for you, love," he assures her, and before he can step forward again, Charlie is just in front of him, faster than his magic can work.

He doesn't like that, and though he hides it behind a smile, the tightness to his eyes says as much.

"Your goddess," he corrects with a scrunch of his nose, the star on his cheek evidence enough of his own alliance. "I was just here for the mud. If you're lookin' for someone to preach to, you'd be better off tryin' elsewhere." And already he's starting to trudge back the way he's come, wanting nothing to do with the bubblegum pink of her enthusiasm or whatever she might try to rope him into doing.

they say I did something bad, so why's it feel so good?

"It's okay." Charlie says with a bouncy shrug before she wrinkles her nose. "Just not a big fan of the cold, y'know?" And if he hadn't before, he certainly did now.

"Why's that?" The priestess wonders, utterly undeterred as she skips after him, as much as the mud will allow anyway. "She's really great, y'know! We Ancients have all sorts of powers, even more so now, actually." She adds, colour flushing her cheeks as her legs have to work to keep the memory mud from fixing her in place. "And I don't know about you, but I can't think of any other gods in all of Caido that are as open and accepting as Dygra is." The blonde continues, before giving up the game entirely and implying dart!ing a few feet in front of Jack.

"I bet you'd like the way we worship, too." Waggling her eyebrows and not simply because she'd seen the easy way Jack's eyes had fell over her body when assessing the mud, suggesting he wasn't unfamiliar with the female form, but because he was a man after all. Charlie's mind is suddenly bright with images of Jack prostrated before the obsidian shrine, a breast parting his lips as a mouth painted with red (lipstick or blood), greedily found its way between his legs. Darkness fell around the writhing figures, illuminated only by the soft flicker of nearby firelight. "I can show you, if you want?"

JACK

Like a particularly hard-to-shake canvasser, Charlie trots (or tries to) alongside Jack as he heads back towards the shores of the island. Drawing the water out of the mud as he goes to keep surer footing, it's all the captain can do not to throw it back towards the priestess - but he's not keen to be roasted by a dragon today, thank you. Especially not one who can also fucking teleport, Jack flinching a bit as Charlie suddenly appears before him.

"Be that as it may, I ain't in the mood to be preached at, and I've already got more than enough goddess in my life for one man." And that's saying something.

Still, as the petite woman appeals to his cock more base instincts, it's no lie that Jack is tempted, if not particularly by the images that flash through Charlie's head, then by the decadent pleasure that thrums through her at imagining them. Clearing his throat and side-stepping her to walk once more towards the shore, he raises a hand. "A kind offer, but I'm in a rush. Maybe next time I'm in town?"

they say I did something bad, so why's it feel so good?

"Sounds like a man who needs a very different kind of goddess, then." Charlie chirps, entirely unperturbed by Jack's efforts to bypass her proselytizing. Appearing before him again, her tail lashing playfully back and forth, the priestess tries to stop the captain's progress by placing a hand against his chest. "Well, just imagine that getting the mud had taken a bit longer." She invites as the sun-bright texture of her thoughts turns positively molten as she imagines walking Jack through her particular brand of worship.

Charlie's blue eyes dart to the jar as if debating heating the glass suddenly that the captain might drop it, or perhaps swatting it out of his hand with one of her shadows. Instead, she flutters her dark lashes up at him, her free hand tugging at her shirt slightly in order to better reveal the curves beneath. "Our brand of worship is very hands on." She explains, her eyes lowering toward his belt before lifting with a suggestive raise of one eyebrow. "I've dedicated my entire life to perfecting it, in fact."

JACK

Were the memory of Safrin's fingertips poised so dangerously acoss his synapses and within his mind not so fresh, perhaps Jack might have been in the mood to play a little more with Charlie. He can absolutely applaud her efforts, the golden sunshine of her optimism, the steel rod of her resolve, and in the right time and place, it would have been enough and then some to tempt him into seeing what made Dygra so great.

Alas.

"I've no doubt you have," he purrs, halted by her hand on his chest. "But let's not ruin an otherwise pleasant conversation with any more of this. I'll be on my way, you'll be a little less muddy, and none of this has to end in tears." There's no visible ice anywhere on Charlie or on Jack, but the chilly whisper of it all but thrums out of the captain, and he raises his eyebrows as if to ask if she's going to continue to block his way.

they say I did something bad, so why's it feel so good?

"And if I'd like it to end with tears?" The priestess wonders, one of her eyebrows arching in a silent taunt. As his body grows cold Charlie's grows warm, her thoughts now gilded with flames that licked up and down her mental walls. "Besides, you've come into our lands to take something." She murmurs warmly, her blue eyes dropping once again to the memory mud before her fanged smile reappears and her chin lifts. "Seems only right that you give something back."

If there was ever any question as to whether golden retriever energy applied only to Charlie's boundless stores of enthusiasm, it most certainly did not. She was just as stubbornly determined as goldens could be, though her mind was tempered by some rationality.

"Either a few minutes of guided worship, or a drop of blood." Charlie bargains. "It's what Dygra would want." She'd even offer a fang or the tip of her horn if the captain was inclined to go that route.

JACK

"If that were the case I feel like one of us would already be crying," Jack drawls, raising his eyebrows right back at Charlie as he feels her heat fight against the cold of his magic, though it seems neither of them are about to back down. "You offered," he reminds her, as if she's forgotten, though if a drop of blood is what it will take to get him back to his ship and on his way, so be it. 

"You seem to be very presumptive about what your goddess would want," he remarks nonetheless, though he does wipe his hand free of any lingering mud (memory or otherwise) and offer it out, palm up, for Charlie to extract her payment from him. "Take your blood, then," he says, nodding for her to go ahead.

they say I did something bad, so why's it feel so good?

"I'm sure I could make that happen." Charlie purrs before shrugging softly. "Never said anything about it being free, though." She quips, before her blue eyes lower toward his outstretched hand.

"I know what she would want because she tells us." The priestess says simply as she reaches for Jack's wrist to draw his hand closer to her mouth. Holding his blue gaze in hers, Charlie wraps her lips around his index finger, sinking it all the way to its base before smiling softly around it, her tongue writhing just as it would had it been his cock. Once there, her mouth firm against his skin, did she begin to pull it out, one fang pressed softly against the skin until she reached the pad of his finger. Only then did she press down, her canine more than sharp enough to draw blood. Withdrawing his finger and squeezing, her movements slow and suggestive, she let a single droplet bead up, before she letting it fall onto the ground.

It was a shame that the captain hadn't wanted to stay and play; he'd initially seemed just her type, but as Jack continued to brush off her advances, the salacious images in the priestess's mind began to sadly tarnish. "You really should come back when you have more time." She hums, her tail drooping with disappointment.