existing, that is all

Rin stood steadfast on the beach, the sand curling around her toes as she watched the secrecy of night slowly transform into daytime, the area increasingly illuminated by an iris of fire. In the distance, the horizon ran red under the sun's awakening glare, combining both the sky and the choppy waters in the most amber of ways. Boats glided along this sea of crimson and gold in their sparkling formations as they headed to and from Kaiholo Port, unafraid of travel in both the starlit hours or the dead heat of summer daytimes.

Soon she would go to them - to the boats that so gracefully danced on open waters - as they anchored in the harbor, unloading and reloading their various types of freight. It was then that Rin would sometimes be able to secure work of her own, asking different sailors and workers alike if they needed help with anything. In return, they'd often toss her a few coins that she would later use to purchase food for herself or anything else she needed to survive, which included medication or clothing on the rare occasion. It was not a steady income, however, and she couldn't do anything should someone accept her help but not reward her in turn.

At night Rin did not aid men and women at the port. She rarely dared to venture outside of her colorful city, Haulani, past sunset at all. Though beautiful, the tropics of Caido had a tendency to turn seedy once shrouded in the cover of night. It was ultimately dangerous for a girl that knew nobody to put herself purposefully in harm's way. After all, there wasn't anybody that would come looking for her if she so happened to disappear randomly. That was the case for countless people in this area, from whores to the homeless. Should misfortunate befall these types, no one would even notice.

So it was only now that she came to the shore to watch as the heavens changed colors and wait until daylight was steadfast before heading to Kaiholo Port.

JACK

The night is kind to some - less so to others. And Jack can't decide if, tonight, he's been lucky or not. As dawn reaches its fingers into the sky and promises another beltingly hot day, he meanders along the shoreline, his boots in one hand and a mostly empty bottle in the other. Bare feet leave a snake of prints in the sand, and if one looks close before they are eaten by the tide, one might notice that they are not entirely straight.

If the captain wobbles, it's only partially because he's still mostly drunk from the night before. Mostly, though, it's the evidence of the fight he's gotten into. With knuckles bloody and a shiny bruise forming along one of his sharp cheekbones, Jack can (and will, to anyone who asks) say that he won the fight. He doesn't know what it was about any more, exactly, but he won.

Up ahead someone is standing and watching the sun come up - his telepathy pricks at him and tells him as much without him needing to look from the sand. And he plans to ignore them, in truth, were it not for the lost footing that sends him stumbling - and promptly laying in the sand on his belly. The waves creep against his clothes and his skin, and y'know what? Who cares?

Jack will just drown for a while, it's fine.

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

An incapacitated mind is not always a side effect of drunkness. Though intoxication is Rin's first thought as she notices the man down the beach, she knows ailments, anguishes, or even general despondencies could bring a person to such a state. Yet, she has no desire to evaluate the stranger, so she looks away from him. Assuming he has preoccupations with more important things than a girl admiring a sunrise, she additionally doesn't worry that he will try to speak with her.

So her eyes stay focused on the tide, on how it licks the shore to the beat of the ocean's heart with an excellently uncontrolled ebb and flow. In moments like this, it seems almost as if she loves the land, and by extension, its people. There'd never been an instance when she truly defined how she felt about her home, for like the tide, her nationalism did ebb and flow.

But she is pulled once more from her thoughts as reality tries to grasp at her in its unique way by sending the man down the beach to the ground, but Rin only sees turbulent grace in it: a man sprawled out on the coast with the sun blooming over choppy waters just behind him. It's poetic in its way. She hadn't been directly observing him, but when she caught the tail-end of the stranger's fall to the sand from the corner of her eye, he solidly earned a large portion of her thoughts.

Finally, when he makes no move to recompose himself, she moves a little closer to analyze the situation (noting in the process that, yes, he is still alive). "That was interesting," she eventually comments in a way that implies neither negative or positive connotation, something as impassive as her expression.

JACK

"Yeah? You want an autograph?" His voice is a bit gravelly, partially because of the sand but mostly because of the state of him, and Jack grumbles a curse or three before he slowly gets his elbows beneath him, trying to lever himself up and out of the creeping waves. Squinting into the growing light of day, he isn't surprised to see the stranger he'd spotted just a few feet down the beach from him, though of course now she's standing too close to be an accident.

Managing to drag himself to his knees (sort of, it'll do), he glances about just to see his bottle of booze go bobbing away with the receding tide, and the sigh that he releases is reminiscent of a man who has just gotten his heart broken. Jack hasn't, of course, he's just pissed to lose the last dregs of the bottle.

"Is it dawn, then?" Random segue, but there it is.

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Her closeness seems to disturb his, well, whatever he was doing on the ground. After tossing her a sarcastic quip (to which she does not respond), he slowly lifts himself upwards to an awkward kneeling position. Rin sees him glance at his bottle, now felicitously dancing among the sea foam, soon to be reclaimed by nature's gentle processes, and can't help but wonder what has been occupying his time. His face, somewhat sloppy-looking and dusted with the slightest bit of sand, is bruised in one area. At his sides, blood that the salty swash could not wash away reddens his knuckles.

Though a notorious smuggler, Rin doesn't recognize him. Perhaps in Haulani's underbelly, they know his name as well as they know the tunnels of Rae's Fingers, but here on the shore, he is as much of a nobody to her as she is to him.

The man inquires if it is dawn and Rin stares at him blankly, unsure if he is being serious or not. Was he considering the possibility that it could be sunset instead? No, there was no way. The sun would be in an entirely different place if it were setting. "Yes," she decides to answer. Perhaps he was disoriented. The shoreline was squirrely, after all.

"Are you heading to the port?" she questions, moving a step closer to him as she reaches her small hand outwards, not in greeting but rather for him to grab and pull himself up so he may once again be on his feet.

JACK

Rude, Jack thinks at her clearly dismissive thoughts of him, and he shifts further to his knees as if to tell her all about him and why he's the dog's bollocks of Torchline, but of course that's stupid and pointless. Because she hasn't actually said anything. All of this is to say that he just ends up squinting up at her with a vaguely grumpy expression on his face. Still, at least she confirms the time of day. "Good," he mumbles, his voice as rough as the sand he's fallen into.

The hand that comes out to haul his ass upright is unexpected but appreciated all the same. He snags onto it, his fingers cool and calloused and covered in sand, before he's pulling himself unsteadily onto his feet. A moment or so passes where he's trying to make sure he's not going to tumble back to the beach, but he does ultimately keep his balance. "Mm? Yeah I am. S'where my ship is," he says. "What you doin? Starin' at the sea?"

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

Rin doesn't weigh enough to use sheer muscle to get the man up to his feet (that was obvious), so as he takes her hand, she leans away from him in hopes gravity will do some of the work, and eventually, he is back standing again. At this point, the self-proclaimed sailor regains his balance and lets go of her hand, indulging her question and even asking his own. She is intrigued to learn about his ship (even though he doesn't offer many details and quickly moves forward in the conversation afterward). Though she pictures a boat as he reveals he owns one, her knowledge of watercraft is limited and, further, moderately inaccurate. All that pops into her head at his words are big, beautiful sails, a wooden deck, and maybe even a rowdy crew hanging onto ropes and railings.

"Yes, sort of," she replies plainly to his question, pausing for a moment to collect her thoughts. She isn't necessarily a secretive person, but she doesn't know the sailor and remains cautious with her words, an unintentionally pointless action when speaking to a man that reads the minds of those naive to the existence of such powers.

"Y'know, I've never left Torchline before," she continues, an admittance more insightful into Rin's day-to-day life than one would initially assume. "So, I come here and watch the sunrise" - not exactly the sea - "and wonder what it would feel like to watch it on the other side of Caido." She shrugs, looking out into the great expanse of waves and sun and sky. You would think that a homeless teenager would have the survival skills to make the trip to faraway places they have always dreamed of going to, but Rin has practically no well-honed skills. Beyond that, she has all the incorrect clothes for any place outside of Torchline. "Then I head to the port and see if anyone has any odd jobs I can do for a few coins." This was why she had asked if he was headed to the port. She wanted to know if there was going to be any other people there and she thought people headed that way so early in the morning was a good indicator there would be someone there needing help.

Turning her eyes back to the sailor, she wonders if she has perhaps overshared.

JACK

Jack can appreciate her mind's doodle of his 'boat', a smile creeping unbidden across his face. If she changed the sails to a ruddy red colour and gave it a bunch of cannons and a bunch more storage space, she'd be about there. The rowdy crew, at least, is completely accurate. As she begins to speak, Jack touches a hand to the bruise on his cheek, wincing and feeling like a total tit for prodding at it in the first place. "Mm, it's pretty much the same," he tells her without preamble. Sorry if that rains on your parade goes unsaid.

Oversharing is impossible for someone like Jack, and he starts to meander past her down the beach again, a little more upright this time. Wordlessly, he motions for her to join him on the walk - if she's going there anyway, that is. "What kind of odd jobs you do?" he inquires. Jack frequently uses messengers, runners, deckhands, that sort of thing, especially in the Longheat months when the Ark is in port and it's too hot to sail.

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

According to the sailor, it is pretty much the same on the other side of Caido as it is here. Pretty much did not mean exactly, however, and Rin thought that even if there is only the slightest difference between here and there, that she would have to see it one day. And if it so happened to be exactly the same, wouldn't that be a spectacle in itself? So she looks at him and nods, deciding that, "I think I've still gotta see it," solidifying that nothing could rain on her parade in a permanent way.

Though not entirely sure what spurs him forward, she has the suspicion it is due to him remembering his injured profile. Still, Rin doesn't point anything out, and when he begins walking away, she is pretty surprised that he gestures for her to follow.

Initially, she is only trailing him, but when he asks her what sort of odd jobs she does, she jogs a few steps to catch up to him in hopes of walking side-by-side. "Oh," she starts, realizing that her phrasing was mildly strange. Odd jobs... that could mean a lot of different things that Rin didn't intend. "I can be pretty fast, so I usually pass along messages and letters from sailors to citizens or vice versa." She could, after all, shift into an animal noticeably faster than humans. "But sometimes I'm sent to retrieve specific people or things, run errands, deliver packages-" She pauses. "Nothing illegal, though." She thinks. Honestly, she doesn't really know what the packages or letters or people she's helped are compromised of, but sometimes ignorance is bliss.

JACK

"That's the spirit," Jack rumbles. "It's why most anyone travels anywhere." It's why he does, as well as for business. The ocean is freedom to a poor boy brought up staring out at it - strange, the parallels that might be drawn between the scene he'd stumbled upon that morning with this waif.

Still, she moves to fall in step with him, Jack's eyes on the port up ahead, painted in shades of the dawn. The sails on the harbour are beginning to catch the light as well, and the captain finds himself breathing in the sea breeze, letting it sober him further that he might turn his attention properly to the day ahead.

"Sounds like the kind of shit my ship could use day-to-day. Got a lot of shit that needs movin', on and off. Could use someone to run messages to merchants for a mornin', if you want to earn," he says, though there's a small smile on his face as he glances across at her. "Nothin' illegal, of course." Probably. Not.

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

No matter how much it seems the conversation is steering in that direction, Rin still finds the man's offer unexpected. With the addendum of nothing illegal, he asks her if she would like to run messages to merchants for the morning. Of course, it nearly bursts out of her, but he hasn't quite finished speaking yet, so she watches him with big eyes while nodding feverishly. And when he's grown back into silence, she says, "Oh, yes, I'll do whatever you need done this morning!" The words rush out of her, and though she knows some jobs on the port are demanding and consuming, it seems that his won't be too bad.

It isn't necessary for him to tell her anything about himself, just as the same is true for her, but as the curiosity edges nearer, she decides to introduce herself. "I'm Rin, by the way." She doesn't directly request his name, after all, what if he didn't want to give her it? Still, she hopes he will take the most natural response to this and introduce himself.

It seemed to be wiser to know who you are working for, and besides, won't she have to tell the people she is delivering messages to who they are from anyways?

JACK

"I was so hopin' you would say that," Jack rumbles - and he's not even lying about it. With his head pounding from a mix of a hangover and a possible concussion, he can use all the help he can find; and it's so convenient to find some right where he'd decided to fall over lay down and take a nap. He offers little more than a nod of acknowledgement to hear her name, the captain lifting a hand in a lazy salute. "Call me Jack."

It's about as much as he'll give her until there's stone and wooden boards beneath their feet instead of sand, Jack leading them along the boardwalk to where his ship is moored, nestled between two others with her burnt red sails currently drooping low. "An' this is the Ark. If you follow me aboard, I'll get you the latest messages to run."

believer... believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes