what, like it's hard?

flora

Yes more than a few FriEndLY offers had been made to captain Flora's ship (wink wonk), though the girl had turned them all down with enough poise and dignity to make her mother proud. That said, Flora had never actually rowed a boat before...or...been in a boat before...or, you know, done..any of this. So it was understandable that by the time she'd figured out how to keep the oars moving at the same time and with the same amount of pressure to bring her near the little island, she was drenched in sweat and her arms felt like jello. Luckily the bottle of wine and bikini she had packed solved those problems almost instantly, and within minutes Flora was spread-eagle on the sand soaking up the sun's rays.

Oh, I should have mentioned: one of the other things Flora had no knowledge of was anchoring boats or tying them up. More on that later.

Or, maybe more on that now.

"What? NoooOoOoO!" It was only by chance that Flora had looked up in time to see her small rowboat bobbing off in the waves. Scrambling to her feet the girl jumps into the water where she began frantically swimming to retrieve her departing boat.

The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

Jack surfaces silently, which is absolutely something he's perfected in his years being made and seasoned along Torchline's shores. It's still uncharacteristically chilly, not that Flora seems to have gotten the memo, but it's not too cold to swim. And with a manta crystal pressed to his throat, the good captain has been busy indeed. This time it's been dropping off cargo presents to some Merfolk contacts; they quite like to trade around the Hale Ka'aila, and he can't say he blames them.

What he doesn't expect is to almost be clobbered by a rowboat as he breaks the tension of the water, his hands coming up to redirect the prow and duck out of its way. Which is about when the flurry of Flora-like thoughts vibrates along his telepathy, like a fly in a spider's web. He almost considers just fucking off again, but something tells him he'll eventually hear about this down the line if he does.

"You'll have a long swim back without this," he remarks, having grabbed the side of the boat as he tries to steer it back towards shallower waters.

flora

Flora is not not a good swimmer, but certainly, casual swims in the Stonesong and Miana Pool don't really compare to battling the waves in the Arclight as you try and outmaneuver a boat.

Breathing hard enough to make the imagined breathy moments between she and Jack before seem laughable, Flora grasps onto the side of her rowboat for purchase as much as to keep it from floating away. "J--a-ck," She pants, grinning and wondering if there were bits of seaweed floating in her hair (and if there were, were they cutely placed?). "-hey-" Wondering if she could clamber into the boat from the water or if she'd have to tug it back home, suddenly all the colour drains from her face as alarm curdles her expression.

"Something just touched my foot." She mewls, looking down and kicking her legs frantically. "Something just touched my foot."

The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

Yes, Jack is his name, and he'd be lying if he wasn't starting to enjoy hearing her say it (as long as it's not in that whiny way she seems to like). "Me," he says, his own voice a little breathy if for no other reason than he's got to tread water and/or cling to the rowboat. He's reminded, a little, of their very first encounter; Flora doesn't have seaweed in her hair this time, and she seems a bit less shit at swimming too. Ah, memories.

He's about to suggest she, you know, help a bit, when there's frantic kicking and her usually bubbly thoughts turn milk sour. Pulling a face (it's not him, Flora, it's you), he peers down at where the pale shapes of her limbs are flailing under the surface. He didn't see anything on his way up, and he certainly can't sense anything from intelligent life, so hey, maybe it's just sharks.

"How's your upper body strength?" he smirks, before disappearing completely beneath the water.

bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones, bones.

---

You've encountered the OG random event! This allows you to skip one levelling requirement with the character in this thread. (Unfortunately does not count for characters over level 10, how sad.)

flora

Panic coats her thoughts into brittle sections of ice that fragment and snap, sending worst-case scenarios spiderwebbing through her mind. "How's my..my..?" Trailing off, her aqua eyes still wide, Flora realizes a second too late that Jack is (going, going) gone.

"JACK" Flora wails as if he'd just sunk Leonardo DiCaprio style away from a door on which he could easily have fit. Kicking her feet, she continues to cling against the side of the boat thinking not of the first time they'd met and how his gaze had made her skin feel far warmer than the sun had, but instead about all those bloodless animals and whether soon she would become one of them.

Worst still, would that weird Amanda girl come carve off parts of her hair and skin to sell?

The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

That weird who? Anyway.

You'll be fine, Flora. Everything will be fine, just... shut up for a second.

Having found the culprit in a snagging coil of seaweed, Jack allows a moment or two of amusement before he engages with his genius plan to get Flora into the boat and out of his hair. (You keep thinking that, buddy).

Beneath the waves, Flora will sense it as the water seems to stir and agitate, as if some clever Abandoned was using it to propel himself upwards like a dolphin about to break the surface. And then something does, indeed, grab her foot. Her feet, actually. It's good ol' Jack, pushing her directly up and out of the ocean on a fountain of seawater, like some gods damned merman.

Granted, it isn't far - just a couple of feet to help her get into the boat. But here we are, anyway.

flora

Flora's heart is thundering in her throat, and she'd fairly sure that any second it's going to come beating out of her mouth. In her panic, there's no mental resources available to put two and two together that the sudden disturbance of water below is Jack using the water magic she'd clearly seen him wield just a few days prior. No, the girl's mind can only imagine that some massive creature (wait, if this was her dad..) was below, and...

..and..!

Flora screams as Jack grabs her feet, propelling her upwards. Having expected nothing more than bloody and imminent death, she flails in the air, arching without any poise, to land hard on the inside of the boat. "Owwwuhhh." She moans, flipping onto her butt so that she could assess the damage done to her knees. One was already bloody from having hit the seat and the other was an angry red. Rubbing at the one which was merely bruised, Flora hiccuped back a sob that was more relief than pain at this point.

At least she wasn't dead.

The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

She lands with all the grace of a potato sack, and Jack is left bobbing quite happily against the side of the boat as she turns to inspect her injuries. He isn't smiling (not that you can see, and it has nothing to do with the way half his face is obscured by the boat, shut up), his eyebrows raising at the blood on her knee.

"Least you didn't land on your face," he points out, smirking and using further water magic to propel her little vessel around, guiding it back towards the sunny shores and white sands of the Hale Ka'aila.

"Next time, it helps if you actually push your boat up onto th'sand," he remarks, content to be shuttled around by his own magic and her runaway rowboat. "Ain't got healin' magic," he says, nodding at her knees. "Salt water'll sting like a bitch, but it'll help."

flora

At first Flora's eyebrows are knit together in a glare, and had this been Enzo instead, she'd have clobbered him with the first thing she could reach. Oh but it was Jack with his chiselled jawline and piercing sea-blue stare, and though the throbbing of her knee wanted to encourage her anger, it was swiftly stamped down by the adrenaline rush of having been saved.

"I did push it up on the sand." Flora protests, pushing her hair out of her face and tapping one finger against the skin which was quickly inflating around her cut. "Or...I thought I did."

You could kiss it better, she thinks to say, only given that her knee was actually bloody, that seemed a bit gross. What she actually meant was that Jack could kiss her better, but--"I have a towel on the sand I can wipe it off with. I think I've had all the stinging I want for today." Flora instead says, with a rather self-deprecating laugh. As Jack ferries them to the little island, it's with a wince and a muffled moan of pain that Flora stands and hops out of the boat, grabbing one side and heaving it up onto the sand.

"So is this how Captain Jack spends his days? Trolling the water for damsels in distress?"

The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

"I won't tell no one," Jack says with a crooked smile that he lets peep over the side of the boat at last. What he isn't telling is up to Flora's interpretation, of course - whether it's that she didn't push the boat onto the sand, or that she didn't do it enough, or that she had to swim after it and chase it. Those sorts of stories could make a reputation, and not necessarily the type you might want.

Still, they make it back to shore without further incident, and he (what a gentleman, Flora) helps to haul her rowboat right up onto the sand where it definitely won't budge. "Stingin' is better than needin' it lopped off if it gets an infection," he points out with a casual shrug, though he naturally leaves it up to her.

"Oh, on the contrary. I had business with our fair Merfolk," he says, tapping at the manta crystal around his throat as if to demonstrate. "Just happened to be at your right place at your right time."

flora

It hardly mattered what they were talking about anymore; the mere fact that there was a secret between them was the last balm needed to entirely take the sting out of Flora's emotions if not her knee.

"Ewwwwuh." Flora moans, instantly imagining her leg green and porous looking before being chopped off with a butcher's knife. " I'll just pop into the fountain when we get back to shore." She says, uncrinkling her nose if only to avoid strange tan lines. "I'm sure I can last that long."

Having dismissed the gemstone around his throat as nothing more than an electric bit of jewelry, Flora oooooooohed with appropriate understanding. "You seem to do that a lot. What other magics have you got you aren't telling me about?" She asks seductively girlishly as she seats herself on her towel and reaches first for the bottle of wine she'd brought rather than something to clean her wound with. #priorities. "I know one of the merfolk." Flora continues, tugging the cork off the bottle "He helped me set up my apartment." She adds, upending the wine to her lips while leaning back on one arm and stretching out her legs. 'Want some?'

The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

JACK

"Smart and beautiful," Jack observes with a smirk, inclining his head in approval of her decision, which he knows by now will likely hit all the right buttons with Flora. "Seem to do what a lot?" he asks, casually setting himself directly on the beach beside her. The good captain has gotten worse than sand on his wet pants in his time, and he leans back on his elbows to let the sun dry him off.

"Oh, I don't kiss an' tell," he remarks about his magic, closing his eyes to bask in whatever limited heat the strange weather can afford them. "This one ain't a magic, anyway. Just a crystal that'll let you breathe underwater. Here." He unclasps it from his throat to offer it out to her. "In case you get attacked by stray seaweed again."

Accepting the wine readily, he takes a very generous sip and raises his eyebrows to hear that she knows one of the Mer. "You're startin' to get around, huh," he murmurs. Maybe he even sounds a little impressed. Maybe.

flora

Jack doesn't just hit those buttons, he smashes them such that Flora's mind lights up like a beach-side carnival. Light might as well have been pouring out from behind her smile for how radiant she felt beneath his gaze as she grinned up at him. "You know, showing up just when I need you."

Heat and ice both flare through Flora's body as the line between pretending to be well-versed in all things flirtatious and sexual begins to blur with the reality of things at hand. "Mmm, you'd have to kiss first, I guess." Awkwardly put, Flora can only manage the briefest glance in Jack's direction before pretending the sun was in her eyes and needing to look away.

Jewellery? A gift? "Seems pretty magic to me." Reaching out with the intention of brushing her fingers over Jack's to accept the crystal, Flora turns it over a few times in her hands while biting at the inside of her cheek to stop her smile. "A little something to remember you by, huh?" Turning onto her stomach to reveal the other side of her bikini-covered body (which was adorned with sand), Flora props herself up on her elbows and nods. "Mhmmm." She agrees confidently. "I'm gonna be queen one day. Just you watch."

The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!