[se] a preference for clashing metal

MELITA

Melita had once spent moments upon her mother’s lap, or just below, watching as she sewed. Dresses had been brought to life from simple fabric, adorned for her sister and herself, and she’d stared on in fascinated rapture at the nimble, gentle fingers, at the speed, at the familiar and comfortable swiftness. Had the Honeybee been given more time with her family, perhaps she might have picked up on that talent too.

Instead, she’d learned to sew stitches into skin and close open lacerations, to survive amidst butchery and extend her own. Which helped and aided in some regards, as she closed holes in her poor, torn-apart vestiges, but still ricocheted loudly when she began to construct something for the upcoming spring ball..thing.

“Fuck,” she whispered to herself as another prick of her needle pierced her finger’s skin, and she began to wonder if she should’ve picked out crimson cloth, just so bloodstains wouldn’t be so apparent. Wiping it off on the rock she currently sat upon, she gave Sila and Fangorn a look. “You can’t even tell, right?” She held it up for them to see, where there was still multitudes of sleeves, trim, and whatever else to apply. Fangorn grimaced and Sila sighed, so the youth hissed and continued, persisted, head bent over the material.

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

JACK

"What the fuck am I lookin' at, Mel?" Jack wants to know, appearing seemingly out of nowhere (it's a talent, okay) and plopping down to sit on a rock a few inches above hers, giving him a perfect vantage point to look at the bloodily-adorned fabric. His tone is fairly cheerful all things considered, the captain getting comfortable and taking out his tobacco tin, planning on rolling a few cigarettes while he watches this travesty unfold.

Why is he here and what's the meaning of all these shenanigans?

He's bored and doesn't really need an excuse to hassle his first mate cannon mistress. "If you wanted to look more like a lady on the ship, there's a perfectly good marketplace," he remarks, shrugging at Seven who has just tried to leap onto his shoulder. The sear cat doesn't take the hint (when does she ever), instead mrowing a greeting to the Honeybee and her cohort.

romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic
and recommended

MELITA

Ordinarily the tones might have jumped her or sent her to her weapons, but she was already in such a grumbling state that she only fixed the captain a look of disdain. “It’s a dress. Obviously.” Except the state of it was a misshapen sack of haphazard sleeves and bloodstains, but somebody, somewhere, would get the gist. Sighing, she bent forward over the garment again, already beginning to remove a line of stitching that hadn’t even been remotely straight. “I’m not very good at this,” she mumbled, perhaps one of the few admittances of her many flaws.

But if he wanted to intentionally rile and piss her off, she had more than enough ammunition to unfurl in return. While she hastened a wave towards the cat, and Fangorn and Sila did much the same with their own acknowledgements (vampire gourd grins and a shy dragon hiding behind the youth’s shoulder), a sigh reeled through, pondering on wrinkling her nose and forging onward with her usual impulse, or to let it slowly build. “It needs to be handmade for the ball thing.” Then, because some rankling needed to happen, her eyes glanced back over her work and pinpointed on him. “You going?”

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

JACK

"Oh I see," Jack drawls, his busy fingers sprinkling tobacco into the paper in his lap. "And the blood is for decoration. Makes perfect sense." Raising his eyebrows at her, he watches with catlike interest as she unpicks her stitching, while the actual cat on his shoulder obnoxiously rubs her furry cheek against his temple.

He doesn't bother agreeing with her, because she's right - she's pretty shit at it, honestly - and so instead he rolls his first cigarette and scrunches his nose at her second comment. "Am I goin' to the ball thing," he repeats, dry as Hak Etme. "Am I gonna sit and stitch a dress so it's handmade. Snorting, he shakes his head. "Your sense of humour is gettin' better," he remarks.

"Then again," he muses, "it'll be a good excuse to get away for monsoon season."

romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic
and recommended

MELITA

“Now you get it,” she postured in return, though it was distracted, her nails digging and ripping apart the seams. Starting over, straightening out the seams as best she could, the sudden painstaking ache for her mother, for her sister, welled up again, and she smothered it downward, into the walls of fire and blood in her chest.

The image of Jack stitching a dress, then wearing it, brightened her mood considerably, enough to stifle a threatening lashing of laughter, half-hidden in the snort behind her hand. “C’mon. Think of all the attention you’d get.”

Head-tilting vaguely, she looked up from the mess she’d created, brows furrowing slightly at the mention of travels. It’d been a long while since they’d taken the Ark out – and rather than dwell in self-inflicted misery or piss poor humor, settled into curiosity again. “Oh? Where to?”

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

JACK

Unfortunately for Melita, thanks to the nature of Jack's magic, he gets it far more than he'd like to, and for a moment or so even the snark fades from his features so he can drag up a mental barrier against the gut punch of the Honeybee's emotions. By the time he peeks over that psychic wall (approximately one more rolled cigarette later), he's not sure if it's any better, but it wouldn't be the first time he's had to run through the streets hitching skirts up around his knees.

"I can only imagine," he drawls at her with a smirk and a raise of his eyebrows, though as she starts to try and stitch again, he waves her off. "That's gonna end up more crooked'n I am. Give it here." He sets down his tobacco tin expectantly.

And as for where to, the slant to his smile becomes decidedly sharper. "A little bird told me that the Hollowed Grounds has a dock these days. Never been there, so I thought I'd drop by."

romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic
and recommended

MELITA

Sheer stubbornness reared its ugly head when she heard his demand – and for half a second, she considered fighting him on it. She should be able to finish it. But one more look at its misshapen and bloodstained form, and she merely sighed, allowing him to have it. It couldn’t look any worse for wear.

Sighing, and placing her hand in her chin, she scratched the top of Fangorn’s head with the other. The implications of where they’d be going sent another pang of emotions through her. Dread and apprehension, maybe, along with the residual side effects of days spent hiding from the darkness along LongNight, or chasing after mysteries, striving to see their way out of the murk and sorrow that was the Hollowed Grounds.

But it’d changed. Perhaps for the better. She had no way of knowing. Wrinkling her nose slightly, she cast her eyes away from the Captain, and out towards sand and shoal. “You’re probably not missing much.”

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

JACK

"Prob'ly is a risk I'm willin' to take," Jack says, and while he can't actually roll his eyes at the Return of the King Heavy-Ass Emotions, he does focus a little more intently on the stitchwork Melita has tried to butcher. Having been fixing sails since long before he owned his own ship, the result won't be fancy, but it will be in a straight line. If she doesn't like it she can unpick it again - when Jack's gone, preferably, because his patience will have run out by then.

"S'where you came from, right?" he continues, holding a bit of thread between his teeth as he tries to tighten up a stubborn stitch. "In Caido anyway." It's been a long ass time, but he does remember the whole Outlander thing being a big deal after the barrier at the Grounds came down.

romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic
and recommended

MELITA

The Honeybee could imagine Jack sailing the Ark to the Grounds for five minutes, before being bored to death and turning around. There were likely more facets there – beyond wretched woods where banshees lurked or stretches of dilapidated farmland, but the youth hadn’t been there since the Ascended had taken over, and then perished. Years could’ve stretched it to something substantial, and she knew Darkeye was trying…

She shrugged her shoulders, eyes watching the heavy stitchwork as she scratched Fangorn’s head, listened to the sound of Sila’s soft breathing around her shoulders. The question brought her out of the melancholy mood for a moment, if only to remember reality. Because the Dragon’s Throat was where she’d been born, where she was from, and somehow reclaiming the crimson sand and the sprawl of leathery wings was better than the notions of the Grounds. “Yeah, it's where we were all shuffled in.” Taken, was probably a better statement. “Are you hoping to find anything there?” Business likely wasn’t booming.

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

JACK

Melancholy it might be, but Jack does still smirk around the thread between his lips, enjoying the mental image of himself that parades through Melita's mind (even if it's thoroughly unimpressed by what the Grounds has to offer). "What'd the place ever do to you?" he wants to know, because one doesn't have to be a telepath - and it's only unfortunate that in this instance one is - to know that Melita being quiet is a treat reserved only for special occasions. Or depression, as so happens to be the case.

"Always," he says of finding anything there. "You never know what might crop up. New business dealin's, connections, new stock to haul..." He shrugs. "An' if there's fuck all there then I know to avoid it next time." But he won't know shit by sitting around and doing nothing, unless Melita's mental namedrop of someone called Darkeye turns out to be of pivotal importance.

romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic
and recommended

MELITA

A loud snort volleyed through her lungs at his inquiry. “Lost a lot of friends during LongNights.” And maybe that wasn’t the Grounds’ fault, but it was the place where they’d all been forced to stay, and by extension, something that made her hesitate stepping down upon again. “Seems to be a place of loss,” rather than renewal – because while some had tried, it never seemed to stick. Mostly all she’d done in her youth was experience those emotions – death, demise, deprivation of family – until survival was the only thing paramount in her mind.

She twined her fingers along Fangorn’s vines as they lingered along her knees, withholding a sigh. Jack would be the type to try, with or without her explanations, so she wondered why she even bothered. Regardless, he’d learn either way. “Many seemed to struggle to just make it day to day there.” The Honeybee’s shoulders lifted up and down again, before her eyes went towards the sea; a comfort on its own. “I hope it’s changed since the war.”

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

JACK

"Oh, that's right - there were monsters'n shit hangin' around there at Longnight, right?" Jack had heard as much - and no, there's not even so much as a sorry for the loss that seemed to drape itself around the Grounds. Not a reputation any place wanted to carry, the captain imagines, but when you've got cheerleaders like Melita singing its praises, it's no surprise it's hard to shake off.

"Fingers crossed. You can pay your respects there or whatever, at least," he drawls. And because he's finished with the line of stitches he's been working on - and also finished with Melita's insistence on hoovering up his good mood - he flings the finished garment at her, hoping it lands over her head. "There," he says. "Could run that up our main mast now an' it'd sail."

romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic
and recommended

MELITA

“Yeah,” she muttered, opting to twirl another vine around her finger. More than just monsters and shit though, and if Jack felt the urge, he could dive headlong into the pocket of images stored in the Honeybee’s memories. Claws and fangs. Screams of pain, agony, and torture. Muffled whispers of promises, assurances, trickery, and deceit. Columns of fire burning around the edges of a shelter, and only the dark to roam within.

Or, if he chose to ignore it, the youth would just pout, staring off into the sea. “Maybe I’ll just get really drunk there instead.” Too lost in her thoughts anyway, she didn’t see the last of the stitches, or the dress coming her way. It immediately felt right over her head, with a violent, hissing sputter spewing and spilling from her lips. “Thanks,” was also muffled underneath it too, as her hands went to remove it from her locks. “I’ll be sure to let you have it after.” A little banner of bloodstained fabric seemed adequate for the Ark.

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

JACK

Jack always feels the urge (such is the nature of his grubby little magic), but the tar-slick colour of her thoughts has him making a hasty retreat, the captain falling uncharacteristically quiet to roll another cigarette, this one noticeably clumsier than his others. "Opposed to gettin' really drunk at all the other places we go?" he snarks, putting the smokes into his tobacco tin and clicking it shut, tucking it away in the pocket of his waistcoat.

Unashamedly proud of having managed to dump the dress over her head, Jack rises to his feet with Seven perched along his shoulders, tsking away her gratitude like it was something sour. "My shoulders might be too broad for it," he says of having the dress after, "but it'd make a nice flag, I reckon. Keep the bloodstains."

And, as is Jack's way, he considers his curiosity sated and promptly takes his leave of Melita; by the time she draws the dress down away from her face, he'll already be a departing figure across the sand.

~FIN

romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic
and recommended