GOD HELP US ALL

     ❛ i am, francis. his head’s still attached, isn’t it?❜ellie holds off on finishing her response to track a change caught through her scope. she frowns deeper and deeper by the second. the stiffness around her shoulders comes apart in the following beat of a muted sigh, and her expression evens slowly back out. ❛… anyway, ‘s been, what, short of two hours since we started watching these jumped - up assholes scratch their balls while waiting for the big man to return? cut me some slack, old timer. this’d burn away anybody’s brain cells. ❜

     𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐋𝐒 𝐀𝐓 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐋𝐈𝐏𝐒.    at first,  he says nothing,  allowing silence to sweep back in between them.   take it easy,  old man.   ross’s voice washes over him in the wake of ellie’s words,  bringing with them a longing so fierce he can barely breathe.   there isn’t much he wouldn’t give to have james with him,  here,  but that chance is lost to him now,  cut down by his own hand.  wherever james is,  francis hopes he is well.  or alive,  at the very least.

     𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑’𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐆𝐍𝐀𝐖𝐒 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐈𝐑.    though it is early yet,  and the season has yet to reveal its true prowess,  there is a bite to it still.   england is known not for its warmth,  but for its damp,  its cold,  which seeps through coat and shawl with indiscriminate wretchedness.   it is incomparable to the true north,  which wields its weather as a weapon  —  this thomas knows all too well  —  but that wretched,  beautiful severity does nothing to lessen this winter’s sting.   he could not,  therefore,  in good conscience permit this woman to go without;  thomas blanky is many things,  but heartless he is not.

     ❛ … i’ve been watching this fuckface eat his lunch for an hour. who takes this long to fucking eat? ❜

open!

@legendariia / unprompted

     𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐋𝐄𝐅𝐓 𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏.    it is stuffed to the point of aching with men,  while its sister lays half a mile away,  bereft.   but henry does not mind;  he is happy for the chance to count himself among their swollen number,  for though it means a world of inconvenience,  henry would suffer hellfire itself if it meant being closer to john.   they cannot take advantage of such closeness often,  for now there are near twice as many chances for them to be found out,  but merely knowing that john stands or sits or lies somewhere on this very vessel,  just like it was when they were aboard the beagle,  fills henry’s heart with unparalleled joy.

     “ how can you ask me to eat ham, ”    said candide,   “ after killing the baron's son,  and being doomed never more to see the beautiful cunegonde? ” 

     henry leans further over the book, mouthing the words as he reads.   he is enjoying the work so far,  but can’t help but feel there is some further meaning in it all which he has not yet grasped.   he’d asked john about it,  but he’d only smiled and asked henry to think on it some more.

     “ what will it avail me to spin out my wretched days and drag them far from her in remorse and despair?   and what will the journal of trevoux say? ”

     trevoux.   the word is entirely unfamiliar to him.  he frowns down at it,  trying to fit its shape into his mouth the way john had taught him,  and becomes so engrossed in the puzzle that he fails to notice lieutenant le vesconte until he sits beside him.   henry looks up — having made no progress,  and deciding to bring it to john when next he gets the chance — and closes the book over his finger so that the lieutenant might glimpse the cover.

@dilapsum· said: beat, from sophia! —— 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄 ╱ 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠.

        his life long goal is to blend in,  a boy looking barely nineteen, yet older in spirit than anyone he’s known or ever shall know; go to parties, make acquaintances, have a dance  &  blend in. not that he minds such fancies, usually; a dance to a beautiful waltz can always spark JOY in the young elder’s heart——–the delightful sounds of the piano, the twirl of colored skirts across the ballroom floor, a smile on the face of whatever partner indulges him in a moment of fun. 

        this time is a miss cracroft——–sophia, he thinks her name is——–relation to some lieutenant … naval … something. occupations  &  titles get so blurred, when one is two hundred  &  some years old. someone more important than he, at the very least, he knows, meant to go on some sort of expedition; but giovanni has no interest in that, he merely wishes to move to the music  &  smile, for a moment.

        the waltz is schubert, something in b minor,  &  he listens closely to every beat  &  struck note, where the music gets softer then louder, missed notes from the pianist in question there across the room;  &  he forgets to focus on the DANCE, nearly tripping over his own foot  &  offering miss cracroft a smile, one embarrassed little chuckle.    ❛you will excuse me, i hope, it is just——i am rather engrossed in the music itself. it is lovely, don’t you think ?❜    something tells him he’s supposed to call her lovely, too, pay her some sort of compliment——–but giovanni’s social skills are lacking more with the day,  &  he is now too flustered over his own misstep to even think of one. perhaps she’ll think him young; laugh off his cluelessness. at least immortality can be used to some advantage.

        ❛thank you for entertaining me for a dance, by the way.❜    there, he thinks, that’s something, a show of gratitude,    ❛even as hopeless as i may be——do not be surprised if i trip again before the song ends.❜

     𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐎 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃.    across the room,  the piano swells and fades like the tide,  underscored by the indistinguishable rumble of chatter,  the soft percussion of shoes upon the marble floor,  the tinkling clink of glasses as they are struck lightly against each other.   it is a veritable labyrinth of noise,  and sophia allows herself to abscond beneath it,  anxieties and aggravation cinched tightly beneath the laces of her corset. 

     she had not particularly wanted to come tonight — the prospect of seeing francis had swept over her like a fever throughout the course of the day,  at once both chilling and gratifying.   but now,  gliding around the floor like a music box figurine,  she recalls just how much such a scene enlivens her.   for a moment,  she plucks francis and her uncle and the northwest passage from where they have stuck fast like burrs in her skin and sets them aside,  relegates them to the furthest corner of the room,  where they may lay,  undisturbed,  until she is prepared to take them up again.

     her partner is not known to her — not well,  at least — but she likes that all the better.   he is handsome,  at least,  if young,  and she is glad to indulge him in a dance.   it makes her feel rather daring,  an unwed woman nearly past her prime,  in the arms of a young foreign thing who cannot be a day over eighteen.

     he stumbles,  and sophia’s hand tightens upon his shoulder as she attempts to bring them back in step.   it is a movement she has grown used to,  from dancing with francis,  and she thinks nothing of it until the boy’s face widens into an embarrassed smile.   “ it’s beautiful, ”   she agrees,  attention narrowing to the piano in the corner.   the waltz is at once charming and somewhat melancholy,  but perhaps that is her own preoccupation leaking out to color her perception.

              𝙏𝙀𝙇𝙇 𝙏𝙃𝙊𝙎𝙀 𝙒𝙃𝙊 𝘾𝙊𝙈𝙀 𝘼𝙁𝙏𝙀𝙍 𝙐𝙎 𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝙏𝙊 𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙔

                     @folkiisms     /     wounded starters

     𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐀 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐎 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆,    hunger becomes a burdensome beast to shake.   after fury beach,  it had been much the same.   we’ve seen worse than this,  you and i.   at times,  thomas wonders whether he ought to have spoken the words at all — whether,  by voicing them,  he had called down devastation from the heavens,  poured it upon them like sealing wax.   his only comfort is that,  in the end,  god had seen fit to spare them — or,  to spare some of them — cupping his hands beneath them and carrying them back to england like wayward children.

     it has been nearly a year now,  but that place remains with him.   he hears the tuunbaq’s roar in the rumble of carriages through crowded streets,  sees francis’s ruddy face in every tumbler of whiskey.   feels the teeth of the north in every winter frost.   thomas greets them all as old friends — there is no fear left in those memories,  only a distant sort of horror.

                      and yet —