âAh, but risk begets reward, Chaplain. We might well meet our watery graves along the way.â âI can believe it.â âAnd doesn't that frighten you?â âMay as well meet God and see what all the fuss is about.â

Andulka

if i look back, i am lost
Peter Solarz

shark vs the universe

Janaina Medeiros
d e v o n
hello vonnie
Show & Tell
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
cherry valley forever
art blog(derogatory)

izzy's playlists!
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
I'd rather be in outer space đž

PR's Tumblrdome
Monterey Bay Aquarium

⣠Chile in a Photography âŁ
dirt enthusiast
seen from France
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Finland

seen from Canada

seen from Malaysia
seen from Canada
seen from Italy
seen from Uruguay
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from Hong Kong SAR China

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
@fatherfoxhound
âAh, but risk begets reward, Chaplain. We might well meet our watery graves along the way.â âI can believe it.â âAnd doesn't that frighten you?â âMay as well meet God and see what all the fuss is about.â

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
* ( Â đđđđđđđđđđ / Â đđđđđđđđ đđđđđđđ.
These may have been edited for clarity or length or to better apply for roleplaying.
do it. be bold.
we must continue our ruse until iâve found my match.
me, unavailable; you, desirable.
i trusted you more than anyone in this world, and you took advantage.
you do not know me, but i know you.
you have no idea what it is to have oneâs entire life reduced to a single moment.
is this not lovely? all of us together again.
an expert in the art of the swoon.
i wish to be entertained.
it would be better if you refrain from thinking about me at all.
lovely indeed. we should tempt scandal more often.
the social season is upon us.
your love is an unrequited fantasy.
i cannot stop thinking of you.
i am anything but interested in you.
it is more than just your honor at stake.
i write in my diary which is not the same as writing in my novel.
a pairing like that would be most enchanting indeed.
the seasonâs diamond, even more precious and rare a stone than previously thought?
stare into my eyes.
is it awful that iâm enjoying it?
if you desire the sun and the moon, all you have to do is go out and shoot at the sky.
we could pretend to form an attachment.
if there is a scandal, i shall uncover it.
must our only options be to squawk and settle or to never leave the nest?
all is fair in love and war.
there is nothing you cannot do.
my honor is not for sale.
if this is to work, we must appear madly in love.
iâm aware of your reputation.
do not tell me that is another scandal sheet.
youâve always amused me.
we find ourselves seated next to each other. iâd think youâd be happy about that.
marriage has it joys, but it also brings with it its special trials.
itâd be better if you refrain from thinking about me at all.
you do not know me, and never shall.
you do not humiliate the one you love.Â
iâm aware of your reputation and i am anything but interested in you.
what if i want to fly?
the ones we love have the power to inflict the greatest scars.
every presumptuous mother in town will leave me alone and every suitor will be looking at you.
you do not trick the one you love.
if you desire the sun and the moon, all you have to do is go out and shoot at the sky.
let it be known that if there is a scandal, i shall uncover it.
you think that just because iâm a woman, iâm incapable of making my own choices?
love, conquers all.
you can choose to love me as much as i love you.
i am tired of pretending.
from the mornings you ease, to the evenings you quiet, to the dreams you inhabit my thoughts of you never end.
i cannot continue acting as if i do not love you. because i do.
i love all of you.
i cannot be your fool again.
the brighter a lady shines, the faster she may burn.
we chose to love each other every single day.
pride, it will cost you everything and leave you with nothing.
i am looking out for myself.
you donât deserve to breathe the same air as her.
you must simply marry the man who feels like your dearest friend.
i am ensuring my own future. because i know in my heart i know that there is no one else who ever will.
you do not lie to the one you love.
to meet a beautiful woman is one thing, but to meet your best friend in the most beautiful of women is something entirely apart.
circumstances change, ladies. sometimes over night.
her heart is no matter, as long as her hand remains free.
you cannot assure me of everything.
i will always protect you.
i believe i should like to stay.
i believe you should like to go.
what others should ever want such damaged goods now?
you have no idea what it is to be a woman.
you are perfection itself.
what? you donât love me for my subtlety.
would you rather die than marry me?
i am yours, i have always been yours.
it is you i cannot sacrifice.
i burn for you.
it pains me you should think every compliment a mockery.
i ask you, can the ends ever justify such wretched means?
i say this before doing just about anything
wolfhoundingsâ:
Theyâd been here once before, albeit roles reversed. Once a towering frame filling a doorway, to keep a hunterâs justice from embedding itself between the eyes of a guilty quarry. Now a towering frame poised to enact their own watery retribution - quarry guilty of nothing but survival and subservience, this time - and a hunter too late to keep them apart.
But not too late to separate them. So heâd lunged. Tried to reign him in with an arm hooked around the throat and a warning glint of steel. A bloodless tranquilliser; once sanguine was spilled on either side, a whiff of it would have them at each other like wolves. The captainâs lot taking their leave wasnât worth a bloodbath.
But there was no winning here, it seemed. With one appeased, another was set off. Heâd hardly registered Laurentsâ screech over the stun of its proximity, and the consequential wrench of his gut as a fist drove home. Mariah came away easily - the deckhand Roi had grappled having managed to slip away, given the opening. He doubled over the fist, the blow punching the air from his lungs for a hard-felt second.
Job done, heâd expected the chaplain to stop there. Perhaps that was why the blade clattered so easily to the deck, dislodged from loose fingers as the abdomen-cradling arm was jerked back and a bellicose bodyweight buckled him to a knee. That was where the compliance ceased. Mariah caught himself before he could be pushed any lower, the fizzle of some ancient ferocity escaping gnashed teeth in a growl, and he began to push back. A living built on bibles versus one built on bounties; it wasnât the fated outcome of this that set him ill at ease, but the fact the dirk had escaped his periphery. He writhed one way and the other - half under the unyielding pressure of the priest on his back, half scouring for the discarded weapon. He glimpsed it too late to discourage what bloody respite it would orchestrate.
Wild eyes flared with something else and he made a sideward jerk, chaplain and all. The restrained dodge was too little too late it would seem, as the hold on him fell away and he caught the agonised wheeze. Immediately Mariah twisted aside and up, whirling to his unsolicited rescuer and clapping him hard across the head (not forcefully, but not at all kindly).
âHave you lost the fucking run of yourself?â he spat as he snatched for the wielding wrist to revoke the weapon, only to glance down and find it vacant. Only to turn back to the man crumpled on a knee and find the offending blade still lodged in his shoulder. His jaw tightened as he flashed one look about the chaos surrounding before he thrust the guard away from him and sidled to the chaplain once more.
âThis may be a God given sign you should stick to scriptures, Laurie. This never seems to end well for you,â Mariah examined the wound with a judicious eye (heâd only the one) before dipping to the priestâs other side and beneath the good arm. With a soft urging of âup you getâ he hoisted him to his feet with weightless ease, though he did not do so too hastily.
âDonât go jostling too much, now. Itâs not going to be the most comfortable trek but I can promise youâll have a nastier go of it if that thing comes out.â The sick-bay was of course, the imperative destination. But a glance about the deck, still fraught with clashing limbs, foretold the journey to the skirts of the fray would be a dicey one. The brow furrowed warily as he hauled the chaplain flush and steady to his side, and began to navigate him through the gaps. Tone perhaps the only unsharp thing to surround them, that moment.
âStick to me, now. Youâll be grand. Itâs not even that bad, alright? It isnât that bad.â
Heâd live, sure enough. But there was no telling what lasting damage such a scrape could leave him with until there was time for a closer look. He supposed the reassurance depended on oneâs interpretation of âbadâ.
âââ
What follows reaches the chaplain in bleary vignettes, as if he watches the fray of their landfall reach him through a pinhole. Thereâs a thrumming in the ears. Blood rushing through the drum of them in a deafening march. Blood blooming from his back. In a moment of flagging lucidity, or perhaps animal instinct, the chaplain paws for his shoulder. Seems an attempt to seize the knifeâs handle and take it outâ out! But weakness, or a flash of better sense, overcomes him. He abandons the gesture, arm dropping limply to his side as he hunches into himself. As he gleans, in a faraway manner, that the bounty hunterâs standing over him in an absurd echo of a night over a decade past and tin-typed into his memory. This presence all too familiar to his instincts would be enough to upend him, only this time the bounty hunter doesnât strike. Instead he hoists him, secures him to his side, and carries him onward.
Laurie. Had he his wits about him, heâd take a higher name in vain for this one:  Laurie. When had they started with the nicknames, then? The two of them. When had wariness turned to such easy friendship? And when had it curdled? Ah, thatâs right. The chaplain had remembered himself. The holy-man with a divine intervention all his own, the whole of it summing up to hubris. The fool with the swinging fist. Bastard with the blade in his back. âSh-shut,â he manages, just barely. The passion that seeps through the wheeze communicates enough: shut your bloody mouth. Maybe itâs one of lifeâs many little miracles that heâs too shellshocked, too tongue-tied by pain, to prattle off even one of the obscenities that come to mind.
Stick to me, now, Mariah says â and thereâs almost a divine comedy to it; he wonders if the fifth circle felt as such to Dante: bodies reeling about the deck in blind wrath. The sound of it, the fury, a far-off gunshot, the blood.Â
Heâs aware of this as they descend to the lower decks and toward the sickbay, his own hands clutching at his breast as though that might staunch what dampens his back.
Heâs aware of Mariahâs arm as it bears his weight â how it presses up âround his middle. Feels as though heâs falling into it with the hazy notion that he may never stop falling. Aware of a glimpse of Jonathan as they near the sickbay. Then, as his vision tunnels, heâs aware of little more.
[ @arcticdoctorâ ]
đđđ đđđđ đđđđđ | đđđđ-đđđđ đđđđđ đđđđ
[ @sweetsunfloraâ ]
Happy Holidays Trixie! Love, Lack

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
đđđ đđđđđđ | đđđđđđđ đđđđđđđđđ
 [ @seraphsaint ]
âHappy Holidays Noel! Love, Lack
sweetsunfloraâ:
She had an ideaââan awful, symbolic, idea: to sit in the hollow, empty, turtle shell of Philippaâs life, and take on the full scope of her actions. To burden herself with the gravity of death. Of murder. She had not just killed flesh and blood, but hope and dreamsâŠThoughts and ideas that will never come into being again. When she opens the cabin door, she intends to drown in the context of the life she ended.
Her hands run over bedsheets, unmade and cold. A bed left in a rush, meant to be tidied later upon returning. There is a small bookshelf in the corner and a writing desk close by. Emma approaches it to find a journal, closed but page marked by fountain pen. She almost opens it, almost breaches into the mind that is here no more but another thing catches her eye first. A peaking corner of a portrait just underneath the leather bound diary, and before she can even pull it out; before she can see the whole picture, Emma knows it is her own work. The noblewomanâs faceââmade with her own strokes, her own handââhalf-smiles in burning irony. And it feels like a mocking, the universeâs mocking. The naturalistâs features twist, wrought iron mangled by this new blow. Her chest heaves, up and down, and the ugly lines on her face deepening. Suddenly, a scream claws out her throat and she is no longer human but hurricane, tearing through books and blankets and journals. She howls, and keeps grabbing and ruining, because thatâs all her stupid hands can do. All they know how to do.
Suddenly, Laurents is in front of her and she stands in the middle of unholy debris. There is wetness on her face, running down in streaks. When did she start crying? âLaurentsââThis isnâtââI can explain.â But she chokes on her excuses. âââIâm sorry. Iâm so so sorry. I donât know whyââW-Why did I do that? Iâm so sorry.â She sinks to the floor, holding herself. As if that will keep the shattered pieces of her together.
âââ
She stands in the middle of unholy debris, and in the immediacy of itâ before reason, before action, before anything else, Laurents only wonders how he never saw the naturalist in such a light. In such a violence. A shrike. He enters the room in a daze and can only blanch at the nest sheâs made of its tatters and the prey sheâs made of him, thorn through the heart. Several heartbeats of stillness follow. In the end, he finds itâs not the outburst itself that pierces his chest, itâs the remnants.Â
Itâs the book that lies by her left shoe (one of several), with its pages gutted through. Its cover torn. A hardback of his own innermost collection, graphite marks in the margins. A book lent to Pippa in a moment alone some time ago, and left to her care since. It feels like being rent open.Â
Laurents moves toward her. Isnât entirely sure why, or to what end; only that his thinning frame moves without him. It takes him to the floor with her, knee thunking to the scuffed boards as he kneels before her. As he circles his arms âround her back and holds her collapsing shape to his chest. Holds fast, to keep the pieces together. To keep both of their crumbling frames together.
arcticdoctorâ:
fatherfoxhoundâ.
âââ
When the good doctor draws him in, feeling pangs deep in his chest and splinters through every sinew of his limbs; the same way a glass might shatter upon the floor and send its shards to the kitchenâs farthest corners, finding the nooks even the home itself had forgotten existed. Perhaps his body has always built houses in this way; erected shelves to store grief, hearths where others warm up, dens for visitors to slough off their worries.
Perhaps his bones have just been creaking timbers for some time now, his shoulders a sagging roof.
He slopes into Jonathan and winds one arm for purchaseâ fingers twisting into the back of his shirt. Thinks he might weep, if he could. Let tears stain the doctorâs shoulder; but nothing comes, eyes dry as some long neglected attic. âI know I⊠I shouldnâtâ crumble for such reasons,â he utters even as meaning escapes him. Shouldnât he? he thinks. He, who is meant to channel meaning from such things. To guide others toward it. Folding, now, or starting to; for the same things he believes a chaplainâs meant to prop others up through.
âI donât know how to make meaning out of this,â a broken, single-syllabled chuckle leaks from his throat as he holds the doctor tightly in turn. I donât know what else to do. He could say the very same; and so they simply stand over an empty bed, the same, but different.
they were past the point of simple sadness; they were past the point of tears and choked sobs. they were somewhere else, somewhere crafted for those of their professions â the caregivers, the heart-tenders. the hollowed, hallowed souls. jonathanâs hand curled at the back of laurentsâ neck, a refusal to let go, a desperate clutch. an anchor for them both, a moment of selfish intent. come, friend, let us be broken things for a moment. let us put down the weight of care and hold each other up.Â
perhaps beauty did not exist everywhere. perhaps they had to make it themselves. perhaps that was their great charge. but another time, another time. this time, this now, this moment, jonathan simply held laurents. i donât know what else to do turning into at least i can do this.Â
âyou donât have to,â he finally said, the words crafting themselves, pulling from what jonathan would like another to turn to him and say. you do not have to be brave right now. his voice catching with the same raw break, the two men mirrors of one another. (Â can a reflection be a witness? can a reflection be a comfort? )Â âyou donât have to make meaning out of it.â
-FIN-
when: immediately after the plot drop, a skirmish where: main deck with: @wolfhoundings
âRoi has easily overtaken his guard, pinning them to the side of the boat. Before he can hurl them into the water, Mariah throws himself onto his back, pinning the stewardâs neck into the crook of his elbow. A flash of silver in his free palm - but then Laurents is on him, twisting their arm back until the knife drops to the ground with a clatter, and drives his fist into the mercenaryâs gut, allowing Roi the chance to break free.â ( âlandfall )
(cw; violence, knives, injury) There are a few moments, rare ones, when signifier and signified become one; where the word meant to grasp the feeling does so seamlessly it transcends translation. This is one of them, he thinks. So, this is anger. Sure, he'd settled his history with the bounty hunter in the common mess nights earlier, but he'd yet to settle the flintlock spark to it. The searing flash that accompanied the memory. It's a directionless anger, this one. One that started long before the mutiny, long before even setting foot aboard the Promethean. But perhaps the starting point doesn't matter at all, and it's only the peak that remains. Here is the peak of the chaplain's anger (the bottom a far sight below):
"Stay back from himâ!" in a splintered snarl as his closed fist finds its next markâ this time a hook up under the Mariah's ribs, knuckles driving forth until he hears the wind wrench from him. It's a sensation like no other, even now. The blunt force. The blow. The give beneath his hand as the man yields to it. He could savor it, maybe, in all the ways he knows he shouldn't. As if man's hands were made for this. As if his wereâ four and a half fingers that curl into a fist with the same ease they handle a horsehair bow. As if the grips for war and music aren't even so far apart. Are just two faces of the same feeling.
The knife Mariah flashed for warning's sake has clattered to the deckâ has gone skidding out of reach in the fray. Come to rest by the boot of Roi's staggered guard. The chaplain's mind is elsewhere. On the bounty hunter, firstâ On the recollection of that arm 'round Roi's neck that's still stirs his heart to boiling.
It's enough to blind him to all else as he wrests the hunter's offending arm behind his back, and holds him there even after Roi's taken his break for freedom. Itâs already over, but he presses on. Forces him lower and lowerâ as if he aims to drive Mariah's chin straight into the deck.
It's enough to blind him to the knife's new keeper: the guard that surges back in to the fray, not to return the blade to a fellow mutineer but to sheath it in the belligerent chaplain. In the flurry of limbs and intention, the man's swing is thrown. ( A slight but saving grace. The difference between maim and mortal. ) Instead of severing artery, the sailor slashes a mad arc aside of itâ thrusting toward the shoulders of Leoâs coat: burrowing through wool, through vest and broadcloth, until it splits his shirt. Until, slowed, it sheaths partway into him. The chaplain's cry is ground to dust between his clenching teethâ only a spitting, choked heave, hold breaking on Mariah breaks as he buckles, knee cracking to the deck.
đđđ đđđđđ đđđđ đđđđđ đ đđđđđđ đđđ
đđŻđđ§đ: đđĄđ đŹđđ„đŻđđ đđ đ«đđŠđđąđ§đŹ | đ đđ«đąđ©đ„đ đđźđ§đđ«đđ„ đŹđđ«đŻđąđđ ( đ đŹđđ„đ đ©đđ«đ đ«đđđđđąđšđ§ ; đđ°: đđđđđĄ )
It's never easy, but it goes like this.
The chaplain stands before the crew, bundled to the teeth in wool layers but freezing to the bone just the same. What lies beyond the mortal coil is again reeled up to earth, made tangible â no longer an abstract thought to reckon with in chapel but a face among them. In this case, three faces, now. Two lost to some unknown expanse, the third the only near to them, still. So â just the one coffin, just the one. Body sewn in a canvas shroud and weighted to ensure her sinking. The chaplainâs orating, though he's not entirely sure from where he comes, nor to what end he travels. What is there to say to them? To those they've left behind?
To us, death is just this, he could say. Not the sweeping movement that is witnessing it, but simply this: a person fails to reappear. what lies beyond is one thing, but this, this is what is real to us they've left behind. An exit, as if just off stage left. One that begins and begins and begins; a distance that gathers weight until, finally, death becomes it.
But, all the same, he's orating. already down some different thread. trying to follow it as far as it will take him until his fingers grow too frostbitten to keep hold, and thenâ he'll slip, maybe. if he's unlucky. For now he clings to it. Lets images of the lost run over his bleary eyes as Pippa, Pantea, Vladya all linger in the air among them. Their memory the hearth kept lit by the hands of other people; now itâs to the living to share and bear the flame.
"âyou've seen the temporary fire, and the eternal fire," he supposes Dante a fitting passage, here, if you mold the words in all the right places. "You've reached the place past which I cannot see." I, him, them, us, this time. Words penned as imparted from creator to creation now turned on end, on end. A great unmaking. A gesture of sending, of spiriting back, for the departed. A steadying for those who remain. "âfrom now on, let your pleasure be your guide. You're past the steep and past the narrow paths. Look at the sun rays that shine upon your brow. Among them, you can rest," he pauses a moment, to swallow that which threatens to freeze in his throat. "âYou can walk. And at the coming of those those eyes that, weeping, send you to my side, Await no further word or sign. You are free, erect, and whole. You are crowned," his breath escapes as a tremulous fog, "and mitered over yourself.â
Raw, red fingers crease his notes in on themselves as he lifts his gaze now to the gathering. "There's little to be said to soothe wounds such as this. Little to find as far as meaning when we're pressed this close to the glass. But a good friend once told me," his eyes seek Jon in the crowd â note him where he stands with Ephraim and the others under guard "you don't have to make meaning out of it, not just now," gives his head a small shake as he searches the somber faces. "Perhaps it's enough to have dreamed. To have loved with the whole soul's might. To have known them at all."
And here's the part where he means to say their names. Pantea Mazandarani, Vladimir Yamatov, Philippa Stanley: he knows them front to back, but he chokes on the last syllables.
Thankfully, someone sees it coming miles off. The ice master, Ephraim: A sailor with the years on him to know when a man's near to gaping like a gutless fish. The chaplain notices this when his own, faltering voiceâ the thickened silence it's been bleeding intoâ is gradually overtaken by another. Tones sliding over one another until his permits to melt away entirely, relieved by the ice master's baritone:
Of all the comrades that e'er I had, They are sorry for my going away,
And something curious happens then. In the growing lull, another. The caulker, Laszlo, straightening unsteadily at the flanks of the crowd to carry it on so it won't stand lonesome. A tone more like the creaking timbers than the billowing sail, but it'll do, he reckons. It'll do.
And all the sweethearts that e'er I had They would wish me one more day to stay,
It catches on, then, among the other caulkers. The deckhands, a boatswain, an able seaman or two. Catches faster, now, until standing at the gathering's other flank, the cartographer Sohrab rounds it out with her husky hum. The chaplain's chapped lips purse shut, bleary eyes crinkling; a certain gratitude in the quiet, weary slope of his shoulders as he leaves the rest to them:
But since it falls unto my lot That I should rise and you should not, I'll gently rise and I'll softly call Good night and joy be with you all.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
wolfhoundingsâ:
Mariah felt it coming (what he lacked in visual he tended to compensate for in visceral). Call it foresight, call it vigilance - call it a lifetime of catching the preliminary spark in the eye before catching the fist in the palm. But the palm made no start to deflect, nor retaliate. It curled around a piece of errant cutlery as the offendedâs eyes met the offenderâs, and as the chaplain pounced the spoon arced sideward with a calculated flick of the wrist.
With the shrill clatter of metal on wood, the blowâs fateful landing was deafened to all but the mess hallâs two stragglers. The hunterâs head snapped back with a sharp grunt, a hand catching the table in time to keep from being keeled from the bench altogether. And then it snapped forward again, the grunt stalled into something hushed and hoarse as the other hand came up to shelter the face from further injury. Hell knew itâd seen enough in recent years.
âFuck me- Did God guide your hand on that one, too?â he grit out after a moment, brows scrunched as the tending wrist withdrew bloody. He touched his tongue to his lower lip and grimaced, before levelling with the ordained pugilist over raw knuckles. There was a weary rime in the eyes but no fire - he didnât share in his pugnacity. He conceded to it, even. A step toward them being even.
âIf thatâs what divine justice looks like, I mightâve found a better calling with the clergy.â
âââ
The chaplainâs chest heaves, several staccato breaths rattling through it as the moment surges in to them then passes. Knuckles throbbing with a pointed ache, blooming red from the point of contact, only to blanch white as his strangling grip flexes on the edge of the table while heâs still half standing. Still half stretched over it to close the distance.Â
This close, he gets a better look at him. At the man heâs remembered in so many of the ways a chaplain shouldnât. âForgive,â heâd preached over the yearsâ only to whisper, âto a fault,â to himself in the night. Leo wants to be angry. Needs to be. So he is, he is. The simmer and sear of it wells from the gut. Washes through every muscle, laps up his throat until it brims at his flushed cheeks. Feels like an unfurling. Like if he lets the tide of it rise, the skin and bones of him will only grow in kind to hold it, until his stooped frameâs gotten far too big for the room.Â
And then his eyes fall to the errant silverware. Cast aside to, of all things, cover his tracksâ buy him that moment so desperately needed; that moment of sheer fury. For once ( and this he notes belatedly, ) he doesnât dread who mightâve seen it. Or what theyâd think. Doesnât wonder whether God can forgive a set of scraped knuckles. Only feels that heady wash of feeling as it flows, and brims, and then slowly, slowlyâ ebbs.
This close, he gets a better look at him. The hunterâs milky eye and knotted scar tissue, the curls that'd earlier served so well to hide the halved ear. The one he had dealt him fifteen-odd years ago. This close, he can see the strangest thing: beneath the veneer of the face he remembers from that night lies no devil. No monster like the one heâd constructed in his young mind, then. Just a man. Just the face of the friend heâd been making through these long seaborne months. The quips had rolled off his shoulders earlier. Now, the tension follows. Slowly, slowly, Leo sinks back down on to the bench. Hands slipping from their clutch on the table to sprawl on its surface as he gauges their budding bruising. As he avoids his friendâs eyes.
At some point, heâs speaking before he quite knows what to say. â...Iâd lay awake, back then,â scarcely a murmur, Adamsâ apple bobbing dryly in his throat. ââImagining what Iâd do to you.â A dark admission. One he thought heâd never make. Certainly not like this. âYou had no name to me, then.â No story, either. No wee siblings whoâd waited up for a letter and the coins of aid itâd bring. No parallels to draw, to weigh what he wouldâve done for Mathilda in his shoes. What he had done for her once with bloody, hound-scarred hands. âAnd then once, just the once,â weary of the gnarled grudge, âI wondered whether we mightâve been friends, had things been different. Asked the Lord, even,â Now, when the chaplain lifts his stare to the bounty hunter, his lips tremble. Purse. As if without the pressure of a clenched jaw, he just might unravel into half mad laughter. Into half mad mirth.
âI suppose heâs finally answered me.â
when: post-mutiny, just after the funeral service where:Â philippaâs cabin with: @sweetsunflora
The chaplain would call it a miracle he made it through the service, if he could recall the details at allâ less a service than tragedyâs latest triptych, paint strokes just so. Three lives rendered in oils that time might never dry. Itâs as if the event seeps from him with each passing second that displaces it; growing hazier and hazier until he canât even recall the words thatâd left his own mouth on the main deck mere minutes priorâ just the fog. Can only recall the sight and sound of his own breath. The icy clouds it formed before his face when heâd moved his leaden jaw. Can only recall the cold-strained breathing of the scores that stood there to watch. The fog. Escaping in puffs from scores of chapped and sorrow-pursed mouths. The fog, and faces hazing in and out of it.
At first, his feet take him through the lower deck before he entirely realizes where heâs going. As the cabin nears, so does the intention crystallizing in his chest. This must be the place. If grief's built a house in him, this must be the place to cut its timbers down.
He pushes through the door before heâs certain what he plans to do on the other side of it. Sit on the edge of her cot, maybe. Sit on the edge of her cot and turn her coat over in his hands.
The last thing Laurents expects is to find someone already there. He freezes in the doorway, voice escaping in a startled crackle.Â
âEmmaâ?â
Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig Choreography by Monica Bill Barnes
romantiismeâ:
( continued from here / chaplainâs quarters / event: the neverending night)
rude, to enter anyoneâs rooms without their permission, but eli had had a notion of surprising the man withâ well, a silly thing really, too absurd to deserve the title of sweet, but heâd found the book during a routine tidying of the cartography room, tucked under the leg of a chair as balance, and knew it would be much better use in the hands of his friend. a history of maritime animals, it said, emblazoned across the cover, with a small golden monkey reaching up from one corner as if to help flip open the pages. and oh, in times like these, if something could be foundâ something could be givenâ that may offer a spark of happiness, of escape?Â
what a shame it would be, to waste another moment withholding it.
elias had knocked once and gotten no response, so heâd thought: the coast is clear. it would take only a few moments to deposit the book on laurentsâ desk, a surprise for whenever he returned. so elias had crept in. seen no form in the bed, and breathed a sigh of relief (his task suddenly made easier.) then heâd seen the bottles.
he doesnât know why heâd picked the vial up. as if touch could gift him more answers, or rather: change the answers that he already had, that were all too abundantly clear. lost in the texture of it, the color, he doesnât notice when the chaplain enters the room, but there isnât much shock left in him to jumpâ so he reacts little apart from a turn of the head in his friendâs direction, the half-sighed admission of his ignorance.Â
normally, this would be the point when elias would step towards him, offer a word of comfort, a soothing hand. but nothing about this moment between them is normal, and in the roiling anxiety of his gutâ he hesitates. moves back, in fact, a half step, fingers curling around the bottle, his other hand holding him steady on the desk to his side. flinches further at the chaplainâs response. meets the otherâs too-raw honesty with his own.
âand who was meant to know, laurents?â he says, similarly sharp as his friendâs own tone. âwho do you even allow to know you?â
âââ
Who was meant to know. The chaplain, of all things, winces. Like heâs been abraded. Like the seaâs salt-sting has crowded the scrapes. Who do you even allowâ And which to dread more with such a question, the echo or the answer?
In the end, he canât leave the lad to silence. God knows heâs practiced enough of that.
âIââ but the answer lodges in his throat halfway up. Adamsâ apple bobbing dryly. Catching. Choking. It smarts that the steward steps back from him, away from him. Smarts more to realize his own instinct has forced the same. A half-step combined to make the distance whole. Leo shakes his head. A gesture that comes out as nearly unnaturalâ a jerk of the chin as if led by a string.Â
âNo oneââ He utters, sweat beaded brow glistening in the jaundiced lamplight. A wash of sickly pallor flooding the room, lapping at the floorboards and shrinking walls. Swallows the frigid lump in his throat only to feel the chill bloom through his belly. ââNo one.â
â The Essays of Montaigne, âOn friendship"

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
intrepidimâ:
His eyes turn the chapel upside down better than his arms, or indeed any of his lackeys ever could. The dark slant of them goes under the cushions, muddy the upholstery with the scorn theyâre spitting. They graze the candleholders, drink in the flame, and then breeze indifferently to the heaped books, the rifling papers, the cranium luster of this place.
When the Captainâs pupils trace back to the priest, theyâre sneering. Sprouted teeth, sprouted a newly minted contempt. Quite the fall from the good graces of the Benedictines, no? I bet youâre having a grand time, away from the safety and luxury you sacrificed so much to ensure.
â Always do, Father. Comfortâs my natural stateâhavenât you seen? â He remains stock-still. Feet rooted, they now point westward, heels at treacherous ease on the planks. On his thigh, his fingers begin to drum a broken pace. â I do imagine youâve picked the wrong benefactor, Laurents dear. Sohrab is wedged deeper in my head than you can imagine, and even if they werenât, theyâd still have sold you for an ashtray. Let us see you walk your chalks, now. Whatâs this bit Iâm hearing, about you having worked at SalpĂȘtriĂšre? â Â
âââ
Havenât you seen? He doesnât miss a beat when he replies, âI suppose I have,â though thereâs nothing akin to comfort in this. Not for the stock-stillness of him, nor the way his fingers drum their faltering march. It speaks to his own paranoia, perhapsâ his own gnawing unease in all thingsâ that he anticipates the words that follow before theyâre spoken.
Is he surprised for it? No, no. At the end of it, he only wishes the cartographer had at least cashed in on a nicer ashtray. ( But thereâs no accounting for taste, he supposes. )
Laurents is quiet for a laden pause. Looking on at him. SalpĂȘtriĂšre. He thinks he could well shudder at the name alone. Some feeling twitching up his spineâ âCall it for what it is,â he says. âThe dumping ground.â The bitterness is evident in the way he speaks the common nickname thickly. They call it that, in the nooks and crannies of London heâs from. The dumping ground for women branded âhysterical.â The Grand Confinement.Â
âI did work there,â he confirmed. âOn a visiting basis, from time to time over the years. Originally.... in search of someone, but then I stayed, to help if I could.â The conclusion heâd reached goes without saying; it weighs his words like lead: I rarely could.
Least of all, the one heâd gone in search of.Â
He mustâve been just a boy of eleven, thenâ when the idea had first seated. A boy watching a nun be carted off. Sister Agnes, whose hand had turned the pages of his sheet music and guided his own the first time heâd handled a violin. Sister Agnes, blessings rained in the form of music lessons. She had a breakdown, Sister Laurents had murmured as the east London crowds swallowed all sight of her, hand firm âround his shoulder to hold him fast where they stood at the Homeâs gates. As if he might run in pursuit of the carriage had she not. It happens to people. Vaguely remembers having thought, will it happen to you? Will it happen to me? Remembers being too young to wrap his brain around it. Around the foolishness of it all. That sheâd been no hysteric. That that had been no treatment.Â
Needless to say, heâd found the place himself a decade or so later. Twenty-one, Twenty-two, maybe. Just ordained and knocking at the doors of SalpĂȘtriĂšre. Looking, because heâd been told âthe women in our care tend to live out their natural lives hereâ. Looking, because he had yet to learn hers had ended a few years shy of natural. Heâd learned at the gates. Heâd entered anyway. Remained a recurring visitor until just a few years ago. After all, for every Sister Agnes, there were countless others. After all, heâd thought he might could help.
âWhy do you ask?â He inquires, as if he doesnât already know.
romantiismeâ:
elias rises from the chair.
nods, several times, even as heâs not sure what heâs agreeing to, what heâs signing up for. what heâs signing away. not that it exactly matters. the chaplainâs face is so soft in exhaustion; elias thinks he would agree to about anything, right about now. throw his books in the sea, revoke all alliances to poetry, to love, to beauty and its gods? surely, certainly. anything, if it might stall this moment, might keep leonardâs face like that, not yet hardened with consciousness. not yet taut with the truth.
âwell, if youâre sure,â he says, awkward. âanyway, i should let you go. i should let you sleep.â
he would like to kiss the back of his hand a final time, make an invocation of it, a farewell with some ceremony to it. but elias knows not to touch him. doesnât move any half-step closer into the chaplainâs orbit, for fear of the temptation to do so. fear of what touch does to him, has always done, the great catalyst of it; thinks laurents could level him with a fingertip to the wrist right about now, exhausted as he is. could have him sinking down, crawling in beside him. let me stay here. let us sleep. why leave at all? why not forget? why go out into the cold, when there is warmth here, and friendship, and safety, and the rock of the ship, and anotherâs breath going quiet as they slip into the realm of the unknowing?
he takes a step back, nods again. slips out the doorway, and somehow manages to not pause on the sill. to not look back, one last time.
(end.)