palette knife | Glowfic Constellation

It's always nice, trading at the Cumaean Canal. She spends the morning sipping coffee in town while she catches up on surface gossip. She collects various bits of intelligence about who's up to what. She keeps in touch with a few friends.

And then around midday a surface barge makes it through the canal. A Tanned Merchant that she's made an ongoing arrangement with brings a hold full of surface produce, and she has a matching load of darkdrop coffee beans for him. She and her crew haul pallets of beans up from the hold of the Heart's Handbasket, her ship, and wait at the staging area as the Merchant's deckhands unload their cargo as well. She walks up, apocyan and irrigo streaks bouncing gently in her currently peligin curls, and clasps his wrist with quiet smile.

"Pleasure doing business with you as always."

He grins, leathery fingers wrapping around her wiry wrist in turn. "Likewise, carissima. You and yours have been well?"

"As ever," she replies with a smirk. "My ship is one of a kind, and we keep each other safe." She snugs a living wooden sculpture of a woman into her side.

"Good, good. Perhaps one day you two will finally come have a drink with me in Naples."

She shakes her head with a chuckle, dark feathered wings spreading briefly behind her. "And perhaps one day you'll remember that the sunlight won't be as kind to us as it is to you, and instead come down here early enough to get lunch with us."

He laughs, and they exchange various bits of news. The various crews start transferring pallets while the two captains finish their chat. No one notices two stacks of mirrorcatch boxes being exchanged, tucked away among the lettuce and the coffee.

When the conversation wraps up, both captains and the wooden beauty start hauling pallets as well. The job is done soon enough, both holds full once more. The boxes disappear into a hidden compartment, lost beneath pallets of fruit and vegetables.

And then she dismisses her crew for the rest of the day, and resumes chatting and hearing people's stories.

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rogue-with-a-cause

Muffled mumbling, then, "That's what we call the sex ed talk down here. Usually a parent is supposed to give it. I got mine from the first officer of a ship I was on."

"Oh. I didn't have anyone like that. My foster mother hit me when I started my monthlies because I got blood on some stuff."

rogue-with-a-cause

"It certainly wasn't your fault you didn't get the explanation. Your foster mother should consider herself lucky that I can't go to the surface, though."

"...I still can. I wonder if there are any interesting Neathy weapons that would still work in sunlight...no, better not to have to ever see them again."

rogue-with-a-cause

"They mostly don't, I think. There may be some that do, but I don't know what they are. And yes, it's better to stay down here where you can have a more interesting life than they'd ever even dream of, without ever seeing them again."

"Even if it would be very cathartic to force them to experience the emotional weight of what they put you through."

"That would definitely take more time than I'm willing to spend in their presence."

rogue-with-a-cause

"Yep. Unless we used a Neathy shortcut, but again those mostly don't work on the Surface."

rogue-with-a-cause

"So I guess we're just settling for having fascinating lives they can't even dream of."

"And outliving them. Like, a lot."

rogue-with-a-cause

"Damn right. The three of us are going to be as immortal as I can safely make us, if I have anything to say about it."

"Is unsafe immortality much of a concern? ...I mean, I assume it's not hard to not shove a chunk of mountain in your chest..."

rogue-with-a-cause

"Becoming a Tomb-Colonist, for one. If you get too wounded at once, or let aging catch up too close, without healing it off before it gets too far, you can become a fragile, decrepit being, held together by bandages and and stubbornness."

"Let's not do that!"

rogue-with-a-cause

"Definitely not. Lots of Mountain-light exposure for us to heal up better from any injuries, and and nail down an aging solution before we age much, and avoid the whole tomb-colonist mess altogether."

Maya Crawford

weather-every-storm

And after some more snuggles, the clock chimes noon.

"Lunchtime. I'm not hungry, but I bet you two are." Maya leans in and pecks Sable on the lips, then kisses Anselma's cheek.

Anselma blinks when Maya kisses Sable but makes no other reaction.

"I'm hungry," she agrees.

rogue-with-a-cause

"I feel like sandwiches. Use up some of the fresh bread, some of the tomatoes and lettuce. And we've got plenty of smoked beef and cheese we can slice up."

She stands up, playfully scooping Anselma up into her arms as she does so. She pecks a little kiss to her forehead. "How's that sound to you?"

Ee!

"Sounds good," she says meltily.

rogue-with-a-cause

Meltily, eh? Well, Sable had been considering putting Anselma down, but now she's just going to get carried all the way to the galley.

Gooooosh.

Anselma is not going to have words about this but she is going to have FEELINGS.

rogue-with-a-cause

Sable can't claim to have planned for this outcome, but she sure as salt endorses it.

Maya Crawford

weather-every-storm

When they arrive, Maya sits down in a spot with a good view of the rest of the galley.

rogue-with-a-cause

Sable pecks a kiss to Anselma's forehead and passes her into Maya's arms, then sets to preparing the sandwiches.

Maya Crawford

weather-every-storm

Maya pets Anselma's hair and holds her tenderly while their Captain bustles about, arms and tentacles whipping across the galley, vegetables being chopped, condiments being spread.