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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Nod nod. She takes her food with a very appreciative inhale.

"What is there that could still hurt you? And what are their weaknesses?"

Maya Crawford

weather-every-storm

She sits down next to Anselma, petting her hair softly while the girl eats, considering her answer. "With enough rounds fired, any shipboard gun could eventually breach my armor, as could any beast with enough time to batter at me. The biggest risk is a fight with something or someone that we can't put down or escape from before they can punch through.

"Any ship smaller than a dreadnought and without an aft gun we can likely handle. I can outspeed and outmaneuver most ships, and stay out of their firing arcs for the most part. Even a dreadnought can be brought down in most cases, though it takes longer than I would like."

She shakes her head. "For some reason most ships don't bother with an aft gun to complete their fire coverage. In my case it's because I can keep anyone else off my tail, but it seems foolish for the others. Perhaps they can't afford the space, or the crew. Regardless, their mistake is my advantage."

rogue-with-a-cause

"As far as weaknesses," Sable adds, humming delightedly at the first bite of stew, "that's why I've made the wide variety of different shells that I have. There are different cartridges loaded for steel armor, flesh, or airborne targets. I'm still working on something optimized for crystal, to better handle when we get the attention of a lifeberg, but those we can typically outrun, and they lose interest soon enough. Also something for exoskeletons."

"Having you aboard and training you as a gunner does give us an advantage in fights, too, because that lets Maya put more of her attention toward maneuvers."

"What is a lifeberg?"

rogue-with-a-cause

"Enormous, ambulatory, angry mounds of ice and crystal, lifebergs are found in the far north of the Zee, and attack by ramming ships that come too close."

"What are they angry about?"

rogue-with-a-cause

"As far as I'm aware, it's unknown. I try to avoid fights with them in case they really are sentient and their anger turns out to be justified."

"Surely they can't be justifiably angry at all the ships."

rogue-with-a-cause

"It really doesn't seem likely! They could be taking something else out on us? Not really sure. If one corners us, then I'll shoot it, for sure. I just try to avoid the situation when I can because cycles of violence are a thing."

She shrugs, smiles fondly at Anselma, and eats some more stew, tearing pieces off her roll and dunking them in.

"Yeah. And maybe--I don't know. If there's someone--controlling them, or something."

rogue-with-a-cause

"Plausible and concerning prospect. I wish I could check for that, but we can't get close enough for long enough, even if I managed to come up with a way to detect such a thing. Maybe if I could talk to them it would be easy to figure out, but nothing they say is in any human language."

"That's...concerning...but probably not urgent..."

rogue-with-a-cause

"Yeah. It's kept for however many centuries so far. It'll keep a while longer."

rogue-with-a-cause

And then suddenly she just breaks out into a bit of a grin, shaking her head in delighted bemusement. "You.~"

"--Me what?"

rogue-with-a-cause

"You're adorable and lovely. You've got such good priorities, caring about this concerning situation about these possibly-controlled ship-killing zee-monsters, when you're still just getting back on your feet after landing somewhere safe at the end of your escape. You still have some more to learn about self-care — hell I still have some more to learn there, even — but you're just so good."

She lets out a little fond sigh, blushing a bit.

Hmmmmm.

Anselma is still not entirely sure about all the things...but it seems perhaps that the appropriate response to this is SNUGGLE?

rogue-with-a-cause

rogue-with-a-cause

rogue-with-a-cause

Such snuggle. She wraps a wing around Anselma and holds her close and beams.

"I don't know if I'm good though. Like--if there's something wrong with the lifebergs, it's likely to be like what was wrong with me. I don't...know...if I care about, like, some guy who tripped and broke his leg, yet."

rogue-with-a-cause

She squeezes Anselma tighter. Those controlling assholes are not a good thought.

rogue-with-a-cause

"Yeah. That's how it starts though. You start with people who are facing similar threats, and as your life gets stabler and easier, it becomes easier and less costly to feel that and share that a little wider. The fact that you're already caring this much when you've only just landed here means more than you know."

More squeeze and snuggle. "Also I'm just right about your being good. Because I'm the captain."

Maya Crawford

weather-every-storm

"There's no arguing with her when she gets like this," Maya adds with a chuckle, shaking her head and squeezing both girls tenderly. "Not that she's wrong, mind you."