Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-5999656-20190205035159/@comment-26571677-20191103041856

It occurred to Hazel; she hadn’t taken the time to rest since they had boarded the ship.

It would explain the lead in her bones. Combined with the intermingled bite of a cold floor covered in some iron scented mix of soaking rain and lifeless blood, she could barely muster the will to stand.

So she didn’t. Adrenaline had kept her running since her brief stint with death, but the thing about adrenaline was that it sucked you dry of your energy. Like the last burst of flame from a fire that sputtered in rain, her body had sucked up all the life in her blood and expelled it at once; making her sharp and fast, but at a heavy toll.

So her eyes closed, and her mind deadened to the world around her for just a moment.

In the solitary confinement of the cabin; all she heard was the drip of the storm’s remnants, pattering onto a floor that was already flooded.

It was calm enough for a moment; her body met peace like reunited friends who have forgotten what they have in common. There was rest to be found in sounds that were not piercing and hard like the strike of discharged gunfire or the creak of a ship’s spine; strained to the point of snapping.

Just the tap of a drainpipe, or the gentle rush of a small stream; enough to transport her away from a ground that stunk of rusting knives, and a hand clutching a cylinder of ice dust like a penny in the hold of a starving orphan.

It was just her. Just her, and her memories while she lay there. The cold on her back reminded her of harder times, but simpler ones too; the memories starting like a strand of delicate gossamer tying her few links to the past. It felt like thirteen years abandoned in the slums, with a hollowness inside you that never filled no matter what food could be found. It felt like cold hands that ached without the warmth of a mother or father, like cold feet that could not afford shoes above rags. It felt like those days where she’d find shelter, and listen to the sounds of rain as she fell asleep.

A breath exhaled, and she felt like she could stay there forever.

And then the shouting came, and her rest broke like a dream on waking.

Her eyes opened up with the strain of early day, and she perceived that it was still night, and though she was covered, it was not in a place familiar, but by a roof of mangled steel and torn pasts.

And slowly, she got up, first sitting, then kneeling, and then finally to a wobbly standing position. She took her weapons, checked the two magazines she had left, and exited the cabin, walking towards the new roof over the new confrontation, and away from the old. If this ship was going down, she’d like to at least get the heads up.

---

Dust fought the urge to suppress a chuckle as he heard Diaboli’s response to his offer of drink.

His acerbic reply reminded him of a foregone youth. The accusations of a ‘false God’ brought to his mind imaginations of young teenagers that were yet convinced that the world had done them something wrong. He’d been the same once, so he laughed about it now, wondering how such an old man would still be so averse to something so simple as a saying.

“Ah well, false gods or not, I’d rather be on the right side of possibility. Means there’s more grog for me.”

The explosion didn’t even make him look up. His eyes caught the reflection of a gleaming flare in the swirling orange liquid of escape, and he figured that there were some things that one couldn’t control.

So he was content with nursing his drink and admiring the gleam of a milky moon, both how it hung in the sky, and how it dropped like a drip of opium into the chop of the waves below.

Soon, he was made aware of somebody else that stood dumbfounded; the girl who had lost her partner. He took a moment to look at her with a question in his eyes; but seeing her gaze, he realized what was wrong.

She carried the look of a dead fish; something plucked and slaughtered in an environment where it could not survive. They were empty, searching for meaning, like a house with the lights on, but no response to a knock at the door.

So he took pity, and motioned to a step next to him, taking another swig as he did so.

“…I’m sorry for your loss.”

He paused, thinking about extending to her a drink, but denied it when his better half took to action.

“People drink usually to forget…I reckon the last thing you need right now is to forget. People can cark it anytime anyplace but…sometimes the place for it just sucks, doesn’t it?”

Hazel walked past, and he nodded at her, letting her leave without second word.

“…If you gotta mourn ya mate, I’m here to listen. Won’t get any judgement from me.”

He saw the medic walking up, and saw the needle of morphine in his hands. At the offer, he shook his head with a smile.

“Keep your morphine mate, the pain reminds me I’m alive, and that’s all the medicine I could ask for. You got bigger issues to look towards.”

And he was content to be quiet from then on, a bystander to Maris’ grief, but a cornerstone that stood strong, even in the careless winds of the cold sea.