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| Scene Title | The Old Man and The Sea |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” |
| Date | February 28, 2020 |
The Deck of the Starling
Flood Timeline
Swabbing a deck was a thankless job. Especially on a deck as big as the Starling’s, but it was a job that Silas had taken upon himself to do as the sun rose over the horizon and the ocean churned around them as they headed toward the hopeful destination. It was the birds that required the most cleaning up after, though. They didn’t seem to care where they relieved themselves, circling and twisting and moving and diving, they moved about in circles and stayed with the ship even as the sun rose with a soft glow.
Foam collected on the hull of the ship as the waves pushed against it, but the water was mostly calm. At least until a sudden water spout brust up over the bow of the ship near where he had just swabbed, sending a spray of salt and foam up into the air crashing down in a splash onto the deck.
He had seen water spouts. They usually didn’t do that.
Nor did they usually carry three, fully grown, golden tilefish in them.
The fish were still alive and immediately started flopping about on the deck.
The water that hit the deck started to gather itself up, droplets running together, gathering like rainwater running down a funnel, until it formed into a silhouette, a pair of legs, feet, strappy sandals, a light dress that hung over curves and hips— long reddish hair— a tall, slender woman.
Who wasn’t even wet.
Her green eyes looked at him with surprise. “You’re new.”
"Cold, the air and water flowing," Silas sings softly under his breath as he swabs — an old shanty he'd picked up somewhere or other and knows well enough that he doesn't have to think about the words anymore. He's thinking, at the moment, about Sisyphean labors.
Crafty old Sisyphus had been a tricky customer, and had cheated death multiple times… to which Hades had taken offense. For his troubles, Sisyphus had landed himself with the job of pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity, with the caveat being that the boulder would inevitably roll back down. The definition, then, of a Sisyphean labor is that it is a.) brute labor, b.) completely fruitless, and c.) lasts for eternity.
Which probably makes this more of a Herculean labor than a Sisyphean one. This isn't completely fruitless, for one; even if the birds do immediately shit on the deck again, it'll take a long while for it to get as bad as it is now. There's also the point that Sisyphus hadn't volunteered for his job… but it's always been Silas's way to try to keep busy. He can process shock and… everything else… later.
Dreams will be fun tonight, most likely.
Or maybe he's dreaming now. Waterspouts usually don't pop up quite as spontaneously as that, and they don't usually just plop onto a ship, and they definitely don't usually materialize into beautiful women, as far as Silas is aware of. Silas blinks.
When she speaks — sounding maybe slightly less surprised than he is — he chuckles and offers a faintly rueful grin. "I am," he agrees. "Just, uh, got picked up this morning."
He leans on his mop, eying the mystery woman. "Silas Mackenzie," he offers by way of introduction — it feels a little strange to be using that name again, but it's his. Then, his eyes shifting to the fish still flopping about on the deck. "Those for dinner?" he asks. "I was wondering if I was going to need to try to catch something later."
“Captain usually doesn’t pick up live ones,” the woman says with a smile, even as she looks down at the flopping fish as if just reminded of them, “Oh yes, dinner.” For a moment, her arm transforms back into that translucent liquid, catching the light and twisting as it catches up the fish off the deck and carries them over to a nearby container and drops them with another slash. There’s ocean-water already in there. Her arm reforms itself, complete with a bracelet that wasn’t there a moment ago.
It’s as if she just decided to add that on, or something. “I don’t need that much, but the Captain has a bit of an appetite. You probably do too, if you’re staying. Hopefully three’s enough— if not I can always go back out.” She doesn’t seem to be put out by the idea of having to jump back into the sea, or by having another guest on this big, big ship. The way she moves seems almost weightless, effortless, as if her body might still be made of that liquid that she had been, and her clothes ripple and shift slightly as if they too were still part of the sea.
“Silas- Silas I feel like I’ve heard of a Silas before— I’m Jenny. It’s nice to meet you, Mister Mackenzie.”
The mention that the Captain doesn't usually pick up live passengers is enough to prompt Silas to think again of how sticky a situation he'd dropped into the middle of… not the situation he'd dropped out of the middle of had been less sticky. He manages to keep a grimace off of his face. There's a whole mess of emotions tied to that thought — worry, depression, disbelief — and it's one he'll have to figure out what to do with sooner or later, but it also has no bearing whatsoever on the present moment.
And luckily, the fair mermaid provides an excellent distraction. Silas watches as she scoops the fish up off the deck and drops them in the tub. He's seen a version of that trick before, and been impressed then; he's more impressed now. He hadn't noticed that bracelet before, though. Had it always been there?
"I do have a bit of an appetite, it's true, but I'm sure that'll be enough," he says, offering a nod of appreciation and a warm smile.
That she's heard the name before prompts a raised eyebrow. "Oh?" he asks, smiling. God, I hope not. He can say without reservation that he'd never been as unpleasant a customer as his evil twin, but he hadn't always been a particularly stand-up guy, either. Still, that's a bridge that can be burned when they come to it. "Hopefully mostly good things, at least," he says, chuckling. "Just Silas'll do, though. Pleased to meet you, Jenny," he says, nodding. He'd offer a handshake, but his hands aren't exactly the cleanest at the moment.
Silas pauses as he considers something. "Who handles the cooking? Is that you, too?"
“Oh, I can cook— I’m not great at it. If you’re better I’m sure your taste buds would thank you and everyone else on board.” Which, as he has been blatantly made aware of, isn’t many. Jenny looks over her hand for a moment, as if checking to make sure she didn’t forget anything, before looking back at him. Her skin looks flawless, which was probably because of her ability more than anything— she didn’t have chapped lips, or sunburns, or flaws from exposure that most of the people who had spent the last few years living in this situation had had that Silas had gotten used to seeing—
And had gotten used to not seeing quite as much of, when he’d been in the other world. They had had different problems, but most people still had access to shade and bath water and even make-up and other things, but this woman still looked just a little too perfect even by the standards that Silas had been getting used to.
She plops down the lid down on top of the flopping fish, and uses that as a seat, lifting a leg to cross over the other. At least it looks like she’s stopped thinking about where she might have heard the name Silas before. “Silas it is. I don’t think you’re the Captain’s type, so you must have had a good story for her to take you on board. It had taken me some time to convince her to let me stay. Not that she could outrun me. I can swim faster than this boat moves.”
Silas grins with delight. "I'm a fair hand in the galley," he says. His eyes follow hers as she seems to peer at herself; he's trying not to stare — ogling is rude — but she really is breathtaking. "Been awhile since I've had a chance to cook a real dinner, but I'd be glad to give it a shot." Even if I thought I was done cookin' fish for dinner for awhile, he thinks, and that files a bit of the edge off of his good humor.
His smile fades a bit more when she mentions him having a story. "Oh, I do," he confirms, his gaze slipping off into the distance. "It's a story, alright. A wild one. Hard to believe," he says distantly… then he looks back to Jenny, and his grin comes back. "I lived it, and sometimes I even have a hard time believing it," he chuckles.
Silas pauses as something occurs to him; he tilts his head a bit. "How long have you been aboard? If you don't mind me asking, anyway."
“Oh good, I actually hate cooking— but it’s either cook or don’t eat most of the time,” Jenny says with a laugh, finding enjoyment in the idea that, for the moment maybe, she won’t have to be the one doing the cooking. “When we manage to drift close enough to an island, I bring back some fruit sometimes, but we do have a pretty good stock of spices. And vitamin C tablets.”
They had been a medical ship, once. That was how they managed to avoid a lot of the scurvy problems that the olden days had been worried about when it came to eating too much fish. They didn’t have a lemon grove growing on the ship, or anything, which would have made swabbing the deck even more difficult, really.
For a moment, she looks as if she understands she’s being deflected, watching him for a moment, before she answers the question, “A couple years. She was sort of a legend. Her, the whole ship, the birds. All of it. I started following her and offering to help where the birds couldn’t. They can only do so much.” She looks up at the birds flying around, giving them a smile, even as they continue to give their annoying little calls and continue to threaten to shit on the deck.
Silas's grin remains as Jenny speaks; first, because it sounds like a cook might be appreciated, and secondly because spice. Having spice isn't a necessity to cook something edible, even palatable, but it sure helps. Vitamin C tablets are, of course, also a boon; more important than spice, but maybe not as exciting. Human nature for ya, he thinks wryly.
He doesn't miss that moment's scrutiny from her… but he also doesn't miss that she chooses not to press. He's glad. Not that he doesn't plan to tell his story — god knows, entertainment's probably in short supply out here — but because facing it right now means stepping away from this pleasant conversation, means stopping to take stock of it all.
And that's going to hurt.
He listens to her answer, and his smile shifts into a thoughtful frown. The Starling's on a four-year cycle… which means if she jumped on two years ago, she had to have been from… what, Britain?
Silas notices, too, that there are a lot of things that are left unsaid. What had motivated her to leave things behind; why she would sign onto a derelict ship, legendary or not. Jenny, it seems, is a long way from home…
Just like me, he thinks, and that is when everything he's been trying to bottle up and work past hits him dead on, like a suckerpunch. He closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath. "That she is…" he manages. "The Sea Witch is a tale that's widely known, indeed…"
He leans on his mop, focusing on breathing. On trying to pull himself back together before he falls apart entirely. The silence that falls, shot through with the calls and cries of birds and the susurrus of the sounding sea, isn't one that Silas finds uncomfortable; it's like a song he's never forgotten. It comforts him, even now.
"I… went looking for a legend once, too," Silas admits, his voice slow, hesitant, as if he's considering his words carefully. "I guess you could say that's where my story began." Now he opens his eyes and looks up to Jenny, a bittersweet smile on his lips. "I'll tell it, if you want to hear. It's a wild one, though."
Definitely doesn’t sound British, but then again, Jenny literally jumped out of the ocean— so who knew how far and wide she could travel before flopping onto the ship for a conversation. Which is definitely what she’s getting right now, as she shifts forward to listen with great interest.
“The dolphins, beautiful creatures, not great talkers— at least not to me.” The only regret she might have in her life, would be that. “I love a good story, so yes, please. I would love to listen.” She looks up at the sky for a moment, shutting her eyes. The reddish hair catches in the wind, splaying behind her for a moment before she looks back up at him.
“I can turn into water and go places no one has ever been. There’s not a lot I wouldn’t believe, honestly.” There’s very little she wouldn’t believe these days, possibly. “You kind of believe in just about anything when you’ve actually been to the bottom of the ocean.”
Silas regards Jenny for a moment, then lets out a soft chuckle. "Alright, then," he concedes, smiling at her. When you've been beyond the world that people know, it has a way of broadening your perceptions on what is 'possible'; this, Silas knows from experience. Whether she can believe this or not… well, that remains to be seen, but he's willing to give it a shot. The smile fades as moments pass, replaced by a distant, considering expression as he sifts through words, trying to find the right ones.
"A year and some change ago, strangers arrived at the Archipelago of Manhattan — Travelers, drifting in from distant shores. They came, these Travelers from afar, seeking after a place every bit as storied as the boat we stand on — they came seeking the Commonwealth."
"Else, I'm sure, could tell you more about that place… but what I knew of it at the time was just the legends: that it was a settlement at the bottom of the ocean, set in place before the Flood. The stories I'd heard told of it as a golden place…" he says grimly; the expression on his face leaves little doubt that the truth of the matter hadn't lived up to the legend.
"I was serving aboard the Forthright at the time. My Captain, Mad Eve, believed that getting the Travelers back to the Commonwealth was of the utmost importance. And as for me?" he shrugs. "I owed a debt to Eve; when she decided that she intended to set off to lead the Travelers to the Commonwealth, I chose to go along. The Forthright'd need all the help it could get to stay floating on this voyage… and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could make a difference."
For a moment, he lets himself wonder if he'd made the right choice with that; lets himself entertain visions of what might have happened for want of a nail… what might have happened to the Pelago, what might have happened to his former (former? yes, former) crew. But… only for a moment. He thinks he'd made the right decision, even now; he's pretty sure he had made a difference, there. But whether he had or hadn't… that choice has already been made, and there is no taking it back.
Drawing in a deep breath, Silas continues with his story. "The journey was… not a pleasant one. We sailed into the edge of the Stormfront, and there, on stormy seas 'neath hail-wracked skies, we found ourselves beset by pirates. We survived that fight — one of our boats sank, but her crew was saved — and managed to secure passage onward. Through the storms… and to the Tower."
"That place, too, has stories around it. I've heard tell that the place is haunted by autonomous machines, killing any who would disturb the peace… we saw none of those. What we did find, though… was a submarine." Here he pauses to glance to Jenny, giving a wry grin. "Which I thought was pretty impressive, at the time." He's guessing Jenny probably won't be as impressed.
About halfway into the story, Jenny’s hands clap together and she presses them against her mouth, but doesn’t interrupt even though it looks very much like she’s tempted to. Something he said definitely sparked recognition in her eyes, and she’s listening intently to his explanation of what he’d been through. The submarine isn’t really impressive, no. But that’s not why she clapped her hands together anyway. “I knew I had heard of you somewhere. Mad Eve. She mentioned a Silas once or twice. I’ve done business with her a few times. Crazy old lady, but I’m thinking that’s kind of my type really,” she glances towards the captain’s chair, with a laugh.
Cause there’s a crazy old lady here too.
At least it seems that she's not against Eve, at least, and that shows that, yes, indeed, she has been to the Pelago at some point or another. Eve may have been an old sea hag who travelled around, but she didn’t travel that far and wide after the flood had drowned part of the planet. “Haven’t seen her in over a year though. I hope she’s doing good. Things got shitty last year in the Pelago so we’ve heard. People from another world, though?” Hmm.
She’s not doubting, really, just— intrigued.
"Ha," Silas chuckles, a spark of genuine merriment in his eyes once he finds out she's heard of him through Mad Eve. He lets out another chuckle at Jenny's comparison between Eve and Natalie; it's on point, though he's not about to say it aloud. The fact that Jenny knows about Eve, though… that's interesting, considering Eve's range of movement.
Hm.
Jenny's next comments derail that train of thought pretty quickly, though; when she mentions that she's not seen Mad Eve in awhile, and talks of things getting shitty at the Pelago, the merriment fades from his face. "Wouldn't know," he says, not quite able to keep his tone light. "I wasn't there."
He's silent for a moment. "I had a choice to make. I could set out with Eve on the Forthright — try and keep the ship together and help the Travelers — or I could stay behind at the Pelago. I chose to go on the Forthright. Figured they needed their Chief Engineer more than the Pelago needed another set of hands…"
Silas considers for a moment… then he glances back to Jenny and musters a grin. "But I'm getting the end ahead of the middle. Yes: people from another world. Several other worlds, as it happens; ours wasn't the first they'd come to. And, for what it's worth — you're taking it a lot more open-mindedly than I did," he says, grinning again.
"So… a submarine. Creaky, leaky old thing; like everything else these days, it hadn't had proper maintenance for a lot longer than it should've." Gloom threatens again, but he powers through it. "And down we went. For any other audience, I might wax a bit poetic about that, but you already know what it's like down there. Drowned ruins of buildings, dead cars, shattered windows…" He shrugs.
"But there, hidden in what looked to have been some kinda drainage pipe, we found it. The entrance to an airlock. The entrance to the Commonwealth…" Silas says. "I'd thought that getting there was the hard part… but I was wrong. The Commonwealth was isolated from piracy and from the bloody Vanguard, true… but they were also cut off from any other contact with the outside world. And prolonged baths in salt water doesn't do any favors for technology… the place was falling apart, and a jackbooted lunatic had installed himself as Director."
For a moment, a shadow flickers over Silas's face; when exactly had Else paid her visit to the Commonwealth? When and how had she left? Had it been on the submarine, with Carina? How had that played in Don's coup? "The Director, Kenner, had apparently received a message from God that we were coming," he says, and feels another distinct moment of unease… because Kenner had known who was coming. Some of them, anyway.
"He ranted for awhile, had a big celebratory dinner… and then when one of our Travelers got a little mouthy, he proceeded to have his goons start shooting." Silas closes his eyes and exhales, leaning a little more heavily on his mop. "Some of us got thrown in solitary, the rest of us got escorted to our new quarters, told to get to sleep and be ready to assume our new duties in the morning. The unlucky ones got dragged to an airlock."
“You went to the Commonwealth— that’s near where Boston used to be, right?” Jenny says quietly, as if she— recognizes that a little bit. “I avoided that place whenever I used to travel that way— years ago. The tides always felt wrong when I’d get too close, like they weren’t— natural. I couldn’t explain it. But that kept me away. There are some places out there like that, that was the worst. I could slip under the storms, sometimes I had to go deeper than others, avoid places where things were off, I could even avoid Vanguard most of the time, but that place…”
Something about it.
And now that she’s hearing it, she’s glad she had avoided it. Sometimes it had felt like she was trying to get pulled in, and sometimes it had felt like she was trying to get twisted apart. But every time she had felt it, she swam away. “I can swim very fast. Faster than any submarine, that’s for sure. So this dictator— he just killed your friends? How did you escape?”
Silas thinks on that for a moment. The tides were wrong? Maybe it had to do with the water filtration, or the rot setting in, or—
—or the fact that good ol' Dictator Don had been a hydrokinetic. For a brief moment, Silas considers hydrokinesis and water mimicry might interact, and blanches. "Yeah, it was around Boston. And it was definitely a good place to stay away from," he agrees shakily, moving on. "And… yeah. He killed some of us. Good people, who deserved better."
Silas takes a deep breath, setting aside the old, murky anger that this trip down Memory Lane has dredged up. "As to how we got out… we staged a breakout," Silas says, mustering a roguish grin. "The Travelers had come to the Commonwealth for a reason, and despite everything Don pulled, they found what they were looking for — a way home. There was a scientist down there, a woman by the name of Michelle Cardinal, and she'd been working on a machine — something that could bridge the gap between worlds. Between… possibilities."
Silas's gaze goes distant as he remembers. "There are other worlds than these; as close as your next breath, as far away as the road not taken. They're real… and it was one of those that the Travelers were trying to reach. To go home to. The machine, down there in the Commonwealth, could be used to open the way…"
That distant expression grows grimmer. "… but either Don wasn't a graceful loser, or things just finally hit their limit. Neither would surprise me. Either way — midway through our breakout, we started hearing alarms about the reactor going critical."
"So there we were. Basically staging a mass breakout in an underwater gulag, nuclear reactor going into full meltdown, Director Don and his goons coming for us on a Mission from God, me just trying my damnedest to keep myself and everyone who wasn't a machine-gun wielding murdercultist alive."
Silas's gaze goes distant again as he talks, grey eyes staring off into the grey sky. "They managed to… to open a portal…" He remembers all the blood that had been shed, remembers that eerie vibration, remembers seeing Ria dissolve into light… remembers the portal. The Eye of Darkness. "A hole in the world. Full dark, no stars…"
"But by then…" he murmurs, squinting at a remembered vista only he can see, "By then… there was no turning back. I was out of time, and the only way out was through…"
Wait What? Jenny doesn’t say that outloud, but perhaps it’s visible on her face as he gets to the end of that story, realizing what must have happened and taking a moment to understand fully. Through. “I— see.” Is what she does say after a few moments, tilting her head to the side almost like a bird, perhaps due to spending way too much time with a certain birdy-like old woman who lived alone on a boat in the middle of the sea. “That is a— fairly unbelievable story. But I guess the most unbelievable part is that you somehow managed to get back here.”
Or perhaps…
“Or the unfortunate part. Because from the look of your clothes alone, things were definitely better there. I can only imagine the food and the company and— well— everything really. This world has some nice things in it, but most people don’t get to enjoy that.” And that included just about everyone, really. Not everyone got to enjoy the oceans recovering from the lack of trash being thrown into them by billions of people yearly. Not everyone got to enjoy the way the fish and the reefs and everything slowly recovered from the destruction that people had wrought upon the world.
That was a question, though.
“Was it— better there? Or was it just other kinds of just as bad?”
Silas glances over to Jenny in time to catch that look of blank surprise on her face, and his own lips curl into a smile that's part satisfaction and part wry amusement — he had warned her it was a wild story. He waits patiently while she processes it — it's a lot to process. He hadn't really been sure about it either, until he'd lived it. Even now, there's a tiny part of himself that's almost starting to wonder if any of it had been real at all. Then again, he's got the scars to prove it, doesn't he? Thanks, Redd. Your taste in souvenirs — and gifts — sucks.
Even the memory of his evil twin isn't quite enough to kill his smile, but Jenny bringing up how he'd gotten back here is. His smile fades, sorrow creeping over him like a cloud covering the sun. "Yeah," Silas agrees quietly.
The comment about his clothes sees a flicker of a smile return to Silas's face; the clothes he's wearing at the moment are from this world as much as anything else here… but Else had dug up his best set. No holes or bad mending, decent material; they'd pass fair enough for something he could have gotten in the other world. Maybe I won't mention that, though. Maybe I'll not tell her I popped up out of the water naked as the day I'd been born, he thinks. Might as well keep a little dignity.
Her question is a good one, though. His first impulse is to answer that yes, it's better… but it's a serious question, and it deserves some thought. He thinks for a moment.
"It was better there, yeah," Silas says slowly, regarding Jenny thoughtfully. "You're not wrong — there are good things in this world, too. But… in that other world, they stopped the Flood," he says, dropping that bombshell with the reverence it deserves, a wide, bright grin on his face. "There were some other differences, too, but the big one is they stopped the Flood. Kicked the Vanguard's ass in Antarctica, before the bomb went off. Half the world didn't get… wiped off the map," he says, gesturing expansively. "And the Vanguard didn't get a chance to go through and slaughter and destroy everything, either."
The grin remains for a moment — who wouldn't bask in tales of the Vanguard getting wrecked? But the other world definitely hadn't been all roses. "Which isn't to say everything was perfect," he admits. "Better, yes, but nowhere near perfect. They had a second American Civil War instead of the Flood. A lot of people died, a lot of bad things happened. But… they didn't get knocked down as hard as we did. They were coming back. Whereas here…"
He hesitates for a moment. "Here, last I saw… we were dangling over the edge of a cliff. Even in the Pelago, seemed like we were hanging on by our fingernails." His expression tightens with worry. "Hopefully, they still are," he adds quietly.
“I guess we always will be hanging on by a thread,” Jenny says with a sad smile, even as she looked on with a renewed hope at the mere idea that somewhere, somehow, someone had been able to stop Vanguard and Sentinel and everything that had happened that had destroyed so much of the world. She had lost her parents, her brother, a fiance, and pretty much everyone she ever knew— And most of those she just assumed she had lost, because contacting anyone had been next to impossible after the world became— what it did.
She may never know what happened to Victor. She had found the home in Queens that she had grown up in with her parents, though, under the crushing waves of the ocean. She couldn’t find their remains, but there was too much probability that they had been inside the apartment when it had gone under. “I hope there’s something still there,” she agrees with him, though it had been some time since she’d been there personally.
“We’ll find out. But we have a long trip ahead of us. You’ll have to tell me all about that other world— over some fish, hopefully?” She gestures to the place where the two fish have been stored, waiting to be cleaned and cooked, with whatever else they happen to have in stock. Along with those vitamin C tablets they have in storage, of course.
No threat of scurvy for these sea goers, thanks to the fact they commandeered a medical ship.
Until we aren't anymore, Silas thinks, but does not say. He might have, once, but now… now that feels too grim.
Her words draw him back from thinking on that, though. She's right; they have a long trip ahead of them. There's no shortage of time to talk. Another thing she's right about — fish is sounding awfully good right now. Between the swabbing and the talking, he's worked up a bit of an appetite. A warm smile spreads over his face.
"I'd be delighted to."