Introspection | Action | Vocal Locket Outburst -- Open to All

[all7seas]

((The first part of this post is Jack's personal record of his stay at the Unseelie Court. The second bit is action, and anyone near Loch Noa, north of the Station, can encounter Jack. Responses to his locket exclamation in the very last section of this post are also welcome.))


The Private Captain's Log of Jack Sparrow, late of the Black Pearl, now of some blighted Castle in Fairy-Land. If found, cast it into the sea. Any sea. Bugger.

June the 1st: Arrived. Rum. Feast. Met a devastating woman who lost her throne. Might be interesting -- looks to be wealthy-ish. Scary, though. Met a fellow with a rich inner life and a hatred of slavery. Met a variety of people from a land called "Panem." Electric fences. Best not to go there.

The Unseelie castle reminds a man of Shipwreck City, just without Grandmama at its black heart. Here is to hoping she didn't cross over as well, though the place would suit her.

Lots of rum.

*****

((While there are entries for June 2nd through about the 6th, they sort of trail off sideways down the pages. There are frequent mentions of "rum" and "bottle." In fact, the entry for June 4th pretty much repeats rumbottle rumbottle rumbottle ho, rumbottle rumbottle doh dee doh doh as though Jack has been composing a song. The entries cease at June the 11th, an entry for which nothing is written. Then:))

June 13ish. Maybe. There is a mooing.

June 14. Why is there a mooing? There is a mooing and a mooing. A man can't get drunk enough. Blast this castle.

June 15th. I have primed my pistol, removing Barbossa's Shot and fixing another in its place. Captain Jack Sparrow, Scourge of Caracas, Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, has a mimbling cow to shoot. The mooing transgresses every boundary between piratedom and cowdom and demands resolution, and I, Captain Jack Sparrow, shall resolve it heretoforthwith TODAY. Bovine-pirate borders must be firmed up, blast it, and broiled steaks for all to-night.

[Thus, Captain Jack Sparrow sets off to shoot the Hedley Kow.

Outside the castle, he approaches it where it passive-aggressively chews a turnip. It moos in a low, coaxing sort of way. It is a come-hither moo, but Jack is not charmed. He aims and pulls the trigger, but at that moment, the pistol vanishes.]

BUGGER!

[The beast moos again, and now his hat -- his HAT! -- takes itself from off his head and vanishes as well! Jack is left speechless as, with a final mocking moo, the Kow itself disappears.

No....no, that's not right. The Kow did not disappear. Somehow, Jack realizes, he has disappeared and reappeared Someplace Else. There is a great dark lake before him, dark even under the sun. Trees whisper in the wind. No one else appears to be near. Welcome to Loch Noa, Captain Jack Sparrow. He opens his locket, shakes it, and bellows:]

..........................Monkeytits!

Comments

[all7seas]

"Stony!" The nickname absolutely did not suit her at all, which made it more intriguing as a nickname. "I could tell at first listen you were a lady, of course."

He wondered whether she were a LADY lady. Like, the nobility kind. He'd had his share of luck with those over the years, though this one was very young.

"You have a genteel voice."

[steeledskin]

"I have a genteel father."

-- She might be the lone soul who ever dared to call Petyr Baelish genteel. Except, of course, Baelish was not her father. And her true father awaited her in Caer Glaem. But she must cling to her false identity all the more tightly now that Joffrey had arrived.

[all7seas]

Just HOW genteel was this father?

"Is he here? Your father? In this land?"

[steeledskin]

"No."

Yes -- back from the dead. "I miss him terribly."

Both 'fathers' wove into one another. Alayne's two-faced Lord Baelish and Sansa's honourable Ned Stark. But in her way she missed both of them, despite missing Eddard most. Eddard was her true father. None of Littlefinger's lies could change such a fact. And yet she knew that Littlefinger's talent for lying would do both her and her real father some good in this foreign land.

"But I rather think we all of us miss the people we've left behind." Polite. Platitude-filled. She would be the picture of courteous conversation.

[all7seas]

Jack snorted. "I don't. I don't miss them at all! Not at all at all!"

Because mostly what he'd left behind hadn't been people so much as pawns, and the pawns were being obstinate, and he still bore the black spot on his palm. It was itchy.

"Are you Unseelie like myself?" He doubted it for many reasons, but he may as well ask.

[steeledskin]

She knew better than to announce her allegiance for all to hear -- even if others had already heard while she'd still been green and unaware of the full conflict between their two courts: "I pledge myself to neither castle in this particular moment, Captain. I'm afraid I find myself...between situations."

Travelling.

[all7seas]

"I like that. 'Between situations.' I like it very well."

It made a lot of sense to a man who hadn't been quite on land or at sea for weeks, now. The safest place for Jack, figuratively and literally, had been the intertidal zone.

"I'd prefer to be between situations in a fast boat with a confounding coast to run along."

This lake certainly wouldn't do. He picked up a rock and tossed it in. The rings that began to spread were even darker than the rest of the water.

"I've traveled most of my life, me. Here and there. Born in a hurricane, even, so not even at rest in the hour I popped out of mum."

[steeledskin]

"--I get sick at sea," she said, pitifully. As if it was the only thing she could truly commit to this conversation. If she was honest with herself (although she rarely was) then she had to admit there was a spirited appeal in what the Captain described. And a boat, she thought, might have helped her and Ser Gendry. Maybe they should make for a coast...

Sansa cradled the locket in her lap. "I spent most of my life travelling very little. But now it seems to be all that I do. Where have you travelled, Captain?"

[all7seas]

"There's ways around the sickness," he promised her. That, too, was the most truthly thing he could probably promise. A shame not to enjoy the sea just because of a bit of projectile vomiting.

"There's seven seas in my world, lassie, and I've sailed them all. Bangkok. Singapore. Haiti. Cuba. Jamaica. All the major ports of Europe and Asia, really, and the American colonies as well. There are few places I haven't traveled," he boasted, though most of them had been not-at-all nice places and he was lucky to still be alive.

"Makes my blood flow, so to speak. Threatens to spill it at times as well."

[steeledskin]

Seven seas! All the names that followed meant so little to her, but she obliged by adding her own: "I know of far fewer seas, Captain--" oh, the title was always present. "The Narrow Sea. The Sunset and Summer Seas. The Shiving one and the Sea of Dorne and...and perhaps there are others but they are far from me. I have only seen the Narrow."

[all7seas]

Clearly they were from different worlds. But this girl had a pleasant voice and he'd just found a mossy boulder upon which to rest his aching head. Too bad there was no hat to pull down over his eyes. The Kow had taken care of that.

"The Narrow Sea sounds a bit dodgy. The Shiving Sea? What's that like?"

[steeledskin]

"I don't suppose it's dodgy at all. Merely...narrow. A divide between one continent and another."

Her answer was measured. Careful. She was not so accustomed to being called upon for such input and such answers. She was not so accustomed to being spoken to casually -- as so many in either court insisted on doing. And so every conversation was an exercise in waiting for the trap to spring. The hard truth to hit home.

"As for the Shivering Sea," which the typist apologizes for mistyping, "I suppose it's rather cold."

[all7seas]

"There's a cold sea I sailed, once." It was a comfortable enough conversation for Jack. Not TOO personal. "And one night I heard a tapping on the hull. Tap tap. Tap tap. 'Ice,' I thought to myself, because it wasn't uncommon for the ice to grind against the ship."

[steeledskin]

"It sounds...nice."

Sansa exhaled. She knew Alayne should not confess any affection for ice or snow or chill. And yet as this strange short spring stretched into a strange short summer, she was beginning to long for winter. Travelling on the road had already brought her mostly strife. And a sunburn! She'd never been so sunburnt in all her life; mere existence was painful.

"Was it far north, this sea?" She asked, curious as to what norths were like in other worlds.

[all7seas]

"It wasn't nice at ALL!" Sheesh! Way to interrupt a creepy story, Alayne! "Aye, it were far north. Now: tap tap, tap tap came the Tapping Thing. And I thought to myself, 'Jack, that does not sound like ice, come to think of it, and you should investigate!'"

[steeledskin]

Oh. Oh dear.

"And did you? Investigate?"

[all7seas]

"I DID."

He waited for the inevitable question: What did you find, Glorious Brave Captain Sparrow?!

[steeledskin]

Ah, well. Jack Sparrow had found luck with this one. Alayne survived by simple tenets. Namely, pandering to the egos of others and making herself as painless a conversational partner as possible. Polite and attentive, that was Alayne Stone.

Sansa Stark, too, under all those lies.

"Please, Captain. Tell me what it was a-tapping on your boat."

[all7seas]

"'Twas a man, darling -- an old, old man. Looked like winter himself! He stood up in his small lifeboat and tapped against the hull, looking for asylum from the cold waters. And what did he use to tap, you might wonder?


His hand. Only it had been frozen off, you see, and shattered off his arm, and he fished it out of the water with his other hand and then sort of..."

Jack trailed off. Then:

"Tapped with it."

[steeledskin]

She gasped. Hells had broken loose over her whole life and she still managed to gasp at a mere spooky tale. At least, she thought of it as mere. Stories were no longer things to be believed. And yet she found herself not exactly minding Captain Sparrow's tale -- it didn't have any of the nostalgic optimistic shine that made all the others sound so hollow.

And yet her compassion ruled her tongue: "Was he alright? Did you help him? Did you give him the asylum he sought?"

[all7seas]

"Reached for his other hand, and it snapped off in my own! Grabbed him by the collar, and it began to unravel, so I dropped his hand an' grabbed hold of his belt with my other hand, whereupon he dropped his other hand and wrapped his elbows around my neck.


There we hung for a bit. Had to get a good purchase to heave him over the rail."

[steeledskin]

The story was disgusting. Disgusting. But it had that fae and distant quality that reminded her of Old Nan's darker stories: the ones where heroes did not always win and spectres seemed to lurk around every corner. She felt those stories more keenly, now. They felt more real than they ever did before.

"But you did, did you not? Heave him over?"

And yet she still tried to make a hero of the pirate captain.

[all7seas]

"I don't like to admit it, child, but aye: heaved him over."

Hopefully that didn't sound too sexual.

"He fell upon the deck and shattered!"

[steeledskin]

"You speak poetically."

She pressed her claim -- hoping against hope that he does not mean the man shattered entire and in truth. But she'd already realized this was not one of those stories where imagery trumped gruesome reality.

[all7seas]

"Of course I do! I'm Captain Jack Sparrow!" He won't clear up the confusion or any of the hyperbole, of which there was boatloads. "You speak very well yourself! Highly genteel!"