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[Video]

[She'd been waiting for hours to see if they'd turn up.

Just a little after dawn on the 25th a piece of smudged notepaper gets carefully tucked into Katie's journal, and then she tosses the whole thing into the hollow log she's sitting on out in the forest.

The video clearly picks up the message. It's not very long.]

Gone fishing.
Everyones invited
except Raine.
No drowning.

[There won't be any replies. She's gone.]

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Perhaps I could stand to be more greedy, then.

[There's a brief pause.] Come in.

[Jack will find that two of her four walls have sort of morphed into splotches of unrecognisable colour, not particularly artistic at all. She's scrubbing away anything that vaguely looked like a picture, leaving wet streaks of blobby, mournful chalk colours.]

[And Jack is horrified. He LOVED her mural of Luceti.]

Hens' teeth, child! What've you done to all your pretty and macabre pictures!?

I sent them on a holiday. [Katie isn't terribly happy to do so herself, but on the walls are all the dreams and desires of Luceti. They have to go.] It's not fair to be trapped on a wall for the rest of their lives. They might go insane from boredom.

Well....aye. Or dead from too much scrubbing.

'S why I'm not particular about cleanliness, myself.

You alright, darling?

I've never been better. Top of the world, bottom of the river. [She gives a couple of scrubs to a fresh new wall, then turns to look at him over her shoulder.] Has anyone ever told you there are too many hands in the world? I suspect I'm too greedy after all.

[Carefully:] You want some toast? Or popcorn?

Both, if you wouldn't mind. [She bites her lip.] I have a lot of time to eat, after all.

Right -- you stay here. Keep.......washing. Me? I'm going to pop you and toast you tasty treats. Make enough for James to share if he happens along and is peckish. Savvy?

[He begins to back out of the room. Maybe the child just needs a bellyful of good snacks. Children do, he's heard.]

[Her expression flattens at the mention of Norrington.] Are you so sure James would want to share with me? He doesn't like me very much.

What? Outrageous! 'Course he does! Has he been giving you troubles?!

He doesn't believe in magic.

He's lying. James Norrington has seen plenty of magical doings in his day.

Really? To hear him go on, magic has no place in the world. [She resumes scrubbing. Giles becomes a smear of colour, a squiggly monster bleeding into the outline of a city.]

Well...that could very well be the man's attitude. But to deny its existence? Even he could not be that self-deluded.

Why is that, do you think? [Scrub scrub. The noise is enough that her words seem flat and inflectionless, any emotion buried beneath her brush.] You'd think magic killed his parents in another life or something. Perhaps he could become anti-magic-man, out to lecture magic people everywhere.

Doesn't like pirates much, either. Ooooor didn't.

[Jack decides to sit for a bit; maybe talking is good, right now. He can get her snacks later.

He rests his back against the door.]

Til he became one, briefly.

[Oh. That sounds like a story. Which rightly she doesn't have time for, but...

... the scrubbing slows. Curiosity killed the cat, but there's something about satisfaction in that rhyme, too.]

What happened?

Edited 2012-09-22 06:11 (UTC)

Lost his commission, became a drunk, and signed on to my crew. Came up in the world after that, really.

James is an exceptional sailor. Too bad about all those proper principles of his.

If he had all those proper principles, why did he become a drunk? That doesn't sound very smart.

[She is intrigued.]

Perhaps you'll understand when you're older...er. Men do mad things when they see their lives falling apart. Sometimes? They do wise things.

Sometimes mad and wise can go together. [She considers that for a moment, then resumes scrubbing.] Do you think he'll ever like magic?

Nah. I don't. Or.

Men like James Norrington like a playing field they understand. Magic? Buggers it all up for that type.

He should learn to live a little.

[Scrub. Scrub scrub.

Pause.]

I have to go fishing for a while.

Could you explain to me what you mean by that? "Fishing?"

You take a boat and make sure there are no holes in it, and then you go out onto the sea with some bait and cast it out wide, and hope you don't accidentally hook any monsters you can't deal with. It's all about timing.

[Well, he did ask. But close enough, anyway.]

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all7seas - 2012-10-08 02:30 (UTC) - Expand

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flickerflash - 2012-10-09 03:45 (UTC) - Expand

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