Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was indeed going...quite swimmingly, actually.

Kalyan might have recognized the aged man that was headed toward him had he spent time looking for those who seemed to be slackers. Leander di Laurentius hadn't done much in the way of work - he'd taken a survey of the ship but he hadn't done anything yet. That was a good thing, actually - he was the ship's mechanic, and he hadn't needed to do anything. He knew very little about running a ship other than how it technically worked. di Laurentius was a landlubber through and through (except for a few brief periods of time where his troops had been moved on the rivers).

Leander was not nearly as accustomed to crowd as most of the crewmembers were. He worked mainly in the privacy of his home, in a town where he had a monopoly on his services. He had business, often, but usually not an audience for it. The sun was good for him, though, so he spent his time abovedeck, anyway. Besides, he had to get himself accustomed to this accursed sea. His stomach was fine, for the most part, but he'd heard too much tell of seasickness in the (brief) research he'd done before boarding the Rosa. He'd left the small unicorn bust his brother had entrusted him hidden deep in his bunker and headed out to face the windy noon.

"Good day," he said, to the young man he noticed resting by a barrel of...ah. Well, he wasn't sure what was in it, but he was also sure that it didn't matter much.

"Laurentius," he answered, in kind. "Mechanic." He grasped Umesh's hand and shook it, firmly. Their temporary helmsman was young, but so were most of the men (of course, Leander himself was among the eldest aboard). It was understandable: a man in his prime was ideal for the hard physical labor that was evidently required of a sailor. "I suppose I was below deck when we set out - I'm not, ah, accustomed to sea travel, and there was really no one to see me off. It comes with the times, I suppose." But a search for a cure was why they were setting off, wasn't it? He offered a sincere, if fleeting, smile.

If he was entirely honest, he had wanted his brother to come. They worked independently of each other, now, and that made sense. They were grown men. And his brother was busy, and while he lived in Mishkan, it was ridiculous to expect him to travel. Leander had sent him a letter and then been off. But if the trip took awhile...well, Leander was healthy yet, and Lucterius, while he'd always been thinner of frame, showed no signs of infection. So far. They'd have another winter together.

"The same," said Leander, tilting his head politely toward Umesh. "Yes, I suppose...and should we succeed, we might not even get a warm welcome back, even if there is celebration. But perhaps then future voyages will be treated as they have been, before...all of this." He wasn't sure, even, that what they sought would be there. But Leander did not see how the factions and pandemonium that had been forming in response to the plague lately helped to find a cure.

"Is that so? You must be rather experienced in the matter." Leander was...all right, he was charmed to see such a young man so enthused about service for his country. For Leander's country. He liked to see that, in youth; so many men these days seemed lost, or lazed about as if waiting, almost, for the plague to take them.

"Ah, it is my first time abroad, but not my first time, ahem, at sea - I've traveled, some, from Panymese port to Panymese port, as a member of the Guard. But I was never...particularly involved with the mechanics of sailing, no." He paused, as if having realized he'd said...perhaps not too much; it hadn't been particularly revealing information. But he was ordinarily not quite so verbose, even if Umesh would not know that. "I don't tend to feel the sickness until a few hours into in; I'd always assumed that was the ordinary experience." Leander was assuming that Umesh was familiar with journeying at sea - he certainly seemed more than comfortable with the concepts, and with all of the...processes!