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 Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 12:57 am
In this corner of Palisade the drinking establishments tend to run together to anyone who's had more than a few glasses: subpar liquor, less than subpar beer, food that tastes largely of nothing.
Taym's wandered from one to the other on the heels of a binge at the morphine bottle, the euphoric detachment from his constant fears fading. He is sitting in the darkest corner he can find, but it doesn't matter, because Maple is with him, and a Guardian--especially now, with the news from Oldcastle--will always attract attention. One man offers him a free drink, but he refuses it.
Taym has not looked well in years, but since returning to Sunderland he has degraded, and in the past week he seems to have aged at a rapid clip. With sunken, pinpoint-pupil eyes wandering the room, he is picking at a grey slop in a bowl, an untouched glass at his elbow. The fork trembles incessantly in his shaking hands--the usual tremors subdued to manageability by his recent indulgences--and he has not even bothered with the choking cravat. The fineness of his coat is mangled by the tobacco ash on its sleeves and the unbuttoned cuffs that expose skinny, sun-scarred wrists. He is watching a serving girl and considering her freckled cleavage distantly, as though it were a thing in a story, which it may as well be at this point.
Maple starts as the door opens, her ears fanning outward, and she presses nearer to Taym in vague premonition, her nose seeking the air.
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:14 am
Sebastian knew every bar and inn on this side of Palisade. He'd like to say he knew every bar and inn (and brothel for that matter) on this side of Palisade, but new ones were always popping up so that wouldn't be,strictly-speaking, true. Silje danced behind him, her ears alert, and he knew that she was jittery. The doe was not fond of public establishments. The trouble was that Sebastian was. They had spent the majority of their time back on land cooped up inside his house with Martha and he could not stand it any longer.
Which brought them to the outside of a relatively okay establishment by the name of The Pickled Pelican. Mediocre wine, shitty bear, okay mead and a mean meat pie. Sebastian walked in and was aware of heads turning instantly. Probably because there was a deer walking behind him. Hard to be inconspicuous with one of those following you around. He smiled and waved, winking at the severing girl he'd bedded once. She blushed a furious red and scuttled away. Just as Sebastian was contemplating where he should sit, he noticed a deer standing in one of the corners. Perhaps Silje would be calmer near one of her own kind.
He slid into the seat across from the miserable looking man and pointed at his bowl.
"You can't eat that s**t, why not try one of the meat pies here? They're better than you'd expect."
And without waiting, he called for two pies and two large pints of mead. The man looked like he needed it.
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:21 am
Taym stares at him without malice--as though the effort of summoning malice is below a little turd like the one across the table from him, in fact, although hopefully he does not broadcast the thought so clearly.
His eyes wander over to the deer while the stranger calls the order, and Maple extends her nose for a polite greeting sniff.
Resuming his absent picking, he takes a mouthful and talks around it, expansively, slowly, and his voice is rough as hell and hoarse as a lunger's, but oddly quiet.
"With my gratitude for your generosity considered, I ordered this festering pile of inscrutable proteins because it is my estimation that in about fifteen minutes I will expel most of it--into a vessel, if I am fortunate, or near the front door, if I am not--and so my concern is not so much for the quality, seeing as that will soon be obscured by sawdust and the scrubbing of some unfortunate ******** staff person, but rather for keeping enough down that some might manage to stay put until it serves its purpose."
He swallows, and takes another forkful, but judging from the amount remaining he hasn't much concern for the quantity, either. "I'll drink whatever she's bringing, though."
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:39 am
Silje shies away from the blonde deer's greeting at first, as if unsure of herself. But curiosity wins her over in the end and she too sniffs back.
About half-way through the man's speal, Sebastian tuned out. In his experience, it was best to tune out after you got the gist of what they were saying. He stabbed his spoon into the pie to reveal an inside of chicken and veggies, all still steaming. The crust was flaky and golden, bless the cook's shriveled heart.
"You're loss man, this stuff's even hot today." He was speaking between bites and gestured at the mug with his fork, "the mead here's good too. Lots of honey, could be good for your throat. Probably also good for whatever's on your mind for that matter."
He sets the fork down after the first few bites, and extends his hand. "My name is Sebastian, Captain of the Marianne, and this doe here is my companion of sorts, Silje. I'd tell you how I came to be with her but I imagine we'll be talking about that two or three hours from now."
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:45 am
Taym stares at his outstretched hand and when he laughs it's like a bark. "For my throat," he repeats, snorting incredulously. "For my throat. The ******** honey."
He shakes the man's hand because he can't do otherwise: Taym's fingers are frigid cold and trembling but his grip is hard. "Obadiah Thompson, and this is Maple, and I imagine we will since that's all the conversation ever turns to with people like us, if experience is any judge. As for what's on my mind..." he makes an expansive gesture that takes in the entire world, but mostly takes in the deer. "My friends call me Taym but I don't know, pardon my blunt language, if you're quite a friend yet, so Obadiah will do fine no matter what ******** appellation you overhear flung in my direction."
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:53 am
Ha! Sebastian was starting to like this guy. He returned the shake, strong and firm.
"Well met Obadiah. Truthfully, the honey's a plus. The mead is the best thing they have here and there's no point in getting drunk off swill. I imagine after seven or eight pints we'll be spilling our lives stories but for now lets talk about something more interesting. For example, Rosie's breasts."
The topic in question was current bending over allowing a ample view of her bosom from their corner.
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:59 am
Taym snorts, but he barely gives the girl a glance. Instead his eyes wander to Sebastian's food, which almost immediately turns his stomach, to judge from the abrupt closing of his eyes and the sudden paleness of his face and sharp exhale of a man teetering on the brink of throwing up.
"No point looking at what you can't have," he says, punctuating the words with a cough. Never mind that he obviously had been before Sebastian showed up, but Taym, ever-sensitive to the dynamics of testosterone, realizes when he's outclassed and feels no desire to expand on related subjects. There will also always be a part of him--and it's reflected in the tautness of his tone--that cannot escape the admonishments of his mother in the back of his head, and thus resists too much indecent chatter until he's fairly well into his cups.
He goes to his glass--his own glass, not the proffered mead--and hazards a sip of it. Thus assured that he won't immediately vomit, he tosses back nearly the rest of it.
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:14 am
Sebastian watches as Rosie bends down to pick up the glasses. He watches as she stands and turns. And he watches as she walks back into the kitchen with the dishes. Nice assets to say the least. He turned his attention back to his pie, polishing what was left off in four bites.
"No harm in looking either way." He replies with a shrug. He picked up his mug and pointed at the swill that Obadiah was still drinking with his pinky. "You are seriously going to get sick if you keep drinking that. They don't call this place the Pickled Pelican for no reason if you get my drift."
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Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:19 am
"I'm going to get sick anyway," he says with tired finality. Maple rests her chin on his shoulder for a moment, but only for a moment. "No sense wasting good liquor."
He wipes his nose, coughs again, and sinks his fingers into his hair to rest his weight on his elbow, as if he has spontaneously lost the energy to hold his neck upright. Up close--here at the same table--it's more obvious that he is younger than he looks, but it only makes him the worse. Somewhere in the contours of his cheekbones and the build of his forearms there was perhaps once a decent-looking if unremarkable man, but that man is gone now. His teeth are yellow when he grins at Sebastian, abrupt and wolfish. "As far as there being no harm goes, you say that like a man who is going to regret like hell the day he can no longer sweep in and get damn near whatever he wants. There's harm in window shopping, when you have no money."
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Posted: Sat Apr 06, 2013 10:31 pm
"You," Sebastian says as he takes a swig from his cup, "speak like a man that's lost the will to live. What's the point of living if you can't enjoy the good booze, the women, the wide world?" He set the cup down on the table and leaned forward, towards Obadiah, raising an eyebrow. Obadiah was starting to remind him of the kind of man that he disliked a lot. People who had given in to fear and self-pity had, in his opinion, no place in the world. "It certainly isn't to get drunk on piss. Certainly not to pity yourself either. But hey, if you want to spend your days wallowing in your own self-pity, who am I to judge?"
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Posted: Sat Apr 06, 2013 10:57 pm
Taym eyes him silently from beneath a heavy and clouded brow. "If you choose to mistake pragmatism for self pity, be my ******** guest," he says finally, raising his glass to his mouth again and letting his eyes wander the room. "It's the over-indulgence of 'living' that's brought me to my current situation and my proclivity to enjoy myself is merely in abatement, not altogether abandoned. The day I decide that there are pleasures insufficient to warrant the labor of waking, I won't." He says this with grim finality. "In any case, there's less pleasure in 'booze' than elsewhere, and it's my slavery to this ******** hierarchy of enjoyment that's prohibiting me from indulging in finer liquor until I am certain of my ability to keep it in my gut instead of spread on the floor. Do you know the word 'emetic?'" If he is truthful, and he's caught up in something finer than drunkenness, he's got little to show for it. Then again, maybe he just always looks miserable. He also doesn't give him time to answer. "If we are going to engage in denouncement of our fellow-drinkers' character flaws on the merits of a few minutes' conversation, I'll return your assessment with one of my own: you are probably reckless and hedonistic and you'll come to ruin if the wisdom of advancing years fails to check your behaviors." He lifts his glass in something like a toast, and while what he says might be seen as sarcastic, instead it seems only tired, and completely sincere. "Don't let any moralizer tell you it isn't worth it, because they're wrong. They never tried it. I did."
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Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 11:54 pm
"Can't say I have, though I imagine you will indulge me with that meaning very shortly." He dodged the man's rebuke. Sebastian did not come to start a fight (though he had to admit he was better than he should be at that). Clearly this self-pity thing, something that Obadiah seemed to be suffering greatly from in his humble opinion, was a sore topic. Best to avoid sore topics when around drunken men. If you pressed to firmly into such topics, they were liable to snap back like a hound that remembered it had teeth. And true to his expectations, Obadiah did snap back. Sebastian laughed. Everything that Obadiah was true, he was reckless and hedonistic. He'd probably fall into ruin too, come to think of it. But these words did not insult him so much as entertain him. "This is a life style of choice. It's a bit like loving a women you can't have. No one but those who have tried and failed before you will understand." He raised his glass to Obadiah's, toasting to some ironic symmetry between them. "To recklessness and hedonism and ruin, and to this good blessed swill." He emptied the mug and slammed it on the table. The sound was lost to all but the closest to the table and it did not surprise him that Silje jumped at the sudden sound. He reached out and stroked her neck. It occured to him that to bring her here was akin to throwing him on top of a mountain. She was completely out of her element. He raised his eyes to the white and cream doe that hoovered beyond Obadiah, her golden eye watching him in turn. Sebastian wondered, briefly, how the man across from him had come to be chosen.
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 12:20 am
Taym's thoughts are currently running along the same lines as he returns the toast silently, although his early arrogance at his own Choosing--a few days of heady faux-heroism, at best--has long since worn away to fear. Not trepidation, or nervousness, but genuine, stomach-turning terror. He does not often allow himself to think of his fate, not even with Maple constantly at his side, but circumstances often force the reflection on him.
"Let me ask you something," he says, leaning forward and pulling a cigarette case from the inner pocket of his coat. It's a remarkably fine piece of work, chased silver, and seems to be much better-looked-after than the rest of him. His shaking fingers have some trouble with the latch while he speaks. "You ever notice how two leaves fall into a pool from opposite sides, they end up drifting into one another even with no wind? I think we're like that. We as in... as in people like us. I can't ******** avoid it even when I try." He can't bring himself to say the word. He merely gestures with his successfully-procured cigarette at Silje, then lights it in the candle. When he exhales, he exhales through his nose: showy, a bachelor's exhale, the sort of thing a man practices to look impressive when he is sixteen and first learning to smoke.
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 12:41 am
"People like us, huh?"
Sebastian leaned back in his chair, quietly surveying his companion. The cigarette case he pulled from his coat was quite fine, something about it made his pirate smuggler merchant's heart thrum. Fine piece of work, probably high-end, a heirloom maybe? Sebastian had to force his thoughts away and back to the topic at hand. At first he wasn't sure if Obadiah was talking about men like them, as in womanizing drunken men who loved debauchery, but the cigarette pointed at Silje (who decidedly did not enjoy the offending smell) said otherwise. He rubbed his chin.
Truth be told, Sebastian hadn't thought much of the subject. It was just... one day he picked up something interesting in the market and the next day, a baby deer was sitting where it had been. He had simply gone with the flow since then. Perhaps it was ignorance that let him think so little of it.
"I can't say I've noticed. I've just arrived back in town from months at sea and needless to say, you don't see a lot of deer out there. Unless these things can walk on water of course."
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 12:46 am
"Where were you?" he asks abruptly. "Or are you one of those people for whom 'at sea' is the point, rather than the means?" With a slightly less-theatrical drag, he adds drily, "And is that why you're walking around like your sternum's choking for air? Women like a good collar on a man, and about a pound of starch around your neck." Not that he's one to talk, with his own cravat hanging limp and his skinny, sinewy neck exposed down to the startlingly-deep hollow of his collarbone.
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