2020-02-21 - What The Sea Takes

When a long day finds her crossing through the threshold of The Surprise, opening the door and letting herself within, she is surprised to find that its familiar trappings have vanished in a flash of lightning, and the vessel lurches as if caught in a sudden squall.

The sudden movement pitches Isabella Reede further into the darkness, the door slamming behind her; it emits a metallic clang, and her hands find a floor that is largely iron and rust. The stinging scent of diesel and stale oil wafts into her nostrils, keeping her ringing senses focused, at the very least, and when her green and gold eyes lift to look at her surroundings, she can't help but feel her stomach sink. She has been in enough Dreams of late to know precisely when she's looking at one - and as always, it comes without warning.

The ship itself is large, and as storms batter through its portholes, she takes in its lines and determines her a cargo, or a tanker - something made for long, gradual hauls across the largest oceans in the world, carrying goods, but while these typically require a full crew, she hears nothing of the sort with the exception of engines thrumming, and inclement weather doing its best to rip holes through the hull. She staggers upwards and attempts to shake her head to clear it, expression set and determined. As Alexander tends to put it, the only way out is through, and after the week she's had, she can't help but wonder what exactly she's going to need to do in order to get out of this one.

"At least I'm al-- "

No. She's not alone.

August once told her that her 'Art' was healing - whatever she had lost years ago has been returning at an accelerated rate the more she puts herself through various situations that require a working knowledge of the strangeness that grips Gray Harbor, and while she will never ever reach the levels of the most accomplished movers she knows, it has rendered many of her instincts hyperaware - extrasensory or otherwise. She knows someone else is with her on the ship despite her very fledgling skills as a reader. Thankfully, she's been out and about today before it decided to seize her. Unlike the last time, she is armed.

There's no hesitation in her when she draws the gun, and starts moving towards the end of the current deck, following the signs of life that pings like a beacon in her brain. She doesn't call out, after all, she doesn't know who it is yet.

Alone? Not in the slightest. The presence of another mind here is like a candle flame, in a room of smoke and mirrors. Fragmented, illusory; the ship groans and shudders as its buttresses are tested against the ocean's swells, and perhaps she catches a glimpse of a profile here, the scuff of a boot there. Nothing substantial, nothing that stands the test of trying to watch or listen carefully.

On this deck, she is sheltered from the inclement weather itself. The corridor is dark and narrow, walls a maze of pipes and electrical cabling. To the right, the engine room; massive drivetrains that power the propellors, currently working overtime to keep the ship crawling inexorably forward. Each one is cordoned off with steel railings and walkways, stairs that lead up and down. Up ahead, a darkened ladder and hatch that opens above decks. The lights flicker, cut out, then swim back on again, washing the claustrophobic space in that hazy, fluorescent glow.

She is alone here, so her guard is up more than usual. Isabella's eyes narrow as she slowly makes her way through the bowels of the abandoned cargo vessel - if this were any other time, she would be letting her mind wander, to fully engage in the mystery presented before her. After all, this speaks to almost everything that she is - the crash of the ocean outside, the groan of metal against the sea and the distant humming of pieces and parts that allows the beast to cut through the waves like butter. But this is no other time, is it? This is a Dream and she knows that if she doesn't focus, she can very well die.

Her thumb undoes the safety and here, as the corridors narrow and the maze of twisted pipes stretches before her, her hyperawareness becomes more boon than blessing; it makes the claustrophobic feeling even moreso, and she hikes her way through quietly in an attempt to get through the encumbrances before her. She does keep a bead on that active mind - whoever it is, he is human, though Dreams can be deceitful, too. Still, with him, or her, being the only other living thing on the boat, she has to investigate it - it might be her only way out of here.

So she follows the signs, working her way up the walkways, the small of her back braced against the railings and feeling cold metal slide against her clothing with her weapon ready. Her heart thunders in her chest, the unmistakable feel of being watched and hunted prickles her nape, and sends gooseflesh fountaining down the shallow channel of her spine.

Chief Steward's office says the sign on the hatch to her left, which is swung open wide. The hinges have rusted away to almost nothing, and as the ship lists from starboard to port, it creaks and grinds ominously. There's an odour, too, that's more noticeable once she draws near the entryway, and a low hum of sound that resembles a buzz. Barely perceptible over the crash of waves against the behemoth's hull, and the creak and groan of fatigued metal fighting a slow obliteration.

If Isabella steps further inside, the smell will start to become intolerable. Not the pungency of a fresh kill, but someone who's been dead for days. The Chief Steward, presumably, collapsed in a chair opposite a plain desk stacked with binders of cargo manifests and weather reports, his head (or what's left of it) bent backwards at an impossible angle. Half of his skull caved in, the corpse covered in flies. Which, it seems, are the source of the buzzing.

Her Gift tells her, however, that there's someone else aboard. Someone very much alive, and burning bright as a bonfire.

There's a solid thump from the end of the corridor, and then the sound of water rushing in through the open hatch; tide-skimmed spray thrown overboard as the ship cuts a deep gouge through an ocean swell.

The smell is intolerable by the time she manages to navigate her way through the pipes and the twisted corridor, and what Isabella finds in the Chief Steward is enough to make the strongest stomach turn. It almost does, in her case, and she relinquishes her two-handed grip on her gun for just a moment so she could cover her nose and mouth.

But her senses twig on the incandescence beckoning her to follow - at the moment, it doesn't register as familiar. All she knows is that it is someone just like her and honestly, in a town like Gray Harbor, that could mean anything. She backs up and away from the desk, and turns to the sound of rushing water, as well as the loud thump. Her heartbeats practically scream in her ear, crashing so loudly against her chest, she's convinced anyone could hear it for miles.

Her steps quicken, because there's no running from a Dream; better to chase than be chased, and doesn't she love the pursuit? Her entire life has been about it and as water rushes around her ankles and boots, she pries her way through the hatch and follows. Anyone, anything, could be at the very end of the run, and she determinedly follows in hopes that doing so gets her out of this, and closer to the other living body in the ship's abandoned carcass.

Another swell hits the ship, and she nearly slides off the rails. She lets out a small cry, because she can't help it, a hand lashing out to grab on a metal bar and grip it to steady herself. With a grunt, she hoists herself back in, and continues on.

As she stumbles back out into the corridor's narrow confines, a soft chirp and something scurries across her foot before being swallowed up by darkness. Hard to say whether it's a rat, or a bird, or some unholy combination of both; bright eyes and sleek feathers, perhaps, and a mouth that hides a sharp beak.

With the hatch open, it's a straightforward, though by no means easy task to climb out onto the upper deck. Out here, a storm rages, churning the sea into a frenzy. Twenty foot swells that boil and surge and crash against the ship's hull with an ear-splitting roar, blanketing the deck in a mist-fine spray that disperses into the howling wind. The force of the gale is enough to whip her clothing about her body, and tear away anything that isn't held down.

And briefly visible, stood upon the end of the gangway, perilously close to the railing that's all that stands between failing ship and sea, a man. Darkly dressed, shoulders slung low not in weariness, but as if in preparation to move quickly. The dim outline of a weapon is visible in his right hand, dangled near his hip; he doesn't stumble, even as the ship hits another swell, her bow carving off the top of the wave and shunting seawater across the deck. His profile might be passingly familiar; that brutish jaw scruffy with beard, and the strength of him in the kythe. Not as powerful as some, but a force to be reckoned with nonetheless.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when that creature runs past her ankles, catching a flash of gleaming red eyes and sharp teeth in the darkness. She grits her teeth to clamp down an expletive, before she continues forward.

When she finds him, she doesn't even pause, though her heart sinks in her chest. After what had just happened in the Lighthouse between herself and Alexander, some part of her already anticipates the necessity for violence. Isabella braces herself within the heart of the storm, feeling her hair cling to her cheeks wetly as she approaches the end of the deck. Her gun is out, her knees bent to keep herself from pitching forward. This is not her first time out to sea....much like the darkly dressed man standing in front of her the ocean is in her blood.

"Javier!" she cries as she ventures closer, but not too close. Already she's attempting to come up with the best way to do this. Thanks to Easton's concern over her wellbeing, she knows the man is not himself. Still, seeing him so close to falling into churning water causes her heart to leap in her throat, because he could still die here if he drowns and she can't let that happen either.

"Move away from the edge!" she yells over the squall, her gun lifting to aim for his leg, though she doesn't fire yet. "You're too close, you might fall! I swear, I am not above shooting you just so I can drag you back!"

The ship turns and lists and plunges, driven forward of its own accord perhaps, because there's certainly no-one at the wheel. More rotting corpses, men mauled to death where they sat; some of them crammed cheek by jowl into narrow crawlspaces, clambering over each other when the beast got to them. Knives for teeth, and serrated claws that ripped through them like butter.

When his name is called, he there's finally a sign of life in the man. Dark eyes fixed on Isabella, weapon held loosely at his side, he starts to move in closer. To meet her halfway, perhaps, except a sudden keeling movement of the cargo hauler sets him stumbling against the railing heavily. The sea roars in to meet the kiss of gangplank, battering him hard enough that his form is obscured for a few moments before emerging again. Drenched, of course, his clothing pasted wetly to his bulky frame. He doesn't speak, simply prowls in closer, a slow slink predicated by that dark, almost vacant stare. If the gun pointed at his leg worries him, he gives no indication.

Instead, a sudden, forceful intrusion into her mind; his presence hot and sleek, tearing its way through with teeth and claws and a guttural snarl. <<Isn't this what you've always wanted? To go back to the sea? Let me give you what you want, Isabella,>> says the voice that's like cool, clear bells in mist.

The corpses are everywhere; draped on the wheel, splayed out on the crates. Isabella tries to keep her head, ignoring the bodies to fix all of her attention at the sole threat in her surroundings, because it's all she can do to keep her calm. She is not a hardened killer, she has never taken the life of an actual person, and by virtue of career, inclinations and age, she has yet to grow calluses as to the terrible things humans did to each other in just the ordinary course. She swallows hard when the man finally turns to meet her eyes. Under the darklight of the storm, his own look black.

It's the vacant stare that gets her - Javier was an exceedingly private man, and some part of her suspects that the only reason she ever understood him without any assistance from word or mind was because they were too alike in the ways that matter. But in spite of this, he was always alive - whatever joy or torment he keeps to himself has always been reflected in the striations of interesting color she finds in his irises and today they aren't present.

She takes a step back despite herself; it might be the last few days, the toil, the strain, the heartbreak of revisiting the moment Alexander Clayton turned his back and ran away from her, her agonized entreaties and repetition of the truth - that she loves him and perhaps always will - over and over again causes those normally formidable defenses to fall and hear his near-androgynous mental voice scream through her mind. There's nothing delicate about it; he's never breached her before and this forced link by anyone other than Alexander traps her breath in her throat at the suddenness and gall of it.

The chained dragon lifts its head to sight the wolf- less defined by lines, and more elemental; a force of nature trapped in whatever limitations had been set for it. Within her own mind, she is all wildfires and hurricanes, a single working green eye blazing bright while the other remains dull and unseeing. Wings spread to make itself look bigger as it rises from the sudden intrusion, but the chains do not let go yet. It stares at the psychic wolf in silence, fiery jaws parting to bare teeth wreathed with flames and crackling emerald energy.

But it doesn't speak. It is silent.

"I want to go back to the sea to experience it, not to die in it," Isabella tells him in her own voice, the syllables tight. And suddenly the chains grow slack and the dragon surges forward in a blaze of fire and ferocity, the roar shaking the disconcertingly silent, black landscapes of her damaged psyche. Its comet-tail streaks outward like a whip as it turns, to lash into the wolf in an attempt to eject him violently out of the archaeologist's brainspace.

"Javier, please," she calls through the wind. "I know you're not yourself! I don't want to hurt you, you hurt so much already! But I will, if I have to!"

He knows, of course. He knows what happened with Alexander is still rattling around in her head, leaking across the mental connection he's forced on her. He pushes off the railing, takes a moment to find his feet again, and continues his slow approach.

In the kythe, the wolf is a fearsome thing. All but dwarfed by her chained dragon, it burns and burns, great gouts of flame buffeted from its lean frame, twisting into the air and turning to ash. Bright golden eyes, and serrated claws still wet with blood, it prowls a slow circle about the dragon, skitters away as its flame-bright tail whips past, and lunges instead for the other creature's back. It tries to sink its teeth into the dragon's throat, to hold on for dear life while that soft, clear voice slithers again through the link: <<I am more myself than I have ever been, my dear. Would you like to see it? Would you like to know what I am?>>

He approaches, still, battered by the spray as another fifteen foot swell collides with the ship's hull; and for a moment, there's only the scent of char and ruin, and that dark-eyed predator, and the wind whipping the sea into a mist about them both. Ten feet and then five; he still doesn't draw his gun, but she can see his eyes clearly now, and her own green-golds reflected in their empty depths.

A sweet, almost plaintive whisper in her mind as the wolf fights with the chained dragon, <<And you do, don't you? You do want to hurt me. Do you want to hurt Alexander, too? For what he did to you?>>

Its ferocity belies its size compared to the monster that guards the depths of Isabella's mind and the dragon snarls in the darkened space when the much limber wolf leaps past its tail and skids into the black. And it's a clever one, the hunter, when it tries to take advantage of the dragon's much larger blind side, when its left eye can't see; it would find, however, that Isabella's frightening perception remains even here and now. The fact that the dragon is hampered in this way doesn't mean it can't sense its leap.

It does. Its sinuous neck arches back and twists, and its gaping maw opens when the wolf launches upward, unleashing a torrent of flame to blow the smaller beast back before it could latch onto its throat. The massive body sweeps sideways, tail flicking like a cat's.

"Alright, I'll bite," she breathes. "Tell me what you think you are." Even choked in the grip of fear, because anyone with a human heart would feel this way at the prospect of having to hurt someone she cares about, she manages to be challenging still. But when he moves closer, she grits her teeth as the muzzle of the gun lifts and darklight glints off the barrel. She pulls the trigger - the shot cracks into the stormy air like thunder, the bullet aimed for the meaty part of his thigh.

Within the kythe, he can feel it - determination yes, and sorrow, but no satisfaction; just the grim, burning will to live through this, and get out of this nightmare.

"I don't want to hurt you," she reiterates with her own voice. "But I will. And while I don't want to hurt Alexander, I know that I will. Without intending for it, yes, and it would never be acceptable even devoid of any deliberate intention or design to that end, but it will happen anyway." Her jaw sets. "That's what it means for imperfect creatures to love, Javier...but that's alright. The point is to never stop." She raises her gun, to aim for his shoulder this time.

"Please don't make me do this."

But I will if I have to.

This time, the wolf is ripped free of its much larger quarry. Its teeth slice through the other beast, tearing narrow gouges in it, and the thing shrieks like a banshee as it's flung to the deck. Flames spill into the grey, relentless rain, sputtering and sparking and guttering until all that's left is smoke. And then, with the next ocean swell, not even that.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Isabella's gun goes off with a crack of shuddering report, slicing through the thunderous crash of waves and groan of the ship struggling to stay above them. The pain of it registers on his face, in the twinge of something in his eyes; regret? But it doesn't stop his forward progress, even as blood starts to soak through his wet clothing, darkening it in a slow-spreading blotch. "You don't know," he pants, hoisting his gun slowly, muzzle aimed at the spot right between her eyes. "You don't know the first thing about love." Clack as the safety's flicked off, his breath fogging the chill, damp air.

Another squall rushes in, battering the beleaguered cargo hauler, and there's an ear-splitting crash following the sound of something being ground into pieces. A buttress fails, and then another, falling like dominoes as the storm gains in intensity.

Please don't make me do this. "Do it." A swift step in, and the muzzle of his gun is shoved right up against her forehead, point blank. "DO IT."

Regret? At the moment, it's too late for regrets.

Because he's a better shot, a better fighter, and now his gun is pointed at her and there's nowhere else to go but the drink. Tension braids across Isabella's shoulders; the relief she feels of having ejected Javier out of her mind is woefully shortlived when his larger shadow dwarfs her own and the cold metal of his gun presses into her forehead. Her fingers shake at the grip of her gun, staring at him with his blank eyes.

You don't know the first thing about love.

"Yes I do," she whispers, the last few days' remembrance springing into her eyes, rendering them suspiciously bright as she looks up at him. "But it was never my capacity to do so that was the problem - it's making someone else realize that I mean it. Maybe I'm incapable of that. And you know that, you do, because in that, we're the same."

Her grip on her gun slackens. The heavy glock falls on the ground in a thud. Weaponless, her hands fall on her sides, leaving her head pressed against Javier's pistol. Her green-gold gaze locks on his, her chin set on that defiant angle that he would find familiar, and even perhaps find some affection for, if he was only himself.

"But maybe if you won't listen to that, you'll listen to this."

His gun's safety suddenly re-engages and he'd feel that invisible weight once it does, forcing his arm and pistol away from her head. She pivots, and twists, and leaps, her arms latching around the bigger man and using the incoming swell and the ship's sorry state to her advantage. She drives her entire weight forward, limbs attempting to trap him...

....and throws them both over the rail, to plummet into the churning waters below.

Oddly enough, he doesn't fight it. He doesn't fight any of it. As if he's some incorporeal thing, and she's the only one here that's real.

Smoke and mirrors, and at the last, a glimpse of him in stark relief upon the grey churn: the horror of what he's done in his eyes, and he reaches for her after his gun falls, tries to keep her from going over. But it's futile. The sea roars her hunger for them, drags them into the undertow greedily, even as the ship begins to break up on the waves. And down they go. Down and down, the crash and fury of the storm fading to a dull, distant music as they sink into the deep.

The moving Moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside –

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charméd water burnt alway
A still and awful red.