Private The Docks The Blood On Our Paws

[Jeshal the Ironclaw]

(Closed thread between Jeshal and Tanya following on from Such Devoted Sisters and Drinks All Around)

The walk back to their ketch had been agonising, if only for how much emotion Jeshal wanted to spill out before they got there. At one point, he'd had to physically hold his snout shut with his own claw to keep in his words, for how much his imbibed cider desired them aired. It was the longest silence of his life after they had agreed to wait until they were away from prying ears, broken only by necessity with forced small talk for which he had no mind or effort. The only thing keeping him from jumping into the bay and screaming underwater was the knowledge of how disgusting the sea would be so close inland.

Because Jeshal had never lost anyone, not really. Not anyone of importance. He had never known his parents or any siblings. His family, for want of a better word, had been whatever pirate crew he had been dragged along with at the time and loyalties had been few and far between, to say nothing of friendships. They had all learnt to use each other. Jeshal knew how to survive and how to manipulate. Family was something he had learnt during his life with Tanya, and retrospectively he had realised it had been the crew of the Golden Hide. Leaving the Imperium had not been too difficult for him, not when his tunnel vision had cared only for his wife. Anyone else he had cared for he had foolishly kept in stasis in his memory, as if nothing would change so long as they were not around.

Back in Bouillabaisse, so much had flooded back, if hazy. And so much of it was gone. Everyone he had known, gone. Anithias dead. Julia dead. Armina... Vaelora — he couldn't even reconcile that name with her — dead.

If we had stayed, they might still be alive. If we had stayed, we might all be dead with them.

He wanted someone to blame. What was wrong with this damned place? Why had they not tried harder to stop Kinza and Lorcan from coming here?

As soon as he and Tanya had got below decks on their boat, he prepared to say something eloquent to sum up everything he was feeling, every muscle tight with the need to blurt out a thousand words and plans and schemes and complaints and promises.

Instead he put his gauntleted fist through a cabinet.​

 

[Tanya Keltoi]

Whilst in public Tanya made no mention of Jeshal's distracted nature. If anything her reticence to confront the situation allowed her to fillmin the gaps with small talk, deigning to make no notice of her husband's evident attempts to stifle himself. It was, if anything, a way to preserve his dignity until they reached privacy. That something was so evidently wrong was, of course, alarming in itself: outside of what she had witnessed him learn from that red panda's book, she had to wonder what else he might have picked up.

For the vixen loss had ever been one of the constants in her life. Death had stalked her since childhood with the promise of stability an ever elusive, dangerous promise ready to be ripped asunder at the instant one relaxed. Indeed, she had taken several seasons to accept once they reached Kutoroka, so convinced that a quiet life would never last. Grief would ebb and flow like the tides to be dealt with by all manner of destructive tendencies, though rarely would she try to articulate herself. Tonight the tide was crashing in and she was treading water. She had refused to cry in front of her sister, nor yet give vent to the grief and guilt burning like molten lead in her stomach: she could, and would, handle this.

However, despite familiarity with the swamping feeling that the deaths were inevitable, news from Dusk had still blindsided her. Deep affection had led her down the same assumptions as Jeshal - that the dangers and risks of the Imperium would somehow not touch those they cared for, not in their absense. Theose beasts were preserved as though in amber which had shattered on the moment of reaching the shores once more. How fitting, then, that Armina and her had spoken in the cemetary.

Tanya flinched at the splintering of wood, an uncharacteristic reaction drawn by mounting nerves. Her mouth opened to make a complaint about needing a carpenter now; she closed it immediately.

"Talk t' me, Jesh."