01 ⚓ Video ⚓ Strangers, who are you? Where do you sail from?

[hearrrtofgold]

[For half a second the feed catches the corridor outside of the mess hall, showing a blurred image of the walls before focusing on a new face. It's a rather handsome youngish male face, framed by brunet hair, adorned with a soul patch, beard, and moustache, and dominated by a prominent nose as well as brown eyes and lips pulled into a thoughtful frown.]

That is officially the weirdest way I've ever been sprung from custody.

Hi. Duke Crocker, token new guy, here to do - you know, all the typical crap. [Graduate an inmate, save his hometown and his best friends, possibly start an underground trade system, that sort of thing. No big deal.] Two things, before I go any further: first, mess hall and kitchen's this way on level one, right? I'm starving, and that hospital food isn't fit for an animal. Not even a spotted hyena would touch it.

Second, what the hell is the date? Is it still December, or is it June? Apparently it's been a really long time since I've seen a calendar. Someone should really do something about that.

Comments

[hearrrtofgold]

Because you don't know, or you don't want to know?

[enchangement]

Because you don't want to know.

[ Says a voice down the otherwise empty corridor. ]

She's never even seen Earth-that-was. All dust and bones in my year. Talking to ghosts in Dove's Hell. Or people from the past.

[ River peers at him with narrowed eyes and then reaches out and pokes him, ever so slightly. ]

Solid.

[hearrrtofgold]

Why don't I want to know?

[He turns in surprise, watching the strange girl as she pokes him. She seems confused, but if she's just curious about him no harm done.

That doesn't mean her riddles are any less weird, but he's always had plenty of those to solve.]

That was? When are you from?

[enchangement]

Everyone carries a bit of it in them, the places they started. Everyone has a different number for the year.

[ What starts as hunched shoulders turns into a roll. River is agitated, but not dangerously so. It's just that everyone is so very...noisy. ]

Twenty...Twenty five and eighteen. Two thousand, five hundred, eighteen.

Do you have a duchy?

[hearrrtofgold]

[Duke notices her body language, aware she's getting irritated but unsure what he's doing to annoy her. For a second he doubts her, but - he's been transported to 1955, turned into a teenager again, and attacked by sentient plants - why the hell couldn't she be from the future? Would it really be the strangest thing he's heard or seen?]

And Earth is gone? Where is it you live, then?

No. I'm afraid I do not.

[enchangement]

It's not you, it's everyone. [ Completely without preamble, that, or apparent connection to anything.

Except her body language. Now she does shrug but she doesn't relax, much. ]

What about the Mrs. Pirate?

[ There's something else there, the overlapping of tide - does time move like water? - filtering in through the sound of a fussy baby, and River gets a little lost in the various secrets that live in Duke's head.

It makes her voice softer, distant, her eyes unfocused but still looking at Duke, around Duke, through Duke somehow. ]

You can't touch the inheritor of the estate. [ She wraps her arms around herself, drawing in, being small. ] Blood and blood again.

[hearrrtofgold]

[This explanation does more to baffle Duke than it does to elucidate. Her next pronouncement only pushes him further into the dark, as he thinks back on what he's said so far and puzzles over where she'd gotten that. Ginger's phrase.]

I...

[Then she says that. Hearing his family's Curse described so poetically, so accurately, catches him unawares and blindsides him. There was no way she'd inferred that from anything he said. He didn't mention it, wouldn't have, meaning this girl plucked it out of him somehow.

Or that, in five hundred years, they wouldn't have succeeded.

Duke shuts off his communicator without looking at any of the new messages on it, stashes it in his pocket, and stares at River.]

You're Troubled?

[It's not the way Simon says it, meaning "pained" or "vulnerable". The way Duke says it the capital T is audible.]

[enchangement]

[ Suddenly River is very much present, jostled out of her psychic reverie by his emotional reaction, driving her to shake her head with wide eyes. A gesture meant both to clear some of the encroaching fog from her mind as Simon's drugs slowly leave her system, and as an answer to his question. ]

No. [ Her eyes find his, brown and much too big. ] Some quirk of genetics, perhaps, but she did not inherit this from her parents, what you see is the result of many a good man of science who believed in Sun and Nation above all. It was a music box and now the entire orchestra are damned and play on, out of sync and out of tune, each instrument cursed to continue on without it's minder.

[ River points to her forehead, and then points to his. ]

He who rules the River, welcome, meet River.

[hearrrtofgold]

[All right, this is all getting a little proverbial. Duke holds River's eyes - big eyes, sad eyes - as she speaks, his brow furrowing. But most of her words making an odd sort of sense.

The idea of people giving other people Troubles, abilities or whatever they're classified as, makes something in the core of him go hard and heavy, as if he's swallowed a stone.

But that's not important now. This girl is strange and seems lost and for whatever reason she's comfortable sharing with him. So he holds out his hand for her, nodding in greeting.]

Your name's River? I like that.

[enchangement]

[ She takes his hand with both of her own, turning it palm up before wrapping around it. ]

Joy cuts through like an anchor in still water, a rapid descent different from the noise of the bombarding distracted horde. A reunion.

She never liked her name before, it never fit.

[hearrrtofgold]

[He didn't expect her to take his hand in hers but now that she has, Duke wraps his fingers around hers and holds her grip, gentle but solid.]

But you like it now, huh?

[enchangement]

It fosters a sense of belonging, having a name with meaning that ties into others of meaning. Not a very solid foundation, but she is dead after all.

[ She squeezes his hand. ]

You wanted coffee.

[hearrrtofgold]

[He squeezes her hand back.] You don't feel very dead.

I did. You can tell all kinds of things about people, can't you?

[enchangement]

Reanimated somehow. Magic? Nanites. She isn't sure. The medics probably can't tell her.

[ River gives a little smile. ]

Psychic.

[hearrrtofgold]

They probably couldn't.

[That smile makes him smile, a little bit.]

Then I am never taking you on in a game of cards.

[enchangement]

[ River slowly extracts her hands, taking a step back. ]

Never played. Might have to teach me.

She wants to know everything - about the Troubles and the boat and life as a pirate on Earth. But the anchor has nearly reached it's destination.

[hearrrtofgold]

That could be arranged.

[She's allowed her space so Duke slips his hand back into his coat pocket, hooking his thumb outside it, and tilts his head thoughtfully.]

And where is that anchor headed exactly?

[enchangement]

Good.

[ She claps once, twirling in a circle, balancing on the balls of her bare feet. ]

It's a surprise! She won't ruin it. A good anchor though. Necessary. Happy.

[hearrrtofgold]

Can you tell how things are going to happen, too?

[enchangement]

A short span, from today to today, sometimes tomorrow, once beyond that but just the once.

[hearrrtofgold]

Do you just get bits and pieces?

And do you want coffee too?

[enchangement]

Waves that crash against the shore of knowledge and the rocks erode against the tide.

[ She gets more than bits and pieces but sometimes it's difficult to parse. Sometimes all she can do is react. ]

Never had it.

[hearrrtofgold]

You get too much?

[Most of what she says makes a metaphorical sort of sense to Duke, but now and then she loses him.]

Then we should fix that.

[enchangement]

[ An adult thing. Not the sort that Simon would ever approve of, given her deteriorating state.

She wants it. She wants to try coffee. ]

Okay.