shakenandlimp | Sixteenth Evolution of Sail: Borrowed colours

[The compulsion to write makes him think, really think-- he is almost exhausted by these three, getting them just so, polished and scrubbed and holystoned clean, but he thinks they look pretty and they say, a little, what he feels. He makes several drafts apiece, and only puts them down on the provided paper when he is sure of them.]

[The Emperor]
You are like the sea to me, you are cruel and salt as tears. You are vast and you sink poor souls to the bottom of you.
But on a clear day you are so beautiful you can break my heart. Every day I learn about another ship lost with all hands and still love you.

Your obedient
-Wm Bush

[Zane]
You did not grow into a man like a calf grows into an ox; you did it like a larva grows into a moth. What I thought was a boy was a man struggling to break free but still caught in the cocoon of boyhood and sorrows. Then it seemed suddenly you were all yourself. To me, it was very sudden. Maybe you knew the whole time.

I am proud of you. I am glad I can still sometimes comfort you even though you have grown past me.

Your loving
-Wm Bush

[Iris]
I would rather your respect than your body; I would rather your friendship than your respect; I am the lucky man to have had all three.

Your friend
-Wm Bush

[Accidental video]

[Bush is usually careful of his comm, but today he's caught up in a newfound knowledge of music and has found something to sing along with as he brushes out his hair.]

'Like the Kipling cat, I walk alone
Never inviting trouble, never casting the stone.
But this badge of honor is of tarnished tin.
Light your guiding beacon to bring this fisher in.

Picking up tired feet; Back from a far horizon.. '

[It's a pleasant rather than brilliant voice , but his grip of tune is good and he doesn't lose the thread as he starts to re-braid his hair with practiced ease.]

[CW: Comment thread contains violence, graphic description of drowning.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

heisrisen

[Just clapping.]

From:

shakenandlimp

[For a moment he is mortified, angry with himself for being caught out by his clumsiness with technology--but with an instinct not his own he conceals that, and in the next moment realizes that if he chooses not to be embarrassed, then his lapse is momentary and trivial.

So he bows, in his white blouse shirt half unbuttoned, with no neckcloth or waistcoat and his hair falling out of its half completed braid, long and clean over his shoulders. ]

If I'd known I was performing for you, Emperor, I would have dressed for the occasion.

[He reaches off camera to one of his shelves, whimsically placing the fine silver crown he has never dared wear before on his head.] Am I more fit for the stage now?

[His eyes twinkle, his mirth gentler and more refined, his gaze less adoring and more proprietary. In a way that feels completely natural, 'your terrible majesty' has turned into 'my dear, ridiculous emperor'.]

From:

heisrisen

[He misses the Majesty, immediately, isn't childish enough to sulk about it, but misses it just the same. The address was a little piece of home, amidst everything. He misses the blush, too, but it's fun to see Bush like this, poised, courtier-smooth, comfortable. He likes courtiers, generally, or at least he likes the clever ones.

He likes the unaltered Bush more. But the crown looks as lovely on him as the Emperor hoped.

He suspends judgement for a moment, as though he has to think about it - as though it is a somber verdict on a very serious matter, and not at all a joke between the both of them, because the more seriously they pretend to take it, the funnier it is. Eventually, he gives an elegant nod, and his amusement is more obvious around his eyes than his smile.]

Oh yes. Very dashing.

From:

shakenandlimp

Only the best for you. [He is fearlessly joking along, playful without awe. But the crown has to come off; he has to rebraid his long hair into a pigtail.]

I woke up knowing music from a hundred and fifty years and more in my future. And I was able to find recordings of it and a device to play them on, and I knew how to operate it.

I think it's the most helpful flood I've ever encountered. [Braid completed, he takes a black ribbon and begins to wrap it .]

Edited Date: 2014-02-15 06:47 am (UTC)

From:

heisrisen

[You are, he almost says, shameless in his inappropriately effusive sincerity, because why say anything halfway when you could say it six times over and barrel through any objections or embarrassment on the force of sheer self-indulgent conviction. You are the best and you are for me in one offhand dart of a comment, and daring Bush to contradict the glint of his grin. But he thinks twice, and then he doesn't dare.]

Congratulations, then. It's lovely to hear you making use of it.

I feel time.

[Because it's the easiest shift to articulate, the only one he wants to share or even really think about.]

From:

shakenandlimp

That must be wonderful. Will you tell me about it?

[His queue neatly in place, but no more dressed, Bush leans into the camera, turning his warm focus entirely on the Emperor.]

From:

heisrisen

[The attention is nice, warm and pleasant in the sort of way that gets called balmy in the weather, except for the cold skittering ants at the base of his spine, the barely audible hiss of stop at looking at me in his hindbrain. His fingers itch for a hood to tug over his face.

It's easier to focus on the question, and he frowns slightly in concentration.]

It's very hard to describe. Like - like suddenly seeing a new color. I don't have words for it.

From:

shakenandlimp

There probably aren't words for it. It'd be like describing music to someone tone deaf. [He shakes his head.] But is it as grand as it should be?

From:

heisrisen

Oh yes. It's clearest out on deck.

We're moving through it. The barge has it's own, but it's not just a bubble or a sheathe or a static thing, it's like...like a strong, tight local current, where the water warps around a jutting cape, and the cape is the barge's power. But we're carrying it with us, so - a gyre, maybe, self-contained and carried by larger currents and cutting across them at once.

From:

shakenandlimp

The barge's wake is time, and it streams from the barge like a breeze against the trade winds. You know, I think that's rather marvelous.

I'd meant to invite you to the CES soon, but I'm afraid I'll pale in comparison to that. [No. Not afraid even a little. He feels safe and slightly removed from his feelings, given a moment to command them instead of simply being them. Peaceful; and useful. He could do so much good this way.]

From:

heisrisen

Would you? I feel terribly in need of a sky that isn't black, just now.

[Grateful, casually vulnerable. It's not that he lacks the energy to keep up appearances; he just isn't proud enough to bother, at the moment. Bush may as well see him as weak as he is; he hardly deserves to seem better.]

Perhaps you'll have the scent of the past on you like salt spray.

From:

shakenandlimp

Yes, I would, Your Majesty. [Your Majesty-- a title of kindness and respect, not of knock-kneed reverence. Bush still adores him, of course, just lacks his usual awe. He judges that for the best. They'll have to have a hard talk and he can't retire, cringing, after saying things that may hurt his friend-- no, he'll stay and mend things after.]

And we'll have real spray too, if the CES will indulge is in an ocean. Shall I meet you at your room and walk up with you?

From:

heisrisen

[Even without the awe, it's a bit of comfort. He smiles softly.]

That would be perfect, captain. Thank you.

From:

shakenandlimp

[Bush is fully and well dressed when he arrives- and carrying himself the way the Emperor will only have seen him when he was aboard the deck of the rented yacht in 1893. Like a captain again, commanding and certain of himself and his place in the surroundings. He dips a bow as soon as the door is open.]

May I take your arm?

From:

heisrisen

[A small smile, a nod that is both acknowledgement and answer, and he takes the proffered arm. He has an urge to slip his hand down far enough to touch the skin of Bush's wrist, or to inhale deeply - but it's an odd bit of mental delusion, half pavlovian and half psychosomatic, his brain attempting to derive time from a sense it is used to receiving, though neither smell nor touch enhances it. It isn't in the air, and it isn't focused particularly through his fingertips. If anything, it centers somewhere in his sternum, tugged by pressures that are not actually tactile at all.]

You do, by the way. Carry a bit of your time with you.

[The difference in gradient compared to the barge baseline is much fainter than Morgana's, but a little crisper, somehow. He might drive himself mad thinking about how to think about this, he considers bemusedly. At least it would be different.]

Edited Date: 2014-02-15 07:59 am (UTC)

From:

shakenandlimp

I hope I always do. It's very comforting to hear that. Thank you. [He lays his other hand on the Emperor's arm.] You always teach me something or other that's beautiful.

From:

heisrisen

[He wants to rub his face in it, just a little bit. Before he was an Emperor, before he was a doctor, he was a historian. Morgana is ancient but oblique; the streams of their histories cross little if at all. There's a continuity, with Bush, as though of a tributary in reverse, a past that lead to many futures, including his. He doesn't let himself lean in any more than usual. No matter who escorts whom, he's still the one with two legs, and it seems the worst sort of selfish to indulge himself at the cost of Bush's balance, no matter how accustomed to it or adroit in spite of it he has become. The compliment makes him want to share more, to somehow convey it.]

It tastes like - oh but it doesn't taste at all, I'm missing words again. I wish I could give you a glimpse of this. It suits you so well, like I always should have noticed. Harmonic.

But very light, like the glimmer of micah, or half a drop of cologne.

From:

shakenandlimp

I don't understand, but that's all right. I'll try to wear it well. [Bush soothes him, running a thumb over his arm. He has to retrieve it to open the warden-locked door, passing his compass over the lock and tucking it away again.]

From:

heisrisen

Maybe Iris could give you some of the qualia of it later.

[It's mostly been emotions he's shared with her, but sensory perceptions don't seem too implausible. He's just musing, half to himself, too absorbed in the puzzle and the tangible experience to realize he's using a word that won't be invented for another century and then some, for Bush.]

From:

shakenandlimp

Dear Iris. I am sure she will if it can be done. She is the most generous lady. [Qualia; he saves it, compares it to his context, saves it to be understood later. At any rate, they are at the door, and he reaches out and opens it without asking.]

Aah, Portsmouth! I've seen this coastline before. A grayer sky than you may have wanted, but that rain looks like it will stay out at sea.

From:

heisrisen

Grey is alright.

[The dead and the conservatives and the crown loyalists are called Greys, in the Empire. The color of solemnity, but stability, too. And to him it's still nickel-iron mountains under their wispy shawls of rust, homey and close, cliff doves and train rails and the little matte hullalloy shuttles with the whole galaxy waiting just beyond them. There's so much more life in grey than political metonyms would suggest. He soaks it up.]

From:

shakenandlimp

If this really were England we'd be less than a day from Chichester, by the mail carriage. No time at all, with any of the modern 'cars'. But I'm happy for the sea and this sky.

Ah, your Majesty. It's lovely, isn't it? As home to me as anything neither a ship nor my mother's cottage could be.

From:

heisrisen

[He almost makes a remark about gravcars, and how much he wants to take Bush flying in one - Zane, too, but they'd love it in very different ways, because Zane has his own means of flying. He keeps it to himself. The barge is moving, not with the current of time, but outracing it, accelerating toward the future, he is very nearly sure, though he hasn't the experience to get a good sense of the corkscrewing angle of it. On some deep unconscious level, he doesn't want to jinx anything.]

Very lovely, captain.

[Quiet, and absolutely sincere.]

Edited Date: 2014-02-15 09:23 am (UTC)

From:

shakenandlimp

[He looks out onto the sea and the white rollers he can see out on it for long minutes. And then he turns with a smile-- its gentleness itself is a warning.]

I can't say how fond I am of you, you know.

From:

heisrisen

[A glance over - not so much wary as simply that his attention is caught by the peculiarity of it; he's subtle enough to pick up the warning, but not quite capable of actually crediting it, not from Bush, not even with all the changes today.]

I thought you said it rather well.

[Quietly, gaze dropping again. It is a concession, of sorts. He never meant to be the sea.]