fandomtownies | The Shore not far from Galactica Point, Monday Morning

Entry tags:

The Shore not far from Galactica Point, Monday Morning

Fjord really, really needed to stop waking up washed ashore on beaches after horrifying dreams. Last night's dream had been like the one before in reverse, had involved the coils with many eyes wrapping around him and pulling him away from the...

... From the what, he wasn't sure, but there in his dream he'd been crushed halfway to oblivion, the cold, booming voice in his head speaking single words again, that guttural growl snarling possessively right into his mind's eye.

WATCHING. RETURN. PROVOKE. CONSUME.

Again he'd woken up coughing seawater, and then he'd just sat there overlooking the waves, getting his bearings. Re-playing what he remembered of the last few days over and over in his head again. Holding out his hand and calling the falchion into it in a familiar splash of seawater. It was whole again, only the barest seam where the two halves had been split apart, and even that seemed to melt away as he watched it. He dismissed it again and then looked around, trying to puzzle out where he was. It was night - everything was in shades of gray - except then a cloud drifted a little more and he had to squint and look away, the sun too suddenly bright and hurting his eyes.

Okay. So not his usual grayscale night vision at work, just gray. He looked down at his hands, breathed out a sigh of relief. His claws had gone, receded back into his usual black, hooked nails. He had no tail, no spikes, no gills. A hand wandered up to his mouth and his eyes narrowed a little.

... Okay, his tusks were slightly longer than usual. Those hadn't completely gone back down to the size they'd been before, still peeking out a good inch from behind his bottom lip when he closed his mouth. But that wasn't cause for concern, so much. They would have gotten there eventually, had he left them long enough to grow. Still, they were... going to take some getting used to. He made a face, wrinkled his nose, and spat, trying to clear his mouth of the last traces of saltwateer still lingering there.

"Fuckin' hate this place," he muttered, and then settled back in among the stones and sand, staring out at the strangely gray morning sea.

[OOC: Open seashore, discombobulated wjarlock!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As it just so happened, Beau had to pass by this way to get to work, especially if she was going to make a run over to the Perk to grab breakfast first. She was coming down Apocalypse Avenue with her coffee in hand, enjoying her very monochrome egg, bacon, and cheese breakfast sandwich, when she spotted a familiar figure sitting out on the beach.

She'd have recognized him even without the distinctive green skin, really.

"Fjord?" she called, veering off the road and down onto the beach. "You okay, dude?"

Shit. She hadn't checked up on him last week, had she? When all that shit was getting worse and worse by the day? Shit.

Short answer?

No.

Fjord answer?

"... Been worse," he replied, shaking himself out of the state of lump-on-the-beach that he'd let himself fall into, turning and looking Beauregard's way with a (slightly extra tusky) grimace. "Last week was a fuckin' trip, Beau."

... There was an understatement.

Fjord was going to get a sidelong, eyes-narrowed kind of look for that, because she knew what a Fjord answer was. Not that different from a Beauregard answer in some ways.

"Yeah, that one was the most fucked up yet," she agreed, scrambling up to perch on a nearby rock -- if by 'perch' you meant crouch atop the rock on the balls of her feet, elbows braced on her knees. "I thought Keyleth was gonna die just from sensing how bad everything was. That shit got you too, huh?"

Most people might ask if he was okay. Beau was an awkward dumbass who still didn't really have the hang of how to people, so she just broke her sandwich in half and offered him a piece, like it might make him feel better. Because bacon.

Bacon made everything better, really. And besides, Fjord hadn't had a proper meal that he hadn't gutted with his own mouth in days. He smiled crookedly as he accepted the offering, nodded, and lifted it up a little in thanks.

"Shit got me too," he agreed, in a rare moment of realizing she'd see right through his bullshit if he played dumb. "Not a big fan of not bein' in control."

Not to mention the dreams.

Well, yeah. Beau was a lot better at seeing through people's bullshit than she let on.

"I hear you," she said, a bit more tension crackling beneath the words than might be expected. "You don't have any, like, lingering urges to gnaw my head off now though, right?"

That was tactful, Beau. Good job.

Edited 2019-06-24 17:21 (UTC)

In response to that, Fjord really just snorted, shook his head, and flipped her the bird.

Because some questions just required a good old-fashioned middle finger.

See, Beau generally tended to read that as a sign she'd done something right, so Fjord got a smirk and a responding middle finger. Two of them, actually.

"Just making sure, right?"

Because she was worried, but who actually said things like that?

Really, with the two of them, an exchange of flipped birds was totally a good sign!

"Even if I was hungry enough to try gnawin' on you, you just handed me bacon," Fjord mused, and took a moment to take a bite of the sandwich piece she'd given him. Gods, he'd needed that. "Who the hell's gonna try and eat a Beau when there's bacon handy?"

He was silent for a moment as he chewed. His upper lip rubbed against his tusks in a way he hadn't felt since he was a kid, and for a moment he felt weirdly small and vulnerable to go with it. Hated that.

"I gotta find a way to get off this fuckin' island before it kills me," he muttered.

"Who would want to --"

Beau just stared at him for several seconds, and then started snickering.

Luckily that was as much as she was going to elaborate on that subject.

There were more important things to respond to anyway.

"That bad?" she asked, frowning slightly.

Fjord's face went through a few very distinct stages of emotion, then. First, confusion, followed by realization, followed by regret, which was then tailed a few moments later with a sort of wry calm, somewhere between regret and consternation all over again.

"... Maybe not that bad."

Stubborn ass.

"But not great."

So, that bad.

Beau took a moment to watch that face journey and enjoy it like the asshole she was, but yeah, she could tell he was grossly understating things.

"So on a scale of 'let's go get fuckin' wasted on the mainland' to 'finding a way to get Fjord to Rexxentrum,'" she said, not nearly as idle about her curiosity as she sounded, "leaning more towards figuring out a way to get home?"

She . . . didn't sound thrilled about that, but she'd promised him.

"Leaning more that way, yeah," Fjord admitted, after a pause. "And that ain't even completely on the island, but whatever the fuck it is this place is doin' right now, it ain't helping anything."

He wasn't sure if the island was going to kill him first, or if the dreams were.

"Right. I hear you." Beau paused to take another bite out of her remaining half of the sandwiches, careful to keep her reluctance strictly internal. "Getting you to the Academy is a priority then? I'd say we should try and book you a portal straight there, but considering we haven't been able to find one yet I'd be willing to put good money on the Empire keeping a real short leash on shit like portal travel, especially in the capital."

That might do things like disrupt mysterious people's nefarious plans to open Abyssal rifts, among other possibilities.

Wouldn't want any of that, right?

"Makes sense enough," Fjord sighed. "We could try the mountains. Maybe I can touch base with my travel companion from there. I'm sure she's long gone by now, but..."

A vague shrug. Jester had been excellent company, if nothing else. Someone he felt like he could be... comparatively honest with. It'd be a shame if he lost touch with her completely just because of some weird man-eating island.

It'd be a shame if Beau never got to meet her BFF, too. Honestly, anyone who never got to meet Jester was missing out.

"We probably have a better chance outside of the Empire, or like on the fringes of it," Beau agreed.

"Right, then. We'll see what Portalocity can do for us, but if it can't get us into Rexxentrum, at the very least we'll get to be road trip buddies."

And they would meet so many other disasters along the way!

"Yeah," Beau said, managing to keep her scowl dialed down as far as she could. "We can start working on that."

She'd run away from the monastery, from home in the general sense, for a reason, and the idea of going back didn't sit well with her at all, but fuck it, she'd already decided Fjord was on the list of people whose back she'd have unconditionally. She could go back for a little while for his sake, right?

"I appreciate it, Beau, thank you," Fjord replied. He was quiet for a few long moments, and then he polished off the rest of his piece of sandwich, sighed, and leaned himself back against a rock, staring quietly up the the grey sky. "Maybe shit'll stop being quite so fucked up, soon."

With the island? With himself? All of the above?

"I wouldn't hold my breath or anything," Beau began, shaking her head, "but if we can get you some answers, that'll at least help, right? I mean, that's something."

This was her trying to be optimistic. It was cute that she tried.

"Answers would be a step in the right direction, anyway," Fjord agreed. "I swear, if I wake up on one more fuckin' beach..."

It wasn't really the 'being on the beach' bit that was the issue, admittedly.

Well, when being on the beach started becoming inextricably associated with your mysterious creepy giant eye patron, you could say it was a big part of the issue.

"That's a habit that just ends up with sand in bad places," Beau told him.

"I mind the sand the least," Fjord admitted. "Sand's got an easy enough fix. Just get in the water."

It was a small miracle that this man was still willing to get into the water, admittedly.

Fjord's water-related trauma was . . . maybe not quite as bad as the water-related trauma of someone they had yet to meet. Not quite. Maybe.

"Eh. True." Beau shrugged. "The washing up, though. Never any good circumstances leading up to that, I guess."

That somebody else didn't have an entire lifetime of experiences framing the water as a source of freedom either, really. Fjord had a lot of reason to sort himself out a bit where his trauma was concerned.

"I suppose washin' up beats the alternative," he noted. "The one where you don't."

Which was generally more common in those circumstances.

"There's that," agreed Beau, tilting her head slightly and nodding. Landlocked as the Empire was except for the frozen wastes to the north, her only experience with the ocean came from this island, but keeping the books for the family winery (and any, er, illicit activity involving the product) had involved enough tracking of imports and exports that she could make a decent guess. "Statistically speaking, that's kind of defying the odds, which makes you a lucky fucking asshole."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject