[Patchwork Port] Just Movin' Stuff [Open]

[Royjeck]

Day 3 of Winter, AV 511 The Patchwork Port

Royjeck was a simple man, well, a Jamoura actually. Let's start over... Royjeck was a simple Jamoura who saw himself much like a man, a human male that is. Born from Jamoura mother and father, but a confusing and obscure adoption made sure Royjeck was raised among humans, and as a human. Perhaps it was a bad idea for his adoptive father (who Royjeck considered to be his true father) to put him in such a situation as a young and developing Jamoura. Perhaps it was the best thing that could have been done for him. Regardless, one thing that is for certain about Royjeck, is that he's a Denizen of Alvadas, and has been for most of his life. Today, he still held onto that simple life (which was sometimes hard when you hardly ever left the walls of Alvadas) that his father had, and which appealed to him. Even now that he had outlived his adoptive family, and even their true offspring, he held tight to that simple income, simple life. "Hey! Roy! Go help Mackum! That old shyke is like to break his neck carrying that!" Royjeck peered up from his casual daydream across the sea and stalked across the docks towards the merchant ship that waited for him. It was a large vessel with a fancy title that alluded him, carrying all sorts of miscellaneous items. Warm clothing from Sylira, Spices from Ekytol, slaved from Falyndar and Kalea, animals from everywhere, fish caught and sold by Charodae, and so on. There never seemed to be a limit to what new merchandise was brought to Alvadas. Even the Isur were known to abuse the Trading City of Alvadas for getting out their wares, their armor, their weapons, their tools, their metals, architectural plans modified for Human life. It was endless, and Royjeck often wanted to just sit down and sift through it all, to know what everything was, what it did, how it was used, but he didn't have time for that. He had to unload, money was first. Later he could wander the markets in search for interesting items. Mackum was a short man with a hitch in his step from where his foot was sawed off. It was a strange tale about a doctor somewhere that said if the foot wasn't severed, he would die. The older man, grim and angry in his mid-age, never failed to express his hatred for this doctor. The man was trying desperately to lift a crate, along with some new hand that had yet earned his name among the laboring workers of Patchwork Port. The crate was average in size, yet whatever was inside, surely was heavy. Roy stepped up, merely ushered Mackum to the side, along with the unnamed newbie, and grabbed either side of the crate, an easy feat thanks to his enormous size and strength, and lifted the box from the ship's deck, and slowly walked it across the board and safely onto the dock. Mackum chuckled grimly as Jamoura Roy walked away. "There's that bastard monkey again. Thinks he's better than me because he's a petchin' ape." Royjeck, ignoring the comment, set his crate back down and returned to that merchant ship once more. There was, after all, a lot of unloading to do, a good deal of which only a person with the strength of ten men could handle.

[Ulric]

And then, unfortunately, there was only one mug left. One petching mug, he snarled, shoving a girl from his path. Her ruddy face twisted, curses echoing in his ears, but he didn’t care. “Go away,” he grunted, casting dark, smoldering eyes over her blotchy skin, down the scant ridge of her breasts under a tawdry, painted vest. Her fingers were rough, stained by tar, lank hair caught up by a length of twine, eyes a watery and insipid shade of azure. Sailor, probably, he conjectured, just kept trudging through the serpent of docks. Though he was considerably larger, she grasped at his shoulder, dug her fingers into his jerkin.

“Come back here,” she spat, and then something else, but her taunts just slid through his ears. What does she want? Again, he lifted the skin, gulped at the harsh, sour red, nearly vinegar. He kept walking, but then again, her fingers were rather well dug in, and starting to hurt.

Ulric frowned.

“I’ve only got one mug left,” he growled, “So don’t do anything you’re going to regret.” One petching mug.

Naama, you harpy. He thought of the savage, of her hips and those inky eyes with some fondness, though they were scoured away by his outrage. One mug, where a pair had before bided? Now he was bereft.

The sky was falling around him, the air turgid, and the breakers a frigid, pewter-dark poison that threatened to engulf him, a fish bone for the choking. Not today, though, he grinned, shaking at the fingers. Today, we buy mugs. The gleam of hope, a prow jutting through milky fog. The burnished, yet dirty bronze of an oil lamp, hanging over a bed of tumbled straw. Upset, the cinders taking hold in the dung, furling starkly into an inferno of molten embers and –

No wait, back up.

And of course, the girl couldn’t just leave him alone. Pride, he scowled. Don’t you know? Here, we shyke on your pride. More curses, scantly neglected, but the fingers, they were bony. Horrid in their rigid embrace, and of course, the drag of her was slowing him, legs reduced to a shamble.

Taken from his mugs.

Ulric took another drink of wine, felt the skin jerked aside, a trickle coursing down his chin, through his beard, down his neck. “Don’t waste,” he growled, and wrestled the fingers away, clasping hard on her hand, nearly enough to crush the bones. And then, of course, there had to be iron drawn, the cruel menace against his ribs, making as though to drag out purple ropes of his guts.

“Don’t you care about my mugs?”

A quick shove, and away she went. An ankle bending around a clean, skinny frame spun around to hurl into the water. A splash, an outraged squawk. A few drops. Hope it’s not going to rain today, he grunted, taking another gulp of wine, wending past a few crates, a coil of broad, heavy ropes.

And then, in the midst of his journey, he saw the face. Huge, dark, squat nose. Huge, dark, keen eyes. Huge, dark lips. Fur, dark. “Sharn,” he rasped, a frown on his lips, brow furrowing, eyes cast asunder. “But… you’re dead.”

And my mug, too.

She broke my petching mug.

[Royjeck]

The day was a typical day of work. Loading and unloading. Moving this and that. Royjeck, he was the best on the docks simply because of his size, but that didn't settle well with everyone. Mackum, a man that Royjeck had known as a newborn, a young man, to his middle aged miserable self, had grown to hate the Jamoura. "Ah, Roy! Why don't you make yourself useful and get these two as well? You know, since you can't do much else than move shyke around. Stupid beast." Roy's body slowly turned as he moved towards the ship once again. His arms would wrap around two hefty barrels, lifted to his shoulders, and he would carry them down the ramp again. It was like Mackum's words fell short of Royjeck's ears. Perhaps, however, he had endured such language for so long he chose not to give them power. A squeal and a splash later, Roy found himself gazing down at a man approaching, in a drunken stupor it seemed, who had just thrown some unlucky soul into the waters. Dangerous, bold. "Roy has been called many things in his life, but a Sharn is not one of them. You seem quite thirsty there stranger. You can call him Roy. What can he call you?" Royjeck nodded slowly as a voice, once again, barked at him from the merchant vessel. It was Mackum once more. "Lazy ass! I'm reporting you to Wharf you cur! Ah, hey!" Royjeck stared at the ship at Mackum, who actually hadn't unloaded anything since Roy had arrived. He only bitched and moaned and complain and insulted. Roy had a thick skin, but bugs like this could still make him itch. For a moment, Roy felt like storming up on the ship and simply throwing Mackum into the waters below, but that would lose him his job. He sighed again before returning his attention to Ulric. "Roy's been called many things, but never a Sharn." A repeat. Strange? Maybe, but for Alvadas what was normal?

[Ulric]

Ulric’s frown was meager, eyes crazy as though trying to find a ring in a haystack, madly scouring that blunt face, the seams of dark leather. And yet, revelation was sluggish, the grimly mocking revenants ever jerking him back, heaping on doubts. The cogs of his mind began to grind, joints creaking as he limped forward to a surly comprehension, vaguely liquored to the guise of a skeptic. Not that he cared, or even that it forced any discrepancy, for he wasn’t even drunk, just caught up in a perpetual disorder, dazed by a bleary plight of chimerical augury. “Not, then,” he hushed, “That’s quite unlucky. Not for you, though. Probably. For the other.”

The clamor was deafening, a pulse of red winding over his aching spine, the creak of ropes and clangor of crates. The gimp, squat already, barging in on his sordid revel, disrupting his ruminating.

And now, for the mask of rage.

Abruptly, he began to roar. “Go away,” his face twisted, sourly jerking a finger at the gimp, “You’re being rude, you mug-breaking, toad-petching, bushy-eared hag of a dock rat. Away with you, you arse-licking cripple,” he spat.

Just as swiftly, the cover sloughed away, and he turned kindly eyes upon Roy.

“Ys jsaun qiw?” Desank, ever the jokester, was chuckling, nearly convulsed by curses.

Not that he could be seen.

Or even heard.

Ulric began to speak, yet was thwarted by an untimely sneeze, a sharp pain in his guts. He wiped away a strand of mucus.

Morosely, he clanked, cranked out a grin, brushed his patchy hedge of whiskers into a sundry simulacrum of partly bemused joy. “You see, he’s dead,” he leaned nearer, plucking at the coarse fur. “Vayt.” How tragic.

“You’re very large, aren’t you?” He grunted, as though requiring a hesitant validation of the blatantly evident. “D’you care for a game?”

[Royjeck]

Roy's massive shoulders heaved, rising and falling in the ever casual motion, a shrug, then shook his head. "Lucky, unlucky, lies. No, Roy isn't so simple as to believe in fantastical concepts as luck. Occurrences happen, those that are caught in them, near them, or because of them are merely recipients of what the event has to offer. Assuming luck existed, it's difficult to say whether this person, your Sharn, was lucky or unlucky for the situation he has been caught up in." Royjeck watched Ulric patiently, the man was obviously drunk, or at was was convincing Royjeck of just that. He, however, didn't pick up on what should have been obvious. Death, what else could be considered unlucky, regardless of circumstance? Royjeck winced lightly, more shocked and surprised at Ulric's sudden outburst of anger, yet it was in Roy's defense. The Jamoura turned his head to look back at the verbal assailant, well needless to say, he was a lot quieter now. "A cowardly one. Roy would call him a chicken." Royjeck shrugged his shoulders again, his voice was quiet, yet intentionally loud enough for Mackum to hear him. "But even a chicken has a spine." There was a single glare from the man on Royjeck and Ulric before he returned to his own business. He would leave the Jamoura alone for the rest of the day at least. Then, Ulric explained Sharn's position. Death, yes, it was typically safe to consider such a fate as an unlucky one. Roy spoke casually as he ignored Ulric's odd fingering at his fur. "Death isn't permanent. Sharn, he's alive somewhere in this world, a newborn child, somewhere." Of course, that depended on your belief in reincarnation or not. "Roy doesn't often participate in such activities, but he will amuse you for a few chimes. What is this game?"

[Ulric]

Ulric gave a shrug. Not that it was a genuine shrug. More of a jerk, a jaded spasm of edgy nerves. There wasn’t anything else he could do. The query had caught him off guard. What kind of game? He’d asked, but he’d asked detached from hasty thought or design, merely asking because he could ask, not because he derived any particular enjoyment from games. Now he was roped in by his wet, pink, rashly brazen tongue, and he had to think of a game.

“Well,” he grunted.

Instantly, he thought of knocking rough-handed, tarry-haired sailors over the edge of the piers, laughing as they roiled over the undulating crests of breakers, spewing water and curses. But when he thought deeper, that wasn’t a very fun game. Not for everybody. And surely, he’d just get weary of it after a while.

“Um,” he jerked fingers through his beard, back through his spiky hair, distractedly tugging at the jut of his collar.

Ulric felt awfully stupid now. Am I drunk? He waved a rough, leaden palm just beyond his dark eyes, splaying his fingers like some strange, japing sorcerer trying to conjure a tower of purple flames. No, not drunk. He swayed just a tad, mostly because he was drunk.

I wonder, he thought, gazing unsteadily up at the ape, past him to the lofty masts, hung with spars and furled, bleached sails, the curving timbers that swept trenchantly from prow to blunted stern around the ship’s huge belly, and the low bulk of the rudder. I wonder, are there any casks of wine?

“Y’know, we could always see how fast we could unload her,” he nudged, a vaguely naughty grin curling over his face. “Her hold must be nearly empty by now.” Ulric jerked a finger at the jumble of barrels, bales, crates, sacks, rolled rugs, lengths of timber, and other, myriad trade goods.

At least, he hoped the hold was nearly empty.