Any Port in a Storm (Sable)

[Liandra]

Timestamp: Spring 83, 512 AV Time: Morning Location: Kalista Island Who: Sable Baggywrinkle "On the 83rd, meet me at the second island east of the northern entrance of The Gut. It is called Kalista Island, I have a surprise for you." That was what Sable had told her three days ago when they had found each other for the first time in a season. Liandra was so happy to have found her only friend, aside from Kylayia, not just alive but healthy and thrilled to see her as well. She'd never been invited out to a surprise location by anyone before, and she had manta rays swimming around in her stomach. Her and Kylayia were had just passed the first island north of the gut, following along the currents of Laviku's playland. She patted Kylayia, telling him to surface, the currents jostling the pair slightly. When they breached, she looked around for any sign of this 'Kalista Island'. She couldn't quite find it, but saw Syna high in the sky, and smiled. Every time she saw the bright goddess, it reminded her of Sable and her golden curls. In Char, she said a quick prayer to the sun goddess, asking her to shine brightly on Sable where ever she may be. She went to dive underwater when she felt a strange breath of Zulrav on her neck. Pressing, insistent, not like the rest around here. She looked behind her and groaned, of all days Zulrav had to send a test on the day she was meeting Sable. She loosed another quick prayer asking him to hold off for a few bells, then she would meet his test head on. She leaned forward against Kylayia's back, and at the signal, he dove beneath the waves, his powerful tail surging. She continued to steer him east, using her knees to guide him, for nearly a bell when she could see signs of reef life below. That meant they were nearing a coast or island. She popped above surface once more, and was pleased at the sight of an island. That must be it! It was so pretty and unique looking, very rocky and unnatural, but not in a bad way. It was a gem on the surface of Laviku's skin, that's for sure, and Liandra found herself wishing she were so pretty. Her eyes grew wide. She couldn't possibly meet Sable there looking like she did! Panicking, she steered Kylayia down in the reef, hoping she wasn't going to make Sable wait long, if she were there already. Upon reaching the reef, many of the fishy inhabitants disappeared into their hiding places. Liandra pulled off her top and bottoms and set them over a bit of coral, then floated parallel to the sandy bottom and waited. After a few chimes, the fish deemed her not a threat and came back out. This was a trick she had learned back home. She wasn't quite as adept those that were blessed by Caiyha, but she managed. Eventually some of the hungry fish, and some of the cleaner shrimp made their ways over Liandra's body, eating any grime or muck they could find, her skin beginning to shine. It was a delightful tickle over her, and she giggled several times. Kylayia was much more stoic about it since he was covered in scales. When the critters were done with them, they started on her outfit, which was probably the most brilliant green when they finished. She slipped back into her clothes, and began looking for something to make her prettier, like how Syna's light envelops Sable perfectly no matter where she is. She began sifting through the bottom sand, and found several small auger shells. She grabbed some string that came with her tack for Kylayia from her saddlebags, and began tying knots at the thick ends. She then tied the opposite end of the strings to some of her tentacles so that they dangled from her head, and would, when above surface, would jingle when she walked. She had several shells and lengths of string left over, and smiling to herself, went to work. She first began braiding a long length of the strings, end over end and under, until she had a length long enough for her need. She then began tying more of the auger shells as she had done before, but felt it was still lacking a certain charm. It was too much. She removed all but the prettiest, most perfect of the auger shells and held it up. She smiled. It was just right. She tucked it between her breasts for safe keeping, and climbed into the saddle. She slowly led Kylayia toward the shoreline, so that she wouldn't lose the shells in her tentacles, and breached the surface, looking around for that ever familiar Sea Sparkle. The manta rays were back to fluttering around in her stomach as she began looking for Sable. She hoped she liked the necklace, and she hoped that she was prettier than normal. Sable's natural sunfilled beauty was well beyond her own. She tried to stifle down the nervousness several times, but it refused. Why was she nervous anyways? The inner turmoil consumed her while she sat their in the drifting tide, awaiting her Svefra friend.

[Sable Baggywrinkle]

“No, no! Stop it! Gah! Damn sea rat!” a scruffy salt barked, smacking Sable upside her curly sun-bleached locks and jerking a long length of cord from her hands. Despite having outgrown “sea rat” size, Sable demurely handed off the line and scooted to the side of the railing. They stood together at the aft deck of the Casinor, coils of heavy line with scores of off-shooting hooks at their feet. The hooks dangled from the strong line by about two feet every four feet. He said they were called drag lines. Everything was a blur in the pre-dawn light. He did nothing more than snap the line out and all the knots she’d created and re-created disappeared. Hooks slid over calloused, dry, mottled forearms without biting. His pupil’s long, golden arms were riddled with slender red breaks, adding to her consternation. Sucking on his beard, he stared at her with thinly veiled impatience. “Add the bait and drop it in. It’ll trail behind the ship catching fish.” Sable did as instructed, taking small cube chunks of fish from a bucket and impaling them on the finger length hooks. Disappearing in roiling wake, soon the ship-length line had been completely baited and spent. Salty knotted it to a rawhide loop made specifically for such a purpose. “Leave it in overnight. Come on, don’t know why I should bother, if you can’t manage to feed out fishing line there’s no way you’ll be able to make it.” Crusty left her behind, sighing at the insult. When finally she’d extracted herself from the extra fishing lines, he sat amongst many tall plant stalks. Without a word, he started cracking them open with a knife and pulling out fibers. It wasn’t until he’d gone through about five stalks that he paused and stared at his engrossed pupil. It wasn’t until he’d smacked her upside the head with one that she got the picture and pulled out her own knife and mimicked his technique. Long, stiff fibers grew pliant in a bucket of water. Silently, he fished out two lengths and rolled them over his thigh. Before long, he spliced more in long before it seemed necessary, twisted the lengths around one another, and kept on rolling. Sable quickly followed his lead, narrowed hues fighting the dark. “This is how you make light cordage, use this plant here for it. You forgot your hook.” Perplexed, Sable glanced between their seemingly identical attempts. He finally took pity on her and whirled the cord around. At her continued blank stare, his hand shot out and something solid thwacked her in the head. Yelping and rubbing furiously at her temple, she recoiled. But she also realized that he’d anchored his line through the eye of a hook. His was tighter because he could hook the fishing tool around his fingers as he rolled. She started over. He stopped her when her line was about her body length. “That’ll break in about three places if you hook anything bigger than your hand.” What was she supposed to say to that? “You waited too long to add more fiber.” “Oh.” “Here, this is from trees,” he pointed to a bucket of red-brown sheets. “Gotta strip off the inner bark and boil it for a day and a half with wood ashes. Then shave them down into lengths.” “This is what that line we just dropped in is made out of,” she observed, pulling some out and following his lead with her knife. “’Bout time you got something right.” He twisted two lengths to the right after anchoring them to his foot, crossed them over, spliced more in, and repeated. Sable followed, frowning at the pressure against the sensitive flesh between her toes. He chucked at her a handful of hooks with two foot long lines attached. He took one and spliced it into his rope. Sable followed along and Syna had made considerable progress by the time they both had fifteen foot long sections with several hooks. Heavy calluses from sailing protected her palms from rope burn, but the unfamiliar motions weakened her arms. Salty Crust looked like he could go for days. “Come on,” he ordered, pushing to his feet and leading aft. “Bait your hooks and toss them in.” Sable stared for a second, unaware of how this attempt was going to go any better than the one from this morning. Gingerly, she unwound the dangerous tool, carefully handling hooks and baiting them before feeding out. He disappeared while she worked, and when she found him, he’d cleaned up the deck. “Take us along that reef, that’s where the fish are.” Rubbing at her eyes, grimacing at the fish guts left behind, the lanky woman trudged to the tiller and manipulated the Sparkle to take them into the wind. Feeling happy for the first time all morning, she had them zipping along at full speed before long. They’d left the reef far behind in just a few chimes. “Do you think you caught anything?” came a dry, resigned query. “I don’t know.” “Wrong. The answer is no. Try again, take us out to that glassy area, the pressure of the current will push food into that calm area. That’s where fish will be.” Pouting, Sable loosened mainsheet to take the pressure off. The ship lurched to nearly a standstill and they puttered through the indicated area. “Come on,” he ordered again, using some indefinable sign to know that they were done with this part. Sable said a quick prayer to Syna, hoping that her beams had penetrated deep enough to entice the fish with shimmering scales. And one to Laviku, thanking him for whatever he had deigned to herd to her lines with his currents. She expected him to be tugging up his line by the time she joined him, but instead he chucked a long flat bone at her. “You’ll also need to be making your own hooks. White bone. Not yellow or clear.” Sable’s eyes narrowed on him. “What do you want?” she asked. “Your scale, silk, and goggles.” From the same knapsack he’d pulled the bone, he removed a series of stones and tossed them near the two fishing lines coiled at his feet. “There’s the stones you need to carve bone, with my lessons and the lines. “Stones, all three lines, the rest of the tree fiber, lessons in bone carving, and fish gutting knives for silk and goggles.” “Done.” He reacted so quickly that she knew she’d been had. “Wait, what is that on your wrist?” “A vambrace.” “Bone?” “Yeah.” “I’ll give you the second yard for it.” “Second yard?” he asked. “Of silk.” His eyes narrowed, a protest on his lips. He laughed for the first time. “Sneaky. What will you give me for the other one?” He lifted both his arms, grinning in triumph. Sable frowned, flicking at the taut fishing lines spanning between ship and brilliant blue depths. “Your ship.” She licked her lips. He cocked a brow, intrigued. “You, sea urchin, do not have possession of my ship.” “Neither do you.” He grinned. “All right, sopsud, let’s pull in your catch and see what we’ve got. They should be tired by now.” Crusty took the rope in hand and heaved, urging Sable to do the same on hers. He made it look easy. With each heave, he mitigated for dangling hooks by hooking them, their bait long gone, over the rawhide mount he’d created. Two fish as long as his arms stirred in the water beneath them. Sable had yet to find the fish on hers. And she wouldn’t. Whatever fish had been on had taken the last third of her line. She sighed and he smirked. Without a word, he gathered up the trade goods and took them fore. Sable returned to the tiller and aimed them toward Kallista Island. Caspien had introduced the two Svefra, and as Lia had yet to arrive for their day together, Sable had taken advantage of his offer to barter. He brought up the sack of stone tools and laid them out. “Knife, scraper, saw, graver, drill, grinding stone,” he listed out, lifting the appropriate tool. They were heavily worn, and she looked upon them dubiously. He took off his armor and showed her what each tool had been used for in their creation. “Okay. Grab your silk and goggles, leave everything at the prow, we’ll have to do the lesson carvings later.” Salty looked up in surprise, blue eyes narrowed in the crevices of his sun-leathered face. He followed her gaze. “Is that a Charoda?” “It sure is, and I have a date, so if you don’t mind…” He grinned and leapt off as soon as the Sparkle came abreast to the dock, tying her off to a cleat and taking his bounty over to his own rickety ship. Sable quickly followed him, sauntering on down the dock and leaping off to follow the shore toward where Liandra waited with Kylayia. The ends of her short pants darkened with water in the surt, bare feet digging into the sand. “Ahoy! You’re late!”

[Liandra]

Liandra hadn't seen the familiar sight of the Sea Sparkle pulling up to the nearby dock. She was busy talking to Kylayia as they bobbed in the water, "She'll like it right? I hope so... What do you think she has in store for me? I hope I don't have to meet too many new people... I just want to spend time with her... Our last meeting was a bit soured after all... Did you miss Sib as much as I missed Sable?" The nervousness was nearly palpable around the blue woman. She hadn't even missed her parents, or Eorar, as much as she had missed Sable. And honestly, she didn't even know if any of those back home were alive. She just about dipped into her guilt at keeping her family and only friend from those days out of her thoughts, when she was interrupted by a voice brought on by Syna herself. “Ahoy! You’re late!” That sunblessed voice could only belong to Sable. She smiled brilliantly, her sharp teeth glistening in the rays. Now or never, she supposed. She turned Kylayia with her knees, and waved at the culmination of Laviku's strength and Syna's beauty. Just as she was about to slide off of Kylayia, an idea stormed her mind. "Wait just a chime! Real quick!" There was a layer of nervousness and fluster in her voice. She reached down and grabbed a length of her barbed net, and fiddled with it until she had a single hook in her hand. She dug the necklace she'd made from its resting place in her bosom, and held it firm against Kylayia's back. In Char, she managed to slowly etch a sloppy, but legible word. Sael'yeya Satisfied, she replaced the hook and the net, and returned the necklace to it's spot for safekeeping. She slid from the saddle, and glided through the waters, stepping out with a grace that only her kind could achieve. She giggled and pulled Sable into a firm embrace, enjoying the moments that felt all too rare for her liking with the curly blonde. She stepped back from her, "I made something for you... Just put the finishing touches on it, I hope you like it," she mumbled, the end trailing off. She then awkwardly began fumbling in her top, looking the fool, when the necklace dropped out of the bottom and into the surf. Eyes wide in horror, she dropped to her knees, "Oh no, oh no, oh no!" She began panicking, frantically sifting and digging through the sand. After too many long ticks, she managed to retrieve it. She rinsed the sand particles from it, and held it out for Sable, "Here." Her cheeks were dark in embarrassment, little chimes ringing out as the shells hanging from her tentacles settled. "So, um, what did you want to show me here? And, um, sorry for being late... I was making your gift..."

[Sable Baggywrinkle]

Surf swelling around endless legs, the golden haired sailor advanced toward that kneeling bundle of embarrassment. A faint smirk played across her lips, eyes honed in on the sleek submerged form and sparkled like Syna cast over ruffled waters. Drops, clear and taut, rolled down Liandra’s outstretched arm, flesh bred in brine and birthed by Laviku’s blessing. Cool and powerful, knee deep water undulated over Sable’s calves, beckoning her deeper. She stepped forward, bare feet digging into quicksand. Fingers too soft to belong to a rope slinging sailor grazed over Liandra’s trembling ones. She removed the shell, sweet trinket with foreign symbols and it disappeared. Cool to the touch, soft and smoother than even ray skin, Sable’s fingers lingered, emboldened by surface turmoil. The Water Father’s daughter needed a soothing touch, and his disciple longed to ease their restlessness. Tender tentacles swayed, bejeweled with the sea’s bounty. As though Lia were as supple under her as the water she conjured at will, her palm swept up the Charoda’s slender arm, committing every swell to memory. Her other hand cupped Liandra’s flushed cheek, and she felt as though she held the sea within her grasp. “Thank you. I’m glad you could make it,” she breathed, the bridge of her nose trailing up Lia’s temple. Again, as the blue woman’s scent surrounded her, Sable felt immersed in depths that only the Charoda had been given freedom to visit. To be cut loose from Zulrav’s chains and welcomed within Laviku’s bosom…Sable took a deep breath and stepped back. Hair blowing in the breeze, she turned away and offered the ends of the shell necklace for tying. As Lia fumbled, she inspected the hasty inscription. “Sael’yeya?” she butchered with Common pronunciation despite recognizing it wasn’t a Common word. “I just thought you’d like a personal tour of the temple here, come on.” Drifting through sunlight, the cavalier woman led the way up toward the temple.