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TEST DRIVE MEME #8
1. but times have changed for sailors these days
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
2. tried to amend my carnivorous habit
[the space inside John's where the piano normally sits is mysteriously vacant today. as a matter of fact, the entire piano bar is silent, without so much as a muzak-inspired interpretation of Uptown Girl to hum along to.
the piano itself seems to have disappeared... for the most part. unlucky, unsuspecting passengers who enter the cabin hallway, step out onto the lower decks, or find themselves in one of the other narrow corridors of the ship, may find themselves suddenly facing down a silent, unmoving grand piano. it takes up too much space to squeeze by comfortably...
and then, the cover lifts, exposing what looks to be... teeth?
yeah. yeah, those are its teeth. and it's coming right for you.]
3. that American creation on which I feed
[it had been a difficult October for bahamanuel, the bahamanal. its territory had changed utterly, becoming alien and strange. new predators were encroaching on its hunting grounds. its position in the natural order is under threat. and so, nature finds a way.
the old timers know to be wary of large piles of clothes, but even they won’t think to look twice at the tiny lumps of garish kids’ swimsuits and sundresses - until they feel something latch onto their leg, and then several more things, and anywhere from ten to twenty balled up clothes piles try to take down their prey.
the young must learn how to hunt, after all.]
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Lev looks Wilson up and down, critically, considers making some wild assumptions, and then thinks better of it — after all, Eli wears waistcoats with fancy shirts, and his sister-in-law would absolutely deck anyone who dared assume anything about hir.
The name's no help, either. For one thing, it's totally unfamiliar to Lev, who's only vaguely aware that there's a distant relative of Ormic languages somewhere all the way on the opposite side of the conglomeration of plena he's from, and he has never read a
Wsound pronounced outside of the Temani way of davening ... and "Wilson" doesn't sound like a Temani name, either.So he shrugs.
"How dost thou refer to thyself?" he asks. "See like, nu—" he hesitates, and decides Wilson probably doesn't yet want a lecture on subcultural slang from a very long way away, "girls, if they like other girls, can call me Lyubov. To boys like me, I'm Lev."
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Right, there was a question in there. "So I'd call you Lev? I'm a boy."
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"Yes, I think thou would'st," says Lev, thoughtfully. "If it turns out thou'rt wrong to do that, well, hindsight's always shame-inducing, but mostly irrelevant, nu?"
He sighs, and leans back against the wall, replaying the rest of the conversation in his head to see if there's anything critical he ought to address ... but instead he latches on to one of Wilson's asides.
"Wait, how dost thou stop thy hair from growing in the summer, then?"
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At the mention of beards, Lev self-consciously rubs his chin; he can't remember when he last shaved.
"I only need to shave like once a week," he says, trying to sound conversational, but the unease in his voice shines through. He's not keen to dwell on the subject, so he tries to change it, "listen, like. I wish not to stay in the corridor, dost thou? Where ... where like, do the people here go, when they're looking to not think about things, nu?"
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The second Bahamulet's been rattling its wicker cage around this whole time, too. Wilson stoops down and grabs it, trap and all. It is no longer visible about his person when he stands up.
"I just got here, but it's a luxury liner, there must be something to do. A library or a smoking room at least, and some kind of... sports area. Maybe somewhere to drink if we're lucky." He's not sure how seriously the ship takes the Volstead Act. And also he hasn't found the abundance of bars on the promenade yet.
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"Smoking room?" Lev perks up. "Think'st thou they might have qalyan there? 'Tis a little early in the day for poppy, and I prefer not to indulge too often ... Nyura, uh. My husband? He worries if I smoke opium too often, as well as take my daily laudanum ... but qalyan's always good, even if 'tis mere tobacco."
He bows, a little absurdly, to Wilson, "lead the way! I will get us lost, if I do, nu?"
As he straightens, something occurs to him, "why would we need luck to find a drink? Is there an alcohol shortage?" he looks suddenly worried; like genuinely worried. Like worse than a Catholic would look if you told them every single communion wafer baker caught fire and was demolished in a flour explosion all at the same instant.
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"It's an American thing. They banned it a... couple years ago." Wilson's not sure what year it is either. "It's not that hard to get around on shore and it doesn't apply if you're far enough out on the ocean, but they can't just leave alcohol lying around when they dock, so if we're lucky we can ask around and if we're unlucky it's, like, one guy's personal supply and he won't share."
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"Thou smokes not?" Lev exclaims, rather surprised. His delicately pencilled eyebrows shoot up. "Is it thy lungs?" He genuinely doesn't seem to even consider that some people may not smoke because they don't like it.
However, if that surprised him, the idea of banning alcohol truly shocks him. His eyes go very wide and round, and he bites his lip as if hearing of a horrific road accident near his home town.
"Even wine? Have they banned even wine?" he whispers, horrified.
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Wow, Lev really likes wine apparently. "You can still get sacramental wine or medically prescribed wine, or you can buy a big block of concentrated grape juice and wait. That's what people do on land, though, I'm pretty sure on a boat the first two are just variations of 'ask a guy'."
There's some faint shuffling noises coming from around the corner.
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"Medically prescribed?" Lev snorts, and he's about to expand on exactly how stupid he thinks that is, but he catches wind of the shuffling too and stops. "Okay. Uh. Thou hear'st that?" He reflexively puts a hand on Wilson's shoulder, as if to hold him back, as if he's used to people rushing off to investigate before thinking.
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That's probably the right practical instinct for Wilson-wrangling, impulsive as he can be, but he still frowns and tenses up under the hand before he really realises he's doing it. Just the one hand, human-sized and shaped, attached to a guy. It's not a shadow hand about to drag him under the earth.
Before they can round the corner and enter the Promenade proper, a furious heap of floral-print summer clothing bigger than both of them looms out from behind the wall and launches itself at Wilson, who screams in an undignified squawky register and flails some sort of purple spiky weapon at it. Bahamanuel makes no move to attack Lev, already pulling away back whence it came, the spiky-haired little man mostly engulfed but visible as a flailing gloved left hand hitting it with the spiked implement.