[Aq] Week 133: Rust-Colored Skies I

[K3]

Rust-Colored Skies Chapter One (1000) The crisp sound of thunder jolts him awake, and his eyes fix upon the steel ceiling above him. His cell, his room, his cage. Notus Virens throws off the covers of his cramped confines, and half-rolls off his bed. The roiling of the ship underfoot has become second-nature once again, and he hates it. The pop-groan of steel hull and the too-cold underbelly of a mechanical beast that he has been too complicit in aiding. Mistral is awake and hungers. More crew to feed her. More feed to fuel her. More fuel to anger her. The careful ruse of a cargo ship inviting taciturn pirates to break themselves upon the beast. Like water on rocks, like feathers on stone, her captain has left a notch on her cabin walls for each trophy the ship claims. He hates it all the more for still being a part of it. He hates that he has nobody but himself to blame for it. Most of all, he hates himself. The enlil's downy blue plumage has become streaked in black oil and soot, the old creak of his past-prime muscles too loud in his ears. Storms are the Mistral's footsteps, her beckoning siren song from which Captain Caterva will strike at the unruly passengers of the sea. Pirates' Bane, they call her. A sore headache is what she is to him. Not like before, when the days were young and high adventure called to him like a mistress. Notus hates it all and himself even more, but he is a resilient man. Experienced and dangerously clever, he remembers neither the feverish dream that seized him in his sleep nor the faint memories that seemed to dart from his mind when he awoke. Older days for an older bird, too old to migrate and too brittle to fly. Such a piteous state, for the Half-wing. He doesn't bother to check his appearance before he stumbles out of his cramped cabin, desperate for the night sky – choked as it is amidst black clouds and the anger of the Vis above. Each step is measured, the thick talons of the avian's feet finding purchase in nooks and crannies as he ascends. One deck, two decks, and three he glides up from and feels the copper-steel taste fade from his mouth as he breathes a hint of sea air. Long drafts bluster down into the hold, and he snarls slightly before drawing his coat tighter around him. Sea spray erupts from above, and he knows the waves are unkind. However, Mistral is simply unkinder. Notus lingers in the stairwell for a time yet, half-caught between his iron sarcophagus so many steps below and the storm-hewn landscape above. The jaybird's eyes, caught in the flashes of lightning and the errant snatches of moonlight that threaten to push through the thick cloud cover, are sunken and aged. A hazy azure that might have once been so bright as to set hearts afire, now dimmed and withered with the years. Still below, he can feel his purpose calling for him. Rumbling in his chest and demanding attention, affection. He knows Caterva's jealousy on an intimate level with her petty denial of his work during rest hours. His hands itch and flex with the thought, nimble talons that articulate better than any laicars. A deep, world-weary sigh seems to wrench itself from his chest, and he feels the constriction of his shirt too keenly. Finally tearing himself away from that precipice, the fine line between blissful chaos and numbing peace, Notus returns to his depths. He travels down one deck, two decks… But not quite three. Perched atop the stairwell that will return him to his accursed sleep, his hateful slumber, he stops and stares at a door. He knows what lays behind it, knows the consequences of violating its grounds. His hands itch and flex. Notus scarcely remembers opening the door and shutting it behind him, picking up the discarded oil lamp on a countertop near the door. He lights it reflexively, and kneels next to the object. Gears and cogs. Screws and bolts. Nuts and widgets. His free hand runs along the surface of the object, the machine, and he feels a terse breath release. He sets the oil lamp to one side, and navigates the room with practiced ease. Caterva will know of his trespass, and she knows of his indifference to her authority. She may be a captain, but she never quite grasped the respect required to be his captain. Wrenches and screwdrivers. Hand-drills and measuring tape. He collects the tools and lays them in an orderly line before the machine. He sits astride them, and regards the collection of metal and scrap he has concocted. His machine, his life's passion distilled. His years aboard Mistral were long-suffered, old pains and new flared with the memories. But if he could finish this, if he could truly finish what he started so many years ago, would it all be worth it? Notus certainly hoped so. The jaybird tinkers and clamors, the soft sounds of machinery echoing as he refines and recreates. It is his machine, his heart and soul, the birthplace of something new. Its presence is his lifeblood, and revenge might be oh-so-easy for Caterva. A lover spurned, one quick order would see it overboard. Alas, the two's passion for one another still burnt deeply. Deep enough for Notus to suffer the Mistral, deep enough for Caterva to suffer his ambitions. That aimless, drifting lust that only seemed to grow as the years waxed and waned. She could never fully understand Notus, or why he needed this so. She knew the Mistral, and it in turn knew her. They were inseparable, and he could understand that. She was no more bound to the sea than she was to him, but there was something deeper to the ship she had captained for centuries now. How could he explain that he had never known a home that wasn't the skies?

 

[K3]

Rust-Colored Skies Chapter Two (1000) The days aboard Mistral grow long during the rainy spring, and Captain Caterva's temper grows shorter in turn. Her cabin is the picture of military perfection. Her bed is made to perfection – a comfort that she partakes in as much for her own comport as she does for appearances. Her desk is spotless, not a speck of dust decorates it, nor her chair nor bedside table. Her bookshelf is impeccably kept, the books on it ordered alphabetically and the manuals ordered chronologically. When she addresses her crew each morning, it is in her spotless uniform. It is pressed, crisply decorated, and without a single medal or chevron to denote rank or accomplishment. It is exactly to her tastes – her mannerisms and personage are all she needs to suffuse authority to herself. For all but one. Few times has Caterva been driven to hesitation; fewer times has she been driven to cowardice. Yet, here she stands, finding that list grow longer by the weeks and months and years. Here she stands, before an unmarked door while the cantankerous sounds of machinery echo from behind. Beyond it, worked a rather odd fellow. She had known his heart, known his body, known his passion and rage and bitterness and found it sweet ambrosia. In turn, he knew her soul, knew her depths, and knew all there was and more that he had helped her discover. Strange, for all that he could love a demvir such as herself. To find endearment in the cold chassis, to find comfort in the immutable face that did not quite exist but was too-present to ignore. Indeed, it was one of the many qualities which continued to baffle – and interest – her. It was a collection of oddities and tastes that made Notus an impossible task for her. Her crew expected orders, her first mate expected authority, and she demanded discipline of herself. Not him, though, not Notus. His demands changed with the winds, or so she thought. She had once told him this and he found it hilarious, and told her the most infuriating and charming of things. "I want to be with someone who is who they want to be," He had said. Pointlessly vague, pointlessly evasive, she had contemplated the words for months for some hidden meaning before he'd drunkenly confessed one day that he'd come up with it on the spot. A silent kernel of anger burnt in the pit of her core, and Caterva's hand raised to knock at the door. Yet, as it always did, that hand stopped just shy of even the most inaudible of noises. Her pressed navy-black uniform crinkled with the repeated movements, the shipman's hat atop her head and the high collar of the uniform obscuring all but the angular slits of her eyes. Caterva's hand lowered, and she felt the anger extinguish. Was it her inability to comprehend what he wanted from her that vexed her so? Was it his crude ambition? His staunch refusal to stay aboard the Mistral, that his current state of doing so was a miracle unto itself in his eyes? She could not say, and it frustrated her all the more. Caterva is a woman who is used to working with knowns. Of all her rotten, ill-fated luck, that she would find herself entangled with an unknown. How cruel, that her hand seemed to raise of its own accord in that moment and rapped curtly against the door. Panic seized her from the unexpected action. Unknowns beget unknowns, and now she stood frozen as the sounds of machinery halted, and the grumbling of Notus reached her. Quite unaware of what to do, Caterva did something even more unexpected as she heard the door handle turn. She shoved her hands in her pockets, so that Notus could not see them shaking as he answered. The jaybird appeared in the doorway, his half-irate state evaporating in the face of Caterva to leave only a peculiar mixture of surprise and fear. The fear was new, she had not known it before he had come back to the Mistral. It was disconcerting, it was disheartening. She didn't like it. Perhaps Caterva was simply sick of trying to figure out someone that was simply impossible to figure out. "May I... come in?" She inquired, another unknown. Her ship, they were aboard her ship, and she was asking permission to step foot somewhere in it! Thoroughly uncomfortable, she shuffled awkwardly as Notus blinked the shock from his eyes and stepped back into the room to allow her passage. His own words reflected his baffled state, "O-of course." So precious few words, so little epiphany. Had age done so much damage to him? Was his time aboard Mistral so grating? She remembered bygone days where he would compose literature on the spot, shower her with endless lectures and praises and thoughts that she would drown in them. Once she had hated his motor-mouth. Now, she found its absence concerning as she stepped into the enlil's impromptu workshop. His blue plumage, denotive of his origins amongst the arch-trees of Boreas, was slicked with oil and stained with grease. Messy black stains and streaks dotted him, but his deep blue eyes seemed as captivating as ever to her. No, she decided. Age had not dimmed his fire, merely let it burn hot and furious. Her attention turned to the machine that sat in the center of the room. It was fat and cumbersome, menacing and intimidating. An engine of size too great for any vehicle of the land, and too small for a true vessel of the sea. She knew its purpose and intention, and felt an equal measure of weariness and fondness for it. It would be – she hoped – the key to salvaging what she cherished so between Notus and herself. For it was the first in the long steps necessary to birth the home he needed, and wanted. Near-decades in the making, she thought it fitting to call it Half-Wing.