OOM: Pearl Repairs

[politestpirate]

The sky is cool, grey, and occasionally misting, but that just means when you are working hard you can keep warm enough.

And there is certainly plenty of work to be done. The deck of the Black Pearl has been cleared off, with debris and pieces that are large enough to reuse stacked carefully. All over is the gleam of cut and exposed wood, the splintered edges cut and smoothed in preparation for patching sections. One mast has been cleared of charred and torn sails and rigging, the canvas and rope set in one area to work on before it can be sent back up.

One of the current priorities, however, is fixing the stern section of the ship, the back wall of the captain's cabin, that took some of the worse damage from the kraken-

Scottish autumn nights can start to get chilly, afterall.

Party thread style, slowtimes more than welcome.

Comments

[mercurialist]

Mercer's been enlisted to take on the snarled ropes and sailcloth dangling from the mizzenmast. He's whistling as he balances precariously on the cracked stay, alternately untangling and cutting the knots as he goes.

The tune's unidentifiable, and yet, somehow, it still manages to sound off-key.

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

Sometimes one simply can't stay belowdecks all day, and so here's an Archie, climbing the rigging to asses what still needs to be done up here. After all, unlike Horatio, he'd always quite liked the view from high above the deck. He winces slightly at the off-key whistling, glancing about for the source.

"Ahoy there?"

[mercurialist]

"Ahoy there!" Mercer calls back, grinning. He twirls the blade Jack gave him and saws through a particularly stubborn bit of rope. "Come to give me a hand with all this?"

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

"I do what I can. Got a bit tired of belowdecks, thought I'd try for some air."

He finally climbs into view and loops his leg around one of the ropes, assessing the damage and the progress both. Also the whistler.

"Though I see no one's mentioned why it's not a particularly good idea to whistle on a ship such as this, have they?"

He grins good naturedly.

"Name's Archie Kennedy by the way."

[mercurialist]

"Oh, I know about it," he returns cheerfully. "I just like to test my luck."

That, and be a jerk.

He sticks the knife point into a splintered part of the stay, due to come down anyway, and offers a hand as he adds, "Mercer. Nice to meet you. How'd you find your way here?"

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

"You may want to take your chances, but I don't particularly fancy getting a sail dropped on my head, because your whistle signaled to someone that that's what they ought to do."

Just so he knows.

"I died... more or less, and found myself here, not sure if I had actually died, or if I was still having some sort of a fever dream."

He shrugs, reaching for a tangled piece of the mess up there, he's pretty much used to that part of the story by now. It just doesn't seem to matter all that much around here.

[mercurialist]

"And did you figure it out?" Casually, as he scoots a foot further down the stay to another knot.

Some people never do, whether by choice or blindness.

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

"Oh aye, didn't take much, after all."

His own attention is focused on trying to salvage as much of the good rope as he can from the snarls.

"And I ended up marrying a death-goddess, so she confirmed it, if nothing else."

[mercurialist]

That gets Mercer's attention.

"Really." He stretches to grab the knife, watching Archie the whole time. "Which one? Anybody I'd know? Not know-know; heard of."

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

"That rather depends on how much you know of the Norse legends, if you come from a where and when that has the Norse."

He glances over at Mercer breifly, then back at his ropes.

"She was a Valkyrie, a servant to the high gods at Asgard. A chooser of the heroic slain, battle goddess, and swan maid."

And she's his once again, and he loves her so.

[mercurialist]

"Ohhh, the Norse." An amused snort. "Pessimists with death gods coming out the ass, why am I not surprised. Valhalla, I am cooomiiiiing!"

He drums out the rhythm to the "Immigrant Song" guitar riff as he swings off of the stay into the rigging proper.

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

Archie stares at him with a look hovering somewhere between amused and bemused. Blame coming to Milliways from 1802.

"Some were pessimists, some were pragmatists, and some were decidedly not. Still, when your doom is foretold, it's hard not to let that overrule many of your decisions."

He's got no personal loyalty to any of the gods of Asgard. He married Svava, is quite fond of Hel, and on good speaking terms with Baldur, but that's about it. He was raised Catholic in this life.

[mercurialist]

Off the look: "Led Zeppelin! Come on, don't tell me you've been dead and hanging out here for who knows how long and nobody's introduced you to the rock greats. That's my point: what decisions, if it's all going to end the same way?"

He slices one final rope, yells, "Incoming!" and lets a section of the tangled rigging fall.

"You can get reaaaally close to breeding inaction if you got it all set up like that," he adds as he turns back to Archie.

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

"As I understand it, most of Odin's time and energy was spent trying to keep it all from happening for as long as he could."

He pauses for a moment, looking over at Mercer.

"It didn't work."

And no, he's been introduced to CD players, but most of the music he has is classical, stuff he'd heard of in his life. And the U2 CD that Duo had given to Svava along with the player for her birthday last year.

[mercurialist]

He waves a hand, dismissive. "I didn't mean him and his family. I meant the rest of the world. Ordinary human mortals. Fatalism in general, you know?"

Gods can do (or not do) whatever the hell he want. Mercer can get peeved at it, but he can't do a whole lot to change them.

Humans, though...they've got an amazing capacity for adaptation.

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

"Most of the people lived their lives as usual, I think. And many lived their lives in hopes of being chosen in the end to fight against those we'd been told were evil."

Though knowing Hel here, he thinks the Norse might have had soer of a skewed idea of good and evil. Unlike the Christians. Though, he gets along with the antichrist too. It's probably a good thing that he's never come across Satan here. His head might explode.

[mercurialist]

"And what about you, how'd you live yours?"

It's casual, as he skitters down a few feet like a spider navigating its web.

[prone-to-panic.livejournal.com]

"I fought my battles, loved my wife, died in her arms after a duel, found myself in Valhalla later."

He eases himself to a new bit, winding the good bits of rope together.