singillatim | [open] the water's rising quicker than light or sound

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[open] the water's rising quicker than light or sound

Who: Edward Kenway and you!
What: local pirate follows a dog to a nice safe cabin and eats some mushrooms he maybe shouldn't have.
When: early to mid-February
Where: outskirts of Milton.

Content Warnings: drugs, temporary amnesia, mentions of piracy and amputation and blanket Assassin's Creed warnings (violence and murder).

i. it's that dog!

[The last time Edward tracked a dog around here, it tried to lead him into a pit. So this time he's wary of following the tracks for this new one, arm tensing as if he's only just stopping himself from flicking a hidden blade out. But he kneels down anyway and checks the tracks, before standing up as someone else approaches. He gives them a tight little smile, crosses his arms across his chest, and nods towards the tracks.]

These tracks seem fresh. What do you think, is it clever enough to lead us to a trap or is it just trying to lure us away to eat us?

ii. a pirate's life for me

[Edward's been occasionally picking mushrooms for a couple of weeks now, ever since the dream that gave him the ability to run better over rooftops and through tree branches. Look, he gets hungrier now these days and he needs the fuel, so he thinks nothing of picking some oyster mushrooms and cooking something up for himself.

Oh, these mushrooms are very delicious. He ought to bring them to Adé and have the Jackdaw's cook add them to their provisions, they're quite tasty even with his own lacking skill at cooking—

—that can't be right. That can't...

Edward shakes his head, feeling the cold prickle over the back of his neck. That's wrong, it's not supposed to be cold, not in Nassau in the midst of summer with the heat roasting them all. He touches fingers to his temple to try and stave off the headache, only to see that one hand is short a finger, which is. What the bloody fuck.

He stumbles out of the house, looks around, and has just one thing to ask some poor passer-by, full of barely-restrained panic and anger at this strange new situation he's found himself in:] Where the bloody hell am I, and where is my bloody ship?

iii. consider this the wild card option! hit me up on plurk at mollymauktealeaf or on Discord at foggytealeafs if we want to plot something else out.

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[This seems pretty bombastic for what Randvi’s come to expect from the Hidden One.]

Edward? Your ship?

[He squints at her, shakes his head.]

The Jackdaw, lass! [It's like he's a different person, restlessly pacing and always in motion, which is a sharp contrast to how he usually is—someone who stays off to the side, hidden in the shadows.] You can't miss her: black flag, black sails? And where are we, this isn't Nassau, and the West Indies aren't this bloody cold!

[It really is alarming, the tension and restless energy are something that she's never seen in this man before. The things he's saying make little sense to her.]

Nassau? We have not left Milton in some time, and I have not seen any ships.

In the West Indies, lass—so this town is called Milton, then?

[He looks around, as if taking in the snow, the house, everything around them with an increasingly confused look on his face.]

How am I here? I remember getting drunk last night, but I don't remember taking a ship all the way to—where is this, north of the colonies?

As I understand it, it's north of most things. You arrived before I did, so whatever you were drinking last night, I should ask you for some of it.

—you're joking. I was in Nassau just last night, I can't have been here before.

[Except he'd woken up in a house that someone was living in, and from the looks of it, that person had taken good care of the house, kept it as clean as they could. Could that person have been Edward himself?

...yeah, fuck no.]

I can assure you that you were not.

You don't recall being here at all?

No, not a single damned thing about this place, or I'd not be asking you about it!

[He pushes his hand through his hair, eyes flicking briefly toward the missing space where his ring finger used to be, and startles a little, still not used to the sight of it.]

And on top of that, [he mutters to himself,] someone's gone and cut off a finger. How did I not wake up for that?

[Randvi frowns. This seems like more than a simple knock to the head. Is he possessed?]

I thought that was required to use your blade.

[Nah, he's just high.]

Is it? [There's a surprise. He shakes his head.] Because I've been using two blades for years and I never cut my own finger off even by accident.

[Oh, he's never hearing the end of that after the way he’d talked about those blades to her before.]

I see. You seemed concerned about it earlier. Edward, I don't think you're well.

[ You know what this place is absolutely great at? Putting Billy into situations he really doesn't want to be.

Exhibit A: this. All of this. Not even being able to just walk through town without being accosted by a total stranger. A total stranger who's seeming angry, on top of it all. It's just about the last thing Billy wants to deal with right now, but considering the situation and the other's temperament, he doesn't feel like just noping out of here will do him much good..

So he does what he does best: shoving down most emotion, trying to seem as neutral as can be when he asks: ]

What ship?

[ ????

Why would anyone even think there's a ship here in the first place. There's not exactly any sea nearby. And Billy is also pretty sure no new people have been arriving after he arrived just the other month? ]

The Jackdaw, mate! Black flag and black sails, figurehead of a bird—how does a man lose an entire ship, I ask you.

[Black flag, he says, as though that's not a dead giveaway as to his allegiance, as though he doesn't know the value of being careful with what he says. And he's not careful, not as a young man, not as a pirate whose first priority was earning a fortune—but the Assassin he usually is would be embarrassed by how easily these things spill from his lips.]

I know I was drunk last night but I don't know how I ended up so far away from Nassau.

[ Hm.

Black flag.

Saying a lot there, indeed. Billy does briefly wonder why the other man is being so forthcoming about that fact - either he doesn't know that there are definitely more than just a few people here who were part of the navy back home, or maybe he already knows that most of them either didn't really care for the navy in the first place or no longer have their heart in it now.

.. or maybe he just doesn't care.

Either way, it makes running into Billy specifically less of a bad thing, because it's not like he's going to judge anyone for being a pirate when he's a mutineer himself. All he's doing is noting the fact that Edward is either surprisingly honest or surprisingly shameless - or both - down somewhere in his head. Good to know for later. ]

You have no clue where you are?

[ It sure sounds like it, with the way Edward is talking. ]

.. I think you might still be drunk. [ That would also explain the whole shamelessness about black flags. ]

You have a ship?

[Levi pauses in his patrol as Edward comes bursting out of the building.]

Is it like a model or something?

[Is that a kid? Is that a kid going on patrol? Jesus Christ.]

What? No, the Jackdaw's a real ship—where are we, anyway? [Did somebody dump him here while he was drunk and abscond with his ship because if so he's gonna hang them from the cross-trees.]

[Levi watches Edward for a moment. The guy doesn't look like anything is wrong with him...]

Uh, this is Milton. Still. And there's not really anywhere for a real ship.

[Maybe a boat on the lake in the basin but it was a) frozen and b) not big enough for anything classed as 'ship'.]

Milton. [To say that Edward's unsettled by this is something of an understatement. He's restless in a way he usually isn't, pacing in the snow, pushing a hand through his blonde hair and trying not to look at the lack of a ring finger on his left hand.

How had that happened?]

Nothing? Really? No port, no cove, nothing? Bloody hell, what a proper mess I've been dragged into and I don't even know who's responsible for it. [A pause.] No, this wouldn't be Torres's style.

There's a lake, but we seem to be land-locked. You should, uh, you should know that?

[It wasn't the right time for people to arrive, but could this be a different Ed? Ugh, he hates thinking about multiverse shit.]

Land-locked—of course I am. No better way to trap a pirate than to strand him on land.

[Is he bitter? Oh, yeah, a little bit, and his tongue is looser both because of that and because this version of Edward, restless and hungry in ways that his older and wiser self has turned away from or at least channeled into better things, isn't as careful with keeping his past and allegiances a secret.]

What do you mean, I should know that? I've only just woken up here, in the midst of this frozen circle of hell.

[A pirate? Really? But that's not what's most important now.
Levi raises an eyebrow.]

R-really? I just saw you yesterday...I guess something might have happened.

[Could the gods or whatever here mess with someone's memory? That was scary.]

Or you could be a different, uh, you.

[But, still, not the normal arrival time for newbies. And aside from being confused, Edward doesn't really look any different.]

Ship, Edward?

[ He'd only been passing by, Dief trotting along next to him. There's a bag slung over his shoulder, bulging strangely in spots, and he's carrying a long curved wooden hockey stick. ]

I'm not sure the lake is really big enough for a ship. And that's without the other consideration of it being frozen over.

Of course not on the lake—how did I even get here in the first place if not on a ship, because last thing I remember, I was in Nassau.

[That's a big-ass wolf. Edward is very pointedly not going to pay attention to the wolf and instead is going to gesture wildly to their snow-covered, frozen-over surroundings.]

This isn't the West Indies. Where the hell am I and what's been done with the Jackdaw?

Ah, no. Of course not.

[ There's no 'of course' about any of this, but he would never be so rude as to point that out. ]

Well, you're right about it not being the West Indies. You're in the far northern parts of the Northwest Territories in Canada.

And Nassau is...

[ Fraser turns, squinting up at the sky, then turns again before pointing, helpfully. ]

Over five thousand kilometers south. So I suspect you won't be getting to your ship anytime soon.

Edited 2024-02-16 17:13 (UTC)

Canada—hold on, in New France? Past the St. Lawrence River?

[Edward's headache is only getting worse and worse with every word. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and lets out a frustrated grunt at Fraser's estimate of just how far he's traveled from Nassau.]

Five thousand—what, in one night? Are you playing some sort of joke on me, because I'd notice if somebody somehow managed to drag me five thousand "kilometers" [a new fancy word for miles, he guesses], from my ship. No matter how drunk I was last night.

Fraser opens his mouth. Closes it. Considers for a moment. "Well, no," he says, finally. "Not only has any part of Canada not been part of New France for over two hundred years, we aren't even in the part of Canada that was part of New France. And we're well past the Saint Lawrence River, I'm afraid."

It's clear he could keep going, but he pauses for a moment, studying the other man, and visibly switches tacks. "Perhaps this would be better if we went back into town and you had a chance to sit down."

I 'unno but last time I followed a stray dog out here, it broke my arm.

[And yet here he is. The griping is put out there as half of a joke, a touch of levity behind the rude thought of the Shaggy Dog of yesteryear. The daylight is at its peak. Tim hums, frowns, doesn't bother to bend down to inspect the paw prints himself; he's a city boy, he doesn't know tracking in maybe the way a pirate does.

He shakes his head. His hair's too long. Some of it catches annoyingly in his lips.]

Whatever it is, it's not hungry. It didn't even try to break into the barn. The tracks were just outside the house.

[He turns to the man who's obviously ruminating on the wonderful outcomes of this hunt, and delivers the suggestion,] So... a trap. Second verse, same as the first?

[And yet.

Here they are.]

Bloody hell. How's your arm now?

[His memory of the last dog is still clear in his mind. This is almost certainly a trap, and the sensible thing would be to walk away now and put it out of his mind—except Edward has never liked leaving a question unanswered, so now he sighs.]

Seems like it. I'll follow the tracks, you stay close behind me. Don't wander off, not even if you hear whimpering.

Not broken.

[Because Tim is a bastion of effective communication and a master at soothing concerns, he leaves his reply at that.

Honestly the forearm still likes to protest when under strain but he thinks that since the sloppy healing is his fault entirely, the nuisance should be his alone, too.

He pulls a face if just for a second. Despite them all hating him, he likes dogs. Whimpering is bound to be distressing but... threat to the safety of them is the worst evil.] Yeah, sure. Do you think we'll find it before sunset?

[God it's so nice to defer to someone else.]

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[open] the water's rising quicker than light or sound

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