singillatim | (closed)

He’s grateful, both for Raju’s sensitivity and the stupid modern fishing pole making it difficult for the both of them.

“Hell if I know,” he says, taking the pole from him to look at the rigging. It’s all made to be more efficient, but in its efficiency it’s become too complicated to understand, like most things in this place. “I think there’s a knot in the line somewhere jamming the spool.”

Raju hums in acknowledgment, poking at the thread and running his fingers over it, trying to feel any lump or knot. The thread is strange too, like a thin, flexible wire, and any similar lumps or misalignments are harder to spot by sight than he’s sure one of the fishing poles back home would have been.

“Then it must have been my fault. I was reeling it the wrong way some— Ah.” Raju finds what he’s looking for, but the line is too thin and his fingernails too short to pry underneath it. “Can you reach into my pocket just there for my knife, wedge the tip just where my finger is here? If you’re careful it should loosen the line and not cut it. I think.”

"Or it might not have been rigged correctly to begin with," he tells him, because who the hell knows with these modern machines? He hauls himself up and gingerly steps around the hole in the ice.

He doesn't hesitate, until he realizes he doesn't know which pocket he means and that very well could mean rooting around awkwardly for a while. "Which pocket? This one?"

"Ah—" He stops trying to pick at the line long enough to glance over. "Lower. It's the one that's harder to see, near my hip. Maybe we'll go looking for a proper fishing pole next time, see if we can't find one in one of these huts some place. Is there one of these you go into whenever you come down here to fish, or are they all the same?"

With direction he can scrounge around for the knife with minimal accidental fumbling or groping. “I typically pick the ones on the outer edge of the lake. Better chances that way of a good haul.”

Where the hell is this thing - ah, got it. Crozier pulls the knife free and flicks it open, wedging it as instructed.

Francis' hand is in the pocket of the blanket at his hip and it's an odd sensation: when you're reaching into your own pocket somehow it's easier not to feel the fingers against the body beneath, but he notices them now. But soon Francis has his knife and he's got it where it needs to be. Raju rolls his lips in against his teeth, focusing on the line, wiggling the reel as Francis holds the jammed part, and—

"Ha," Raju says, victorious, and straightens up again, reaching for the pole so he can attach the reel again and test it. "That's got it. Why the outer edge? Are there more fish there?"

“Less people,” he laughs, closing the knife back up with a flick against his leg. “And yes, more fish. Usually. Did you really get the line straightened out?”

He leans in close, over Raju’s shoulder, to inspect for him, humming in approval when he sees the slackened line. “Ah, good work, good work.”

Francis is leaning close enough that Raju’s cheek nearly brushes his when he turns to smile, pleased with the compliment. Pleased even though it wasn’t much, and he’d probably caused it in the first place anyway.

“I must have turned it too quickly,” he says, looking down again to run his fingers over the spool. It looks neat enough that the problem might not have been the spool itself. Maybe the line is more temperamental than he’d expected it to be. “But it should be alright now. We must be close enough to the edge here too, I was expecting catching one to take longer.”

Crozier doesn’t immediately pull back, perfectly fine with the proximity for the moment. It’s cold and dark and he had his hand rooting around in his pocket just a few moments ago.

“Told you so,” he laughs softly. “I expect we’ll leave here with at least five fish. Perhaps more, since you’re such a quick study.”

He gives him a few friendly pats on the shoulder before finally stepping away to check on their first catch.

"I only put bait on it and dropped it in a hole," he says, leaning forward and watching Francis check on the fish for a moment before moving to find the hook and the bait again. "Anyone could do that. I'm sure there's more to it."

Five fish seems a little ambitious, considering they didn't start out here early, and so can't spend all day on it. But Francis knows the ice best and the fishing, and Raju's never minded ambition. Aside from that, it says something that catching them goes quite this fast here, but Francis said he has to spend all day on it — whether that something is how much the missing hand slows him down or how much he'd wanted to avoid the rest of the people living here, Raju can't say, and probably isn't going to ask. It's going well, that's the important thing.

Five fish is absolutely ambitious, but Crozier doesn’t mind a little optimism now and again.

“Hardly,” he replies, producing his own knife from the kit he’d hauled onto the ice. It’s different from his snow knife - this one is actually made of metal and not bone, and so it’s easier to do things like gut a fish or skin a rabbit. “It takes patience. Not everyone has much to spare for something like this.”

“Mm.” Raju sounds distracted as he acknowledges it, leaning forward to better watch Francis gut the fish and then deciding that isn’t close enough to study detailed work and putting the pole aside to stand and move closer.

“But what else is there to do?” he finally replies, leaning over Francis this time to watch. “Walk an hour to find two roots and an armful of wet sticks? May as well wait here with the fire and get dinner at the end of it. You’re about to gut it, aren’t you? I never learned to do that.”

When he senses that Raju might be interested in observing he stays his knife until he's close enough to look. The fish is placed directly on the ice, his non-hand stabilizing the body so his actual hand can do the slicing.

"Typically with a fish this size I'd hold it in one hand and cut with the other, but for practical purposes setting it on a flat surface works just as well. The knife tip goes in by the tail, like this, and slides up towards the head. Cut needs to be shallow lest you pierce one of the organs. Then you just..." He lays the knife down, grabs the organs, and pulls out whole lot in one swift tug.

The organs are discarded right down the ice hole and Crozier sets the filet back down to wash his hands in some of the water from his canteen. It's awkward, a bit of a dance with the canteen held in the crook of one arm, but he eventually gets it done. "I'll scrape the inside with a knife, then the outside to rid the skin of the scales, then it'll get rinsed with water."

Raju starts to watch Francis' efforts to rinse the only hand he has to grasp with, then he moves his gaze to the fish. A man has to do some things for himself, doesn't he? Raju might want to help, but there's a line somewhere. Raju isn't sure where that line is yet.

"You don't eat the organs?" he asks, still looking at the way Francis had cut, tucking his bare hand absently underneath the folds of his blanket again and rubbing his thumbs over his fingers to warm them up a little. "Or use them as bait?"

“Typically, but I don’t feel like chopping up chum today.”

And the organs are small and fiddly and he just wants to wash his only hand. Prickly details, honestly, nothing to really justify the loss of perfectly good resources, but even a man who drinks seal blood to survive is allowed to just want to do things the lazy way now and again.

He picks up the fish again and places it in a small, insulated box he’d found in his scrounging. If any of the modern folks were to come across the scene they’d recognize it as a children’s lunchbox.

“Mm. Does it matter how you chop it, so long as it fits onto the hook?” Raju doesn’t pick up the pole and use it quite yet; he picks up what he was sitting on and moves it a little closer to the fire, casually as if he hasn’t been thinking about doing it for a while, then settles to sit again. “I can chop it up from the next one we catch.”

Well, Crozier won't turn away a perfectly good offer to chop up fish guts so he doesn't have to!

"The next one," he agrees, and then he's back to the stove to boil some snow and check on the tea. He's not the biggest fan of the smell of fish -- he'll have to visit the hot spring tonight to soak a while. God knows bathing in melt water is considerably unpleasant.

"You have this one, or should I take the pole?"

"I can take this one." Raju looks down at his hand, rubs his thumb hard along his fingers, for the friction and to decide whether there's anything on his fingers to stain the inside of the mitten if he puts it back on. He decides it's fine, slips that mitten on and pulls off the other one. He'll need at least one hand that's more manoeuvrable to fit more bait onto the hook, and that other hand is at least a little warmer. He can bare his hands in front of the fire once he's done with the fish. "I want to make sure I can do it without tangling the line."

“You’ve got a sense of it now, you’ll manage this time around.” Damn modern technology. What was wrong with a pole and a string?

He ducks out briefly to collect fresh snow off the top of the ice, wincing as he shuts the door behind him in apology for all the cold air coming through in the two seconds he stepped out. It’ll warm up quickly again.

“Are you a sure shot?”

Raju looks surprised, the grimace when all the cold air had been let in still in the process of fading off his face.

"You mean with weapons?" It seems such a far topic from reeling in a fishing pole and gutting a catch, and Raju can't think what the connection there might be. It doesn't seem like Francis needs to be able to shoot anything in order to hunt. "Or are you thinking about something else?"

“I was thinking you might be a better hand at a spear than a rod.” Lord knows he was never quick enough for the kakivak, but Raju…

Well. He’s certainly more spry and quick than he’d ever been.

“When the ice melts the fishing will look a lot different. We’ll build weirs and cast nets.”

Raju frowns, finishing with the next piece of bait and dropping the hook down the hole a little more quickly than he had been, and quicker than he would have if Francis hadn't just implied they'd be better off moving to something else. He'd been taking his time a little bit, but now there's an implication to prove wrong, and more reason suddenly to get back to the fishing.

"Hard to imagine all this melting at all," he says, shaking off some of the tension and most of the frown. He'll manage the rod better this time, and it'll be fine. "How do you know when it's time to take all these huts down while it's still thick enough to take the weight?"

His suggestion isn’t because of passing judgement based on that single attempt to reel, rather he thinks Raju would be impressive with a spear. It takes a lot less sitting and waiting around too.

“When the sun starts spending more time in the sky. The thaw will come - the large piles of snow will start to melt. That’s when we’ll know.”

"Mm," Raju hums, attention fixed intently on the fishing pole. He won't be able to see under the water, the hole is too deep, but he'll see the line or the pole move. And he'll be ready. "And how will you know that? The sun's always behind ten different layers of cloud. When it tries to spend more time with us we'll hardly be able to tell."

Not that he's bitter about what he'd had without even thinking about it back home, being able to turn his face up and see a bright, wide open sky as easy as that, being able to feel the sun's real warmth over his face.

Well. Maybe a little.

"Still. At least the snow will be melted. I'd started to think that's never going to happen here."

Crozier falls silent for a contemplative moment. “The lack of sunshine can be distressing,” he remarks quietly, finally pouring into their tea, a concoction of dandelion root, into a single cup to share instead of two. It’s just easier.

“The sun will stop moving below the horizon after the summer solstice. It will circle and circle, but never set.” He takes a sip to test the tea and, finding it to his satisfaction, holds out the cup to Raju. “You will see the sun again.”

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cw descriptions of animal butchery

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