singillatim | (closed)

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.”

The quiet tone to Francis' voice gets Raju glancing, at least, away from the fishing pole, and then away from it again to look at Francis' offered cup. The corners of his eyes crease in a faint smile, and he takes it.

It's meant to sound like complaining, the times Raju says it out loud about the sun here. But it never quite does, not only like complaining, not to someone listening for what's behind it. Or for what isn't. His voice is never quite as light as it should be, when Raju tries complaining about these things. It's like his hands, before Francis gave him those mittens: it should only be a little thing. It should be. It should be.

Francis says it like a reassurance, and Raju's eyes move closely over his face as he feels the warmth of the cup in his hand and drinks. The drink is warm, wonderfully warm despite the bitter taste, but he's sharing so he only takes a brief taste before handing it back. "And then it won't set at all? I didn't realise we were far enough north for that."

In this cold the heat of the tea feels like a separate thing moving down his throat, a bizarre contrast to the air. He's aware of how little he knows about this place, how little he's studied about it, or any place remotely like it, or any of the things that happen here. The normal, natural things, the effects of the location and animals and temperature. If he'd known... But at least Francis is here, who knows and doesn't mind telling. "How long? It's... at least a few months, isn't it?"

“We were far enough north for the polar night, we’ll get the midnight sun. The only question is for how long.” He has plans to take measurements at some point, though he thinks this very non-scientific determination holds some weight.

He take the cup back and drinks without consideration of where Raju’s lips had been touching. He may think on it later, when he’s trying to fall asleep and realizes how close they’d been.

“A few months, yes. It’ll be an adjustment for all of us.” He sits back down nurse the tea, though he’ll hold it out to Raju whenever he seems interested. “But in the first few weeks it’ll be a novelty. We might even enjoy it, as odd as it is.”

And he’s eager to share it with people who haven’t experienced it before.

"Enjoy it?" He watches the fishing pole, thinking about that for a moment. "I suppose so. Isn't it strange, though? Never any night?"

While he wouldn't mind hearing an answer, he isn't looking for one; it's more asking to make a statement than anything, and he goes on without waiting for Francis to reply, looking over at him curiously. "How many times have you done it, that midnight sun? In your expeditions?"

His brow furrows at the question. How many times? He hasn’t thought about it before. There was Parry, Ross, the search for the missing whalers in the North Sea, his time in Antarctica…

“Over a dozen at this point, perhaps closer to fifteen, sixteen seasons?” He can really feel his age in the answer. “It’s strange every time, yes. One waits and waits for that sunset and it just never comes - the sun circles about in the sky, never disappearing. Sleeping becomes a new chore, finding a way to keep your usual hours, telling time…it’s all an adjustment.”

And he’s certain Raju is going to struggle with it, but not as much as he did with the polar night. He’s from a land of so much sunshine and warmth, for his sake he hopes the thaw does come.

Excitement curls over Raju's face and he leans over his thigh, closer to Francis, his previous focus on the fishing pole forgotten.

"Sixteen." The phenomenon itself is one thing — the impossible frustrations of this place, the involuntary nature of it, has spoiled the excitement Raju might have had for some of its features otherwise — but the idea of adapting to it so many times, all that experience, has Raju's voice eager and impressed when he speaks about it. "Everything you must have learned and seen. I'll have to follow your lead when we get there."

He’s used to being an oddity by now. Every one of his experiences is a novelty, something people hear and then follow up with a hundred questions about the how and why. But that’s not Raju’s reaction, it’s something akin to awe, and sincerely meant instead of put upon or searching for something self-serving.

He feels his neck and ears grow warm at Raju’s look of genuine curiosity, that handsome face and those clever eyes - he’s glad it’s dark in this hut. He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and nods. “A blindfold as one sleeps or dark drapes, that’s the secret.”

"I'll have to find some." Still smiling, Raju studies him. Francis had been excited to talk about the adventure and the discovery and the excitement of it even the first time they'd ever spoken to one another, and he's still happy to now, but there's something markedly different about it from what Raju would have been used to back home, especially from an officer who's had the kind of long experience and celebrated successes that Francis has had. There, from that kind of man, Raju might have expected to be hearing any number of things. But here, there's only drapes. A blindfold. A simple suggestion, and that's all.

"Not one for bragging, are you?" he says thoughtfully, still looking fascinated. "And you a commissioned officer. Those parties they all go to, the balls where no one actually enjoys the dancing and everyone stands around talking about themselves, did you all have to go to those? Or was it only if you wanted to be seen?"

Ah, those Admiralty galas and fancy dinners, the bane of his existence. He ducks his head with a soft smile.

“I doubt you’d be my friend if I were a braggart and a commissioned officer.”

Crozier never hated glory, but he certainly never knew what in the hell to do with it when it did come his way. No, he was humble, always humble, until it began to be to his detriment.

He manages another glance up, another little peek at his friend’s face, and has to duck back down again. “I went to the ones I was made to go to. Otherwise I avoided them where I could. They’re exhausting! All the firm handshakes and empty platitudes - have you ever gone to an affair like that? Horrible.”

Raju smiles, warmly and a little bit amused. "They aren't so bad. You only have to—"

He pauses, his free hand and the one holding the fishing pole already raised to gesture. "I forget, you're navy but not military. Maybe this won't work for you. But there's a good deal of strategy involved in captaining on the sea, isn't there? It's only strategy. You know this person and that one and that one," he points out figures in an imaginary crowd, "you know what they expect and what they want. You decide what victory looks like and how to get it. It's like any battle, only cleaner. I always wondered if you superior officers were made to go. There must have been heaps of them after those discoveries you and your friend made at the South Pole. It was, ah... James Ross, wasn't it? The two of you must have had to go to every fancy affair there was."

Of course Raju would have a strategy for these things! Divide and conquer. “Where were you when I needed you, mn?”

But of course those grand parties were different for him. He wanted to be seen when he was still trying to court Sophia, and those gala affairs were the best way to do it. And naturally being lauded by the entire nation certainly helped things along.

“Week after week,” he says. “James and I were exhausted, and then he went off and retired and didn’t have to deal with that nonsense any longer. I was on my damn own!”

no subject

no subject

cw descriptions of animal butchery

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject