it's been a long october.

[afterdrop]

Who: Charles Rowland and YOU
What: Monthy catch-all
When: Throughout October
Where: Around Milton

Content Warnings: Specifics TBD; general warnings available here.


𝒊. 𝒚𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒔𝒂𝒓𝒅

[A short jaunt up from the town center, where the road gets rougher and the sparse trees begin to climb towards Milton House, there's an overgrown, decrepit cottage tucked back in the trees. Blue once, maybe, but faded into a mildewy grey, its windows utterly piled with what hasn't been worth scavenging.

At least, until today.

It's been almost six weeks of squatting in the near-hoard, stuck between pretending that he wouldn't be here long and feeling overwhelmed by the monumental task of making this place livable, when Charles finally wakes up, opens the front door, and starts dragging shit outside.]

Sorry, mate. [He gives a sideways little wave, plunking down a plastic cat carrier.] Just trying to clean up a bit, yeah?

[If it looks like it might have belonged to a 70-year-old woman prior to the apocalypse, it's sitting in the front yard now. Several ceramic horse figurines. A needlepoint pillow with a Bible verse on it. An ornate mirror, slightly scuffed. Use your imagination liberally. Surrounding it all, however, are items in much worse shape. The mattress looks like someone may have died on it, judging from the stains, and there's plenty of busted, broken furniture that's ripe to be chopped into firewood.]

Nick whatever you want. Don't think Gladys'll miss it much, will she?

𝒊𝒊. 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆

[There's one thing he won't part with from the old lady's house - an old, crumbling stick of black eyeliner he found in a bathroom drawer. With a tragic lack of sufficient inside light, however, he's toted a compact mirror down to the lessening hours of the town's unfiltered sun, and sat down against the back of the hunting supply store.

After thirty years of spiritually manifesting his eyeliner, it's harder than he remembers, especially with the scavenged pencil.]

Fuck. [Someone's having a hard time.] Bloody piece of shit.

[If you approach, he'll have one of a couple of reactions. Older men, particularly those broad or bearded, or otherwise classically masculine, will have him scrambling to conceal the pencil behind his leg, quickly barking out a, ] What're you looking at?

[If you have the good fortune not to remind him of one Paul Rowland, however, his reaction will be much less hostile. Instead, he'll give the pencil a little wave and offer a crooked smile.] Bit harder than back home, innit?

𝒊𝒊𝒊. 𝒐𝒐𝒄

[Contact me at ghoulsonfilm or pantsghost @ discord to plot a custom starter. Brackets are prose are both fine!]

Comments

[fidior]

[ This is all very unprecedented. Little's Lieutenant's Manual certainly never prepared him for such a thing! As the youth swipes at his eye, smudging the lining there, it's truly clarified — he was painting his face... in his culture, this is what ladies of the night do...

He stares at him for a long moment, before blinking. ]

Ah— First Lieutenant Edward Little of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. I served aboard Terror. [ Since there are men from multiple ships around here... best to clarify....

The lengthy title itself comes out naturally, like it's a part of his name more than anything. Like it's a fact about himself, recited as easily as anything, without thought necessary beforehand. Edward stands there, awkwardly, and then thrusts out a gloved hand as though to shake. ]

[afterdrop]

[The response isn't what Charles was expecting - not just the words, correcting his brash judgment, but the demeanor as well: stilted, certainly, but polite. On instinct he'd been gearing up for a fight, and the lack of one leaves him uneasy.]

Terror? [A terse echo, as he tries to wipe away the rest of his smudged makeup. It's not working very well, and the peek of a dangling, golden earring beneath his toque cap doesn't quite help.] Bloody stupid name for a ship, innit?

[First Lieutenant Little isn't quite getting the best Charles has to offer, but it's nothing personal. Fucking trauma reactions, yeah?]

[fidior]

[ He waits, hand still lifted awkwardly, but the situation only continues to worsen from there — the young man's response not only catching him off-guard all over again, but the gesture of trying to clear his face... well. He looks even more painted now, a mess of black against one eye, and there's that flash of gold at his ear...

Little's staring there now, startled and feeling another stomachache of worry coming on. In his time, such things do suggest.... a rather unfavourable sort of character... ]

Er— stupid? [ Brought back to that little statement, his eyes widen again, looking every bit unsure how to handle this as he feels. ] I'm not sure I know what you mean, sir.

[ What's so strange about a ship named for sheer doom! ]

[afterdrop]

[The reaction breaches another hole in Charles' bitter armor; while he remains guarded, a touch of regret seeps in, and his frown softens a bit.]

Just- [He shakes his head; the earring sways and glints.] Seems like it's asking for trouble, yeah?

[He makes an attempt at lighthearted.]

If I had a boat I'd name it something like... Happiness. Or Super Great Time

[fidior]

[ Little is notoriously not a Very Happy Man, and it is difficult to Earn A Smile out of him, but something to that— catches him off-guard in a different way, this time.

The reaction that comes is just as caught off-guard, a faint hint of a surprised smile that actually ghosts across his face, enough to interrupt his Nervous Startle. He might almost even laugh! Except he hasn't done that in an even longer time, and what comes is more of a soft exhale as his chest kickstarts up something that feels like amusement. ]

I see what you mean.

[ He would have very much preferred to serve aboard something named Happiness, to be quite honest! ]

She was a powerful warship, before. A true terror. [ It's... strange, speaking about his previous station. That ship is lost now. ] When I served aboard her, she had been re-purposed into a ship meant for exploration, but... there was something still very formidable to her.

...Our companion ship for that journey was called Erebus. I suppose they did paint a rather dark picture together, didn't they?

[afterdrop]

[Ah, there we go. Even with the faintest of smiles, the poisonous reminder of Charles' father splinters and fades, and breathing begins to get easier. He leans away from the wall, propping forward on his elbows; the pencil drops onto the ground, where it easily rolls under his knee.]

Where were you exploring, then?

[He can't say he recognizes the name "Erebus" - Greek, maybe? - but it does strike a certain gravity.]

[fidior]

The Arctic — we were in search of the Northwest Passage.

( He hesitates for a moment. He knows by now that the event is... historical, documented — almost legendary, someone told him. Isn't that what the goal was, at the heart of it all? Glory. ...Not that glory was ever really what Little personally sought.

Regardless, he's bumped into people here who know of the event, but he doesn't want to assume, so he continues explaining. )

A route that could be established between oceans. To be utilised for trade, and an expansion of the empire. And to explore — map out uncharted waters.

( It might all sound a bit boring to A Youth... and Edward himself doesn't really sound too enthused when talking about it... )

Our ships became trapped... I suppose not too far from our current location. Though this Canada is very different from the one of my time.

[afterdrop]

[Okay, so, colonialism confirmed. "Expansion of the empire" isn't a phrase Charles ever finds particularly comforting. But Edward seems nice enough, and he supposes he can't fault the guy for being born in an age of global ignorance. He certainly didn't fault Edwin for it, given how eager he was to learn.]

You should see it when I'm from. [It's still so strange to say that - when instead of where.] There's massive cities, probably a long ways from here. Skyscrapers, and everything.

[Not that Edward probably knows what those are.]

Not as big as London, but bigger than Milton, for sure.

[fidior]

Massive cities? Really?

[ It's truly difficult to imagine such a thing in such a place, though he knows the future is... very different. He's gotten glimpses of some of those ways; it's all very odd to think about.

London, though. Of course he'd pinpointed the lad as being English, given his accent, but to hear the word itself is a dose of familiarity — and something wistful. ]

I do miss London. I regret that I did not spend more time there, though the countryside was a rather nice place for a boy to spend his youth.

[ Pause, and he squints a little. ]

Did you say skyscrapers? Those sound treacherous.

[afterdrop]

[An easy smile spreads on Charles' face.]

They're, like, really tall buildings. Hundred floors, or something. [Probably much taller, in some of the dizzying pictures he's seen from Asia, but there's a point where he figures counting becomes irrelevant and really fucking tall suffices.] Never gone that high up in one, but me and my best mate went to the top of the Shard once. You can see the whole bloody city from up there, all the way out to the country.

[Or at least, what counts as the country to a boy raised in a council estate in Notting Hill.]

He hated it. He's from back around your time.

[Give or take, like, sixty years. But history isn't his specialty.]