[ OPEN ] Hot Springs Episode!

[shri]

CHARACTERS: EVERYONE
WHERE: The Second Flight
WHEN: DAY :022
SUMMARY: The Sauna!
WARNINGS: Nekkid times.

[ A few hours after the murder, she hasn't blown the ship up, and here they are. Another knock knock on everyone's brain: ]

( For those of you that are interested - I have secured us a place at the Sauna. Free for us to be use without interruption from outsiders.

You are to be clean before you come in. )

[ Maybe you're here because she bullied you, maybe you want to soak - maybe you're the poor bastard that is standing guard at the door. Either way, welcome to the Suana, have fun. Or don't. ]

Comments

[shri]

[ Not his thing? How can it not be his thing - it is water, it is life, after all. Sacred to her, she supposed, in the abstract joy of childhood, in the purposeful rituals she had done on rivers edge since childhood.

The only people she had seen react to it like this had a very particular aversion it. ]

Can you swim?

[wrackful]

[There's a beat, where maybe he would consider denying it, or deflecting. Instead it just breaks into a dry amusement, his mouth pressing down at the corners.]

That obvious, huh?

[shri]

[ She gives him for once - her own open expression, a little rueful, before she nods. ]

Some. Only because a great many I know cannot outside of my homeland. [ She rises up a little, head and shoulders above the water. ] Come. Fears are better conquered. [ and with it, her hand lifts. ]

[wrackful]

Yeah, try saying that when every bit of water you've come across had something in it waiting to eat you.

[Or when you've been stuck out in a tiny boat in the middle of a lake, watching that something eat your friends. There are faint scars down Murphy's left arm from trying to save one of them.

But it's a bitter-tinged reaction to the idea of fear being something that can be conquered. He's known it as a companion, more often than not, and he isn't truly feeling it now. He sighs, takes the few steps to the edge of the pool.]

I just didn't want to ruin anyone else's time.

[By drowning.]

[shri]

[ Her smile is slow, not as slow as her hand that curves to drag through the water, splashing up at him - as if it show, there see, harmless. ]

The dark always has monsters in it.

[ As she comes closer to the pool's edge, she sinks down into the water deeper. Letting it settle against her collarbones. ]

So too, are you not alone in facing them. Come.

[ For if she can work through her own loathing of vampires, she can help in this. ]

[wrackful]

[His face scrunches a little at the splashed water, a beat of consideration like he's trying to decide whether to be amused by it or if he finds her continued assurances a little patronising. The latter's what beds in, mostly, but luckily it makes him defiant rather than belligerent.]

Nah. [Tone borderline drawl.] Things trying to eat you aren't monsters. They're just trying to survive, same as everything else.

[And he drops into the water without any further hesitation.]

[shri]

[ She turns her head away to the inevitable splash of water. Task done as she sinks back. Arms sweeping wide in the water, she floats on her back. ]

If only that were always the case.

[ Her arm lifts, a set of scars. ] But sometimes they bite off more than they can chew.

[wrackful]

[The water's warmer than he expected. He shifts his hands in it experimentally for a moment, then slowly sinks down, lets it envelope him. When she lifts her arm, the corner of his mouth tugs, grim amusement as he lifts his own arm in response, the drag of overlarge teeth drawn in the scarring around his elbow.]

Twins.

[Flat, obviously sarcastic. One bite around his arm didn't make for anything near what Lakshmi had scattered across her skin, and he doubts the rest compare either. Wear enough scars and you start to be able to tell the difference between a fighter's wounds gained in battle and the maximum-pain-achieveable Murphy had written on him.]

[shri]

[ She moves forward in the water, still wonderfully happy to be uncaring about her exposed body. Moving smoothly closer to him, to get a closer look. A frankly concerned little knit in her brow. ]

It met its end, I trust?

[wrackful]

You're kidding, right? [Immediately bemused at the question, a little incredulous.] It was big enough to swallow my friend whole.

[He was lucky to get away with his arm still attached. Only he knows luck has nothing to do with it. It was Jaha dragging him back that had saved it. But then, if Jaha hadn't thrown Craig into the water, he wouldn't have been reaching to grab for him in the first place.]

[shri]

When we find something that big again - I promise I will show you that even they can die.

[ Her arrogance is bellied with surety. She will take him by hand and show him just what determination could do.

Because she wants, more than anything, to remove that fear he might have. To give him a world without it. As much as she had wanted too of her own people. Sure in that too, that ultimately, she doesn't even notice as she comes to that decision as it is said. ]

[wrackful]

[It's a very determined promise. Certain. Arrogant like a warrior - he'd seen that enough in the grounders. And for completely the wrong audience, evident enough in his immediate eye roll.]

Yeah, anything can die.

[You just needed a man strong enough, a gun big enough, the right weather, enough bombs. The whole world had been dead for nearly a hundred years. It wasn't about size.]

We were four half-starved guys who didn't know how to swim out in a tiny boat with no weapons. At night. [Pragmatic, matter-of-fact.] That's why all the dying was on our side.