#not explicity or even really vaguely mentioned but gonna put the idea of stupidly devoted qp and or poly crews into your mind

[greyskyflowers]

Something about devotionals and spiritual songs applying to crews

Something about the wonderful, choking feeling of devotion

Something about creating your own gods and calling them captain

Blood, salt, sacrifice, love

They are their own gods

Calling ships home like makeshift alters

Mouths wet with promises made in wine and sake

Swearing devotion and love to each other in small ways. Where are we going next and we'll will try again tomorrow and yes captain.

Pressing bloody hands against each other's skin like hands clasped together in prayer

They offer strength and belief, worth more than any gold that's worn their fingerprints

What use is gold and other material items when you hold someone's love in your hand? When they call their life yours and you call your life theirs with all the breath in your lungs?

They haunt each other and linger like incense

Not in the horror film way but in the way that they carry each other all the way down to the dust that makes up their bones

Scars healing in raised and embroidered skin, spelling names and memorials for every drop of blood freely offered

Tears of sorrow, relief, pain, happiness all leaving the same watery trails on each other's skin

All the echos of each other that linger in simple things. A song stuck in their head, a favorite fruit, a fondness for the smell of a certain brand of cigarettes.

How many times have they bleed on each other? Held torn skin together and demanded life with a viciousness that only comes from the risk of losing something priceless, digging your nails into it and grinding your teeth because this is mine. They are mine. I am theirs.

How much of their skin would be covered with marks of each other if all the blood that touched their skin stained it?

All the places left sacred and scarred

Nothing growing or absolutely everything growing

Blood, salt, and truth to water the roots and turn the soil

Blood, salt, and truth to kill the roots and burn the soil

Life thrives on sacrifice

Life cries for sacrifice

Thriller Bark

Marineford

The sea herself

Every jump in the sea, to catch an anchor and carry it's weight to the surface, is a baptism.

And good god, isn't being human, being free, a holy thing?