#oarlock

[dykepuffs]

As... Often happens. I am thinking about Mary The Mother Of Jesus. And just... Fucking hell man, her story is awful.

We pray the Seven Sorrows of Mary but.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. I offer this rosary to meditate on your Holy Mother, the Blessed Virgin, to meditate upon her suffering.

The first sword of her sorrow: That in the night and without asking permission, she was impregnated by one who wanted a Son, who never asked if she did too, just trusted that as she was Born Without Sin, she must (Because good girls do).

The second sword of her sorrow: That this rapist sends someone to speak for him, with a terrible visage, who tells her that she must be joyful about being pregnant. If she has space to argue that she doesn't want to be pregnant, it isn't recorded. "Let it be done unto me as according to Your word" - Like a student to a teacher, a prisoner to a guard, Europa to the bull; "She didn't say no" just means she's scared of their power to ruin her life.

The third sword of her sorrow: The violation of having this pregnancy, not of her choice, and having it changing her body against her will. Being not even a teenager, not even able to enjoy having a fully-grown body yet, and having that slow discovery stolen from her by the sudden painful and nauseating changes of a pregnancy. Traditions differ on wheher Mary ever had other children, or whether she died a virgin - I wouldn't blame her, if she never let Joseph touch her. With this being her first introduction to the whole idea, her autonomy taken away from her in the most public and indisputable way, before she ever had a chance to find out what she wanted, if she wanted it, with someone she loved and trusted - It must have taken a lot of work and patience for her to feel like her body was her own again.

The fourth sword of her sorrow - Having to come to her community with her unwed pregnancy, with her betrothed insisting that it wasn’t his, no matter how noble he promises to be about it, to divorce her "quietly". Those few hours or days before he agreed to marry her again, the whispering campaign that probably spread for years after anyway.

The fifth sword of her sorrow: Carrying this pregnancy as it got heavier, having to make the journey to Bethlehem - On a normal betrothal timescale, she wouldn’t have been married by time of the census, she wouldn’t have been pregnant, she wouldn’t have had to make the trip in pain and exhausted. How much else in those nine months was a mess, and what about afterwards, when Mary is just any other new-mother, learning to live with drip incontinence and all the other joys of postpartum, before she's out of her teens. God sacrifices his son, but he sacrifices Mary first. When Jesus was older, and knew His destiny, did Him and Mary ever talk about the cruelty of God inflicting all this pain on their mortal bodies, without ever knowing quite how much He was asking?

The sixth sword of her sorrow: Giving birth, aged about 13, in a barn, with no midwife, no family with her, no chance of help, not even an older sister or a mum to coach her through it, just shitting and bleeding and screaming in the stall with the other livestock whose birthing was arranged by a distant manager. Who knows how she felt cutting the umbilical cord, or did Joseph help? Was he surprised that it's not like cutting the fat off a cooked lamb chop, its more like cutting the hock off the joint, it takes a bit of effort, it's slippery and bloody. Did she know to expect the afterbirth? Was it clean? Did one of the cows lick it up off the ground, like how they often eat their own placenta too, recognising the thousands of calories of effort and flesh and blood and months of pain it represents?

And the seventh sword: That straight away this baby isn't *hers*, it's forever linked to the one who forced it on her, everyone she sees for the next few days (for the rest of her life, but lets not get to that) as this bare teenage girl tries to recover from being ripped from minge to arsehole tells her how wonderful it is that this is happening to her, how beautiful, how miraculous.

Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never carried and the tits that never fed.

[ruknowhere]

3 poems 3 pictures 3 greetings

Good morning

Good day

Good wishes to you

When First We Faced, And Touching Showed

When first we faced, and touching showed

How well we knew the early moves,

Behind the moonlight and the frost,

The excitement and the gratitude,

There stood how much our meeting owed

To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life

That opened past your inch-close eyes

Belonged to others, lavished, lost;

Nor could I hold you hard enough

To call my years of hunger-strife

Back for your mouth to colonise.

Admitted: and the pain is real.

But when did love not try to change

The world back to itself--no cost,

No past, no people else at all--

Only what meeting made us feel,

So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?

-Philip Larkin

Astonishment

Oarlocks knock in the dusk, a rowboat rises

and settles, surges and slides.

Under a great eucalyptus,

a boy and girl feel around with their feet

for those small flattish stones so perfect

for scudding across the water.

*

A dog barks from deep in the silence.

A woodpecker, double-knocking,

keeps time. I have slept in so many arms.

Consolation? Probably. But too much

consolation may leave one inconsolable.

*

The water before us has hardly moved

except in the shallowest breathing places.

For us back then, to live seemed almost to die.

One day a darkness fell between her and me.

When we woke, a hawthorn sprig

stood in the water glass at our bedside.

*

There is a silence in the beginning.

The life within us grows quiet.

There is little fear. No matter

how all this comes out, from now on

it cannot not exist ever again.

We liked talking our nights away

in words close to the natural language,

which most other animals can still speak.

*

The present pushes back the life of regret.

It draws forward the life of desire. Soon memory

will have started sticking itself all over us.

We were fashioned from clay in a hurry,

poor throwing may mean it didn’t matter

to the makers if their pots cracked.

*

On the mountain tonight the full moon

faces the full sun. Now could be the moment

when we fall apart or we become whole.

Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping.

Then why have we kept up the singing for so long?

Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are.

Before us, our first task is to astonish,

and then, harder by far, to be astonished.

-Galway Kinnell

Are You Looking For Me?

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine

rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding

around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me instantly --

you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.

-Kabir

[hitchell-mope]

Hypothetical titles for season 30 of 88.

The kings of New York. Season premiere. Part one. Former commissioner Jones Moriarty Wilmington is sworn in as the newest mayor of New York City, former captain of the 88th precinct Thornton Birch assumes the office of commissioner and newly minted captain of the 88th precinct Sidney Sullivan interviews prospective detectives.

The Queen of New York. Season premiere. Part two. Findlay enjoys her rank up as the wife of a police captain and daughter of the mayor. Meanwhile Sidney hires a Detective from the recently disbanded narcotics division and his wife. First appearances of Staz Nair and Sarah Bolger as Detectives Tony and Maggie Chopra.

Poodles and husky’s. A secret about the Chopra’s is revealed during the harvest moon when Maggie’s cousin drops by the precinct along an old friend of the Five Families. Guest starring Joe Alwyn as Daniel Kavanaugh and Ty Tennant as Edmond Corman.

Oversight. Sidney had to contend with the revelations about the Chopra’s while Findlay organises them a suite as the Van Buren location of the Mulligan Institute.

The pitiful children. The team takes a case involving a high school chess club that may or may not have robbed bank to get in good with the popular kids.

Stitched up. In the 700th Episode. Sidney’s highest profile case yet as captain happens when a man is found murdered and sewn back together on the last leg of the muppets 93rd anniversary concert tour. Guest starring the muppets as themselves.

Family is forever. It’s Zoey Anne Mulligan’s turn to call Arlene out when the woman’s complaining gets too much for even her go with the flow disposition.

Changing your tune. In an effort to let her uncle and cousins know she’s part of the team, Arlene arranged for what is hopefully one last meeting with Heidi Kauffman. Guest starring Jennifer Anniston and Jeremy Shada.

The lying bitch in the supply closet. The dark side of policing once again rests its ugly headed when it appears that Senator Kauffman has been abducted.

Parables. A drunk Barnaby accidentally ends up at church instead of his hookups apartment. Feature the return of Hayden Christensen as Reverend Logan Hearst.

The policeman’s ball. Part one. Thornton had his work cut out for him hosting his first ever policeman’s ball and trying to investigate a spate werewolf disappearances.

The policeman’s ball. Part two. The party is in full swing. But the Chopra’s are missing.

Start the clock. The race is on to find the Chopra’s. But it’s more difficult than it should be thanks to an extraordinarily unhelpful and anti werewolf public.

The smoking tooth. It’s almost time for the last full moon of the year. And Findlay has a bad idea to end every single last one of her previous bad ideas.

Blood sports. Midseason finale. Part one. Licked in the basement of a long ousted family, the Chopra’s and Findlay plan their escape. Guest starring Matt Barr as Kyle Blackburn and Andie MacDowell as his mother Rachel Blackburn.

Wolfsbane. Midseason premiere. Part two. Hunted by the Blackburn’s the Chopra’s and Findlay desperately try to survive Christmas Eve night. Meanwhile the team tirelessly searches for them. Guest starring Mara Wilson as Allison Daylesford, Justin Johnson Cortez as Eli Daylesford and Zelda Williams Inez Blackburn.

Desperately seeking Schubert. In this bottle episode. Theo is the key to finding a missing person. Whether he will choose to give up the information and break the promise he made is another matter entirely. Guest starring Tracee Ellis Ross as Dj Whitley, Loretta Divine as her bigoted mother Grace Whitley and the voice of Brian Michael Smith as Albert Whitley.

Win a date. Barnaby auctions off his ticket for a date with Findlay’s favourite celebrity. Guest starring Chris Pratt as Emerson Davenport and Jameson Oarlock.

Duty free. The team is called to JBK airport where a frequent flyer is causing a fuss in the stores. Guest starring Maribeth Monroe as Mrs Crandall

Incompatible. Drummond and Odessa’s plan for a baby get derailed by their physiologies.

Is all fair in love and war? Barnaby and Theo try to pick up the same woman.

Trip a little light fantastic. A blackout in Fifth Avenue forces the council to negotiate with an old enemy. Guest starring Matt Smith as The Bogeyman.

The aunty social quadrille. Justine is in tenterhooks waiting for her British republican aunts to visit from Chelsea. Guest starring Alex Kingston and Eve Best as Mrs and Mrs Demeter and Nina Clarkson.

Open mouth insert foot. Arlene’s well meaning attempts to integrate herself into Fifth Avenue life runs afoul of the worst talk shows in existence.

Murder they vlogged. The team investigate an influencer couple that always seem to be on the scene where a brutal, grisly murder has occurred.

My mother told me. After decades of refusing to change. Arlene finally has an appointment with Deucalion to get to the bottom of her problems with her mother and the rich.

The one where nothing much happens. In this Seinfeldian parody of Friends. Drummond lounges around his apartment all day wondering what to do with his life.

The ancient ancestor. On Cinco De Mayo. Jonah accidentally brings forth one of Jones’s relatives who comes with a dire warning that everybody needs to know. Guest starring Richard Armitage as Horatio Wilmington.

Back to the start. Season finale. Part one. Sidney’s team is alerted to a grave robbing case that mimics a similar one from thirty years ago.

Never eat shredded wheat. As the summer solstice draws nearer. The council tries in vain to prevent the Ozian Rising. First appearances of Elizabeth Mitchell as Mother Glinda, Rose McIver as Eula, Georgina Haig as Tattypoo and Elizabeth Lail as Griselda Windward the resurrected Witches of Oz.

[lforlimbo]

She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you and cast up from your childhood, cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies. She has always been there, my darling. She is, in fact, exquisite. Fireworks in the dull middle of February and as real as a cast-iron pot. Let's face it, I have been momentary. vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor. My hair rising like smoke from the car window. Littleneck clams out of season. She is more than that. She is your have to have, has grown you your practical your tropical growth. This is not an experiment. She is all harmony. She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy, has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast, sat by the potter's wheel at midday, set forth three children under the moon, three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo, done this with her legs spread out in the terrible months in the chapel. If you glance up, the children are there like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling. She has also carried each one down the hall after supper, their heads privately bent, two legs protesting, person to person, her face flushed with a song and their little sleep. I give you back your heart. I give you permission - for the fuse inside her, throbbing angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her and the burying of her wound - for the burying of her small red wound alive - for the pale flickering flare under her ribs, for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse, for the mother's knee, for the stocking, for the garter belt, for the call - the curious call when you will burrow in arms and breasts and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair and answer the call, the curious call. She is so naked and singular She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid. As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.

[napollya-inspiration]

Thank you to @cha-melodius for tagging me!! I actually have done a decent amount of writing this week so I decided to share a new but old WIP.

I am still working on lovestruck! Like actively. But I've also been trying to write this fic for so long... (And Boys in the Boat is coming out soon and I don't want someone else to get ahead of me...)

Anyway, here's a new snippet from 'about knives and spoons', which is the third iteration of what I just call 'the rowing AU' :D

“Your oar.” It’s the guy from earlier that had made the condescending comment - Solo. No doubt he could tell that something was wrong about Illya being here. And the worst part is that he isn’t entirely wrong. “Thank you,” Illya mumbles and cringes at the roughness of the th.  Perhaps it’s the brewing frustration under his skin that distracts him; perhaps it’s his unfamiliarity with the sheer size of the sweep oars. Either way, when he spins it to put it into his oarlock, he hears the dull thud of his blade connecting with flesh, a startled cry, stumble, and finally, the unmistakable splash.  Illya turns in alarm and sees Solo surface sputtering and then, of course, glaring at him. “What the fuck!” He hollers even as his crewmates start to chuckle.  “I did not hit you that hard!” Illya protests because it’s true. Someone shouldn’t just lose their balance at being hit with an oar. They are on a dock; they all know the risks. It’s not like they are new here. “Clearly hard enough, Christ,” Solo mutters and swims around the boat to climb back onto the dock. He’s dripping and, not long after, starts to shiver as the early morning Fall breeze gets a hold of him.  “If you can’t handle yourself around an oar maybe you should think of taking up another sport,” Solo hisses and stalks towards him.  Illya squares up. His height doesn’t stick out too much in a group of rowers, but it’s enough to tower over Solo, who glares up at him in fury now.  “Gentlemen.” Waverly strolls towards them, wellies squeaking and ready to run interference. “I see that there’s been an accident. I assume you have a set of spare rowing clothes in the boathouse, Solo?” Solo’s expression and Illya watches as the fury - doesn’t disappear exactly but gets reigned in. “Not exactly, Sir. I was replacing them after the Summer and did not grab my spare this morning.”

There are such wonderful sports AUs in this fandom but we neeeeeed a rowing AU. So, I'm taking one for the team hahaha

No pressure tags for @heytheredeann and @bighandsforabigheart and anyone else who has been writing and wants to share!

[dylanisdazed]

3, 22, and 89?

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

"clung to me and I clung to the oarlock; behind us Hugh held on to"

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?

Multiple, multiple, many times!

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

That's a hard one. Probably, "Have you actually killed someone?"

[bbbeternelle]

The squeak of oarlocks comes over the lake water A woman's shriek assaults the ear While above, in the sky, inured to everything, The moon looks on with a mindless leer.

Alexander Blok, The Stranger

[hildegardavon]

William T. Trego, 1858-1909

The Lady of Shalott, n/d, oil on canvas, 36x24 in

Private Collection

Based on the early-nineteenth-century poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Trego’s painting joins a dozen or so other works inspired by the same verses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With her name-and therefore the title of the painting-written on the boat as described in the poem, the lady looks longingly at Camelot as she floats downstream toward the castle. There are no oars in the oarlocks, and she cannot control the boat any more than she can control her destiny. The victim of a mysterious curse, she will be dead before the boat reaches Camelot. The background, with mellow late-afternoon light falling on the distant towers and trees, is reminiscent of some paintings by Maxfield Parrish and quite different from “the low sky raining” actually described by Tennyson. (© James A. Michener Art Museum)

[smokeys-house]

At the car dealership and every time the salesman starts listing features I stop him and ask where the oarlocks are on this beast. He keeps saying they don't have any and I can't help but wonder what in blazes you're supposed to do when you run out of gas

[woundgallery]

Astonishment by Galway Kinnell

Oarlocks knock in the dusk, a rowboat rises and settles, surges and slides. Under a great eucalyptus, a boy and girl feel around with their feet for those small flattish stones so perfect for scudding across the water. * A dog barks from deep in the silence. A woodpecker, double-knocking, keeps time. I have slept in so many arms. Consolation? Probably. But too much consolation may leave one inconsolable. * The water before us hardly moved except in the shallowest breathing places. For us back then, to live seemed almost to die. One day a darkness fell between her and me. When we woke, a hawthorn sprig stood in the water glass at out bedside. * There is a silence in the beginning. The life within us grows quiet. There is little fear. No matter how all this comes out, from now on it cannot exist ever again. We like talking our nights away in words close to the natural language, which most other animals can still speak. * The present pushes back the life of regret. It draws forward the life of desire. Soon memory will have started sticking itself all over us. We were fashioned from clay in a hurry, poor throwing may mean it didn't matter to the makers if their pots cracked. * On the mountain tonight the full moon faces the full sun. Now could be the moment when we fall apart or we become whole. Our time seems to be up – I think I even hear it stopping. Then why have we kept up the singing for so long? Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are. Before us, our first task is to astonish, and then, harder by far, to be astonished.

[books-of-the-great-leviathan]

Chapter 43- Ziva

***

Wind tugged at Ziva's curls as she stood at the Mistfox's bow, hand on the railing. She lifted her face to the sky with eyes narrowed. That had been a fell wind, full of ice and ill intent, setting the sailor's charms to ringing. The witch's wind, she knew, but she couldn't help the stirrings of superstition it brought on.

No fair portent, she thought. Then again, when as of late was there?

She watched the dark silhouette of the islands grow nearer. Dawn had just broken, staining the waves crimson and orange. The sun was a pale slash at the horizon, illuminating the barren crags of the approaching land. Even at this distance Ziva heard the boom and echo of waves through their sea caves, the chitter and cry of coursing seabirds. Desolate ground, but neutral ground, no civilization to speak of but the remnants of some long-abandoned fortress clinging to the upper crags, empty of lanterns and inhabited only by wind and gulls.

Above, the witch-boy circled low and alit on the rigging. Ziva glanced up. He'd taken on his human form, skinny and ragged. He grinned down at her from the crow's nest, and Ziva felt cold wind whisk her hair.

"Unnatural," she muttered.

His grin widened.

Ziva heard low voices behind her and looked back. A single lamp shone from a dinghy, already being lowered overboard. Cereza stood at the gunwale, Azare and Alois alongside her. The princess was cloaked, her face pale under her hood, and she wore no weapons save for that improbable whaleglass sword. It hung belted at her side, her hand poised at its hilt. Ziva watched as two crewmen hoisted buckets down, into the dinghy- iron-banded and reeking with blood. Already seabirds, groaks and carrion eyethieves, had scented the blood and circled above. The buckets were heaped with chum, fresh and dripping.

"You're certain?" Azare said quietly.

"Completely," Cereza said. "If you're certain of your watchmen."

"Sighted a pod of them on our way," Ziva cut in, ambling toward them. "Looked to be half-a-dozen good-sized sea-orks, calves, maybe even a bull in the mix. I'd be surprised if they didn't scent this lot already."

She nodded at the chum. Cereza gave it a glance. She was doing a good job at looking calm, but her lower lip trembled, her brow creased with fear.

"Good," Cereza said. "I...I suppose I'd best get a move on."

She looked to Azare.

"Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

"For not saying I don't have to do this."

"The time for doubting you is long past," Azare told her. He held out his hand, and Cereza clasped it for a moment. "Calm seas, Princess."

"And fair skies."

"Be careful," Alois said quietly. Cereza caught him up in a long hug; it was a while before she let him go. She glanced at Ziva, then with a little nod to herself she hooked one sandaled foot over the railing and clambered down the rope ladder, into the dinghy.

Ziva drew alongside Azare and Alois, the three of them watching Cereza as she fumbled with the oars. At last she slotted them into their oarlocks and began to row, falling into a steady one-two stroke and quickly retreating from the Mistfox's side. After a few minutes her lantern was a pinpoint against the dark waves. Soon, it was lost altogether.

"I'd best get belowdecks," Alois said, his eyes lingering on the place Cereza had been. "You be careful too. The both of you."

Ziva nodded. Head lowered, Alois brushed past her and retreated through the stateroom doors. He'd spoken little to her; Ziva wasn't surprised, but she was unsettled by his lack of vengefulness. If she'd been sentenced to death, forced to share a ship with her would-be condemners, she didn't think she'd be so forgiving.

She set her eyes again on the waves, thinking of Cereza. "Seems a dangerous gamble, Severin."

"Hasn't this all been?"

He was looking at her; she could tell. She felt his gaze like physical touch. She didn't meet it. "Never thought I'd be aflutter over the well-being of a bloody Valere whelp," she muttered. "Never thought I'd break my sacred vows more times than I can count."

"How does it feel?"

"I could use a drink."

Azare smiled. "Time for that later, Lapin. We all need our heads clear. Is that pistol of yours loaded?"

"Could use another check."

"Then do it." He brushed past her as he strode for the ship's wheel. "And be ready."

"I always am, sir."

She turned as he went, words snagging on her tongue. She stared after him as he called orders to draw closer, to lay the anchor some quarter-mile or so off the coast, at the shores of an islet broken off from the island's main bulk. It was there they and the pirate lords would meet- and there Ziva and the rest would bleed their last if all went awry.

Her throat ached. She needed to tell him- what? That she couldn't lose him again? That she couldn't love him the way she wished she could love him? To save himself, and her, and damn the consequences?

She didn't speak. The moment passed; the words died.

Time for that later, Lapin, she told herself.

***

They moored the Mistfox and took the longboat in. As they pulled away, Ziva looked back at the ship. A tick of fear feathered in her throat.

"What?" Alois said.

"Nothing." She glanced at him. "Highness." "You don't like calling me that?" he asked dryly. Ziva blinked. The Alois Belmont she'd watched grow up had never had the guts to confront her, would have taken disrespect with head bowed.

"No," she said, and it was she who sounded dry, now.

"You were following orders, Lapin. We all were. I can't hold a grudge forever, not when Estara is at stake."

"I think you could manage it, Highness," Lapin told him.

Alois let out a short laugh. "Cheeky, Lapin. I respect that. One matter I want to make clear, before today's negotiations begin." "Yes?"

"Never try to betray me again," Alois told her.

Ziva grinned, sudden and hard, and nodded, and they lapsed into silence again, shoulder to shoulder in the Mistfox's longboat. It was something strange indeed, she thought, to support a bastard's claim as heir to the Estaran throne, and an afflicted one at that. But if Estara was to survive, it couldn't do so with a child king.

It was Alois Belmont she'd put her faith in now.

They reached the shore. Ziva's boots crunched on the dry, stony soil as she strode from the surf and onto the islet, flanked by Azare, Prince Alois, the witch-boy, and several of their Witchhunters. Bright blue lizards scuttled into their burrows at their approach and watched with mercury eyes, tongues aflicker. Crumbling walls and broken foundations rose around them as they climbed into the ruins of what must have once been a watchtower or smugglers' nest, barely hanging onto the little islet with each devouring wash of the tide.

They came to a halt on the remains of an ornate floor tiled in cobalt and deep red, now riven with cracks and scattered with sand. From here Ziva could see over the waves, toward the horizon and the rising sun. The groaks and eyethieves had not yet retreated, as if anticipating a feast.

Away with you, little prophets, Ziva thought, casting their whirling shadows a glare. We don't need more bad fortune today.

Dawn came, and with it: ships.

Sails appeared on the horizon. One, then more, then many: a forest of sails snapping a dozen colors in the wind. Flags flew high, pirate banners hung proud from each mast.

"A warning," Ziva said. "They're ready for a fight, each one. Those are war colors and no mistake."

"Steady, Lapin."

"You're sure you trust the girl?"

"Like I trust you."

Ziva snorted. "Not sure that answers my question."

"Don't be scared," the witch-boy murmured at her side. "Worse things in this world than death."

"No worse things today," Ziva shot back, and the boy hummed a little, a smile twitching at his mouth.

Most of the vessels hung back, ringing the islands, but five broke off from the rest and approached, coursing swiftly over the waves.

"Saints," Ziva muttered to Azare. At her side, Alois shifted back and forth on the loose scree, his brow furrowed. "That's not a ship, is it?"

"That," Azare said, "is Lord Sabat."

Ziva shook her head. "I truly, sincerely, bloody hate pirates."

The ship gleamed like jet and fresh blood, black and crimson and gilt aflash: a three-decked monstrosity cleaving the waves to a frothing churn. Its sails billowed, high and proud. Ziva counted a row of cannons for each deck, their maws gilded like the ship. Most magnificent of all was its figurehead: a great golden sea-ork with jaws agape, as if ready to tear a gash from the Mistfox's side. It towered over the Mistfox, drowning it in shadow; it dwarfed the other ships. One was the Fishcutter, another a sleek Buyani icerunner. Another yet was an Isozi caravel, all curved lines and intricate paintwork. The last seemed insubstantial as a reflection, ghost-gray and ragged, its wake so slight it scarcely parted the waves.

Ziva watched as the pirate lords disembarked, as they made their way to the islet shores. She sensed the tension of the Witchhunters behind them, standing back with weapons sheathed and holstered. She felt it, too- the thrum of her pulse, the acid on her tongue, the way the world had been turned inside out, all certainty and tradition dashed to the stones. Their king, murdered. Their duties, dismantled. Their captains, treasonous and mutinous. Their reality turned to monsters and magic. They'd been, to the last soldier, trained to kill a pirate as soon as see one; now here they were consorting with their most lofty lords.

In a thunderstorm the rat and the hawk shelter together, Ziva thought, and smiled. If you could see me now, Ren. I think you'd finally like me.

Azare strode forward as the pirate lords advanced. He'd told Ziva of the lot, and she recognized them to a man: Sabat and Atana Bateleur, Captain Irene and her seconds Matteo and Nadya. Anoshka Safi, the red-haired Buyani firestarter, and the towering blue-skinned Isozi captain Noor. Her eyes were narrowed, and she moved with care thanks to the wounds Sirin had, according to Azare, gifted her in their last spat. Each brought a retinue of crewmen armed to the gills.

Last came an old woman. She made her stiff way up the beach with the help of a driftwood cane, each step a dry tap against the stones.

"The Eel Queen," Azare murmured at Ziva's glance. She didn't look like much of a threat, but then again, most pirates didn't get old. Ziva studied her, and as if reading her thoughts, the Eel Queen's pale eyes snapped to hers.

Ziva hissed a breath as the Eel Queen smiled, exposing a mouthful of teeth carved like scrimshaw.

Lord Sabat extended his arm, and she took it, her hands fragile as bird claws against the improbable mass of his forearm. The man himself was as colossal as his ship, all gilded crimson greatcoat and glistening muttonchops, his blunderbuss near itself another cannon.

He stared up the steps at Azare, his gaze cold with suppressed fury. The stare held for a heartbeat, for two. Ziva itched to lay hands to weapons. She forced them to stay at her sides, forced her spine straight and her eyes on Sabat.

"Witchhunter," he boomed at last. His voice rolled like a thundercrack, scattering the carrion birds. "Come back so we can kill you properly?"

"You received my summons." Azare glanced at Irene, who stared back, narrow-eyed, her face hard.

"That I did. And sad it was to see one of Bateleur's best reavers put to such work as playing message hawk to Witchhunter scum."

"Speak another word against me, Sabat-" Irene snarled.

"Then you know why I brought you here," Azare went on.

"To beg our assistance?" Atana said. "To entreat our forgiveness? For your sake, Captain, I hope you brought Sirin here to fight for you again."

"Sirin," Azare said, "is gone."

The pirate lords shifted. A mutter passed between Noor and Anoshka; the Eel Queen narrowed her eyes, gripping her cane tighter.

"Gone?" Atana said. "Dead?"

"Not yet. She is why I'm here. Not for forgiveness. Not for you to become my allies. I am not here to entreat friendship from any of you. It is your anger I appeal to now."

He lifted his arms. "Kill me where I stand. Burn me to my bones. Or use your anger to make right what I have done, to make right the world I had a hand in breaking."

"Where is Sirin?" Atana demanded.

"She's gone north to the Sunken Ruins of Rashavir. She took Luca Valere's creature with her, to draw along to her the monstrous Leviathan. We all saw what she did, the last time you were assembled. You saw the power she drank from the beast. Now she craves more, enough to become herself the destroyer. She doesn't seek balance, but wrath. No resettled world, but destruction. Vengeance."

He paused. "Anger."

"She seeks the whale god's power," Noor breathed. "Blasphemy."

"All Witchhunters are liars." Sabat reached for his blunderbuss; Ziva heard her crew go for their blades, heard the hiss of steel from scabbards. She lifted a hand. Not yet. "All Estarans have tongues of silver and knives hidden up their sleeves-"

"He's not lying, Sabat," Atana said, her voice soft, her eyes half-closed. "I can see it on his heart. He comes with nothing but the truth."

Sabat cut off and rounded on her. "How can you say this?"

"I say it because I know it. You know my power, given to me by my mother's Isozi blood-"

"Do not invoke Alaji's name in the Witchhunter's favor," Noor growled.

"Your power." Sabat towered over the little girl. He was nearly twice her height. Still she stood her ground. "None can lie to you, but you can twist whatever truths you like."

She lifted her chin. "You will mind your tongue, Lord Sabat. Unless you're forgetting who I am, and who my pa was?"

"Your father would be ashamed to see you so. His only daughter-and-heir, siding with the man who murdered him?" He snarled something in an unfamiliar tongue, rolling and timbrous. "I spit on your claims, Atana, and on your so-called power-"

"You dare to betray Bateleur's memory?" Irene gave a disgusted snort, her whaleglass eye aglitter. "Are there no loyal souls assembled here today?"

"You betray Bateleur's memory by not gutting them at first sight. You betray our tradition, our way of life."

"I say we give the Witchhunter a listen," Anoshka said, picking at her nails. "He came all this way."

"All of you, traitors!" Sabat drew his blunderbuss. Irene's blade was free and at his throat in a heartbeat; Noor's rifle was unslung, cocked, and Anoshka lifted her hands, her palms glimmering with embers. The Eel Queen stood, silent, watching not the other pirates but the sea.

"Name me a traitor, Sabat, and I will flay your skin to fix upon my mast," Noor spat.

"Stand down," Irene said. "Or I'll help her."

"Challenge me, do you, O Captain Irene?" Sabat laughed, a ferocious sound. "We'll see who skins who-"

"Oh, enough of this!" Ziva strode past Azare. "Hang all of you, shrieking and squabbling and wasting time. This isn't about loyalty. This isn't about promises and bonds of blood and old Saints-damned traditions. This is about what's true. What's real. You think you'll be able to stop that monster if Sirin gets her way? Any of you?"

"Do you?" Noor said. She spat on the ground. "Witchhunters come with nothing but stolen sorcery and reckless pride. A king's hounds, sent to do a king's dirty work-"

"Not only his hounds," Alois said.

His voice cut through the crowd, cut over Noor's next words. She braced back as he stepped forward, his shoulders stiff. For a moment, he stood, his chin lowered, his brow furrowed. Ziva stood, tensed and waiting. Would he fold? Would he run?

He did neither, and lifted his head.

Silence filled the ruins. Not a one spoke.

"I am King Alois Belmont," he said. "King of the Sister Isles of Estara. Son of Daval Belmont. Beloved of Bellana. And I will be by your side."

Alois held the eyes of the pirate lords, one at a time. "You fight alone and you'll die alone, crushed to the bottom of the sea. We don't fight alone."

He pointed to the witch-boy. "We come with a witch, and winds sung under his command to sail us. But he isn't enough. We need you- all of you- to follow us into the jaws of the beast, into the Hells themselves, to give Valere a chance."

"Luca?" Atana gasped.

Alois nodded. "The same. He's on his way north as we speak, riding on witchback to save all our skins. He has nothing now but madness and hope."

He lifted his chin, his amber eyes flashing with conviction. Ziva's heart pounded, fear and pride a heady pulse inside her.

"Come with us, and keep the beast off his back. Follow us, and keep your seas, and your freedom," Alois cried. "Fight with us and see the Great Leviathan reborn. You with us? Or are you the cowards who'll sit by and watch the seas burn, and yourselves with them?"

"No," Sabat muttered.

He lifted his head, and Ziva saw the black fire burning in his eyes. Fear splintered through her; she reached for her pistol.

"I would sooner die a coward than fight alongside Witchhunters," Sabat snarled, and whirled, and fired, point-blank, at Ziva.

The explosion of his blunderbuss cracked through Ziva's skull; impact hit her hard, taking her down. For an instant she thought his shot had torn her in half. She gasped as someone seized her shoulders and dragged her onto her back.

Azare. He stared down at her, his eyes wide, searching her face.

"Severin-" she whispered.

"Are you hurt?"

"Don't think so-"

"Then get up." He dragged her to her feet, and into chaos. Gunshots cracked; the floor was a wrecked crater, still smoking from Sabat's shot. She really would have been torn in half, had Azare not pushed her out of the way. Blades clanged, filling the air with their warp clamor: the Witchhunters, in their dark grays, sliced through the pirates like sharks, circling around Azare and Ziva, pulling in to shield them from their attackers.

Their attackers. Ziva searched the onslaught, her breath caught in her teeth. Everywhere: pistol smoke, blade flash, Sabat's crew in crimson locked in combat with Anoshka's men, Noor's Isozi with white braids whipping against their Witchhunters. She saw no sign of the witch-boy, nor of Alois. There; she spied the witch's ragged shape, spiraling into the clouds with Alois clenched in his claws. Nadya and Matteo fought alongside Irene, the trio moving as if with one mind.

Irene deflected a blow aimed for Lieutenant Guilan, and he flashed a grin in her direction.

"Obliged, madam!" he called.

"Captain to you," she sang back.

Guilan dipped his head. "Saints forgive me, I-"

He cried out as one of the Isozi's spear-muskets plunged into his stomach, ripping out his back with a spray of blood.

It spattered Ziva's face. She flinched, eyes wide. Again, the drone of flies. Again, blood slick on the backs of her teeth. The Isozi flung Guilan aside and charged her with a scream.

Ziva shook off her stupor. She tore her sword from its sheath and sprang to meet her. Steel sang, parted, sang again. The Isozi snarled; she was strong, much stronger than Ziva, driving her back and back with each blow. Ziva was quicker. She ducked, twisted, whirled around to the other woman's back, opening a gash in a visible patch of blue flesh.

The Isozi cried out, stumbling. Her guard fell: an instant of opportunity. Ziva glanced at Guilan. He lay, curled, in a pool of his own blood. Dead, dying- it didn't matter. Heat seized her, black and scouring; she tore her plain knife from its sheath and lifted it, to plunge it deep into the Isozi's spine, to sever it and her life in one blow.

And when she did?

This would go on, she knew. This fight would end in blood, and pain, and despair. This place wasn't a desert, but it would be dug into graves, sure enough- more than five, so many more. When would it end, then? When Sirin, or the monster she would make of herself, came to rain storm down on their heads? When the last soul standing lay at the bottom of the sea, and breathed their last? When all that was true, and good, and kind, was bled dry from the world, like it was bled from her? On, and on. More, and more.

No.

It ended here. It ended now. Ziva flung aside her knife and slammed her fist into the blue woman's jaw. The Isozi crumpled, out cold.

Behind her: a blade cleaved air. No time for pious reflection now. Ziva spun with a scream and dashed the sword aside, then cracked her skull against the man's forehead, one of Sabat's. He dropped, groaning and clutching his head.

"Azare!" Ziva yelled.

She searched the battle. Red hair- no, that was Anoshka, cackling as she fought, her hat lost, her hair aflame, truly aflame, up like a wick. She saw him then through Anoshka's heat shimmer, at the battle's heart. Witchhunters flanked him; Atana was pressed to his side, armed with a dagger and pistol of her own. A cut streaked down one cheekbone. He ducked and weaved, his back straight, his eyes narrowed, defending the girl.

"Severin!" Ziva screamed. She elbowed off a pirate and plunged toward him. "We have to stop this- we have to-"

Red filled her vision. Sabat. He moved like a rockslide against Azare, his sword a heavy, scarred cutlass. It swung; it screeched against Azare's slimmer Estaran blade. Ziva saw his eyes spring wide, his teeth clench. He set his weight, but Sabat had that advantage. Azare's boots scraped the tiles as he was driven back, their two blades locked.

"Lord Sabat-" Atana darted in, but Sabat swept her aside with his free arm, sending her spinning to her knees.

The sword lock broke. Azare spun his sword for a strike, but Sabat was ready. The back of his hand cracked across Azare's face, slamming him against a wall. He lay there, reeling and dazed.

Sabat's cutlass glinted, red in the dawnlight, as he lifted it to Azare's throat.

"Severin!" Ziva screamed.

A bellow filled the air. The ground quivered; waves hurled themselves up the beach, swamping the longboats and dashing against the ruin's foundations. Swords stilled in midair, battle cries shifting to shouts of shock and terror.

Hot wind blasted Ziva as she whirled toward the coming dawn. Her mouth, halfway to shaping Azare's name, hung wide in disbelief.

A shape filled the water, a vast black column surging through the waves, hide deep gray and glistening, encrusted with scars and barnacles. A sea-ork, the biggest Ziva had seen, and coming straight for them. In a fanburst of spume its tusks broke the surface and speared toward the skies, twin sawtoothed curves vast enough to impale ships and take them crashing to seabed. Its jaws followed, long and saurian and clustered with teeth, a second bellow already rumbling from deep within the beast.

It rose higher from the waves, swimming with powerful strokes of its forefins and long, flat tail. Its wake sent the moored ships to swinging, its body twice the length of Sabat's galleon, its cold yellow eyes set on the beach.

"Sea-ork!" cried Matteo. "Bull sea-ork, coming in fast and hungry! All of you, into the ruins! Now!"

The pirates scrambled higher up the beach, away from the monster. The Eel Queen danced and cackled, waving her stick through the air. Ziva stayed where she was.

A slow grin spread across her face.

Light flared from the sea-ork's back: prismatic light, channeled through the blade of a whaleglass sword. Cereza gripped its hilt with one hand, the other wound around a spike on the sea-ork's neck ridge. She didn't just control it; she rode it, holding Valeria's sword aloft. The sunrise fractured through the blade and set the air alight, set the waves aflame.

The sea-ork reared up the beach, carving great gouges in the sand with its forelimbs, another roar blasting Ziva with hot breath. Pirates crouched and huddled around her, but Lord Sabat stood, lifting his sword from Azare's throat as he faced the sea-ork.

"Korag Magra," he breathed.

He approached, tossing his sword aside, his hands open, beseeching. He stopped before the beast's tusks and fell to his knees.

"Ork Mother," he said. His eyes shone. "You have come."

"Stand down, Lord Sabat," Cereza called from her place atop the beast's neck. She lowered Valeria's sword, pointing it down at him. "All of you who fought for him, too. And be quick about it."

"You!" Sabat said.

"Me." Cereza stood, balancing on two struts of back-spine. "I said. Stand. Down."

Sabat signaled to his men. Ziva heard the clatter of arms laid aside, the murmur of the pirates, whispers of reverence or disbelief.

"Then I welcome my death at your jaws," Sabat said. "Ork Mother-"

"You think I'm here to kill you? Triune, no. And I'm not Korag Magra." She touched the sea-ork's neck, and it lowered its great head. The lower curves of its tusks came to rest, gently, on the sand. Cereza followed, climbing gingerly down its muzzle and onto the beach. She stood before Lord Sabat, the point of Valeria's sword set at his knees.

"Get up," she said. "Come on, now."

He rose. He towered over her, but she stared up at him unblinking, her soaked hair plastered to her cheeks.

"You heard them," she said. "They came to you, here at world's end. They came to you at the hour of greatest need. Now what do you say?"

Sabat's grin was a craggy thing, glittering with teeth silver as his fingernails. "She is magnificent," he said, nodding at the sea-ork.

"She is," Cereza said. "But she needs to be free."

The sea-ork snorted, gouting steam through its blowhole; warm seawater spattered Ziva's face. Cereza lifted her hand, and the great creature reared backward, diving from the shallows into deeper waters. It crashed to the waves and sank to a shadow, the ridge of its spine glistening for a moment in the dawn before vanishing, too, gone back to the depths.

Cereza slumped; her eyes fluttered shut, her face drawn. She pressed her hand to her heart, the strain bright in her eyes. Still, she stayed on her feet. Wind stirred at Ziva's side, and Alois stumbled from the black flutter of the witch's wings, his face ashen, his expression set.

He glanced at Ziva, and she nodded.

He smiled, just a little.

Sabat turned to the gathered pirates.

"World's end this may not be," he said. "Our hour of greatest need, not yet upon us. But I cannot deny the prophets have come." He took up his cutlass and plunged it deep into the ground. "And I cannot refuse them."

He faced Azare, and Alois. Conflict tightened the lines of his face, then settled. He produced an enormous S-curved pipe from his greatcoat, lit it, and took a deep drag.

"I won't fight for you, Witchhunter, nor your king. But I will fight with you," he said, pungent smoke curling round his muttonchops. "And so will my crew. And so will those loyal to me."

"And to me," Atana said as she picked herself up from the ground. "We'll have words, Sabat. For now, we haven't a moment to waste."

She climbed atop a broken crust of wall and lifted her hand to the sky.

"All of you," she cried. "All those who count yourselves people of these seas, whaleblood and freemen and pirates to the marrow- we sail as one."

"With the wind," the witch-boy whispered at Ziva's side, and for the first time since Ziva had first seen him, shot down and cowering, his blood black on the ancient stones underfoot, he almost sounded afraid.

***

Ziva found Azare, later. He sat by Guilan's body, lain out on a canvas sheet. A bowl of seawater rested by his head. Azare was washing him, cleaning the blood from his face and the sand from his eyelashes. Cereza's sea-ork was long gone, nothing left but great furrows carved into the beach, already smoothed over by the tide. Around Lapin was a moil of pirates climbing into longboats, of casting off and signaling from ship to ship, of creaking sails and shouted orders. Atana knelt alongside the wounded, feeding them sips of water from the Belmont cup. She was teaching Alois, Ziva saw, the king's hands red to the elbows, on his knees in the sand and the blood.

Once, maybe, she might have scoffed at the sight of a gentle king, one who knelt to help reavers and brigands drink. Once, she might have not believed there were ways to be strong that did not depend on the pain of another.

In the midst of the beach Azare seemed over-still. He looked up as Ziva stood over him, on the far side of the canvas.

"He was the only one?" she said.

Azare nodded. "Some wounds, but no other lives lost on our side." He smoothed down the lapel of his uniform, lingering on the speared wing signet affixed to the fabric. "He was a good man."

"He was. A proper lieutenant." Ziva sank to her knees beside Guilan's body. "Better one than I proved, anyhow."

She ached, her muscles sore as she'd ever remembered them. Her head was worse. She watched Azare clean the blood from Guilan's mouth, then lifted her eyes.

"I want to bury him," she said.

"We need to move," Azare said, gently, watching her.

"No. We need to bury him. Properly, Severin."

He paused, then nodded. "Then we bury him."

They left the chaos of the beach for the far side of the islet, the lee face of its ruins, where the shadows were still cool and blue and tasted of night. They found a spot of loose ground under a section of wall and began digging, their borrowed spades making quick work of the soil. It wasn't long before they had a grave.

"It's no shrine in the Witchhunter tower," Ziva said, leaning on her spade. "But I hope it's enough."

Azare brushed his fingers over Guilan's canvas shroud. "So do I."

He climbed from the grave and helped her fill it in. They stood over it, silent. Neither of them was a priest, but no words were needed, not for a soldier's burial. Gulls circled above, shadows moving like ghosts across the sand.

After some time Azare reached into his uniform and withdrew Ziva's knife. "This is yours, I think."

"You should know. It was in your heart."

"Might be mistaken. The heart's a foolish thing."

Ziva took the knife. She flipped it in her hands, examining its blade. "I thought Sabat would take off your head out there."

"He very nearly did."

"I almost lost you, Severin."

"Are you afraid of that now?"

She dug her thumbnail into a groove in her knife's bone hilt. "Always was. So I did it first. I was ever a spiteful thing."

"I think much more than that." He paused. "What I feel hasn't changed, Lapin. Not for you. I remember what I told you, still. And I'll swear by it, as much as any vow I ever made."

Ziva didn't answer. Her throat was as tight as her grip on the knife. She couldn't answer him, not now, and maybe after twenty years together he understood that. Maybe he didn't. Either way, he was at her side.

Azare glanced toward the beach. "We should go."

"Give me a moment."

He nodded and began away. Ziva didn't watch him leave. She didn't look up, not even when the air chilled, when the snowfall spackled the grave with white. When she sensed the air pressure shift, and she knew she wasn't alone.

"You're scared," she said.

"So are you."

Ziva lifted her head. The witch-boy perched on the wall above the grave, wings shrouding him and Ziva both from the snow.

"Well, yeah," Ziva said. "Remember the monster."

"Not that."

She drew a short breath. "I miss the days of being sure," she said quietly. "I miss the days of knowing."

The boy's eyes were dim, his arms hugged around his knees. He didn't look like a boy anymore, nor a monster, but old, and so tired.

"Maybe you never knew," he said.

They said nothing more, but stood together in silence, watching the snow fall past the shadow of his wings.

[lloke]

I like reading about disasters sometimes and recently I've been reading through some of the transcripts from the Titanic inquiries, which you can find online here. They’re pretty interesting. Despite the tragic nature of the story there are some amusing bits, like the woman who spends half her testimony complaining about the amenities on board the Titanic (rooms too cold, food service poor, etc) before she finally gets around to describing the sinking. ("But other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?")

There’s also this woman who complains that the men assigned to row her lifeboat didn't know how to row, so she and the other women had to row instead:

The man who rowed me took his oar and rowed all over the boat, in every direction. I said to him, "Why don't you put the oar in the oarlock?" He said, "Do you put it in that hole?" I said "Certainly." He said, "I never had an oar in my hand before."

Further quotes behind the cut.

Lord Mersey, Commissioner of the British inquiry, getting increasingly sarcastic about the other questioners wasting his time by going on for too long about minor or irrelevant details:

The Commissioner: I do not want to hurry you at all, but we are not at present concerned to inquire whether this ship, the "Californian," was properly supplied with lifeboats. If I am to sit here and inquire into the manning and equipment of every vessel referred to I shall never finish.

-----

The Commissioner: You know, Mr. Scanlan, I may tell you I have been deluged with circulars from all sorts of patentees of all sorts of lifeboats, and if I am to sit here to hear the merits of every one of those patents I shall be here to doomsday. 

-----

19525. (Mr. Harbinson - To the witness.) Would it be desirable to indicate upon the tickets the boats which the passengers would be assigned to? - I can conceive no useful purpose that could be served. 19526. Do you not know that it is actually done in the case of some lines? - I do not know. The Commissioner: Can you tell me which line? Mr. Harbinson: I do not know of my own knowledge, My Lord, but I have been told that it is done in the case of some of the Japanese lines, but I will try and obtain the information for your Lordship. The Commissioner: From where to where? Mr. Harbinson: I take it, it is the ships that ply in the far east, probably between the East and England. The Commissioner: You mean boats plying in Eastern Waters. Mr. Harbinson: That is my information, My Lord - that that has been done. The Commissioner: Well, I do not like cross -examining gentlemen in your position, Mr. Harbinson, but will you tell me the name of the line? Mr. Harbinson: That I cannot do, My Lord, but I can ascertain it for your Lordship. The Commissioner: Can you tell me the source from which the information comes? Mr. Harbinson: I have been told so, personally. The Commissioner: By whom? Mr. Harbinson: I was told so by a nautical man in London. The Commissioner: What is his name? Mr. Harbinson: His name, I believe, is Macdonald. The Commissioner: Where does he live? Mr. Harbinson: I cannot give your Lordship his address. The Commissioner: Is the question based simply upon information given to you by a gentleman named Macdonald, who lives somewhere, and you do not know where. Mr. Harbinson: I know where he is to be found. The Commissioner: Where is he to be found? Mr. Harbinson: At a club, of which I am a member, My Lord. I hope I have submitted patiently to your Lordship's cross-examination. The Commissioner: But you know, really, if I am to sit here to listen to questions based upon information or suggestions derived from somebody in a club, I do not know when I am to get to the end of the Enquiry. Mr. Harbinson: The question, I submit to your Lordship, is important in this way, that if a station had to be allotted to each individual - The Commissioner: We are upon the question of practice in Eastern Waters of Japanese Lines, the names of which I do not know, and upon matters mentioned apparently by a gentleman named Macdonald in a club.

-----

22757. (Mr. Harbinson - To the witness.) Have the Board of Trade any Regulations enjoining upon shipowners the necessity of having printed notices put up in, say, the third class accommodation to indicate which way third class passengers should go, which staircase they should use, in cases of emergency? - No.

The Commissioner: Exercise your own common sense. Do you think, Mr. Harbinson, that if such notices were stuck up, any body would ever read them. Judging for myself I do not believe anyone would ever read them; I never should. Perhaps I ought to. The question is, What would happen, not what ought to happen. Have you ever been on board a ship?

Mr. Harbinson: I have never been to America, but, if I may relate my personal experience, every time I go across the Channel one of the first things I do is to read the notices.

The Commissioner: You are one of the most extraordinary men I have ever come across. The first thing I do, if it is about the middle of the day, when I get on a cross-Channel steamer is to get some lunch, and the notion that I should go about the decks or about the ship reading all the notices that are stuck up never occurred to me.

The Attorney-General: That is not the class of literature your Lordship chooses.

22758. (Mr. Harbinson.) I regret that luncheon is an occupation I am never able to take part in at sea.

Also: the evolution of the English language, in action!

9470. Now, have you got your record of what he said? - Yes. "'Titanic' gives position and asks, 'are you coming to our assistance?' 'Frankfurt' replies, 'What is the matter with you?' 'Titanic' says, 'We have struck iceberg and sinking. Please tell captain to come'; and then 'Frankfurt' replied, 'O.K. Will tell the bridge right away.' Then the 'Titanic' said, 'O.K., yes, quick.'" 9471. (The Commissioner.) What does "O.K." mean? - All right.

Then there are the parts where people describe what must have been incredibly harrowing experiences in a very dry and matter-of-fact way, e.g.:

Senator SMITH. What time did you leave the ship? Mr. LIGHTOLLER. I didn't leave it. Senator SMITH. Did the ship leave you? Mr. LIGHTOLLER. Yes, sir.

Or this bit:

Mr. BRIDE. There were no big lifeboats on the ship at that time. There was a collapsible boat on the top deck at the side of the forward funnel. Senator SMITH. You mean over the officers' quarters? Mr. BRIDE. Over the officers' cabin, sir. Senator SMITH. Do you know what was done with that? Mr. BRIDE. Yes, sir. Senator SMITH. What was done with it? Mr. BRIDE. It was pushed over on to the boat deck. Senator SMITH. What was done then with it? Mr. BRIDE. Went over the side. Senator SMITH. You never saw it? Mr. BRIDE. Yes; I went over with it. Mr. BURLINGHAM. He says it went over the side. Senator SMITH. I understand what the second officer said about it. I want to know whether you saw it again? Mr. BRIDE. Yes, sir, it went over the side of the ship. It was washed off by a wave. Senator SMITH. It was washed over the side of the ship by a wave? Mr. BRIDE. Yes, sir. Senator SMITH. And fell into the water? Mr. BRIDE. Yes, sir. Senator SMITH. Bottom side upward? Mr. BRIDE. Yes, sir. Senator SMITH. And how far were you from the water when you saw this boat fall? Mr. BRIDE. I was in the boat. Senator SMITH. You were in the boat? Mr. BRIDE. Yes, sir. Senator SMITH. It fell, the bottom side upward? Mr. BRIDE. Yes, sir. Senator SMITH. What became of you? Mr. BRIDE. I was inside the boat. Senator SMITH. You were under the boat? Mr. BRIDE. Yes. Senator SMITH. How long did you remain in the boat? Mr. BRIDE. I could not tell you. Senator SMITH. About how long? Mr. BRIDE. It seemed a lifetime to me, really.

[ruknowhere]

Astonishment

By Galway Kinnell

Oarlocks knock in the dusk, a rowboat rises

and settles, surges and slides.

Under a great eucalyptus,

a boy and girl feel around with their feet

for those small flattish stones so perfect

for scudding across the water.

*

A dog barks from deep in the silence.

A woodpecker, double-knocking,

keeps time. I have slept in so many arms.

Consolation? Probably. But too much

consolation may leave one inconsolable.

*

The water before us has hardly moved

except in the shallowest breathing places.

For us back then, to live seemed almost to die.

One day a darkness fell between her and me.

When we woke, a hawthorn sprig

stood in the water glass at our bedside.

*

There is a silence in the beginning.

The life within us grows quiet.

There is little fear. No matter

how all this comes out, from now on

it cannot not exist ever again.

We liked talking our nights away

in words close to the natural language,

which most other animals can still speak.

*

The present pushes back the life of regret.

It draws forward the life of desire. Soon memory

will have started sticking itself all over us.

We were fashioned from clay in a hurry,

poor throwing may mean it didn’t matter

to the makers if their pots cracked.

*

On the mountain tonight the full moon

faces the full sun. Now could be the moment

when we fall apart or we become whole.

Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping.

Then why have we kept up the singing for so long?

Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are.

Before us, our first task is to astonish,

and then, harder by far, to be astonished.

[seppiratu]

why his name ocunt oarlock when oar lock isnmt even a number you can count to i'm fucking psised gonna SPLATTER your BRAINS HUMANb

[ananke-xiii]

Integrity

by Adrienne Rich

the quality of being complete; unbroken condition; entirety ~ Webster A wild patience has taken me this far

as if I had to bring to shore a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books tossed in the prow some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades. Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through. Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain in a sun blotted like unspoken anger behind a casual mist.

The length of daylight this far north, in this forty-ninth year of my life is critical.

The light is critical: of me, of this long-dreamed, involuntary landing on the arm of an inland sea. The glitter of the shoal depleting into shadow I recognize: the stand of pines violet-black really, green in the old postcard but really I have nothing but myself to go by; nothing stands in the realm of pure necessity except what my hands can hold.

Nothing but myself?....My selves. After so long, this answer. As if I had always known I steer the boat in, simply. The motor dying on the pebbles cicadas taking up the hum dropped in the silence.

Anger and tenderness: my selves. And now I can believe they breathe in me as angels, not polarities. Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius to spin and weave in the same action from her own body, anywhere -- even from a broken web.

The cabin in the stand of pines is still for sale. I know this. Know the print of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked the door, then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis back on the trellis for no one's sake except its own. I know the chart nailed to the wallboards the icy kettle squatting on the burner. The hands that hammered in those nails emptied that kettle one last time are these two hands and they have caught the baby leaping from between trembling legs and they have worked the vacuum aspirator and stroked the sweated temples and steered the boat there through this hot misblotted sunlight, critical light imperceptibly scalding the skin these hands will also salve.

[sheltierv]

September 1st, Clinton BC

Left PG before 8am. Nice day and going to hit the 80s this afternoon.

Ran into some fog banks around the rivers in the morning. The road conditions were pretty good with some rough spots.

Arrived at Willow Springs RV park south of Clinton before 1pm. Very cute park with a private lake and lots of grass. Sites were a bit unlevel, but a couple of blocks solved it.

Hot in the afternoon, but the sun disappeared behind the mountain and it cooled nicely. Took the rowboat out, but the oarlocks were rusted and falling apart. We decided to make it a short ride.

Tomorrow we make our last Canada stop at Camp Bridal in Rosedale.