A Night At Black Beach Cavern (Daske & Urrezko)

[Daske Baggywrinkle]

Timestamp: Evening of the 79th of Spring 512 Northern Suvan, off the north coast of Cyphrus The Black Lady rocked gently back and forth in the night. They were hove-to, which means the sails and rudder were configured so that they played off against each other, causing the boat to slowly drift backward in long, sweeping arcs. It is the deep water version of anchoring. Daske was lying on one of the couches with his head propped up with a cushion. He was smoking his pipe and watching Urrezko sitting on the other couch trying to get the tangles out of her hair with a small bone comb. A day sailing will do that to long hair, Daske supposed. Not that he would know. He kept his hair short. Urrezko's chestnut brown hair, on the other hand, hung down to her bare shoulders and a little beyond, with very little curl. Except after a day in the wind. After a day in the wind it was a tangled mess, although she was slowly making progress with the comb. She had proved to be a quick study when it came to learning to sail. The first two days of out Syliras he had showed her how to handle the sails. A casinor is a small enough boat to sail solo, but handling the rudder and the sails at the same time is a tricky proposition for one person. It's much easier if one person is handling the rudder while the other manages the sails. The jib is especially difficult because it requires two hands to free the sheet on one side, use the sheet on the opposite side to guide the jib to the opposite tack, trim it properly and then secure the sheet on that side. All while using the rudder to steer the boat through the tack. Urrezko quickly mastered the jib sheets, and then the main sheet. By the third day, Daske didn't even worry about the sails. She just took care of them, trimming them as needed as the wind shifted this way and that. She soon developed a kind of routine. She would be sitting at the bow of the boat in her cheetah form with her head turned into the wind, seeming to revel in the feel of it. Then she would suddenly sense that the wind had changed speed or direction and would transform into human form, run back to the cockpit, make the needed adjustments to the sails, and then return to the bow where she once again assumed her cheetah form. The sheer grace and beauty of the entire operation never ceased to amaze Daske. And a naked woman leaping over the cabin into the cockpit never failed to get his attention. The next two days he taught her how to manage the rudder to keep the boat on a steady course, to bring the boat about, and to perform a controlled jibe. By day six, he was comfortable enough with her abilities that he allowed himself to go below for long stretches of time while she sailed the Black Lady alone. He had not expected this; that he would entrust the Black Lady to someone else's hands. Daske was a hard man. Urrezko was a gentle woman. It was an odd arrangement but so far it seemed to be working out to their mutual satisfaction. The Black Lady had never been as clean and uncluttered as she had been since Ko moved aboard. It even smelled nice. Daske had no idea how she managed that. But he liked it. And he loved listening to her lilting woman's voice. He had several times seen her naked. She seemed totally unselfconscious about it, apparently totally unaware of the self-control required of him to not reach out and touch her. In a few short weeks she had come to mean a great deal to him and he was determined not to ruin it with unwelcome advances. He wanted her to be happy. He wondered how long she would stay in his life. “Ko,” he said. She looked up and her golden eyes met his deep blue eyes. “Are you happy here? On a boat? With me?” OOC : I'm playing Daske the way I think he would react to a beautiful and sometimes naked woman on his boat. If this makes you uncomfortable, let me know and I will dial it down. It is entirely up to you to decide how you think Urrezko would deal with this.

[Urrezko]

OOC :

I'm totally cool with his personality, there's no problem. But for this thread I'm not going to make my posts all fancy-like, like last time. It was too much work to go back and copy the format and stuff.

Urrezko was almost done untangleing her hair when Daske spoke. She always loved his little nickname for her, but when she looked up into his blues eyes and she could already tell he had been thinking. First he was sitting in a lazy position, which he only did if he was sleeping or thinking, and he was so pre-occupied with his thoughts, his pipe ran out of tobacco and he never noticed.

"Well of course I am" Urrezko replied. "Why wouldn't I be?" She asked in a seemingly carefree way but she had a feeling that Daske meant something behind his words. She spoke as she got her hair to a reasonably untangled rate, and started to tie it up with a stray piece of yarn she had found while cleaning Daske's boat a while back. She really hoped that Daske wasn't sick or bored of her. She had really enjoyed his company, and he was probably the only other person she held close besides her mother. She had met some people while Daske was away but they mainly just were friends, whcih was also a new experience to Urrezko.

[Daske Baggywrinkle]

“I dunno,” he said. “It's an awful small, cramped space for a creature made for speed and wide-open spaces. And I know I'm not the best company in the world. I want you to stay but I wouldn't hold it against you if ya left.” He fell silent for a few moments and then changed the subject. “I figure we'll reach the Black Cliffs tomorrow. Black Beach Cavern is around there somewhere. I've never been to it and I figure maybe we'll see if we can find it an' do a little explorin'. It's supposed to be haunted, ya know.” He grinned as he got up and went to the galley to locate a small metal can he used to catch the ashes when he cleaned out his pipe. He returned to the couch with the can and started cleaning the pipe with his hunting knife. “Maybe do a little fishin'. Maybe some huntin'. Maybe let yer wild side out a bit.” He produced a small smile. He finished with his pipe and put it back in the small drawer under the navigation table. He turned the lamp in the galley down low and walked to the other end of the main cabin area to put the second lamp out completely. The cabin was now mostly dark with only a warm orange glow coming from the galley lamp. “We better get some sleep,” he said. “Gonna be a long day tomorrow.” He had no idea how true that would turn out to be.

[Urrezko]

"Well the sea is pretty big." She smiled gesturing to the endless view of the blueish-green ocean. Urrezko was excited to go somewhere other than Syralis. She had never really been anywhere but her city. Her mother told her that she had lived in another city once, and they had traveled a long way across Mizahar, but Urrezko couldn't remember it. At Daske's comment on the haunted cave, Urrezko rolled her eyes.

"Sure it is." She laughed, standing up when he did. Urrezko followed hims down under deck as he turned off the lamps. Blindly, Urrezko followed her memory the few steps it took to get to her room. Turning her head, as she had gotten into the habit of doing every night, she peered into Daske's room, to see his shadow moving around. Sighing, she undressed and changed into her cheetah form, curling up on top of her neatly made bed.

[Urrezko]

"Well the sea is pretty big." She smiled gesturing to the endless view of the blueish-green ocean. Urrezko was excited to go somewhere other than Syralis. She had never really been anywhere but her city. Her mother told her that she had lived in another city once, and they had traveled a long way across Mizahar, but Urrezko couldn't remember it. At Daske's comment on the haunted cave, Urrezko rolled her eyes.

"Sure it is." She laughed, standing up when he did. Urrezko followed hims down under deck as he turned off the lamps. Blindly, Urrezko followed her memory the few steps it took to get to her room. Turning her head, as she had gotten into the habit of doing every night, she peered into Daske's room, to see his shadow moving around. Sighing, she undressed and changed into her cheetah form, curling up on top of her neatly made bed.

[Daske Baggywrinkle]

“The wind's changin' again,” shouted Daske. He was standing at the bow holding on to the headstay as the Black Lady rose and fell in the four-foot swell. The wind had been blowing from the North-Northwest at a pretty steady ten knots ever since they had left Syliras. Perfect speed and direction for them. But during the morning it had begun shifting to the North and had now shifted around to the North-Northeast, bring it across their stern. And it had picked up speed to what Daske guessed to be about fifteen knots. He made his way cautiously back to the cockpit where Urrezko was sitting on the port side gunnel handling the helm. She had the tiller is a death grip as evidenced by her white knuckles. He couldn't blame her. This was the worst seas she had yet experienced. “Don' get worried 'bout it yet,” he said. “The Lady's seen rougher stuff than this.” But she could no doubt see through his bravado as he kept looking back toward the Eastern sky, where dark, heavy clouds were forming. “A storm front,” he said after a while, deciding not to try to hide anything from the girl. She was his sailing partner now. She deserved to know the whole story. “It's headed our way. We're gonna be in for a rough time of it.” He let both the jib and main out a bit to better catch the wind. “Might be able to outrun it.” But he knew that wasn't true. He sent her below to get something to eat and to fix him something while he took over the helm. Two bells later she was back at the helm and he was reefing the mains'l. He explained what he was doing as he did it. “We're gonna get more wind than the Lady can safely handle with full sails. If it gets much stronger, it'll tear the mains'l or maybe even bring down the mast. Bring us up into the wind please." When she had headed the Lady directly into the wind, the sails began flapping wildly. He let the mains'l drop part way down the mast while he bundled up the excess sail that collected on the boom. Soon he had the main sail area reduced to about one half of what it had been. “Bring us back around to a broad reach!” She let the boat fall off the wind and swung her around so that the wind was again coming off the starboard side of the stern. “By shortening sail, also called reefing, we show less sail area to the wind, but we'll still keep our maximum speed 'cuz of how strong the wind is gonna get. Always best to shorten sail before you're in trouble rather than after, 'cuz it's a real real bear of a job in a twenty knot wind, which we're gonna get real soon now.” The sky was now a solid gray overcast. The storm was slowly but surely running them down. “We need to switch out the jib for a storm sail. Think you can handle that?”