[PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

[katabasis]

The bread that is over-baked so that it cracks and bursts asunder hath not the form desired by the baker; yet none the less it hath a beauty of its own, and is most tempting to the palate. Figs bursting in their ripeness, olives near even unto decay, have yet in their broken ripeness a distinctive beauty.

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[katabasis]

His head comes up, brow furrowed hard and-- he pauses while measuring the thought, momentarily baffled by his own incompetence. Hannah, Bettina, Annie, Bes and Charlotte, and the half dozen women who he's spent a day and a half ironing and folding and washing with doesn't even take into account the four or five women and girls working full time in the kitchens to put food on either the main house's table, the slaves' or both. It's nothing like an army, but it's certainly not insignificant. And if Bettina had the freedom to set fire to the fucking barn, she certainly has the lateral flexibility to speak to whoever she wishes.

Or someone in her position might anyway, given the woman's apparently mute and her interests - if she does indeed have a penchant for arson - clearly lie beyond conversation.

"Yeah. That could work."

Under the watchful eye of Mrs Oglethorpe might not be the ideal environment for full sedition, an opportunity must eventually present itself. There's no such thing as a waterproof ship. Tugging at his beard, he's just drawing a breath to say as much when the bell in the yard clangs out twice. They're apparently at the end of their leisure. James starts to get his feet under himself without thinking, then balks at the habit and instead turns Thomas's hand over in his - bares the raw underside of his wrist.

"Your arm looks terrible," he says. "I'll let Annie know."

[aletheian]

Life measured by bells and shouts. He wonders if it dredges up echoes of the navy, and just how frustrating that must be. Thomas flexes his fingers and pushes up enough on his knees to press the softest kiss against James's mouth once more-- he shouldn't, some part of him thinks, because it's too much out here in full view of everyone, but to hell with them, and the ache of having to leave him until nightfall is already seeping into his bones.

"You needn't tell stories," Thomas murmurs. "You don't know how charming you are when you're being yourself, still, I suspect."

Stubborn and cranky but with that jagged-edged humor, the way he smiles, the way he listens. James isn't charming like an actor or a con-artist, but in his own way; the sound of waves on a beach at night, a heavy wooden table that doesn't creak. Something like that. Thomas never has the right words for him, precious and burning-- and, anyway. If the girls are already doing things like burning down structures for his quiet propaganda, then things are proceeding rather well, honestly.

(How could those pirates wish him away? How could they not be desperate to keep someone so smart and so charismatic?)

"Until tonight."

[katabasis]

(Because which is more valuable: time or change?)

Something in James's face softens so dramatically that it strips back the former - undoes a dozen years in an instant with barely a handful of words. It's as if they're a map on paper and Thomas has folded it so this point and some kinder one - the curl of some crooked smile in a cheap room - can touch. And how James loved him then and how he loves him now spills through, both parts as real and as present as their hands together. That isn't a story like a ghost from the sea or who pirates are or what anyone says the world and what's right in it is or lines of poetry or a book written to make sense of things. It's just true.

"Tonight," he agrees, squeezing Thomas's hand.