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[impure_tale]

Though it is always a breach, that one in particular always gives me some pause. It's always the same person that I become, always later in his existence on the Barge. It's given me reason to think of him at times, even worry.

I know myself to be a stubborn man no matter what my form. It shouldn't surprise me he lasts as long as he does, but it's always so frightening to find himself so...out of control of myself.

This time, he was better, and I'm overjoyed to look back and realize that. Without a Warden on his back, he had friends. He was not lonely. He was...approaching something more normal again. It reminded me much of the weeks in Charenton before the doctor came.

What still troubled me -- his door was unlocked, and he couldn't step outside. He didn't believe he could open it.

I remember being that way, in my first weeks here. Romana took such time and care coaxing me out of my room, showing me there were no bars on it. No chains.

And I look at myself now and realize that while I know there's been no lock on my door, I've still been reclusive.

I didn't come this far just to make myself a prisoner again.

Comments

[impure_tale]

I meant more beginning with a fictional base and going wherever their hearts lead them.

[tentacruelest]

Each one has tales from their homelands. Aye.

[impure_tale]

And what of you?

[tentacruelest]

I am no exception. But I find no point in them.

[impure_tale]

What entertains you, then?

[tentacruelest]

Music. The occasional bargain with less clever men than I. The suffering of those who willingly expose their hearts to pain.

[impure_tale]

For some the only way in which they may arrive at pleasure is to begin with pain, but I'm certain that is not what you meant.

I, too, am particularly fond of music but lament that I am neither gifted with so fine a voice nor so dextrous of the fingers that I could perform any that might be deemed satisfying.

Perhaps we might find a middle ground. Have you availed yourself to any poetry at all?

[tentacruelest]

It is not.

But it is...similar, in nature. Satisfaction gained.

And I find it hard to believe a man of your wealth, tastes and experiences has not been taught at least one instrument.

No. I know no poems except those in songs.

[impure_tale]

My preferred poetry, especially when I am out of sorts, is unfortunately not so musical as one would like, but its passages soothe for whatever reason just the same.

...And Harpsicord, just a smidgeon of training. I believe the polite term when describing one's skill is to say you play "a little" and having spent the last thirty years of my life in poverty or in prison, and having had few opportunities to take it up again, it is safe to say I play "very little." I'm more of a theatrical sort myself, have been since I was quite young.

[tentacruelest]

Music soothes me more than words. Words lie. They twist into unfulfilled promises and bargains not intended to be kept.

Did they not have harpsichords in prison? Imagine.

[impure_tale]

Words for a long time were my only music, Captain, and if you were wasting away in silence I imagine you might welcome the sound of a pretty lie over nothing at all.

[tentacruelest]

No, I would not. Unlike you, I am not theatrical, and I like silence. Noise does not travel well at the bottom of the sea.

[impure_tale]

Yes, I remember. [He spent an entire flood as a rather elegant angler-fish creature] But so much that it doesn't travel; it just travels differently. You feel it, like vibrations. [He sounds almost husky when he muses of that.] I can see why you might like the right sort of music in that environment.

[He sobers.] It's not the theatrics I missed. It was the people. I am a lonely man by nature and in my youth a very passionate one as well.

[tentacruelest]

We are all of us lonely by nature. Some of us only grow to enjoy the loneliness more than the disappointment you find in other people.

[impure_tale]

I find the best solution to avoiding disappointment, generally, is to never stop seeking to know people and to make as few assumptions as possible.

If you know a person's nature they cannot disappoint you with it, only impress you when they defy it.

[tentacruelest]

People will always disappoint you.

[impure_tale]

People are people. They make mistakes, they kill, they shit, they die, all of them.

They are also still worth it from time to time.

[tentacruelest]

And here I must disagree with you, Marquis.

[impure_tale]

But do you disagree with me as much as you think you do, Captain? After all, here you are. Deigning to carry on conversation with me for not the first time. Waiting for me, I wonder, to disappoint you by being faithless, just as likely to be disappointed that I will not live down to that expectation, thereby making for you a self-fulfilling prophecy?

[tentacruelest]

I enjoy our conversations.

[It's the flood talking more than anything; an unaffected Jones would never openly admit it]

But you, like all men, will prove a disappointment in the end.

[impure_tale]

You say that as though I owe you something, dear. People cannot disappoint you if you are not entitled to anything from them.

[tentacruelest]

You think of yourself as an honorable man?

[impure_tale]

That depends upon one's definition of honorable. I think myself a better man than I was and have sense enough to acknowledge my own many flaws and misdeeds.

[tentacruelest]

And what sort of man were you before? How are you so sure you've changed for good?

[impure_tale]

A man grows out of his vices once he loses his taste for them, whether because he sees and abhors the fault in them on his own terms, or because he finds happiness without them.