Sharransepulchre - Tumblr Posts
@sharransepulchre is starting to figure out why Anne has no friends. Continued from ✨.
Shadowheart can pout all she likes: Anne’s no intention of telling some tales with a damned good reason, and passing curiosity is hardly that. It’s funny, finding her footing as a barbarian now: it explains why the light fighting style of the sea has always alluded her and her bull’s strength and stride. She’d rushed blindly into that gnoll and she’d paid for it—more than was expected even at the time. She knows the story Shadowheart’s reading in the rest of her back, nick’s and scrapes and burns and the like that would’ve healed much sooner at a cleric’s magic touch. The avoidance that speaks of. The recklessness, the rash action.
Some scars she’s proud to bear. That godsdamned J isn’t one of them, nor will it ever be.
It had taken more than a little pain to finally drag Anne’s arse to the radiant (she’d hate to hear that, no doubt!) cleric’s little purple and gold setup.
Anne huffed a laugh when Shadowheart snaps back: fair enough, one whipcrack of a lashing tongue for another. Than the ancient chanting started and Anne braced herself for…who knew what. She wasn’t altogether sure, obviously, but it wasn’t the sharp spike of pain she’d halfway assumed it must be, based on the Sharran’s brief lessons of Shar’s divinity. Anne drops her forehead down onto her kneecaps in relief and reminds herself to breathe.
“—Among other things, aye. Just so happens to match a description of someone with an unfortunate resemblance to me.” Though one might think that if they welcomed a vampire in their midst they would would almost certainly welcome a pirate, one would be wrong. In the wrong circles, Anne is to a pirate what Strahd is to Astarion. There’s a difference between welcoming a pirate and Anne Bonny the pirate, and Anne would frankly rather err on the side of caution. “Turns out we traveled in similar company for a time. Though…I take it ye have an inkling of what is to own. Can’t imagine that thing on yer hand is any more a thing ye’d like to discuss as I would mine.”
Anne glances over her shoulder, winding her blouse around her hand and between her fingers out of habit. It’s never taken much for Anne to lose her shirt, and it’s proved a surprisingly strong tactic to employ in any fight, from a bar brawl to a mid-sea battle. She lets the silence rest between them for a moment before adjusting her head into a more comfortable position.
“Is it hard? Healing? I got used to the sight of blood early on, but there are some things that even clench _my_ stomach to think of. Can’t imagine that’s easy.”
@sharransepulchre forgot that only sith deal in absolutes. Continued from ✨ .
Anne actually snorts when Shadowheart, prickly and defensive, tries to cast aspersions onto her. Here all she’s said is the world isn’t as against the cleric as she thinks, simply is not in love with her, and her hackles have gone up! What in the hells is in the water these religious types drink? Anne levels a look that says you really should have seen this coming before she replies.
“Oh, the world’s fucking against me, have no doubt! Hates me. Made me what I am and rejects me, don’t matter a whit. I live on spite and audacity alone.” That’s at least mostly true. Anne shrugs and falls silent.
They share an inability to express vulnerability, but Anne’s found that to be standard in those who would take on a life of adventure. The burdened few, ignoring their burdens by facing the burdens of others. Anne’s known their type, her type, all her life. She’s been surrounded by them since birth.
“I only meant to say that the world hasn’t proved half so hostile to ye as ye act it does. Just ‘cause the world don’t love ye don’t mean it hates ye.”
The icy absence is…numbing, and familiar in an uncomfortable way. Anne’s never known Shar’s touch so directly as it is now, but her has been a life marked with loss in many ways. It takes her a moment to recognize that ache as coming from behind her, coming from Shadowheart’s touch, and not just her own gut again. She’s glad she’d spoken up about the brand when she had: that one wasn’t for Lady Shar. It wasn’t for any god, nor any devil save herself.
Truthfully, she’d started slipping out of her things long before the cleric had suggested it, her customary hat and coat left aside in her tent, alongside a vest and a few armaments. She had expected healing to need skin to skin, somehow, and had already been untucking her shirt when Shadowheart suggested the fabric might prove any barrier at all. She didn’t mind. The nights are warmer here than she’s used to, anyway: if anything, it’s helping to cool her down.
As is Shadowheart’s delicate touch, as cool in temperature as in temperament. She reminds Anne of an old friend when she concentrates so hard, when her touch is so cold and barely there, a whisper across scarred skin. When she speaks low and watches her work. Anne smiles a bit for the memory, even as the aching cold reminds her of her friend’s fate.
It’s that sobering reminder that grounds Anne in time to receive Shadowheart’s rejection of the comparison, especially with logic so flimsy. Anne sees no difference between any of them, all lessons learned at the hands of others seared into flesh and bone forevermore. Tragedy is often so because it comes demanding great sacrifice at all levels: the flesh is often the easiest of them to bear.
But maybe Shadowheart’s just not ready to fully face the tragedy that made the scar, or maybe she’s beyond this level of understanding and ascended to acceptance of all that it means. Anne doesn’t see need to push the issue either way.
“How do ye manage to make a favorable comparison sound like a feckin insult?” It’s an honest question. She’s proud to be compared to any of this little gang of outcasts, steeled and flinty as each one is in their way. But on Shadowheart’s tongue, it’s…disparaging. A sense of being found wanting in some way Shadowheart herself is not.
Anne doesn’t really wait for an answer. “‘Scuse the fuck outta me for thinking it a mark of a lesson learned. Me being so wrong there, by all means: tell me the story of it, that I may learn the lesson vicariously through ye.” It’s clearly a dare. “Might even tell ye mine, if that sweetens the pot.”
@sharransepulchre is starting to figure out why Anne has no friends. Continued from ✨.
Shadowheart can pout all she likes: Anne’s no intention of telling some tales with a damned good reason, and passing curiosity is hardly that. It’s funny, finding her footing as a barbarian now: it explains why the light fighting style of the sea has always alluded her and her bull’s strength and stride. She’d rushed blindly into that gnoll and she’d paid for it—more than was expected even at the time. She knows the story Shadowheart’s reading in the rest of her back, nick’s and scrapes and burns and the like that would’ve healed much sooner at a cleric’s magic touch. The avoidance that speaks of. The recklessness, the rash action.
Some scars she’s proud to bear. That godsdamned J isn’t one of them, nor will it ever be.
It had taken more than a little pain to finally drag Anne’s arse to the radiant (she’d hate to hear that, no doubt!) cleric’s little purple and gold setup.
Anne huffed a laugh when Shadowheart snaps back: fair enough, one whipcrack of a lashing tongue for another. Than the ancient chanting started and Anne braced herself for…who knew what. She wasn’t altogether sure, obviously, but it wasn’t the sharp spike of pain she’d halfway assumed it must be, based on the Sharran’s brief lessons of Shar’s divinity. Anne drops her forehead down onto her kneecaps in relief and reminds herself to breathe.
“—Among other things, aye. Just so happens to match a description of someone with an unfortunate resemblance to me.” Though one might think that if they welcomed a vampire in their midst they would would almost certainly welcome a pirate, one would be wrong. In the wrong circles, Anne is to a pirate what Strahd is to Astarion. There’s a difference between welcoming a pirate and Anne Bonny the pirate, and Anne would frankly rather err on the side of caution. “Turns out we traveled in similar company for a time. Though…I take it ye have an inkling of what is to own. Can’t imagine that thing on yer hand is any more a thing ye’d like to discuss as I would mine.”
Anne glances over her shoulder, winding her blouse around her hand and between her fingers out of habit. It’s never taken much for Anne to lose her shirt, and it’s proved a surprisingly strong tactic to employ in any fight, from a bar brawl to a mid-sea battle. She lets the silence rest between them for a moment before adjusting her head into a more comfortable position.
“Is it hard? Healing? I got used to the sight of blood early on, but there are some things that even clench _my_ stomach to think of. Can’t imagine that’s easy.”
…previous profession. Right. Anne fights back a grin at that by tonguing her cheek to mask the expression. Right and wrong, really. Right on the one because she has experienced the sort of mischaracterization Shadowheart means, but wrong because she experienced it in her current profession. She’s glad to see Shadowheart on the other side of that darkest part of her, but Anne’s shadiest character traits where still very much a part of her. One cannot rise from the ashes of their demise totally cleaned of soot, after all. Anne’s proud of her decisions, even if perhaps she hasn’t made the one Shadowheart thinks she has.
“…about that. I’ve a big favor to ask ye.”
She hasn’t recruited anyone to her cause. Not yet. It didn’t seem relevant until the city’s gates were on the horizon and she realized, too late, that Jack probably knows she’s alive. Just like she knows he is, and he’s in the city, and people seem to know about their little adventuring party.
“I…haven’t been entirely honest. About myself. My goals. And with…actual, world-ending problems my, ah…petty drama, if ye will, has felt so insignificant to. Everything and, frankly, everyone else. But it strikes me now that there might be a problem,” Anne says slowly, figuring the urge to emphasize each word, “that we have yet to prepare for.”
Anne tries and fails to keep her voice from rising in pitch.
“Have ye a moment to discuss that?”
@sharransepulchre forgot that only sith deal in absolutes. Continued from ✨ .
Anne actually snorts when Shadowheart, prickly and defensive, tries to cast aspersions onto her. Here all she’s said is the world isn’t as against the cleric as she thinks, simply is not in love with her, and her hackles have gone up! What in the hells is in the water these religious types drink? Anne levels a look that says you really should have seen this coming before she replies.
“Oh, the world’s fucking against me, have no doubt! Hates me. Made me what I am and rejects me, don’t matter a whit. I live on spite and audacity alone.” That’s at least mostly true. Anne shrugs and falls silent.
They share an inability to express vulnerability, but Anne’s found that to be standard in those who would take on a life of adventure. The burdened few, ignoring their burdens by facing the burdens of others. Anne’s known their type, her type, all her life. She’s been surrounded by them since birth.
“I only meant to say that the world hasn’t proved half so hostile to ye as ye act it does. Just ‘cause the world don’t love ye don’t mean it hates ye.”