light_mischief | [come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

"Well, good. Now we know it's bone. And lotus pods, and... feathers." He's not really a bird guy, and he's definitely not a charms guy. The only people he could think of who would know what to do with this aren't here, and he's not hoping to see them any time soon.

"There's a man aboard named Palamedes who I plan to take this to." He shrugs. "He's supposed to be good with items. It's not my focus, so we'll have to rely on his abilities." He hesitates, then adds, "We can't let the captain know about these until we understand what they're for and who they're from. They're obviously not from him, which means they're not likely from Friday..."

"Oh- nerd with the glasses, ehn? The necromancer? I met him, apparently I remind him of his totally-not-girlfriend from back in his world. Because of the sword thing."

Darcy retreated from the offending lei to place herself back down on the couch.

"I'll work out where I dumped mine. Maybe we should do some experiments on it, see what happens if you take something off them?"

Another orbital-roll head-tilt. He imagines it wasn't her charming personality that struck a nostalgic chord...

Skulduggery weighs the offending object in his hand, briefly fiddling with a lotus pod before deciding not to be quite so impulsive as the teenager he just reprimanded. Instead, he sets the lei carefully back in beside the traced photos, shutting the drawer with his foot.

"We can't rush anything, but you're right. We'll have to do some tests." He hums briefly in thought. "The bone was why I thought it might have something to do with the resurrection process. The feathers, I've got nothing. The only thing that comes to mind for lotuses is the Odyssey." And they aren't exactly harbingering good things in that story.

C'mon Skully, you know you want to bite it.

"The Odyssey?" She asks, quickly clarifying- "I know what it is, don't give me the whole fucking story, but I've never actually read it, and I don't know where the lotuses come in."

He chuckles. Well, okay, fine, you caught him there. "It's been a while since I read it myself, but... In the story, they come across an island of peaceful people who offered them seeds from the lotus flower. When they ate them, they would forget about their homes, their loved ones... and they would never want to leave the island."

A beat.

"Again, it's been a while." But the story has some... unsettling connections with their situation, even if only superficially.

"Is it too late for you to not tell me that?" she jokes reflexively, rubbing her arm with her hand. It was... unsettling, the idea of losing every memory of home, but it also hadn't exactly happened yet. She still remembers cooking for her mother and singing along badly to the Spice Girls and BTS on the way to fencing competitions, her life back home retains richness and reality that hasn't faded yet, even with the circumstances.

"It doesn't have to mean that's what the thingies are trying to do. It could be a warning. Maybe we should find some of Homo's other works, see if there's anything about roosters or bone disks in them."

"Homer," he corrects, utterly deadpan. "And I agree, I don't think that's the case here. It could be that the leis use the lotus as protection against losing our memories. Sort of like the hair of the dog that bit you."

"That's totally what I said," she lies, unwilling to admit she'd misheard the few times she'd heard the name aloud.

"But I guess that makes sense. So, just the feathers and the disks we need to work out then, ehn?"

Thankfully, he just thinks she was being a rude teenager and not a genuine dumbass.

"We need to work out the feathers and the disks, and then confirm all three theories." He sits against the edge of the desk, crossing his arms. "I don't know what to do about the feathers, but there are enough necromancers aboard that we should be able to figure out the disks."

It's probably usually a safe bet on his part.

"So we just need to find someone who knows birds. There's no books in the library that aren't made up, that's not useful, but we can probably ask around, work out what kind they are. They're probably not crow feathers, ehn? That's a saying, isn't it, 'as the crow flies'."

"No non-fiction, but that doesn't mean we can't find anything useful there." After all, the lotus-eaters aren't real. At least, not technically. "There's bound to be somebody here who knows some folktale involving feathers and protection. Assuming that's what this is meant to be." It's what makes the most sense, but Skulduggery is hesitant to put his trust in something he knows nothing about.

Darcy makes a noise of agreement. She was never the one who handled researching things like what repelled ghosts- that was always the duty of Terre Mère. She was the eldest and most experienced, their on-call nurse and lore-master. Avery was the people person, the one who established contacts with the underworld and Underworld, Kael was their equipment, tech, and surveillance guy, and Darcy... hit things, until they stopped moving. She really wished Skulduggery would ask her to just hit things instead of feeling like she needed to input when he was clearly the one who was used to this sort of thing. Darcy rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.

"Then we know what we're doing. We'll ask around, see if anyone knows anything, tell people to hold onto them and keep the thingies quiet."

She gestured small and vaguely to the room around them.

"Do you mind if I keep stopping by? Just to update you and everything."

And to take more naps in here, since it's been the best sleep she's gotten in a while.

[come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

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