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When the Sinners had first boarded Mephistopheles, the few bits of luggage that all of them carried were thrown (carelessly, then only with slightly more care as a loud shatter came from one of Hong Lu’s bags) in a back compartment that the confusingly engineered bus had.
Since then, they had barely touched whatever was in there, the only frequent visitors being Ryōshū, who one would think had come upon a bottomless bag of unending cigarettes as she procures more packs there in a day than a cigarette factory does in a week, and Faust, for a far more mundane reason, that being maintenance and making sure that their luggage doesn’t inexplicably disappear.
And here, in the middle of a fairly outback country road, Mephistopheles runs into some troubles and stops working entirely, prompting everyone to start meandering about near the general area of the bus while Faust, Outis, and Meursault attempt to fix whatever made the engine sputter out half a tub of chewed gore.
Barely a quarter of an hour was enough for Ishmael to get so bored that she checked her luggage. Her belongings in there weren’t much, just an old, but sturdy canvas bag, haphazardly shoved with bits and bobs that Ishmael cares not or just simply doesn’t want to know what it is, and a raggedy bedroll strapped atop it. From one of the spacious pockets of her bag, she pulls out several things; First, a well-worn wooden pipe with a mouthpiece of ivory, noticeably more noble looking than the one she usually carried within her coat. Second, a hefty chunk of whalebone, old and yellowed. And third, a small, sharp knife, her ever trusty whittling partner of years upon years.
With these in her hands, she closes her bag and walks a little ways away from the bus, passing by Ryōshū who she assumes has run out of smokes and seeks to replenish herself with her endless hoard.
Upon a dry spot of grass and earth, Ishmael sits down and relives old habits, putting the pipe in her mouth, unstuffed and unlit, as she begins to whittle away at the whalebone in her hands. She doesn’t even know what she’s making, specifically. Any shape it might have once been had been long lost to grief, to guilt, to an obsessive emotion that muddles and twists the foundations of sense in her mind. Perhaps it is a boat in her hands? Or perhaps she is exercising a bit of irony as she whittles herself a visage of a whale, an icon of the great leviathan carved from its own remains. Perhaps it is the barbed tip of a harpoon, or a curved hook for a fishing rod. Or perhaps it is nothing, nothing at all, just a mass of curves and swirls that might evoke the sea’s waves, but ultimately is just the obsessively maddened carving of a grieving sailor.
Ishmael whiles and whittles away at the whalebone, whittles, whittles in an unbreaking focus, so concentrated that she doesn’t notice that someone had decided to sit themselves down beside her and watch her senselessly carve sense into the bone.
When she deems her creation complete, she holds it up towards the sky, letting moonlight and starshine illuminate the shape in her hands, and then jumps and almost shrieks as Ryōshū pipes up from beside her.
“Too abstract.” she says.
“Alright. I don’t care about your critiques about my carving, but could you not scare the shit out of me next time? At least announce your presence?” Ishmael sighs, as Ryōshū only chuckles at her exasperation. “What are you here for anyways?”
“Your back.”
“Huh?”
“At the last mission. You were showing Outis. I wish to see it. Show me.”
Ishmael considers protesting her deranged request, but out of the corner of her eye, she spots Ryōshū tightening her grip on her blade. She sighs again. Unwilling to die slowly and painfully today, Ishmael obliges and removes her shirt and coat, bundles her hair to one side, and turns around to present her whip-scarred back to Ryōshū.
And then, a gloved hand grips the back of her neck, as if she were a fish for slaughter.
“Hey! What th-“
“I suggest you stay still.”
Replaying the sight of the artist tightly gripping her sword within her mind, she stills, hoping that she would lose interest quickly. But working and fighting alongside Ryōshū, she knows. This will not be quick, nor pleasant, physically and mentally. Maybe. Probably. Actually, very likely.
Ryōshū’s other hand began trailing up and down her back. Unlike Outis, she seemed to know where Ishmael could still feel her touch, which was light and feathery, as if she were closely examining a porcelain statue. It almost felt wrong for her to be able to sense Ryōshū’s hand, but even more wrong to her, was that the longer Ryōshū examined, the gentler her touch became. With each second passing, Ishmael lets herself slowly relax into Ryōshū’s grip, and she responds in kind by lightly loosening the hand on her neck, accompanied by a quiet mumble of “Good girl.”
After five minutes, Ryōshū gave her verdict.
“Wild. Unfocused. It’s too messy, too much overlaying. Whoever struck you only understood cruelty. Not beauty.”
“You sayin’ you can rip better lines on my back than my old Captain?”
“Nonsense.”
Ryōshū suddenly presses her lips against Ishmael’s nape, making her shudder as the warmth of her smoke-addled breath hits her skin. She dares not move an inch.
“Starting from here…” she whispers, “I’d only need one line.”
Ryōshū parts from Ishmael’s nape with a kiss, and sits back down beside her while she puts her shirt and coat back on. From within the coat that was draped over her own shoulders, Ryōshū pulls out a long, black-lacquered, elegant looking pipe with a mouthpiece of white ivory and intricate golden patterns painted onto it. Alongside this, she also retrieved a little wooden box, barely the size of her palm, and opened it.
“Here.” Ryōshū grabs a small pinch of her tobacco and stuffs it in Ishmael’s pipe.
“Hm? Oh… ah. Thought you only smoked cigs. Didn’t know you had a pipe too.” Ishmael lights her pipe, then offers a pinch of tobacco from her own little stash. “Here. It’s only fair if I give you some of my own, I guess.”
“Hm.”
Ryōshū accepts, and stuffs her pipe.
“Got a light?”
“Yeah, here.”
“Appreciated.”
She takes one long drag from her pipe, appreciating the slight, smokey sea salt flavour of the sailor’s tobacco, light on her lungs, but refreshing nonetheless. Then, to Ishmael’s surprise, she slides her coat off of her left shoulder and begins unbuttoning her shirt, just far down enough for her to wriggle her left arm out.
“Mine. My thanks to you.” she explains, removing the glove on her hand.
Ryōshū’s whole left arm, from the tip of her middle finger, running all the way up to her shoulder, then spilling in scattered scarlet like paint around her left breast and stomach, was a patchwork of webbed, swirling, sickeningly discoloured scars. The marks of an infernal fire upon skin. Ishmael was familiar with these kinds of scars, for the ship’s cook had them in splotches as boiling water spilled over him during rocky storms. But those on Ryōshū told of a great suffering ordeal. Of her being engulfed in flames, trapped within the vortex of a cruel inferno, barely able to breathe as the fire seared her lungs and consumed her bit by bit. How was she even alive?
Ishmael’s face twists in disgust, and Ryōshū merely laughs at her discomfort.
“ART (A revolting thing) is it not?”
“…Y-yeah. Sure. Just… put that away. Before someone looks this way and gets scared.” Ishmael says with a poorly hidden unease in her voice. She takes a long drag out of her pipe, and it tastes like pure smoke and embers, with a hint of a fragrance, like a field of flowers set burning ablaze within her lungs.
Ryōshū laughs again and complies. “To you, ART, to me simply a painting AFLAME (About fleeting lives and merciless ends).”
Under the moonlight’s glow, did the two Sinners sit in silence, waiting and smoking together.