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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rolzup" data-source="post: 2841571" data-attributes="member: 10105">Interlude: Ship of Fools, Part V. The Things They Carried (On About)<Aboard MCSDF Windsprint, 6 days from port at Narayan:CITY>For Burne, the plan was uncharacteristically simple and free of combustion. Get Joachim’s advice concerning the problem of Han Oi Xian’s mother, whose living soul was bound up inside a necklace of jade. As a priest, he should have insight into this kind of mysteryUnfortunately, Joachim has spent the better part of the day exploring mysteries of an entirely different sort. The ones of gin, giving out like a blessing by Tawny Portal, High Priestess of the Order of the Saint of Shamelessness, in the Faith of Aja Opal Blossom,Satisfaction Be Upon Her. It is evident that young Joachim is but an initiate into these particular mysteries.“F—k if I know how to put her soul back into another live body,” he says with inappropriate enthusiasm, which so happens to be a virtue in the Order of St. Tarte.“Great Kruetzel the Ever-Risen teaches us to feed the poor, protect the home, defend the hearth, and eat sweets and oils sparingly. Not much in our creed about the transmigration of souls. To Kruetzel there’s no emptiness that can’t be filled by a good meal. Unless it’s that gnawing feeling you get when you keep a secret from the woman you love.”“Hell and damnation, man!” exclaims Burne. “She’s risked death and worse to see you again, and you don’t think she’s strong enough for whatever is eating away at you? She’s an adult, last time I checked.” An awkward pause follows.“Not that I really spent much time checking, you understand!” Burne adds hurriedly. “She being betrothed and all that. But! As I was saying! She’s an adult and I think you’d better start treating her as one. Else you risk waking up with a slit throat one fine morning. Or *not* waking up, to be more accurate. She strikes me as woman with little tolerance for condescension.”“Fulminous Mercury! We’re getting sidetracked, man. I was asking about souls. I’ll have time enough later to fix your communication problems with Delphine.”Joachim takes a swing from a canteen that, from the grimace on his face, clearly isn’t filled with water.“Kruetzel doesn’t teach much about the afterlife. Some denominations teach that the most faithful are gathered up by Kruetzel and serve as prep-cooks in the Kitchen of Heaven. The ones who weren’t too bad, a little too salty or burnt 'round the edges, get split into their ingredients and made fresh, to live their lives again. And those that were really rotten, curdled, bad to the marrow, they get thrown into the fires of Kruetzel’s own pandoor --his oven. To blacken for all eternity.”“Of course, other denominations say that’s a crock-pot of s—t. When you die, you're dead, and you become a meal for something else. You say his mother’s soul is stuck in a piece of jade. Well somebody should get her out. That’s just… unnatural. I could take you to see the High Gourmand at the Grand Pandoor Temple on Cavalry Hill in Narayan. He might know more. There are legends that speak of Kruetzel breathing life into dough.”“I’ve heard of more unlikely things, at that. Probably a bit less objectionable than jade, if a little more prone to being nibbled to death by hungry mice,” muses Burne.“You don’t suppose this fellow would mind having a big tart for a mother, would you?” says Joachim with a pronounced slur.“Bear a grudge, do you? Not that I blame you, under the circumstances.”“I should. That damnable foreign yamika got me thrown into the navy.”“I believe that it's ‘yakuza’”, says Burne, backing into the correct pronunciation by accident.“Why does Delphine want to help him?”“It’s all rather complicated. Seems that Xian’s mother is the spitting image of Delphine, only older. So she could be your future aunt-in-law. Or perhaps his mother is Delphine herself and time travel is involved…”Nearby the madman, sometimes, for reasons no-one can quite recall, Any Seven, looks on with a far-away look in his eyes. He starts to speak.“The fires of love burn hot but the baker man drinks his way to a heartburn of another kind. A little milk might soothe the inside… that’s what mommy always used to say”.He offers up an old tin cup of fresh goat’s milk to Joachim, yet his gaze seems fixed on some point infinitely far away on the horizon. From the condensation around the base of the cup, it’s evident the milk is quite cold. It hovers there for a brief moment, before Any Seven dumps the contents onto the deck.“The fire consumes us all eventually, burns us up, bakes us like cookies left in the oven until the raisins dry up. Keep your hand out of the cookie jar –especially between meals.”Suddenly, the former homeless man bursts into a rage, grabs Joachim by the shirt, and screams into his face.“She roasts in the fire, her flesh charring, crackling… like a pig roasting on a spit! Flames around her -- char-broiling the life from her – so the her body and soul are CONSUMED. The fat man grows fatter, then warms his hands by the fire!“No guilt. No desire.”He releases Joachim gently, and resumes staring off towards some infinitely far place.At first, Joachim is too startled to move. Then a look of anger crosses his face. Followed by one of horror.“Oh Gods, her family is going to be consumed by fire!” he says, wildly casting about as if looking for a place to run. Realizing that no good would come from attempting a mad dash across the wave-tops, he takes a desperate pull from his canteen and then slinks below decks unsteadily, looking like a crestfallen soufflé.“Well,” Burne murmurs after a long moment of silence, “That certainly went well. You’ve a gift for words,” he continues in a louder tone, turning to Any Seven. “Have you ever considered a career in marriage counseling?”</blockquote>

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