Drifting Along Warm Seas [Catherine, Alvah]

'Whenever we are together'? Guy was crazy if he thought he was ever even breathing near her kitchen. She only gave a murmur's worth of attention to it as she finished the remains of her plate, tossing it into the sea for whatever critters to eat up the specks. She wondered if it would hit the bottom of the sea, far aways into that deep blue, past the swarm of swimming bulbs. How far would they really sink? How far would she sink, if she-

Those wanderings of the mind were interrupted with Alvah yelling a name. Oh. It was her name, that's right. She just looked back at him with mild irritation, her arms wrapped in front of her to rest on the rail, her locks of sunshine spilling over her shoulders. His words got her more and more tense, feeling a sensation of anger burn her throat as he spoke so proudly and confidently on something he ultimately knew nothing about.

It was a flash of movement, only the swirl of a green current would have caught one's eye in the between of the ginger being pinned to the balcony, and having gone to get up in the Arrancar's face and grab the collar of his clothing with two calloused hands, surely knocking the plate off his lap.

"I am not happy," Her voice spoke with a quiet yet cold hostility, teeth grit tightly between words, "Nor do I have to be to be alive. I fought with everything I could, to stay alive, to earn the right to be alive. Most people in my position would be fucking dead, a bunch of losers. But I won, I win, I keep winning, and I will continue winning until I get everything I want. If I settled with being a good little happy girl, then I would've been killed years ago. So don't you act like you know me enough to be all smug, cuz ya don't. You couldn't even imagine, the bullshit, I have to keep up with."

To be fair to her, he doesn't know anything about her. However, he is a Hollow, a creature that swims through negativity, killing and devouring, over and over and over, hoping for sanity to bless its empty void. She has to fight for survival? He could almost laugh in her face, and he does.

"You speak of right? You have no right to live. You're just lucky, but instead of making the best of your luck, you squander and try to cheat life and death through plans and schemes."

He didn't remove her, tilting his head as a small smile twisted his lips. Despite it, the chilling nature of what he is came to fruition as his energy leaked around them, rolling off the boat like the sea's breath.

"When you meet your match and death comes for you, what will go through your mind? Will you remember the happy times or will you have nothing at all to look back on? I, for one, won't allow my life to be filled with nothing but tribulation. I refuse! Every experience, every joy, it will be mine. What will be yours, Catherine? Nothing? What a sorry excuse of a so called right."

Piercing hazel daggers into those dark sulfur eyes, the grace of hearing him was given - did she have some manner of respect or interest in his opinion, or was she willing to let an idiot go on his tirade to it's very end, so much that she would have an excuse to throw him overboard? It wasn't entirely clear, the only indication of her thoughts were at first, only in her tightening her grip. Her gaze remained hard, uncompromising - that was what Farfar taught her; the first to lose one's cool in a serious argument was ultimately the loser.

Even so, every roar of instinct wanted her to beat this guy's ass and throw him off the boat so that she didn't have to hear his stupid, over-confident words anymore.

Not another word was spoken from her, closing her eyes and releasing the collar of his outfit. What she was about to do felt gross to even think about, a cold chill down her back told her to not bother the point any further. Yet, she unzipped her jacket even as it felt like some force of will stiffened her hand. What was this even meant to be, to drive a point home? A secret call for understanding? Reckless shock value? The thought wasn't troubled with for too long, as the article of clothing was promptly discarded in a moment of silence, the first instance of her bare arms the Arrancar would witness.

Starting at a point past the wrists, into her forearms, smooth pale skin under the ship lights harshly segued into rough, discolored textures. Old burn scars adorned her skin with no visible end, even climbing past into her shirt, even what little was visible of her chest from her shirt had these zigzagging malformations, newer scars overlaying at points. Despite their appearance, a proper look would tell the observant they resembled large hands and fingers, varying in severity of damage.

"I'm gonna go get something to drink." Would be spoken with a layer of defeat, momentarily vanishing into the cabin without another word, only to return with a bottle of rather expensive-looking wine, and two plastic cups. A simple play on the souls of the cork pulled it free, and she'd pour her cup full, walking to the edge of the ship and slipping her feet down, wordlessly looking up at the star-speckled sky as she drank.

Magnificent.

Whether both are satisfied or not, a story continues, a chapter ends, and another opens. The book of life does not turn its final page until the final breath, and Alvah is a beast keen on reading his fair share of stories until his own book closes. The look in Catherine eyes is the emotion actors wish they could capture on camera, the raw intensity of a woman who's life has been nothing but close calls, murder, death, survival, and life.

He could not stop himself. His mind ran wild, an artist struck by the thundering howls of inspiration. A flurry of emotion turned his mind into a Picasso painting as he hurried to his notebook as she left and began drawing her beauty. The hands on her skin etched themselves on paper. Her frail skin became a symbol of human existence to him. Her eyes, now cemented in his mind, transformed into black stars in the white sky. Each burn, scar, and warped texture of Catherine was crudely forced to fill Alvah's book in hopes he never forgets.

"Call it luck. Call it endurance. Call it determination. However, Catherine, the stars are only as marvelous as we allow them to be. I could call them flaming balls of gas, but someone could just as easily call them an unfulfilled wish."

There he went again on his dumb tangent about stuff he hardly knew about, swirling the plastic cup as she took a depressive sip. She heard the scratch of a fine pen on paper behind her, a wondering or two of what had him so heated, but hardly the motivation to question him too much.

"Wishes don't exist," Finally, she spoke up after far too long of a silence, "If they did, a whole lot of people probably would be happier. Or worse off. I don't know, people are shit at asking for what they want. Stars are just stars, hot, exploding balls of gases, mostly hydrogen, some helium, bits of other stuff. They don't think, they don't wonder, they aren't looking out for us. They're just as indifferent as the spaces between them."

Soon, she lied back on the deck with a thump, looking up at the sky as if she was searching for something. Then she pointed a finger out, "Leo. Cancer. Think that's Mars..."

"You only prove my point, Catherine," He mused. "A person's perspective is their own, whether changeable or not."

He put down his notebook after finishing his artistic bout and looked over at her. The names coming from her mouth intrigued him. He did not know what she meant but moved his eyes to the sky. The stars are out and about. He read about them, and it's crazy that Earth is but one planet among many.

"Do not take a bit of reprieve as a weakness. If that were the case, then the world would have collapsed a long time ago."

"You're annoying." A bored voice responded to his philosophical ponderings, hair and arms splayed out on the deck as stars reflected in her eyes, "You talk too much."

Everything felt slow and warm, she guessed it was kicking in. Not that she cared all that much, slowly peeling herself off the deck and wandering her way over to him, getting unusually close.

"I wanna see it," Her tone was insistent despite her dulling eyes, "What you drew."

"Annoying? That means you fail to ignore me. Is my presence too strong for you, Catherine?"

He chuckled to himself at his continued taunting, knowing that conversation is best layered with comedic and serious toning. For a second, he did worry, pondering the idea that her outburst may have upset her enough to lose his ride to America. It seems she is capable of being criticized though, which is good. He is good at criticizing.

However, she neared him and demanded to see his drawings. He's no shy man, so he allowed her to scan his work as much as she wished. Outside of archaic scribbling that would be impossible to decipher without his help, she'd see his drawings. Multiple pages were used to capture the jellyfish from before, crudely drawn circles with dark lines that mimicked light screamed inadequate skill.

Then she'd see herself, scribbles of her wild orange hair splayed out on page with a crude circle that represented her face in the middle. Despite it all, her eyes and expression felt eerily accurate, as if staring into one's soul with lifeless disdain. The next page changed the eyes though, showing the mass hysteria she had displayed before. The next page then had rough drafts of hands and lines which represented her body, the paper seemingly rippled as if he had tried to add a bit of texture to his drawing to match the jigsaw of her skin.

A frustrated grunt would precede one of her hands firmly grabbing onto one of the horn-like protrusions that extended from his head, not feeling too intent on letting it go but not doing much to cause harm outside of grasping it. She wondered if they were really horns, or some form of antenna, or if this even hurt, but she just wanted to be slightly uncomforting.

Hand firmly holding the plastic cup sipping down any remaining alcohol in it, eyes skimmed about the pages. What was this moron, illiterate? What was this chicken scratch... Well, wait no it didn't look like chicken scratch, she felt like she'd seen that type of text before; not that she could read it, she just swore it was actually an intelligent language.

It didn't take long for her attention to be drawn to the poor drawings of jellyfish, they looked more like trash floating about with weird tassels than fish. Almost laughing, her tickled expression would become stone cold when she saw drawings of.. Her? She stared at them for the longest time in silence, it was hard to determine what she was feeling, at least until she pulled up on one of his horns to force his head to look up at her,

"..Are you mocking me?" Her expression and tone of voice didn't come across as disgusted or insulted, if anything it sounded like an earnest question, "Is this your way of mocking me?"

Horns, antlers, part of his body, not part of his body: pulling on them still caused him a form of discontent. They are attached to him, so any force enacted against them pull or push on the skin of his head. He felt no immediate need to detach her, but her stupor is making her a bit touchier than normal.

"Mockery? Why, you mock me by insulting my art," He grumbled before ripping his notebook from her hand, pointing at her drawn face.

"As you can see, the detail of the eyes captured the moment you showed genuine emotion, and these hands and scars show the exquisite nature of your human shell. The soul may be untouched, but the body has lived through tragedy after tragedy. To not capture you would have been a greater mockery of your story. It is something I wish to never forget."