esteven: (Default)
[personal profile] esteven posting in [community profile] where_away
There were plenty of people on the little quarter-deck- the master at the con, the quartermaster at the wheel, the marine sergeant and his small-arms party, the signal midshipman, part of the afterguard, the gun-crews, James Dillon, the clerk, and still others - but Jack and Stephen paced up and down as though they were alone, Jack enveloped in the Olympian majesty of a captain and Stephen caught up within his aura. It was natural enough to Jack, who had known this state of affairs since he was a child, but it was the first time that Stephen had met with it, and it gave him a not altogether disagreeable sensation of waking death: either the absorbed, attentive men on the other side of the glass wall were dead, mere phantasmata, or he was - though in that case it was a strange little death, for although he was used to this sense of isolation, of being a colourless shade in a silent private underworld, he now had a companion, an audible companion.

(chapter four)

I always felt this was the first time that showed how together Jack and Stephen are, even this early on.
*smiles*

Date: 2012-01-28 12:21 pm (UTC)
heather_mist: (Default)
From: [personal profile] heather_mist
Indeed - it is in the knitting together of all these little incidents and thougnts that we are shown how bound together these two are, and how right it is that they should be so.

Date: 2012-01-28 03:59 pm (UTC)
derien: It's a cup of tea and a white mouse.  The mouse is offering to buy Arthur's brain and replace it with a simple computer. (Default)
From: [personal profile] derien
"An audible companion" implies that very often previously Stephen has been so lonely that he's talking to ghosts of his own memory, yet it's wonderfully subtle about that touch of angst.