February 4th, 1890 — Magical Docks, London

Winter had to be Jo's least favorite season to travel. What was normally a tolerable trip across the Atlantic was wrought in rough waters and frigid air. By the time the crew cheered for land she was a sick, miserable mess of blankets below deck. Even Saturn, who despised sailing more than Jo would ever comprehend, fared better than she this trip. It was safe to say she would be waiting for Spring at least before heading back to South America.

Which was why her temper exploded when she realized her trunk hadn't been delivered to her residence as arranged with the captain. She and Saturn both knew their focus would be anywhere but retrieving their belongings once docked. Mars was a widow at only twenty-one — Jo's attention couldn't be anywhere but on her grieving twin. How could it when the guilt of not being present ate at her throughout the entirety of the past three weeks?

She moved quickly between the docked ships, eyes scanning quickly for the Serena. The deal struck with the captain hadn't come cheaply, to have to leave Mars' side so soon after arriving home only served to irritate her further. The galleons would be returned — she would insist upon it. Not to mention her belongings had best not been riffled through. Jo didn't care for her clothing, but there were several sentimental tokens from her travels stashed in them. If those were missing ... the Lord himself would have to appear to stop her fury.

  

Alfred had let the crew off for the day, mostly because he was running out of things for them to do and wanted to ration out the remaining tasks as best he could. There was no telling, after all, when the Ministry would get around to letting him leave the area once again. It was possible, now that it had been nearly a month, that they had just entirely forgotten about him. Maybe he ought to inquire — maybe they could leave next week, if the Ministry didn't actually need anything. Alfred would like to have his knife back, he supposed, but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to write it off as a lost cause and get on his way without it. He'd lost things of much higher value on previous trips, and the knife didn't hold any sentimental value.

Anyway, he was just packing up for the day and heading off of his ship when he spotted an unfamiliar figure on the pier nearby. It was fairly uncommon to see anyone female in this section of the docks, since the ships here were mostly cargo-carriers and not passenger ships or cruise boats (which took care to keep their docks looking a little more presentable than the one immediately outside the Voyager). It was so surprising that he had to do a double take to make sure he didn't recognize her — though if a woman was coming here looking for him that would surely be a terrible sign.

He didn't recognize her, he decided, but by then he'd spent too long looking at her not to say something in passing. "You look lost," he observed.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

The man staring at her was startlingly familiar, though in her angry state Jo couldn't quite place it. Had he worked aboard the Serena?! Was he responsible for her missing belongings?! Rather than accuse him though, Jo furrowed her brows and frowned. "I'm looking for the captain of the Serena." She said with a huff. "He made off with things of mine and I'd like them back."

The longer she stared at him the more certain she was that they knew one another, and not from her most recent voyage either. Jo folded her arms across her chest before continuing l, "you look familiar. Have I sailed with you before?"

  

If she was looking for the Serena she was lost, or at least too late; it had pulled in at the next pier to unload its cargo but had shifted berths later that same night. Alfred had only been aware of it after the fact, when he'd come in the next morning and seen that the place where she'd been docked was empty, so he wasn't sure exactly where she'd gone, or why. It was unlikely to be anywhere very distant, though, given the turn-around time between pulling in and pulling out. Maybe they'd shifted down to a pier that was easier to accomplish some structural work, if they had any that needed doing — that seemed the most likely scenario. In any case, the port authority would know, and he was inclined to direct her there without any further involvement on his part, until she asked if they knew each other. It wasn't that she'd asked — people sometimes recognized him from newspapers or the back of that damned book. The way she'd asked, though, was intriguing: had they sailed together.

Every voyage he'd gone on since his return from the Sycorax, he'd been the captain, and he liked to think he would have recognized any of the men who'd sailed under him. He certainly would have recognized a woman, though, because they were few and far between — and, because, if he were being honest, he was still too superstitious about having them on board to just treat them equally, regardless of their role. She hadn't been on his ship since he'd returned to England, then. He didn't remember every face from the Sycorax, particularly with the whole slew of scientists and researchers they'd brought along, but there were only three survivors of that journey, in the end, and he certainly knew them quite well. Which only left his early sailing career, but that didn't seem possible. He wasn't sure how old she was, but she didn't look old enough to have been sailing ten years ago.

"Doubtful," he answered. "And the Serena's moved, but I'll walk you over to track down where," he offered. It was uncommon enough to meet women with any nautical experience that he felt it was justified to help her out a bit, if only so that he had an excuse to talk to her a bit longer and satisfy his curiosity. "You sail?"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"That bastard." Jo hissed in response. What a shady, double dealing, bastard. The arrangement had been spoken of for months, the money paid well in advance. Jo wasn't normally the sort to be swindled by grifters, but her distraction had allowed a glaring opportunity. It would take nothing less than a heavenly miracle to encounter any of her belongings again. Such a loss would take months - if not years to recover from.

Still, the offer to track it was helpful. Even if her belongings were gone, recouping the money would salvage at least something. "Yes, please. That would be excellent." Jo said and began to follow him back the way she came. "Not as a crew member, unfortunately. Most of the time I have to convince the captain to let me aboard at all. But I've traveled to several of the continents by ship."

  

The first part of her answer wasn't at all surprising to him. Alfred considered himself far more liberal (and generally more enlightened) than the average Englishman by virtue of his exposure to so many other cultures, and even he had trouble getting comfortable with the idea of embarking a woman. Obviously, most more traditional captains wouldn't be eager to take on a woman, even if she was willing to pay for passage.

The fact that she'd traveled so much was interesting in and of itself, though. It wasn't a typical trait of English women, or at least not the sort that wore skirts and corsets.

"What sees you traveling so much?" he asked, genuinely interested in her response.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Most Englishmen shied away from discussing her profession. Be it their views on women (which were as tiny and insignificant as their town) or their egos (which were larger than the universe) they typically scoffed at her and walked away. As such, when afforded an opportunity to share her passions Jo rarely allowed it to pass by. A sailor would understand her want to explore at the very least.

"I'm an archaeologist recently returned from Venezuela. There's an excavation there investigating a former magical community. We have reason to believe it's linked to some larger extinct muggle civilizations." She thoughtfully explained. "I've spent most of the past four years there, with some other trips East and South." Jo gestured animatedly as she spoke, the love of exploring and learning plain on her face. "There's much to see in this world, wouldn't you say?"

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   J. Alfred Darrow

Archaeology! That was a subject Alfred knew nearly nothing about, but the longer he'd been out of school the more interesting it seemed. He had some greater distance from his Ancient Studies professor, whom he hadn't been particularly fond of, and more exposure to different cultures which begot a greater interest in learning about those cultures, or past ones. Although he had met a few archaeologists (both of which had since died), he didn't know much about what they actually did, day to day, or how one became an archaeologist. Nevermind how a woman became an archaeologist.

"Yes, I agree," he answered with just as much animation. "And I spent a great deal of time in that part of the world as well," he added with a somewhat cryptic smile. If she recognized him from the paper, she'd get the joke, but he wasn't trying to make this about him when she had such an interesting life as well. "How do you know it's a magical society, just by looking at the ruins?"

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   Jupiter Smith

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

That was where she knew this man from! Saturn had become infatuated with the idea of being shipwrecked for months after reading Mr. Darrow's book. "I believe I read something about that." She answered with a laugh. Saturn was going to grow green with envy when she later bragged about meeting Mr. Darrow. Jo couldn't wait.

"We've recovered several cursed artifacts, likely buried with the tribe's leaders to thwart grave robbers." Such was the operating belief, anyway. Jo wasn't always entirely convinced, but she was still not able to lead any work on her own. "There's also some enchantments carved into the furniture and walls."

  

She had read about him, then. Alfred was a bit relieved that his comment had made sense. He'd realized after he'd said it that if she hadn't recognized him from any of the several places his picture had turned up his answer would have seemed intentional obscure, and that really wasn't the vibe he was going for. (And it wasn't often that Alfred even had anything he was 'going for', socially inept as he always felt he was, particularly at home in England. Even though he'd known this woman for less than two minutes, though, and still hadn't managed to get her name, her profession and the way she talked about it had piqued his interest. He wanted to hear more about her work and her travels, and more than that, to just hear more about her. He wanted her to feel inclined to talk to him — he wanted her to like him. Which was sort of new for him, at least since he'd returned from abroad).

When she brought up cursed objects, though, he couldn't help but feel let down. He'd missed most of the drama with the fog in Irvingly that had swept through England taking magic away from wizards, but that had been due to a cursed object of some sort from an ancient civilization — and that was, apparently, the general type of thing that had produced the chest he'd turned over to the Ministry earlier. He was entirely too close to that particular incident, and it was what had kept him and his crew sitting around in port twiddling their thumbs since January. He'd had quite enough of cursed objects.

"It's sad that curses are the only things we really see from those societies, isn't it?" he asked with a frown. "And there seem to have been quite a few of them floating around lately."

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   Jupiter Smith

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Of all the reactions Jo expected from him at her answer sadness wasn't one. She bit the inside of her lip as she thought of how best to answer. There weren't many people she could discuss digs with on this side of the Atlantic without coming across as rather odd. While she didn't assume Mr. Darrow would immediately be her friend, she had hoped this conversation would at least be pleasant.

"I suppose you're right." She began somewhat cautiously, "that's not all we see, though. Outside of the magical components their culture closely resembled many other muggle societies. I more like to believe our leaving behind little trace of magic makes our lives that much more meaningful."

  

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beautiful set by mj

"But if that magical trace is a curse..." he argued, drifting off halfway through his sentence. It wasn't that he didn't see her perspective, or that he didn't appreciate it, but he still thought the implications — maybe about whatever culture she was studying but maybe about humanity or history as a whole — were less than stellar. He didn't mean to belittle her field in the slightest, though, and he paused to try and make sure the way that he was wording what he said next wouldn't come across that way. He wasn't trying to make her think he was saying these things were better left undisturbed, or anything. Whatever information they were able to find from a ruin was probably worth a little risk, he imagined, so long as that risk was managed correctly. It was more the fact that those things existed at all, when so many other things hadn't lasted.

"It's just — there's so much good magic. Fixing things, or making new things, or even creating illusions. And any magical society probably had all those same sorts of things, and maybe even other sorts of magic that we don't even teach in England," he said, thinking of the tribal magic he'd learned while abroad. "And wouldn't it be great if that was what was left, after everything else was gone? But it doesn't ever seem to be that way. It's always the curses. And then that's the impression that we're left with," he explained. "Maybe not for you, if you're up close studying it, but — like the fog that happened in Irvingly," he continued. "That came from a cursed object from Egypt. And for a lot of people here maybe that's the only thing they'll ever know about that entire culture."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Mr. Darrow was right, of course. The fog had cast such a negative light on Egypt that Tiffany Smith frequently requested her two traveler children to avoid the country as a whole. And though such a request wouldn't be enough to keep her from visiting should the opportunity arise (to explore those tombs was a dream of hers), she hadn't yet pursued any adventures that might lead there either. In Jo's experience, artifacts were usually a double edged sword. For where there was something new to discover there was also something new to fear.

"The goodness comes from every day magic. From simple magic like a cleaning charm and the likes. Most people don't have a need for continued positivity as there's always more to be found. Think of it this way, in any given situation we're more likely to remember a negative event than a positive. An example being your misadventure in South America. Surely, it wasn't bad in its entirety. You might have shared jokes with a friend or been excited to learn from the natives, but that isn't what we're prone to remember." Jo had stopped walking as she explained. The decision to use his life altering experience as an example was likely going to backfire on her, but it was the first thought to spring to mind.

"Magic is very much the same. I couldn't tell you about the countless good spells I know off hand, but I could easily relay the bad. Such a flaw doesn't belong strictly to magical societies. It's simply a trait of humanity." She blushed slighly at the end of her tangent. Flirting and conversations about anything else really were second nature to her. Sharing life philosophies with a man she met only minutes prior was a little out of her depths. "You can't go into it with the expectation that those before us were a better sort." She said lastly.

  

Alfred bit the inside of his lower lip as she talked about his misadventure, as she'd called it. He didn't think of it that way at all, and if she thought that the only memories he carried with him from those five years of his life were negative, she was mistaken — but she would hardly be the first. Most of the people he met in England didn't think there was anything to the story of the Sycorax beyond tragedy, and Alfred didn't bother to correct them. It would be insensitive in certain ways to all of those whose lives were lost, and disingenuous to pretend that the really horrible things he'd experienced hadn't left as much of a mark on him as the positive ones. That, and most people simply weren't capable of understanding. It wasn't worth his time or their trouble to try and convey the depth that an experience like that brought, when they had never and would never go through anything similar, so he didn't try — and he wouldn't try now, with her, either. She might have traveled and had an interesting career, but she was still, on the face of things, just another stranger, and the assumptions she'd made about his experience so far didn't lead him to believe she was any more inclined to understand it than anyone else he'd met in England.

Ignoring that bit of it, he still felt that her explanation was dissatisfying, but not because he thought her logic was flawed or that she was wrong, necessarily. It was disappointing because she was probably right, and he was probably being a little naive to have expected that the world could be any other way — and that in and of itself was disappointing enough. But that was hardly her fault.

"I suppose so," he responded with half a sigh. "Maybe that's where that phrase comes from: nothing good lasts."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"Perhaps so." She replied casually. It was her belief that nothing good was meant to last, for a single flame couldn't burn eternally. One had to constantly seek out the good to even have a taste of it. "Doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy the good while we have it, though." Some might say she overindulged in her search for happiness, but those were typically the sort caught up in the waves of propriety.

She looked down the dock towards the shimmering sea. Today was too beautiful a day to waste wallowing in the evilness of society. "Once we've tracked the Serena down would you like to grab a drink with me? I'd like to hear more of your travels instead of blabbering on about myself."

  

Her proposal caught him off guard, as he'd still been a bit caught up in his own thoughts and the tail of their conversation about the innate goodness, or lack thereof, of people and magic. That, and he just wasn't used to anyone taking much of a social interest in him. He could survive a fundraiser if he had to, but outside of that he wasn't in the habit of talking to new people and making new friends, really. Certainly, he didn't tend to get invited out for drinks before he'd even exchanged names with someone.

That being said, he couldn't pass up a chance to talk about his travels, not if she was genuinely curious. Plenty of people weren't; they were only interested because of the sensational nature of the tale, with the shipwreck and the return from the dead and all. He wasn't holding out hope that he'd accidentally stumbled upon someone who would actually understand everything he'd been through, but she did at least seem genuinely interested, which was something. "We could do that," he agreed with a tentative half-smile. "I don't think I got your name, though?"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER