effie.

(1)Arrival- rescue?

It seemed an ordinary day, of the new life Joscelin had built for himself. His pupils in the art of Cassiline-style arms were doing well, Micah especially. He watches with pride as the young man steps in to play mentor to one of the younger, showing him how to fix his footing to get the forms right. Another young Yeshuite approaches and gives Joscelin a nervous but well-executed bow, arms crossed tightly over his chest in the usual form. Joscelin feels a twitch of a smile that doesn't quite form and bows in return, preparing a ready stance with his daggers crossed for the training bout.

It starts off fine, a weaving and dodging, Joscelin giving perfunctory but not unkind corrections to his sparring partner. He pulls a whirling twist and something seems to go wrong, like the world itself gives a little sneeze. He stops, partway through a twirling form, and feels the rare feeling of losing his balance. He slips, and he hears a few voices shout as he slides into the La Serrenissima Canal...

No, not the canal. This water is salt. It's tangy on his tongue and burns in his throat as the weight of his own body and of his clothes drag him down, faster than he expected. Panic does not hit him, though, only a deep sense of disgruntlement. The Elua-damned ocean again! He tucks his daggers safely away and swims, the least graceful of any movement he can manage, and does get himself to the surface, at the least. His sleeveless coat drags him down, not to mention the two-handed baldric sword strapped to his back. He cannot remove the coat without unbuckling his sword, so he moves to do neither. He flounders a bit, mostly managing to keep himself near the surface, but he's fighting the pull of weight and waves.

He can see a flash of color, bright and nearly painful to the eye, close to shore. Large enough to be a vessel. Where they got a pigment that intense, he's no idea, but it acts as a beacon to shore. He moves his arms, making some headway toward land.

"Micah! Sarae!"

He shouts for the young Yeshuites he had been training with. This is no part of La Serrenissima that he has seen. Did the canal wash him out into the ocean truly? Did the fall knock him unconscious until it dumped him out at sea? How did he not drown?

He takes in breath to shout again, then thinks better of it and focuses his energy on his inelegant, slow swimming. He dips below the water a few times, coming up gasping and spitting salt.

(2)Arrival- Safe

Grumbling, he drags himself onto the sand, dripping in his muted second-hand clothes, his braid limp against his back. He adjusts the sword at his back and makes for the nearest non sand-encrusted area he can see, his beautiful face trapped in a frown. His legs wobble somewhat and he nearly pitches full over sideways.

"Blessed Elua," he curses softly to himself.

(3)A little time later...

Once acceptably dry, and able to tend to his salted weapons and gear, Joscelin can focus on anything else. He finds, or is led to, the Welcome table, which has him frowning in a very different way than he was before, but no less perplexed. His eyebrows draw in tighter as he reads the sticky notes, and then something called a "snogging scale". What manner of tomfoolery is even going on in this place? Even he can admit to himself that the absurdity of it all has not fully sunk in for him yet.

"I wonder who this lady Susan might be, she sounds the most sensible out of this lot." At least her note made any blessed sense, not something he can say about most of the things that he's seen and heard today.