Deepest Africa (locked to Kate Barlow)

[immutablysam]

Sam took a long time setting this one up. The details had to be right. The ship has records of Africa, of course, but those are, in general, from a time long after Sam's own.

The 'camp' is just at the border between jungle and wetlands. The ground is treacherous here. Much further towards the trees, and it'd take a machete to get very far. Mosquitoes abound, the heat is downright oppressive, and if one wanders too far off of the trail, partly just composed of mud layers on top of tree roots, they might get a close up of a crocodile or three, floating in the water amidst the fallen trees to escape the heat of midday.

Sam seems quite comfortable, stretched out on a fallen log, hat tipped down to shade 'his' eyes while he waits for company.

Comments

[ikissdhimbck]

Were he any other man, the clipped, cavalier way he answers would garner her ire. He answers like they're talking about the weather or picking out a good skin from the market, not immortality. So Kate fixes him with narrowed eyes and an arched eyebrow, wondering if he plans on volunteering anything else or if he's being coy on purpose.

"Really?"

How's a lady supposed to react to that kind of shock?

[immutablysam]

"How would you like me to prove it? But, really. Not that we were ever s'posed to talk about it, lest anyone actually find it. But I've done more'n a normal share of livin' and traveling."

[ikissdhimbck]

She lets off a startled laugh.

"Prove it? Sugar, you jus' told me you was one hundred years old and that the Fountain of Youth exists in your world."

She finally starts moving again, taking a couple quick strides to catch up with him.

"All as if you was placin' an order with a general store. Y'have met me before, haven't you? Do I really hafta ask what it was like?"

Finding it, where it was, what it looked like, how it tasted — hell, it don't matter. He's just gotta give her more than that!

[immutablysam]

"Existed. It's gone. And before that, I wasn't exactly a regular visitor. My Dad found it by accident. Took my mother back there. She didn't know she was pregnant with me when they were drinkin', bathin', all of that. So, I got a bit more of a direct hit of it than Dad, I suppose."

[ikissdhimbck]

If he's looking at her, he'll see her face fall.

"Oh."

She don't know why she's so disappointed, it ain't as if it's a sure thing his world is the same as hers; however, knowing it's out there, someplace to discover, someday...

Well, that's all gone now.

She gives herself a mental shake.

"So you never got a chance t'go there yourself? What 'bout your parents? Without the Fountain, are they still — with us?"

[immutablysam]

Sam sees the expression fall, and... pauses. Sam knows that expression all too well, for very different reasons.

Yes, it's gone. It's all gone. Thanks to greed, and railroads, and science. Time marches on and all that.

"I missed my chance by about two years. We went back when it was a matter of life and death... which is how I know for sure it's gone. My Dad is still around, startin' to show his age a bit... or some age. After, way he figures it, three-hundred years, he's lookin' about like a guy in his late forties, fifties maybe. My mom died not long after I was born."