[b]Coleman![/b]

The Flood reaches out and caresses your jaw with one rotten hand, and where scales and wood meet, the wood flakes away. For a moment, you are driftwood floating on the tide; you are a stone being smoothed by the current, washing away the words etched into you in memorial; you are love poetry surrendered to the water. Then the tide recedes, and you realize that, for one reason or another, you're still alive. And you only seem to be missing a little bit of yourself. A memory or two, but you'll be run over before you can tell where the holes are.

"This is the only time I offer," she says. "When you come to me again, I will take you both together, if you ask." And the way that she says it... she invites you to imagine yourself colonized, brutalized, or otherwise consumed by the powers of the Heart, dragging yourself and a dying Sasha along, and finding yourself at the shores of a still river. Her arms are wide and her heart is cruelly caring and she is so [i]certain[/i] that you will eventually find forgetting yourself in the deep more palatable than your fate.

She recedes, wading to her knees in the water, and then--

It's like a magic eye puzzle (not that you'd recognize that; you'd have to ask Jackdaw). What was the Flood's merest fingernail is now just trash floating on the water; here, a spur of wood, there, teeth and gold.

The crossing has just become extremely ominous. But, again... the other path is through the [i]Houses of Parliament[/i]. And she seemed like her vengeance would be like the flick of a hippo's tail, rather than the death roll of a crocodile with its prey in its jaws.

***

[b]Lucien![/b]

[i]She wants you, too.[/i]

Not like she wants the train egg (a terribly cursed turn of phrase, still). But when she cast her gaze over you, she held your eyes for a moment with those cloudy pearls. But for all that you may have done regretful things, there's still more to be seen. Isn't that right? There's drinks to be emptied and sights to ogle and somebody needs to keep the mouse from dooming herself.

***

[b]Ailee![/b]

This power is a [i]cowardly punk[/i] who got so huffy over not making out(?) with Coleman that she immediately collapsed into trash parts and if you don't cross her while making rude gestures you're going to explode. Screw "maybe not going over the power Coleman just offended/turned down and looking for a safer route," if she tries anything on the crossing you could probably blow her apart just by looking at her angrily.

***

[b]Jackdaw![/b]

What preparations need to be double-and-triple-checked on Coleman's lovely raft? Because it's amazing, yes, especially with the limited supplies he had to hand, but there's always something worth worrying about, and where oh where are you going to perch? And maybe you should leave sooner rather than later, what with the way the locals are giving you all the stink eye after you managed to make their god appear and then immediately swan off back into the water.