the man who cannot leave his ship
Sailorboy is the captain of the Actæon, the living ship, and he cannot leave it without pain. Not metaphorical pain — actual, physical, excruciating degradation that begins the moment his feet touch land and only stops when he returns to the sea. He can survive it. He has learned to survive it. He carries a bottle of seawater at all times, just in case.
He is the Dreamer of the Sea — connection, emotion, the physical body, the fluidity of all things. He is a Sea Mage and a Weather Witch who can whistle up storms and bend weather to his purposes. He is also a merchant, a sailor, and arguably the most genuinely sincere person in the entire Chain.
He has a large, harp-shaped birthmark across his back.
what he carries
A deep, unrequited love for Our Lady Maeve that he has never adequately expressed and probably never will. A chaotic, devoted friendship with the Bard Thomas that is the closest thing either of them has to a home they can point to. A sadness that is not dramatic or performed but simply present, the way the ocean is present — vast, quiet, and there when you look.
The Actæon loves him most of anyone in the world, and the feeling is entirely mutual.
He has, very occasionally, had too much rum and become a different person — confident and bright and sun-warm, casting a circle of literal sunlight wherever he stands. They call this version Solarboy. He does not always remember these episodes. People who have witnessed them remember them for the rest of their lives.
what he is
Worrisome. Handsome. Sincere in a world that punishes sincerity. He worries about the ship, about the weather, about Maeve, about Thomas, about whether everyone has enough to eat. He worries quietly, not as a demand for attention, but as a condition of his existence.
He is the kind of person who notices when someone is hurting before they say anything. On a ship full of Dreamers who are all, in various ways, hurting, this is both his gift and his burden.
The sea takes care of him. He takes care of everything else.
“What you see is what is there, including the sadness, including the love he can’t quite express.”
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