meryoon / yoonmin

Of Touches and Tears

Yoongi sort of regretted not telling Jimin he was leaving. However, being faced with the view of the merman curled up and peacefully asleep the sailor was confronted with the fact that his heart wasn’t strong enough to shake the sleeping angel awake. Instead, he gathered his things and his glass full of water before setting off.

His own body was complaining against the awfully early day-starters but Yoongi’s mind was too busy buzzing with excitement to let the sailor sleep more. There was a certain anticipation eating him away; his idea from yesterday was still very basic and vague but definitely doable.

If this goes well today, Yoongi drawled albeit there was nothing but hope pulsing in his veins.

He set to explore the forest of the island’s western, flat part with a very specific goal in mind. Yoongi’s sharp eyes were critically sizing up the trees in his way, actively seeking out each and every single type. He made a mental note of their texture, widespread availability and measurements. Based on these the sailor easily judged the types of timber for their resilience, buoyancy and the ease which they could be worked.    

Yoongi needed a single type of knot-free wood that wasn’t susceptible to deterioration upon being exposed to water for a lengthened period. It also would be heaven sent if the timber was easy to handle given that the sailor lacked all types of tools needed for shipbuilding - the only thing he had was his sword and his hands. And those had to be enough.

“Best would be oak or cedar,” Yoongi mumbled to himself, his eyebrows furrowed under his fringe. “But those only grow north and I’m fucking stuck in the tropical zone.”

The abundance of fruiting trees tipped off Yoongi as much as it amused him. He kept snacking on the fruits as he was walking around - albeit he totally turned a different direction when he saw those yellow apples grinning at him from the branches.

“Not today, Satan -” Yoongi sent a disgusted look at the fruits, with mouth curving downwards- “not today.”

Fuck those caramel lickspittles and the dick they ride on, Yoongi scoffed in revulsion trying to shake the shiver off his body. He could practically taste the sweetness on his tongue and he had to stop for an early lunch to wolf down the last piece of deer meat - desperate to get rid of even the memory of that sugary taste.

The first success came around an hour later when Yoongi stumbled across a handful of old sapele trees. The specimen was healthy and sturdy with perfectly straight trunks - the best any shipbuilder could ask for.

“These will be perfect for the framework,” Yoongi mused evidently satisfied with his discovery, slowly walking around the sapele. His brown eyes studied the wood through an analytical lens.  “I’ll craft the keel, stem, and sternpost from these... would be nice if there were enough wood for a rudder from these too.”

With sapele trees, Yoongi now had great material for the parts that had to bear the most strain. The mast would require another type of wood, one that is more flexible and performs well under compression. So, a douglas fir or a Sitka spruce would be the best. But those only grown up north too, Yoongi’s brain helpfully supplemented.

Furrowing his brows the sailor weighed his chances. Due to its rigidness, sapele didn’t make great masts but Yoongi didn’t exactly have an abundance of choices here. But even if he did chose to make the mast from sapele, that still left him needing more wood for the tapered planks to make the ship’s body.