You take a slow step forward, the ash crunches loudly beneath your boot, scattering clouds with every step.
You give a slow tip of your hat, JJ holding onto the back of your pants and not letting go.
<greetings, followed by inquiry>Howdy. Is the fishing... good?
The creature tilts its hooded head at you and reaches into a small satchel hung loose around (his) robes. Letting his fishing rod stay lodged between the boarding, he pulls out a dented tin of Copenhagen. With slow, delicate care he grabs a small rope of tobacco and sneaks it under his hood, not bothering to answer with any haste. You hear a crackle and loud, wet smacking from under the thick fabric.
After a few moments of wet smacking, a voice rattles from underneath, muffled and wet on every syllable.
>"Mebbe so, but ain't nothing I'd be knowin' of.
>"I's only fish these days as a favor fer m’girl, an’ now I'm jess' relaxin'. Let dem folks upstairs get their jollies out whiles I take care ah' thuh lee'l devil."
>"Little devil? So you did catch something? Wouldn’t that mean the fishing is good?"
JJ seems as confused as you as to how there is no bucket, or cooler, or means to keep whatever this thing fishes up. Or why he’s fishing here in the first place.
>"Unn. I see now, I forgot how’n most folk see fishin’ on the surface-side. I mean ah’m fishin’ with m’girl."
...
>”Easier to jus’ show it.”
Spindly, scaly and irritated looking joints of a four-fingered gray hand go back to the rod, and with a bit of a quiver, the Hooded Creature pulls up the line--
A young girl's face hangs taut from the end of the multi-pronged hook. Her eyes are glossy and sunk deep, on breaking the water, you hear what sounds like gargling. Various hooks pierce her cheek and eyelid, tightly affixing her to the hook. Bright blue rivers of long dead veins adorn the pasty-white remains.
Her eyes flick to and fro frantically as you put together what you’re looking at.
It’s a wooden figure, like a doll, wearing a child’s skin over its face.
Its eyes settle on the Fisherman and a voice rises from the creature’s mouth, one member of the Hive notes that it sounds like if you mixed Judy Garland and every female lead in a spaghetti Western.
>"-Ugh!! What the heck, Pops? You scared me-I was half-sleepin an’ got muck in my mouth..."
>"We gots guests, mm-hmm."
As he talks, he reels the line fully in, and extends his arm to the 'Girl', lifting her onto the boardwalk. Her skinsuit stretches and tears away on surfacing, showcasing wood and various dark gears and pulleys visible from various joints in her chest, arms, neck, and legs. She’s abnormally tall, at least eight feet in height.
Coming to her senses, the girl-looking thing sits up on the dock, and gives the two of you a broad smile, showing wooden, misaligned teeth and a wavering silver glaze in her overly-large, hallowed eyes.