Through gospel, song and vivid memory.
The tavern announces a full-house with loud and boisterous song, and Jack weaves past the crowds with the ease of someone who's far too familiar with the waltz of drunks. He mentally notes down the faces and accents that stuck out from the norm: The singsong quip of merchants that were comparable to the hollow chime of coin, the harpist that strummed with more vigour than sense after ale, some castaways who were so far gone in the haze of intoxication, all of which were so persuasive than illustrative in speech that Jack's interest simply melted away.
He would've spared more patience on a better day, link their stories to the maps beyond town and maybe even appreciate how they each sold a fantasy. Storytellers use lies to tell the truth after all, and their account of events used to matter in his younger years. He figured that maybe if he stayed long enough in places like these, where customers were loose-lipped and drunk enough to divulge just parts of their world, he'd have listened to enough answers to match at least one to his many questions. Perhaps it would help him remember bits and parts of a hometown that used to be golden and safe through the verbal recollections of others; those who have seen it in passing, too, that can help him find a truth if not the whole truth.
Except he cannot remember without pain that he finds no solidarity in feeling, not with this crowd.
Jack joins dark-haired Braig behind the wooden counter to lapse into the bartending duties he will no doubt retire from eventually, and forces a bitter pill in reminder that he’s found an answer to visualise life beyond the shallow waves around their town, now, in the navy he had so little love for. That it was enough for now to move forward more relentlessly than ever in spite of everything.
So when he sees it in someone else's eyes that day, the little crack of loss that breaks the veneers people hold so close and dear in a world so vast and cold, he wipes a glass and reminds himself not to project onto a stranger so finely groomed.
Jack asks, casual in professionalism even in an atmosphere that did not require it. ''What'll you have?''