His strength is never in question. Its what he is; the presence he brings to this world. To have eyes is to first know this. Surface strength written like poetry in each flex of flesh, curve of muscle raised and hardened through time and purpose. You cannot help but be drawn to him, though few have dared to reach out with questing fingers, to read skin mapped with scars and abrasions like Braille.

I have dared.

I have felt them rough against the smoother pads of my fingers, pressed them down with the sensitive flat of my tongue. I have learned that each aspect of his body leads to the ruin of his chest, the strike of skin ripped and mended marred. He laughs into the dark at my preoccupation, when my hands settle there, urgent and expected, rubbing against the raise softly, and then roughly, as I try to pry a path inside.

It is in there that I know him, and am known in turn; it is inside, past all things material, where his true power pulses. Purpose and goals that have tossed him to the sea, given him to this crew, and placed him here, on this ship, between my thighs, sweat slicked tension in the moonlight.

And it is later, with limbs tangled like a slanted puzzle, as the sounds of his snores drag across my ear, that I am most in awe of the might of this man. This is power in repose, the strength of one who is not the best but will be, who carries a soul and resolution in the shape of a sword, gripped tight between the bone of his teeth.