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freosanSo it turns out that every time I do a NaNo, I get another universe. Actually every time I hear a new song/read a new book/have an interesting dream/come across a concept/breathe I get another universe, so perhaps this should not come as a total surprise. Anyway, here is a story from a world made up of countries and towns floating in mid-air.
“I’m going on that ship.”
Daven was standing on the dock of Aurn Harbor, looking out to sea without much interest, when Kylie made her pronouncement. He looked up. She was balanced on the dock-ropes, standing on two thin braids of cotton with her skirts hiked up to her knees and her eyes fixed on the mainmast of the Swimming Eagle, the fastest ship to dock in Aurn.
He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and eyed her skeptically. “Girls on a ship are bad luck.”
She gave him a look of disgust worthy of the Empress. “I am not a girl. I am a woman. And I’m a better sailor than any three boys you can name.”
“Maybe we know that, but the crew doesn’t, and sailors are a superstitious lot.”
She smirked, then, and looked dangerous, despite her frilly blouse and pink skirts. “It’ll be much worse for them not to have me.”
Daven thought she was probably right.
*****
She was. Daven hasn’t seen her in seven months: twice the amount of time of a standard voyage. The day she left, he sent her off with a kiss and a promise to be waiting. He’s waiting now, on the docks of Aurn Harbor, though the sun’s burning hot and the air’s filled with the stench of a thousand sweating sailors and a thousand thousand dead fish.
The ship she set out on – not the Eagle, despite her protests, but a smaller one called the Areomaid – is supposed to dock today. He doesn’t hold out much hope she’ll actually be on it, but he did promise.
*****
She came to his house three months later, and the first thing she sad to him was, “Told you I was going to sky.”
“You told me you were going on the Eagle.”
Kylie flipped her hands back and forth, signifying the utter irrelevance she attached to that fact. “Eagle, ‘Maid, it’s all the same air. Like my outfit?”
“It’s not very regulation, is it?”
She laughed and turned so he could get a full view. She was wearing an old green skirt, hacked off at the knee, over men’s trousers and leather boots half a size too big for her. Her formerly-white shirt was tucked in with a myriad of leather belts, at least one of which was meant to hold a sword.
“Areomaid isn’t as strict about all that. It’s not like I signed on with those stuffy bastards in the Queen’s Guard – oh, sorry,” she said with a smirk. Daven sighed. She’d been mocking him ever since she’d found out that he’d decided to enlist in the elite corps.
“At least I don’t look like an explosion in a tanner’s, oh great captain,” he drawled.
“Hah! That was almost snappy. Another six weeks and we’ll have you up to clever!” she declared. He rolled his eyes at her.
She sat on his table and looked him in the eye. “Look, I’m leaving tomorrow at sunrise, all right? I want you to be there.” She fidgeted with her hair, as if the effort of being serious was frustrating her.
“I’ll be on the docks by sunrise, then,” he said. She burst forth from her perch and nearly knocked him over hugging him. “Relax, woman! Damn.”
“Psst, Daven. I’ve got a secret,” she whispered in his ear, after she’d gotten him pinned to the bed.
“Oh really?” he asked. “Is this like when you told me there was pirate treasure at the bottom of Lock Lake? Because that was kind of painful.”
“Noooo, it’s actually true this time.” She pushed herself off of him so there was enough distance to look in his eyes. “Want to know?”
He actually kind of did, so he didn’t say anything, just smiled at her until she got impatient.
“I’m going to marry you. When I get back,” she said.
He was stunned momentarily while she giggled at his expression. “You’re right, that was a secret,” he managed, eventually.
“And it’s absolutely true,” she assured him.
“I don’t even get to say yes or no?” he asked, pulling her down to lie beside him again.
“You know what your answer would’ve been,” she said, and he had to admit she was right.
*****
So of course he’d been on the docks, and she’d left him, and he’s been in the Guard for seven months and she’s been at sea, and now he’s snuck out when he’s supposed to be drilling to see her come back. So she’d better be here this time.
He lights another cigarette as some ship he’s never heard of before lands and the crew starts throwing ropes in to dock. He’s not looking for her there, of course, so when he hears…
“Daven! Aren’t ye gonna at least wish me safe landin’?”
…He drops the cigarette and stares.
She’s hanging off the rigging like she was born there, looking down at him. He wouldn’t have recognized her had it not been for the grin. Her hair’s lighter and longer, with beads and bits braided into it; her clothing’s all been replaced with items of stained brocade and water-crushed velvet; her skin’s tanned and worn and she’s gotten a few small scars on her cheek.
But her smile’s the same, and her voice, though accented, is the same, and she jumps off the ship and lands on him like a ton of bricks in exactly the same way as she always has.
He doesn’t fall over this time – the Guard’s taught him that much. He catches her and kisses her instead. She tastes like saltwater and rum.
“I don’t need to if you’re going to land like that,” he tells her. She laughs at him.
“’Ave ye seen my ship? She’s gorgeous, ain’t she?” she asks. “Well, she ain’t mine as yet, but she’s gonna be, you wait.” Halfway through her sentence she slips back into her old voice, which sounds odd coming out of her new face.
“She’s lovely, yes,” Daven says. He knows nothing about ships but this one doesn’t look like much, especially next to the Navy’s Eliza II docked next to it.
“You haven’t got a clue, actually, and she looks ruddy awful,” Kylie informs him with a wink. “We’ll have her shipshape in no time flat, though. She’s the Kelvin, and she’s a lot faster than she looks, S’truth. But look, I’ve got things to do up there – I’ll meet you here in a half hour, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, but jumps onto one of the docking ropes and walks up it casually.
He’s got half an hour. Right. He doesn’t think that’s enough time to come to terms with the fact that his fiancée has become a pirate.
*****
“So what got into you, anyway? That Kelvin is no Navy ship. You deserted!” he rails at her, forty-five minutes later, after they’ve gotten back to his house and he’s served her tea. She glowers at him defiantly from over her porcelain cup.
“Yes, I did. What of it? The captain of the Areomaid was disgusting,” she tells him. “Not to mention the crew all thought that there was only one purpose for a woman onboard – the only other women I saw in four months were dock whores. The rations were awful, punishment random and extreme, and eventually, I’d had it.” She puts her cup down and looks up, daring him to comment. He glares right back and takes another drag – he’s been chain-smoking since she landed. Too much stress.
“You’re still not supposed to desert. It’s kind of punishable by death. By hanging. Which is unpleasant. I shouldn’t even be talking to you right now, I should be reporting you –“ he stops at her look, waving his hands “–Not that I’m going to, but you know, these are the things you force me to think about when -”
“All right, then, come off with me and you won’t have to anymore,” she says. He stops midsentence and midflail, stares at her, changes his hand gesture into something that he hopes expresses the level of oh you have got to be kidding me that her offer has induced in him.
She correctly interprets his expression, and says, “Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about what’s going to happen when you go back to camp today,” in the sort of eminently reasonable tone that one would use to talk about, perhaps, choosing class schedules. Not deserting and going pirate.
“I’m not going to sail under a pirate flag! I don’t sail at all, anyway, and stop giving me that smirk,” he says, in response to her sparkling expression. “It’s impossible.”
“You’re no fun, you know that?” she says. “I wanted a pirate wedding.”
He nearly swallows his cigarette.
“That was a joke, Daven. You really wouldn’t?” she says. He knows those puppydog eyes are practiced and they don’t look half so sweet with kohl smeared around them, but dammit, he’s weakening.
“I’m sorry, Kylie, but I’m not marrying a pirate. I’m not becoming a pirate. It’s not what I’d expected when you got back,” he says. It is, of course, the wrong thing to say. She stands up.
“Please accept my deepest apologies for not bein’ the same li’l girl you been pining after,” she says, as sarcastically as he’s ever heard her.
“That’s not what I meant, Kylie, come on,” he says.
“I ain’t gonna ask what you did mean. Don’t much care, either. I’ll be goin’ now,” she says, and matches actions to words by heading for the door.
“Kylie, please. I just can’t, all right? I don’t like you being out there either,” he says. “Marry me and stay here. Stay home. Please.”
She looks at him for a long moment. “Damn you, Daven, you made a liar of me again.”
He grabs her before she can turn fully to the door, because he knows he’ll never see her again if he doesn’t fix this, right now and right here.
“Kylie. I know – I’m being stupid, I’m sorry. Just wait, please? For just a second.” For long enough for him to get this out, so he can get his stupid brain to send the correct words to his stupid mouth.
She pauses and turns back to him, but has her hand on the doorknob and a closed expression on her face.
“All right, I know better than to ask you to stay here, I’m sorry,” he says, yet again. “But – I can’t go either. You know that, right?”
“Aye, I know,” she tells him.
“So I’ll wait for you, okay? Just make sure you come back.”
There’s a long, long moment of silence, where she looks up at him, and he looks down at her, and her eyes go from hard to soft to teary. She blinks, a few times, and shakes her head.
“You know I always have to,” she says, and finally leaves. But not before standing on tiptoes to press her lips to his.
“I’m going on that ship.”
Daven was standing on the dock of Aurn Harbor, looking out to sea without much interest, when Kylie made her pronouncement. He looked up. She was balanced on the dock-ropes, standing on two thin braids of cotton with her skirts hiked up to her knees and her eyes fixed on the mainmast of the Swimming Eagle, the fastest ship to dock in Aurn.
He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and eyed her skeptically. “Girls on a ship are bad luck.”
She gave him a look of disgust worthy of the Empress. “I am not a girl. I am a woman. And I’m a better sailor than any three boys you can name.”
“Maybe we know that, but the crew doesn’t, and sailors are a superstitious lot.”
She smirked, then, and looked dangerous, despite her frilly blouse and pink skirts. “It’ll be much worse for them not to have me.”
Daven thought she was probably right.
*****
She was. Daven hasn’t seen her in seven months: twice the amount of time of a standard voyage. The day she left, he sent her off with a kiss and a promise to be waiting. He’s waiting now, on the docks of Aurn Harbor, though the sun’s burning hot and the air’s filled with the stench of a thousand sweating sailors and a thousand thousand dead fish.
The ship she set out on – not the Eagle, despite her protests, but a smaller one called the Areomaid – is supposed to dock today. He doesn’t hold out much hope she’ll actually be on it, but he did promise.
*****
She came to his house three months later, and the first thing she sad to him was, “Told you I was going to sky.”
“You told me you were going on the Eagle.”
Kylie flipped her hands back and forth, signifying the utter irrelevance she attached to that fact. “Eagle, ‘Maid, it’s all the same air. Like my outfit?”
“It’s not very regulation, is it?”
She laughed and turned so he could get a full view. She was wearing an old green skirt, hacked off at the knee, over men’s trousers and leather boots half a size too big for her. Her formerly-white shirt was tucked in with a myriad of leather belts, at least one of which was meant to hold a sword.
“Areomaid isn’t as strict about all that. It’s not like I signed on with those stuffy bastards in the Queen’s Guard – oh, sorry,” she said with a smirk. Daven sighed. She’d been mocking him ever since she’d found out that he’d decided to enlist in the elite corps.
“At least I don’t look like an explosion in a tanner’s, oh great captain,” he drawled.
“Hah! That was almost snappy. Another six weeks and we’ll have you up to clever!” she declared. He rolled his eyes at her.
She sat on his table and looked him in the eye. “Look, I’m leaving tomorrow at sunrise, all right? I want you to be there.” She fidgeted with her hair, as if the effort of being serious was frustrating her.
“I’ll be on the docks by sunrise, then,” he said. She burst forth from her perch and nearly knocked him over hugging him. “Relax, woman! Damn.”
“Psst, Daven. I’ve got a secret,” she whispered in his ear, after she’d gotten him pinned to the bed.
“Oh really?” he asked. “Is this like when you told me there was pirate treasure at the bottom of Lock Lake? Because that was kind of painful.”
“Noooo, it’s actually true this time.” She pushed herself off of him so there was enough distance to look in his eyes. “Want to know?”
He actually kind of did, so he didn’t say anything, just smiled at her until she got impatient.
“I’m going to marry you. When I get back,” she said.
He was stunned momentarily while she giggled at his expression. “You’re right, that was a secret,” he managed, eventually.
“And it’s absolutely true,” she assured him.
“I don’t even get to say yes or no?” he asked, pulling her down to lie beside him again.
“You know what your answer would’ve been,” she said, and he had to admit she was right.
*****
So of course he’d been on the docks, and she’d left him, and he’s been in the Guard for seven months and she’s been at sea, and now he’s snuck out when he’s supposed to be drilling to see her come back. So she’d better be here this time.
He lights another cigarette as some ship he’s never heard of before lands and the crew starts throwing ropes in to dock. He’s not looking for her there, of course, so when he hears…
“Daven! Aren’t ye gonna at least wish me safe landin’?”
…He drops the cigarette and stares.
She’s hanging off the rigging like she was born there, looking down at him. He wouldn’t have recognized her had it not been for the grin. Her hair’s lighter and longer, with beads and bits braided into it; her clothing’s all been replaced with items of stained brocade and water-crushed velvet; her skin’s tanned and worn and she’s gotten a few small scars on her cheek.
But her smile’s the same, and her voice, though accented, is the same, and she jumps off the ship and lands on him like a ton of bricks in exactly the same way as she always has.
He doesn’t fall over this time – the Guard’s taught him that much. He catches her and kisses her instead. She tastes like saltwater and rum.
“I don’t need to if you’re going to land like that,” he tells her. She laughs at him.
“’Ave ye seen my ship? She’s gorgeous, ain’t she?” she asks. “Well, she ain’t mine as yet, but she’s gonna be, you wait.” Halfway through her sentence she slips back into her old voice, which sounds odd coming out of her new face.
“She’s lovely, yes,” Daven says. He knows nothing about ships but this one doesn’t look like much, especially next to the Navy’s Eliza II docked next to it.
“You haven’t got a clue, actually, and she looks ruddy awful,” Kylie informs him with a wink. “We’ll have her shipshape in no time flat, though. She’s the Kelvin, and she’s a lot faster than she looks, S’truth. But look, I’ve got things to do up there – I’ll meet you here in a half hour, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, but jumps onto one of the docking ropes and walks up it casually.
He’s got half an hour. Right. He doesn’t think that’s enough time to come to terms with the fact that his fiancée has become a pirate.
*****
“So what got into you, anyway? That Kelvin is no Navy ship. You deserted!” he rails at her, forty-five minutes later, after they’ve gotten back to his house and he’s served her tea. She glowers at him defiantly from over her porcelain cup.
“Yes, I did. What of it? The captain of the Areomaid was disgusting,” she tells him. “Not to mention the crew all thought that there was only one purpose for a woman onboard – the only other women I saw in four months were dock whores. The rations were awful, punishment random and extreme, and eventually, I’d had it.” She puts her cup down and looks up, daring him to comment. He glares right back and takes another drag – he’s been chain-smoking since she landed. Too much stress.
“You’re still not supposed to desert. It’s kind of punishable by death. By hanging. Which is unpleasant. I shouldn’t even be talking to you right now, I should be reporting you –“ he stops at her look, waving his hands “–Not that I’m going to, but you know, these are the things you force me to think about when -”
“All right, then, come off with me and you won’t have to anymore,” she says. He stops midsentence and midflail, stares at her, changes his hand gesture into something that he hopes expresses the level of oh you have got to be kidding me that her offer has induced in him.
She correctly interprets his expression, and says, “Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about what’s going to happen when you go back to camp today,” in the sort of eminently reasonable tone that one would use to talk about, perhaps, choosing class schedules. Not deserting and going pirate.
“I’m not going to sail under a pirate flag! I don’t sail at all, anyway, and stop giving me that smirk,” he says, in response to her sparkling expression. “It’s impossible.”
“You’re no fun, you know that?” she says. “I wanted a pirate wedding.”
He nearly swallows his cigarette.
“That was a joke, Daven. You really wouldn’t?” she says. He knows those puppydog eyes are practiced and they don’t look half so sweet with kohl smeared around them, but dammit, he’s weakening.
“I’m sorry, Kylie, but I’m not marrying a pirate. I’m not becoming a pirate. It’s not what I’d expected when you got back,” he says. It is, of course, the wrong thing to say. She stands up.
“Please accept my deepest apologies for not bein’ the same li’l girl you been pining after,” she says, as sarcastically as he’s ever heard her.
“That’s not what I meant, Kylie, come on,” he says.
“I ain’t gonna ask what you did mean. Don’t much care, either. I’ll be goin’ now,” she says, and matches actions to words by heading for the door.
“Kylie, please. I just can’t, all right? I don’t like you being out there either,” he says. “Marry me and stay here. Stay home. Please.”
She looks at him for a long moment. “Damn you, Daven, you made a liar of me again.”
He grabs her before she can turn fully to the door, because he knows he’ll never see her again if he doesn’t fix this, right now and right here.
“Kylie. I know – I’m being stupid, I’m sorry. Just wait, please? For just a second.” For long enough for him to get this out, so he can get his stupid brain to send the correct words to his stupid mouth.
She pauses and turns back to him, but has her hand on the doorknob and a closed expression on her face.
“All right, I know better than to ask you to stay here, I’m sorry,” he says, yet again. “But – I can’t go either. You know that, right?”
“Aye, I know,” she tells him.
“So I’ll wait for you, okay? Just make sure you come back.”
There’s a long, long moment of silence, where she looks up at him, and he looks down at her, and her eyes go from hard to soft to teary. She blinks, a few times, and shakes her head.
“You know I always have to,” she says, and finally leaves. But not before standing on tiptoes to press her lips to his.