moonwrecked

“If you forego questioning where I got it, you’re more than welcome to share.”  Course what she’d actually prefer would be for everyone to question everything- even if it discomforts them. So long as it might better keep than safe. And that’s really what it comes down to; distrust.  It’s not something she’s familiar with, when she wants to trust everyone until they prove she can’t, and even then offer another chance. This, oh this she excuses as being more about the island than the people on it, more about the terrible acts and fleeing of such that got them here. 

“I think it’s rum, or turpentine. Who’s to know really.” Lifts her hand to lift the bottle, holds it out for whoever’s approached.  “As far as I know there aren’t any laws here, aren’t any peelers, so there are worse things than drinking in the streets. Call it a distraction from doing those worse things, if you like. Doing them or suffering them, what’s your poison?.”

after landfall / siren’s sorrow / open

at some point—edward can’t tell when exactly, time seems to be running outside his conscious understanding here—he’s given in. though initially, the purser has refused every single offer of a drink (unlike so many of his friends), there’s one in front of him now, the cup half-empty. it was inevitable, really. with the pressure of everything that’s happened, there’s only one thing that can soothe one’s mind enough to go on like the world isn’t burning. 

it doesn’t quite work—not yet, hopefully. edward stares at the piece of paper in front of him; blank, save for the few attempts crossed out with vigour. there’s pencil smudges on his fingers already, a proof of how much he’s struggling to find the right words. he hasn’t written a letter in so long and it feels especially foolish to be doing it now. edward thought it would make him feel better or perhaps it would help him stay grounded. he feels even more shattered when he realizes that there isn’t anything to say—he’s rather forget so many things. 

the paper barely makes a sound when edward balls it up in his hand. he holds it in his fist for a few seconds before he changes his mind—he unfolds it, straightens it across the table, stares at the page that wasn’t ruined by his hesitation. then he starts writing about the search party and by the time he has them back on the boat, about to find out about estrada’s plan, he realizes he’s got company. he folds the paper in half, covers it with his hand and looks to the other, catches a glimpse of the outside through the window. “i feel like the sun should’ve set hours ago yet it still refuses to give way to the moon. i’ve lost my watch and whenever i ask someone for the time, i get conflicting answers. it makes me nervous.”

---

She nods toward the paper, the docile little attempt to hide it, “I believe it’s spelled S. O. S. if that’s too taxing for you, Edward.” Quirks a grin at him, and for the first in a long time it doesn’t feel hollow. Tragic, really, when the rest of her does. Devoid- there’s another good word for it.  No, though, apparently making fun of her claimed family is enough to bring some sense of comfort, some warmth, make her look like herself. Feels like she’s missed him, though they’ve barely been apart all things considered. Feels like she’s missed him because of all the distance, all the secrets, all the idiotic attempts to handle things alone. 

“Maybe it’s your age catching up with you. Maybe the sun and moon are having a quarrel, Goodness knows they had one for days back there.” Endless night. Only it had found its end, hadn’t it. Endless day might make a change, welcome or worthless. 

———

𝑨 𝑭𝑬𝑾 𝑫𝑨𝒀𝑺 𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑹. 𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑫𝑭𝑨𝑳𝑳

It might take the pair of us, fair enough. The same pair that now walks the cobblestone paths of this port city that defies all maps, all reason, as far as Ephraim can discern. He’s lost count of which turn through the streets this is, but somewhere after the first several he’d come upon Ayla stepping from a storefront.

Speaking of fair. What of all this, then? There’s little fair about the rift that’s split the Promethean and its passengers down the middle. Little fair about the loss of Nyima while others walk free. But the Icemaster knows fair has nothing to do with it; that ice never bent to no such whimsical notions, after all. Only knows the living, or the dead. Fair’s got nothing to do with it.

“Still reckon we’re in a cage?” He opens with this over hello. They’ve known one another long enough to exchange the formalities for a simple offering of the elbow. He steps to the curb and offers his. A puff of frosted breath chases the words from his chapped lips— could’ve been a laugh all stopped up in the throat. “It’s only the bars ‘ve gotten bigger,” he supposes dryly. Nevertheless.  Another turn through the streets, then. Another lap as if the act of retracing will mend their geography into a sensible form. Into patterns as recognizable as the ice he finds himself missing, now they’ve reached solid ground. 

There’s comfort to be had in the ice, after all. He’d first courted it as a youth, fever-ravaged and dunked to his collar in an iron banded barrel of the stuff. Courted it again when grown— each time a different vessel, approaching the same vast thresholds. Each time like meeting an old companion, whose curves and ridges he could read from the horizon out. 

There’s little comfort to be had in strange ports. No law to their structure but that which man makes— and Ephraim knows men to be fickle things, after all.

“How’re your hands?” He ventures with a sly, sidelong glance. He’d caught wind of her movements during the skirmishes at landfall, how she’d taken a rope between the palms and nearly garroted a belligerent crewman with it; and to inform her of such he only winks with a glint of dread in the eye and says, “word travels.”

“More like a trap. Willingly walked into it to get out of the cage.” Same thing, aren’t they? Only look different, only can pretend you prefer one over the other because you give it a different name, pretend it was a chance, a choice.  Both glad and sad that Ephraim seems to know it too. For he deserves a bit of ignorance, if it’s supposed to be bliss.  Draws her palm away from the crook of his elbow, turning it up and laying it open, as much so she can see as he can. Had forgotten all about it. Not the act, but maybe the fact it had been her, that it had been her hands. 

“I didn’t mean to.” Tries again, with a little more honesty, “I didn’t want to.” Finally, “...but it was Eli.” As though that’s the only explanation needed, as though that will express everything. After all, Ephraim had gone to an island in his company, he was sure to understand the urge to keep him safe, to at least try. 

“I wish we could travel as fast as word. I want to be away from here.” From all that we’ve done here. “Do you think we ever will?” 

And it returns. Memory or logic or something that stirs the need for hypocrisy; the request to do no harm. There’s, of course, the thought that their best option for leaving this place is onboard the ship.  It’s not only that which makes her think of it. It’s the panic, the little jolt of hopelessness from all of it, the same feeling she had watching Ephraim aiming at Marc.  Makes her steps falter, her breath the same. Almost chokes on an inhale when she remembers to function.

WHEN | AFTER LANDFALL WHERE | A NONDESCRIPT STRETCH OF BEACH, A SAFE DISTANCE AWAY FROM THE PROMETHEAN  WITH | OPEN TO EVERYONE

this is not his rifle. 

here, in this mirage of a place, conjured by the grief stricken minds of mad men out of seawater, this purgatory made of mist and blood, he still thinks of the old adages tossed around by instructors at sandhurst, old soldiers holding court around campfires in the field. the nature of the beast is this, they would say. eventually, you come to know the body of your gun like the body of a lover–your hands get to tracing every curve tenderly, you know the exact location of every knick and freckle. then they would grin, elbow the nearest boy still too green around the gills, the one who they deemed still too quick to flinch, and mutter under their breaths–’fraid that’s what passes for tenderness out here, lad. 

the rifle jack settles against his shoulder is heavy, hard bodied as every firearm is–but it isn’t his. his is warmed by the hands of another aboard the promethean more than likely, or perhaps it sits prisoner in the gun room–the j and the f carved into the stock obscured under layers of gathering dust. another casualty he failed to prevent. 

he exhales, bites down hard on his bottom lip as he tries to settle the one he now holds against his shoulders, against his flesh and bones. this is not his gun–but he thinks that perhaps that might be fitting, for he is no longer a soldier. he stands yet again with his boots planted in the uncertain earth of foreign sands, only this time he does not shirk the sun–he allows it to perform its work, to melt the flaking gold leaf that covers his skin and turn it into armor, to make him into more. 

let them call me a hero now, he thinks as he gently slides his finger towards the trigger. let me be worthy of it. 

he fires, and the bullet shatters his green glass bottle target. 

he feels the corners of his lips begin to pull upwards. he will not fail again. 

he can hear footsteps sound behind him–they might have been hidden underneath the ringing of gunfire if he had been anyone else. he glances over his shoulder towards them, drags a hand through his hair–he only just notices that it is long enough to tuck behind his ear, to be blown carelessly in front of his eyes with the breeze of the sea. “you haven’t come to volunteer to stand over there with an apple on your head, have you?” he laughs, a quiet sound that sounds rough with disuse to his own ears. “because i’ll have you know i hit that exact shot once, drunk off my ass in the seychelles.”

I’ll do it without the apple. She thinks about it, wonders where he would aim for. If he would pick a point past her or through her.  After all, she’s the reason Vladya’s gone. She hasn’t paid for it, not in the way this place likes; with blood or bone or some part possessed.  It might be why she had approached at all, with no way of knowing whether Jack’s nerves were worn thin enough to imagine anyone as threat, and so turn the weapon on them.  She’s of mind to mention the waste of ammunition, just to argue with him, just to stir something. Only he knows her well enough to know she’d not be herself if she was insinuating such things should be kept for causing harm instead. 

“You can tell me about it, if you like. The Seychelles, or anywhere, anything.”

when / after landfall where / the lobby of the highwayman’s rest with / open to everyone! 

when he was young, when the only frame of reference he possessed was an overactive imagination, his mama’s bedtime stories, and roi’s tall tales of the sea, cyrus used to close his eyes and create imaginary cities–they almost always rose up on some forgotten coast, with long stretches of soft sand to directly contrast england’s rocky shores that required boots, that froze over when the winter came, always buildings made of old stone rose up into sky, playfully taunting him with their vague notion of history, of containing something for him to uncover for himself. the streets teemed with people, eager to share their tales with him, eager to show him the treasures they kept close to their chests–always, he could feel the breeze of the far off desert he could never see but knew sat beyond his line of sight, of the constant sea like a heartbeat. 

he woke up with an ache in his chest every time, the longing for the imagined that plagues every child–but it never stopped him from sprinting down the stairs, where he would collide with his mama’s legs, where she would ask him without fail where he went last night. 

he tries to think of what he would tell her now, but he just keeps producing thoughts that are only half formed, severed of any connective tissue that might give them sense, might make them something he could hope to articulate. almost, but not quite. old, maybe not in a strictly chronological way. eden, but the snake keeps turning into fruit and speaking in a language that can’t be understood. off-axis. 

so this, he thinks as he jots each one in a neatly ordered list in the corner of the parchment he’d managed to charm out of the hotel manager, as though they are important pieces of information to be referred to later on in his research instead of nonsense, is the the undiscovered country. hotels with attendants but without guests that can be seen, streets without people, stores and bars with solitary keepers and without patrons–and the sea, constant as the heart in his chest. 

he huffs out a breath and shakes his head, before he sets the pen down and starts pulling at the roll of bread he’d been offered when he entered, inexplicably warm even though it has been sitting untouched on a plate for at least an hour now. it’s the first time he’s looked up from his work in just as long, and he can feel color rush to his cheeks when he notices that he is no longer the hotel lobby’s solitary occupant–that there’s a strong chance someone may have been watching him sigh and scribble like a madman. 

“as far as i can tell,” he says, as he clears his throat and sets the roll back on the plate. “there isn’t a single map to be found anywhere on this entire island. you can find silk and beads and enough grog to put you to sleep, but cartography is apparently where the line gets drawn.” he worries his bottom lip between his teeth, shrugs his shoulders. “you haven’t seen one, have you? or talked to anyone who has any sense of where we are in fuckin’ space? i can’t make sense of any of it.”

---

“I don’t think this is a place that wants to be found.” Shakes her head then, for she hasn’t seen a map, shakes her head then for her words don’t sit quite right, “or it’s a place that only wants to be found by particular people.” The cursed, the damned, the fleeing. The ones who might choose it because it seems the better option, even when it’s not.  “I’m sorry I disturbed you. Unless you wanted me to?” There’s very little she can offer, but all she knows is that two minutes staring at the back of his head had brought her more comfort than she imagines the bed she’s seeking will. An odd thought that it might not have been Cyrus, could have been anyone from the ship; could have been either friend or foe- just so long as they had arrived there together, so long as she could believe she didn’t simply make them up. 

She can’t say it, can’t mention how she thinks they fabricated the island. It might be one of the least absurd things Cyrus has heard in the past few weeks, but that only makes it more shameful to unburden.  “It’s funny how none of their comforts are comforting.” 

and then there was ayla, ayla dowling who looked at jules in all her messy state ( drops of ink, drops of blood; a message of hope, a message of pain ) and stood there, tall and proud and steady. the girl asked do you need any help with that?, and jules felt that thick rope lodge itself around her throat. felt the grief — a grief unearned, not hers, unfair in the way it stood untouched — settle within. 

what was there to say to an apology here? the ocean ate apologies, pressed them down into the sand, ground them down to dust. to memory. 

what was there to say to any of them? 

“a little,” jules answered. her fingertip ghosted over where ayla had hovered, pale flesh over black ink. ( and so another was dead. and so one day soon it might be one of them. and so the question remained: when death came, would they haunt the living still? ) 

and then, something unexpected, something strange on her tongue that she had rarely offered before — something she knew that ayla would understand. 

“i’m sorry too.” 

She doesn’t expect the admission of it. Not that Jules would ever take pain to mean weakness, when she’s too smart and capable for all of that nonsense. Even on a ship full of soldiers, if that’s what they prefer to be called now, Jules was the one to worry about. The one most likely to cause any threat. Estrada had known it, and still the mutineers had been taken by surprise.  The way she had taken to action, to loyalty, to violence, when it would have been easy to fear the result.  And now that’s what’s here.  What Ayla failed to prevent. 

( the siren’s sorrow / evening, landfall / OPEN )

in a lone corner booth, tucked away, katja stares into a whiskey pool. the edges of their fingernails drag up and down the glass—the only indication that they are still connected to a body. the person trapped in the amber reflection is not someone they recognize, but perhaps this is what happens when you kill an innocent. maybe this is your punishment, your cain’s mark: to become a stranger unto yourself. a weak, regretful, echo of who you once were. 

from somewhere across the room a loud thud breaks the settled tavern buzz. it’s probably someone setting down a box, or moving a chair, but in their ears a musket is firing a killing shot. katja flinches—fingers tightening over glass, jaw tensing. they exhale as emma’s cries and tristan’s howls wash over the musket sound; as their vision becomes filled with blood blooming over a working woman’s dress. then a feeling stronger than grief—the unnamed, unholy, love child of guilt and regret—threatens to overwhelm their eyes. so, they pinch the bridge of their nose, blocking out the rest of the world with closed and tightened eyes. 

 a shift in the air occurs, a new presence sensed, even with shut eyes. without looking up the thief says: “go away. booth is full.”

---

Their first interaction had been in much the same setting; Ayla drifting over to claim the seat at the bar beside Mathilda. Not even a year has passed since, but it seems another world entirely, another century even. Nothing to be said for progress, unless it’s a remark on their opposition- whatever that may be; the fates, demons, malevolent gods, the nature of man, some cosmic unbalancing.  “It doesn’t look full, but appearances aren’t always the whole story.”  There’s no doubt plenty already blaming or praising Katja for something they can’t be sure to have seen, to have known or understood.  “Would you like me to leave? Your decision is really the only important factor.” 

when have they ever been allowed to take charge? when has control ever been something now taken on and held with force, with frost-bitten white-knuckled grips that demand recognition and then take an equal amount of strength to stay there? not you or I and lijin looks down to her hands, to their open, chapped grip, to the now-nearly faded paler skin on her ring finger, to the fainter band on her pointer. rings and promises and changes wrought.

‘ marc. ‘ oh, she could lie it, and it would be easier to swallow, lend her in with the right group, the one so desperate to believe that they can win the ship back, with righteousness and desperation on their side. ‘ my allegiance to him is something much more written, but it is not blind. i won’t feed your every word, or even the hints of any plan or secret. those are for you and yours. ‘ he has the memory of me, and so i shall keep the memory of him, no matter who we’ve both become, and perhaps that will be enough. ‘ but feel free to walk away if you want. ‘

“hush. you’ve nothing to be sorry about, nothing in your life,” he says, pulling away so he can look at her as he says it, make sure she sees that he means it.  “it doesn’t matter anymore, none of it, as long as you’re safe.”

how pathetic it all feels now, how appalling, that seasick feeling of betrayal and shame following him since his friends left him for the ice. how paltry, in comparison to this act from ayla dowling, the immediacy of it– him in danger, and her with the rope. 

he smoothes a hand over her hair once, twice, barely registering what he’s doing. feels wild, shaken loose behind the eyes, pulse still racing, but also– awake. really, really awake, for maybe the first time in his life, because the further he gets from the event, the more he can’t deny that there was a satisfaction to it, amidst that terrible violence. after all these days, weeks, poised on tension, to finally act. to be handed a chance to protect something of his own, by his own hands… and to be protected in turn. 

it’s love as he’s come to know it, turned on its face; another facet, turned to the light.

“nothing hurts,” he says, and it’s true; will undoubtedly change after some rest, when his heart rate slows enough for him to feel everywhere his body was slammed to the dock, but he can’t imagine a moment outside of this racing, this buzz, so it hardly matters. “i don’t need anything. but you– oh, ayla, the rope. your hands,” he pulls out of her grasp, reaching for her palms. cups one of them between his own, and smoothes out the fingers. “did they burn?”

She’s not sure what the noise she makes is, somewhere between a laugh of relief and despair, the faintest sigh of resignation to follow, for she isn’t going to argue with him even when he’s wrong. She’s got everything to be sorry for. All of it. She’s the one who should have paid some sort of price. And that’s what all the blood is, isn’t it? It’s a toll, a punishment, an offering. It just keeps pouring from the wrong people. Onto the island, onto the deck, onto the sand no doubt. The colour of it a warning, red for war, deep and rich to engage the greedy, the violent.