just as I now sweep through you

once upon a time i told my sister a bedtime story in which the baby daughter of the couple in the song grows up and sets off in search of her father. she disguises herself as a boy and sails to america, where a polish immigrant boy falls for him, then across the pacific and around the tip of india, where a trans girl ties a raksha bandhan around his wrist, and finally to australia. there may have been intermittent pirates. but he makes it to new south wales, the prison colony, and he searches the bars until he finds a haggard man with haunted eyes that are the same color as her own. and she shows him her mother's wedding ring and watches the tears well up in his eyes and then she takes him home. they sail all the way back around the world and he introduces his father to his friends and finally back to athenry where her mother is waiting for them both. first time i ever told a story about a bigender character. actually i was really pushing it on the assumption that ma and my sis were too sleepy to really pay attention. historical accuracy debatable (i fudged my shipping routes) but its still special to me. i never wrote it down but i've got it all in my head