#iludhra

The Stormsinger

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Current Stock: 5, limited quantity.

I have been unlike myself of late, or perhaps more truthfully, I have been more myself than I was before. When the ocean takes a Drifter, we do not mourn in the way that many do. We honor their life by seizing hold of our own. We celebrate and we sing and we dance and we love...we live.

I keep watching Iollan leap from the rigging, a track set to loop in the shadows of my mind. I was untouched by the sirens' song, even as so many others fell helplessly to it...and I do not believe that it marks me stronger. I am simply already trapped in the song of another, and I will follow him blindly to the bottom of the sea.

He has never looked at me before the way that he did last night, as though I was finally the woman he wanted. I flirted shamelessly. I sang for him and I danced for him, and I knew it was reckless even before Lu settled her judgement upon me.  I knew it was a mistake. I knew it was only the liquor and the firelight and the need to dash red hair from his mind. I would have chased that mistake to the dawn, though. I would have drowned myself in our mistake.

It's there in every distracted smile.  It's there when he looks past her, then at her: his gaze doesn't focus but sharpens, and he smiles without smiling.  It's there when he rolls his shoulders, and he looks taller, stronger, more cruel.  He isn't Liam Gale, all charm and invitation and bedroom eyes -- not entirely, not anymore.  He's becoming someone else.

When he exhales, the Stormsinger breathes with him.  "Soon, Captain," she purrs.  He touches her as he touches no other woman; she means so much more to him.  She is his support, his success, his superstitions all wrapped up in one person.  She is his siren.

It's there in the way he lifts to his feet and his hand drifts to the pistol at his hip.  It's there in the reverence with which he kisses her palm and the briskness with which he strides away.  

It's there in the mask he lifts, strong fingers playing at the leather bindings the same way a child's play at a security blanket.

Brutality is beckoning him.