@musesofmyriad
(continued from here)
He waits, with a patience that never comes to him save for in these moments, for her to make her way across the deck to the hammock, listening to the rustle of her clothing as she sheds it from her body, at the how different her footsteps sound when it’s barefoot on the wooden decks instead of boots; softer, gentler, and it could almost be easy to make the mistake of thinking her softer and gentler for it. Thinking her weaker, or more vulnerable.
Not his Uma.
Not his Captain.
He laughs when she chides him, reminding him of his proper place, waiting on his Captain’s arrival, the sound of it low and quiet, not his usual laugh; the brashness, the theatricality, tucked away again until morning. There’s no one to perform for here, no one to show off in front of, except for Uma — and with Uma, in these still moments where they’d somehow found the space to breathe, to murmur soft and find themselves with no one watching them, no one listening in on their conversation, save the stars, there was no need to perform. He had all of her attention, all to himself. Had the the press of her body against his, the shivery brush of her lips against his throat like a blessing, and that was all he needed.
“And who’s to say this new island of ours won’t have treasures hidden away inside it, just waiting for the right hands to come and hunt for them?”
He settles her closer against him, the hammock swaying lazily, listening to the sound of the waves lapping at the pier, at the hull of their ship. It’s a quiet night; quiet as they’ll ever hope to find while docked at port, and while Harry’s heart feeds on the teeming hustle and noise and crowd of the streets there’s a part of his soul that yearns for the solitude of the open seas, where the only sounds were the creaking of wood as the ship stretched and settled, of the wind snapping at canvas sails and the waves keeping time as the ship danced her way toward the horizon.
What must it be like, to sail so far and bold as his father had, before he’d found himself a prison of that other island for so many years? What must it be like to be so far from anywhere else, and anyone else other than you crew, than your captain, that you might as well be the only living souls on the earth?
What must it feel like to be free?
“This island, oh, this island — it’s got secrets.” He nods softly, glancing at her face out of the corner of his eye, drinking in the elegant beauty of her features as she looked up at the stars. His Captain’s always beautiful; beautiful in rage, beautiful in glory, beautiful in exasperation and in bloodlust and in greed. But his Captain, his Uma, is just as beautiful in the quiet moments, in stillness, as she was in motion, and he let himself savor that quiet beauty for a moment before continuing, weaving a quiet tale of what-ifs and wonders out of nothing more than starlight and his imagination.
“There’s a natural harbor there, on the leeward side; it’s a good place to drop anchor before we lower the longboats and take them in to shore. There’s no people on this island, none at all. Haven’t been people there in five hundred years, at least. Maybe more than that, though we’ll not know it until we get further inland, and start to see the ruins they left behind them. But first, there’s the shore itself, bone-white sand stretching off in a graceful crescent, curving invitingly as we row our way in, so soft and clean it’s almost like powder to the touch.”
He can see it, and he aches for it; this made-up, imaginary world, this mystical land where they can stand on the clean beach and breathe air untainted by the press of humanity around them. Where the trees teem with fruits he’s only ever heard of and never once seen; where there’s wild boar to hunt and roast over the fire at night, and giant palm leaves and branches to lash together and lay beneath them as they stretch out on the sand, as the cool waves roll in and lap at their toes while he pulls her close and kisses every inch of her body under the silverly light of the moon. An island with miles of jungle to explore, the ruins of old mysterious temples cloaked in vines hidden in their depths, with towering waterfalls protecting secret caverns teeming with treasure from ancient times; an ageless place, private, and all their own.
It’s out there; he can feel it, knows it in his blood and in his bones, as though the sands of that distance place call to him, as though he need only study the stars long enough to get his bearings and set a course out into the night, and he’ll soar across the seas toward it like an arrow loosed from the bow. How he longs to see this island, to step into that aching dream. To share it with Uma, this secret place he feels he knows; to give her the gift of it in more than words, and stories, and what-ifs. To build their hide-out their, to reclaim the ruins as their own, to set out from that natural harbor and roam the seas like wild things, returning to their home covered in glory and blood and plunder, to live in their island’s still and quiet beauty in between their many great adventures.
The island likely isn’t real.
The practical, mercenary side of his nature knows this. But to accept that it’s not, that there’s not someplace out there that’s mysterious and beautiful and clean, with enough room to spread out and be free, truly free, was to accept that they’d never sail further than the edge of the Barrier, not see what was on the other side with their own eyes.
And that was something which Harry would not, could not, accept.
He strokes her arm as he holds her, fingertips trailing along her skin; over and over again, as rhythmic as the waves, as the beating of his heart. “There’s berries growin’ at the edge of the jungle, leading the way down the path toward the first if the streams that zigzag and criss-cross and meander their way toward the lake at the center of the island. Big, fuck-off sweet red berries that grow nowhere else in the whole of the world. And we’ll have ‘em, much as we can stand and more, once we’ve the island under our colors.”
