A little bit of what I’m working on in Ambergris Ch 21 for ya’ll <3
*
“Will you leave when we get off at port?”
Sentenza drops his hand from his face, “What? No, no-- of course not. This is -- it’s my crew now, or rather, I’m part of it. I’ll see it through. And I wouldn’t do that to Karro. A new port, hardly a reason why -- we wouldn’t see any of our lay, what with the little we have. Then we’d have to kill or starve. No. I couldn’t do that to him again.”
Sylvan purses her lips, but doesn’t speak yet. She supposes a murderer on board might seem like ‘hardly a reason’ to one who was used to being stabbed in the back. Still. The fact that he hasn’t even considered it might be more loyalty than they deserve.
“What about to yourself?”
He laughs, a short bitter bark, “I’m surprised you would even ask. What I want -- that hardly matters, now.”
Good morning to lesbian surgeons haunted by a horrific past, ex-pirate captains who would do anything for their partner, spirited whaling ship captains who take no shit and are proud lesbians, and newbie harpooners who think of their dreams as prophetic.
My name is Syb (she/her), white cis adult Canadian, bisexual and polyamorous. I write queer fiction of various genres (mystery, romance-adjacent, literary-adjacent), and fanfiction. I am also an artist (more as a hobby), and I work in physics as my day job.
ABOUT MY WRITING
My main genres skew towards slightly darker queer fiction. My preference is towards character-focused work, and I tend to play fast and loose with worldbuilding. I usually try to reach for unusual moments of catharsis between characters, and I tend to favor writing good endings for characters, but their peace is often hard-won.
CURRENT WIPS
To Breathe a Vein of Ambergris (WIP PAGE * INTRO)
Verdict Three (LOGLINE ON MY WIP PAGE * TAG)
Phantom Throat (INTRO * TAG)
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I’m feeling cheery about this. From Ch 17 of To Breathe a Vein of Ambergris.
*
“Are you so worried?” Sylvan asks gently. Sentenza’s eye is now on Karro. She expects him to scoff, but instead he simply looks away, fixing his gaze on the distant grey skyline.
Sylvan’s gaze wanders to the sea, searching for the tell-tale tuft of a whale’s breath above the rolling waves. The sky about them swirls with heavy cloud cover. They might yet get a storm, if they’re unlucky. But the sky is holding for now, and Klaus doesn’t seem to have called Nia over to batten down the hatches.
Sentenza shifts beside her, tapping his spoon on the edge of his bowl. “I’m tense. Yes. If I’m perfectly honest. I was hoping that this -- change of career, as it were, would shake off this constant, pressing need to know of my weak points. Fishing boats, I reasoned, would have fewer reasons to stab each other in the back. ”
“You did sign on with that,” she points out. He laughs quietly.
“Yes I -- suppose I thought that doing away with the killer would be easy, that it would be some kind of...last echo of the life I used to live,” Sentenza shakes his head, “That seems naive now.”
I have been writing VERY productively for Ambergris, I am happy to report.
That said. Wanna read a preview of some Salt Glass stuff? :3
***
I swirl the amber rum in my glass. It goes down smooth -- as it should, on an island with a distillery and a reputation to match. So why is it the aftertaste leaves that soured memory of the night spent hiding out on the southern harbor?
Stupid question. All of it. I’d never given myself, nor Karro, the impression that his installment in my crew was permanent. All these second thoughts will fade, after the second, third job without his embittered demeanor looming over the decisions I make. In truth, our connection began and should have ended when I found what was left of myself in the holding cell of my ship.
Under his hands, my thoughts add unhelpfully. I sip the rum. So be it.
“So.”
I freeze. I dare not turn towards that all too familiar voice-- afraid that something in me has given way to desirous madness at last. How could Karro be here, after all the miles of sea I put between us?
Is it purpose, or coincidence that he is on my left side?
“So?” I repeat, the inflection in my voice dull.
“You know, I expected you to pick a different place to dock. That you’d run out, somewhere I couldn’t follow. I didn’t expect it to be that easy.”
I turn to him then -- as if I could let such a challenge lie, but the words dry up in my throat as soon as I see him. He’s paler by several shades, a sheen of sweat that speaks to more than the breezy air present on his forehead. Hell; he’s even breathing shallow.
“What the hell happened?” I hiss.
“What the hell do you mean?” he asks hoarsely. I take him by the arm, and he nearly staggers.
“Christ,” I loop my arm under his shoulder, pulling him to standing. He doesn’t struggle, though I can feel him staring.
“What --” his question is cut off by a hiss of pain when we climb the first stair. My gaze travels downward to see the dirty and torn binding around his leg. A wound. A wound that he’s let go to rot, by the look of it -- and for what? I struggle with him up the stairs, attuned to his every wince.
"Shit, okay -- " he starts again.
I slip the key in my rented room in the lock. Once the door is shut behind us, I maneuver him to sit on the bed, kneeling to unwrap his wound. He stares, blinking slowly. Perhaps he’d thought about what he’d say the entire way here. All of the wit he showed by the bar counter seems to have been shocked out of him.
The words shrivel in my throat just the same, when I work the messy knot in the bindings open. Dried blood and yellow liquid festers there. Is there a doctor on this godforsaken island? Who the hell would I even ask? I reach for the bottle of white rum I left on the bedside, uncork it before meeting his bleary gaze.
“This will hurt,” I murmur, then dump half its contents into the wound.
“Jesus Sen!” he flinches backwards, the red and clear liquid pooling on the splintered floorboards.
I look him in the eye, "How could you let something like this happen?"
"...I thought I would have lost you, if I didn't move fast."
I hold his gaze in disbelief. The realization that he’s telling the truth comes in slow, scraping at my consciousness like a ship coming in too fast to a harbor too shallow. Christ. I swallow the dregs at the bottom of the bottle.
Not exactly six, but ya’ll ever heard of a try-works? They were these big-ass furnaces they kept on whaling ships for processing the fat etc. Anyways here’s Sylvan scrubbing one out.
Sylvan seeks out the soapstone and grit from below decks, which serve well to remove the grime from the innards of the pot. With a bucket of water slung over her shoulder, she descends inside the iron womb. Without the sunlight bouncing off it, the inside is cooler than the sea air, completely unlike when it is put to work with the relentless furnace underneath.
The cloying scent of burnt fat is one that’s familiar to Sylvan. She wonders, abstractly, if the murderer has considered killing anyone inside here. She discards the thought, however, looking at the previous deaths, which were all connected to drownings. Whether natural or unnatural.
“If I didn’t think of you as sane, I couldn’t -- have you here, you know? It wouldn’t be safe. So of course I do. Of course,” Nia doesn’t sound certain. And more to the point --
“Of course,” Sylvan repeats, firmly sorting that question into poorly posed, never to be asked again.
“So...you don’t think that you’re --”
“No, no, not in definition,” Sylvan runs a gentle hand along her lover’s arm, then stands with as much decisiveness as she can manage. It’s technically not a lie. She has no working definition for ‘sane’, and has long since suspected anyone of the medical profession who claims one simply isn’t examining the root causes carefully enough.
So? Examine your root causes.
Not on your word, she replies vehemently in her mind.
