Clouds of Yesterday || Owen x Arya (feat. Aulus/Sekhad)
A long stare. Owen gazed long at her, his fingers digging, digging into the bench and imperceptibly, imperceptibly he inched forward to study her face, as if he could read there something that would banish the torrent in his mind. There was nothing there to see. Abruptly, Owen jumped up, paced back towards the hedge, then back again.
He stood where he was, his hair and greatcoat alike tousled by the gusts of ocean-wind that swept along the coast, but he did not notice, did not notice the thrashing of the shrubs around them, or the wheeling seabirds overhead crying to one another. Each revelation seemed more incredible at last till, finally the words Heir to the Sunburst Throne had escaped her lips. None of this jived with his own memories, an orphaned peasant girl – a mermaid – living alone in a tiny cottage by the sea, rescuing and saving shipwrecked sailors, smiling shyly at him as if she’d hardly ever seen a man before, swearing to wait for him, swearing to pitch a flag for him…How could any of this be?
He sank, half-eagerly, into the bench beside her. “Surely you…jest,” he said, finally, but glancing down, he noticed her feet peaking out from the hem of her dress, stared at them, taken aback. He looked back up to her again, brows contorting. Oh, he’d seen her standing on the shore – at first he’d reasoned it couldn’t be her (after all, it would not have been the first time his eager heart had imagined her standing before him only to find another face looking back instead), but the instant she’d turned…all doubt was erased – it was her without question. He’d assumed she’d learned some means of…appearing to stand on a fin…and then she’d walked…Perhaps…she somehow faked that, too, but those were feet, sure as day.
“I–” he shook his head, sat back from his half-imploring attitude, and shook his head. “I don’t understand. How…how is any of this possible?” His eyes widened, mind reeling back to fairy tales of his youth suddenly – she was apparently a princess, after all. “Were you cursed?” Instantly, the ridiculousness of that claim overcame him and he shook his head. “No,” he muttered. He cleared his throat, cast his gaze out towards the see as he attempted to order his fevered mind.
When he turned back to her, his expression was calm again. He stood again, this time pacing before her as he ticked off notions on his fingers, glancing occasionally to her for confirmations.
“So, if I understand you correctly, you were born heiress presumptive to a throne and,” he shook his head. “One day the Princess of Harmanil,” he said in an emphasized way that showed he was trying to wrap his mind around it. “Decided to go for a swim, became a mermaid? And rescued a bunch of…shipwrecked sailors?” He stared at her for a moment, then he laughed. “You must make an odd princess, indeed,” he added, half-teasing, half-unsure. He shook his head, returning to the story. “You, princess that you are, decide to play mermaid nursemaid to us and stay there for…however long it takes for us to recover, though…You were gone for long stretches at a time, weren’t you? I confess, I thought you were just…” he shrugged. “Underwater.”
He paused, mulling this over, before continuing. “You begin a dalliance with one of them.”
Which, he realized. I can only assume, given the princess bit, was just a bit of harmless diversion.
“And when he offers to bring you with him aboard his pirate ship, you probably did your level best to suppress a riot of laughter, given that – rather than gaining anything – you’d be losing quite a bit,” he added, flushing slightly.
And then say that you’ll wait with flags and the whole bit, but that was just as meaningless as the rest, I suppose, he added, mentally. Hence, why neither mermaid nor flags were ever there.
“And, as soon as they’re gone, resume your…princess…activities…? Whatever those are. Is this truly what you’re telling me? Oh, and also, the fin was optional, the whole time, I suppose?” He turned to her, brow quizzical, astonished to learn all this…and fighting, fighting to suppress the quailing of his heart.
The only thing that had mattered…gods, it had all been just a bit of meaningless fun. He’d never mattered to her at all. He laughed, a mirthless sound, and turned to face the waters far below.
“Is this the truth, Arya?”
For a fleeting moment the young woman thought perhaps this revelation would be taken in stride. That perhaps the manner in which Owen stared at her was only his way of listening attentively. Or that he was leaning towards her to press a gentle kiss to her lips as he had done so long ago.
What?!
Of course not…
A sigh instead dropped from Arya’s lips as she set her parasol aside and began to remove her gloves. Of course he would think her jesting. Janahara had thought much the same when Arya had told her after being assigned to her retinue. It, among many other things including her country’s security, was one reason she kept her true nature so close to her chest even among her closest circle.
“I assure you I am quite serious.” She replied. “It was not a curse, it was not a mistake. I am both a mermaid and the daughter of the King of Harmanil by blood. Both things can be true at once, you know.”
A deep breath coursed through her system and she folded her hands stiffly in her lap atop her discarded gloves. “I understand this is all quite a shock, but I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.”
Please do not let him hate me for this… Please, I could stand anything but that…
“Yes, you are correct, I was born the heir presumptive to Harmanil. And I cannot stress to you quite enough how much I am my country’s biggest kept secret.” Her fingers twisted between each other. “My moth–the queen, was not my true mother.”
Arya took another deep breath and steeled herself to tell the tale she had sworn long ago never to speak of to another soul. But she could not keep this secret from Owen of all people. “She had been sickly even when they had married but had taken a turn for the worse and so had been kept away from the public for quite some time. My father… My father in that time had been so full of sorrow at losing the woman he loved that he had taken to long sea voyages. He came upon the cabin on the shore – the very one I brought you to, in fact– after a terrible storm had pushed him off course.”
She looked to Owen, searching his face for the loathing she was certain she would find there. After all, even Arya had though the story preposterous when she had heard it the first time. It had been true that her legs often pained her when she was young but she had never begun to imagine it was due to a desire for them to be a fin instead.
“There was a woman living there, a mermaid who had lost someone of her own to the waves and so had decided never to return to them again. Though it pained her greatly to remain in her human form Father said she swore it pained her even further to live each moment knowing any could be the moment she came upon the corpse of her love.” Arya turned her gaze from Owen back out to the sea. “They fell in love. He visited her every day for months. As the Queen grew weaker, the mermaid woman began to show she was with child. With me.” A glance back, a sad smile. “Both of them died the day I was born. A happy accident my father called it. An easy lie to then pass me off as the daughter that had been born to his deceased Queen. None would ever know of his dalliance and as he had yet to bear an heir, I was a perfect fit. Except for, as we both know… the fins…”
She laughed a little and shook her head. “My father told me of the cottage when I turned sixteen and he told me of my true heritage. It became my little hideaway when I grew tired of being a princess. Odd or otherwise.”
“I had been running from a particularly boring lesson on geography when I happened upon you and your crew. It was pure luck, honest.” Arya’s hands clenched tight around her gloves as her voice became reedy. “I had always been told to be so careful around strangers. Not to be seen when I was not in my human form lest anyone connect my face to that of the princess’ and discover my secret. But I also could not leave you all to die!“
The princess looked back to Owen, tears once again pooling in her eyes. “What I said, Owen. What I did. All of it was without ulterior motive, I assure you. I grew to care for all of you… And–” A lump in her throat. “And for you most of all. It was not a laughing matter to me to have to leave you!”
It was her turn to stand now as Arya was overcome with emotions. Her blood crashing in her ears and her heart twisting itself into knots. “I wanted so badly to say yes. To throw away everything I had lived for in my eighteen years on land and go with you, but my people! I had–I have a duty, Owen!” She pivoted quickly, ebony curls whipping about her face in the wind, the picture of a Fury flying over the seafoam.
“You scoff at me for not going with you. As if had our position been reversed – had I asked you to stay in Harmanil with me – asked you to be my prince, become my father’s heir, give up your quest for revenge… Would you have said yes? Would you have given up your duties as a son, as a brother, as a leader of your crew?”
“I all but died the day I had to watch your ship leave my harbor, Owen. All I had left was the knowledge that I was doing what I had always been told was the most noble thing a ruler could do: sacrificing my heart for my people. That perhaps I could hope you would one day return as you promised and if I were lucky I could keep both.” Her smile was sharp, thin, painful – a razor across her perfectly poised face.
“But you never did. You never returned to Harmanil’s shores again. And I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited and waited and waited. How could anyone blame me for growing weary? My father is growing old! He is frail and I need to become the light for my country… I had to give up childish dreams that would never come true.”
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