I love going through phases and seeing my interest in writing and drawing flourish and dwindle. Here you get just a little bit of everything from everywhere. Started: 2016
The Crew of the Pyrrhus
- Halloween Special - Spider Edition
Westlie’s Backstory
- Leaving Arthur (Old) (1)
- Leaving Arthur (Official) (1)
- The Flight to Port Prosper (2)
- Meeting the Crew (3)
Westlie Snippets
- Fitzroy’s Death
- The Flight to Leadbeater
- Possessed Morgan (Non-canon)
Westlie and Morgan
- The Faire Sisters
- Happy Birthday
- Happy Birthday Alt. Hurt-Comfort Ending
- The Fight (Non-canon backstory)
- Early Memories
Liztlie AU
- Master AO3 Link
- My Daughter Now I Guess (1)
- Copycat
- She Loves Me More Get Fucked (Snippet)
- Morgan and Lizzie
- Epilogue
- I Have Codependency Issues (2)
- I Don’t Have Codependency Issues (Yet) (3)
- Westlie’s an Idiot (4)
- Thanks, Arthur. You Gave Us Codependency Issues (5)
Westlijah
- They’re Adorable But Really Awkward (Romanticly Inclined)
- Unrecognizable, Yet In Love (Prompt AU)
- Mwaybe We Cwould Hwold Hwands? 🥺
- For Me But Not For Ye. Get Fucked. I Do Things For Myself Sometimes
^ (Posted Privately)
- First Kiss
- Skyfarer Epilogue (non-canon)
- Skyfarer Epilogue - Westlie and Elijah
Coriolis: The Third Horizon RPG OC: Ferrikh ibn Timur (they/he)
Born on the planet of Algol to a small clan of salt miners, Ferrikh's early childhood was simple but happy. Security forces for The Consortium killed most of the clan when they were four, including their parents. An elephant caretaker passed by the site soon after the devastation, and adopted them once the situation was assessed. Due to Algol's longstanding volatility, communal parenting and adopted children are not uncommon, and it's far more rare to see a biological clan last for the full maturation of a child.
Ferrikh traveled around the planet with their guardian's elephant herd and had a happy childhood. Algol's cities were often built on Portal War ruins after the Consortium moved in and they couldn't escape their fascination. As a young teenager, an order was put in for several elephants to be taken to rich Zenithians on Coriolis. To prevent strain on any one herd, one young elephant from several groups were selected - one of which was Ferrikh's.
While the buyer was willing to pay fare for caretakers to travel to Coriolis and back to Algol, both Ferrikh and their guardian knew it would be their only chance to leave the planet. On their last night in Algol, their guardian presented Ferrikh with their own Algolan coat.
Worn open, the coat is a communal symbol worn by all Algolans if they can afford it. The hem is embroidered in the traditional Algolan style, with symbols of region, personal attachments, and good luck. The front of the coat is embroidered with major events of the wearer's life from bottom to top. Family members often pass down a coat, if the wearer bequeaths it, but it is taboo for a wearer to make or embroider their own coat; a coat must always be made by another as it symbolizes events and achievements the group thinks is important, not the wearer.
In Coriolis, Ferrikh followed their love for history by joining Ahlam's Temple. The Temple of Ahlam trains Courtesans in the arts of the eight religious Icons - including but not limited to dancing, poetry, song, and death, as well as sex. Ferrikh's primary art was poetry and history, although they also studied mourning. (A common advert for Courtesans is professional mourning.) They do not regret leaving Algol, but the isolation haunts them sometimes; particularly as they embroider their key moments - leaving Algol, and becoming a Professional Courtesan - themselves.
Several years on, Ferrikh's growing knowledge of the Portal Wars and pre-Portal War artifacts begins to alarm them. Nobody in the Third Horizon knows what started the Portal Wars, only that the ruin and devastation in the wake ended planets. But Ferrikh is almost positive that before it, people began showing odd powers and figures calling themselves the Emissaries of the Icons arrived.
And now, on the news, there are figures calling themselves Emissaries of the Icons and there's a strange new "disease" of people who know things they shouldn't, move things without touching them, and call upon the powers of the Icons without prayer...
A lanky guard stepped through the door, caught sight of Arthur Faire behind bars and scoffed. "Six months an' one visitor, eh? The real social type." He looked back at whoever had come visiting. "Six months, six minutes. No funny business now."
There was another, much politer scoff as Arthur's eldest daughter stepped through the door and the guard stepped to the corner.
Westlie looked… well. Arthur hated to admit it.
"Six months one visit?" Arthur's back ached as he straightened up. "Finally come to pay your dues?"
Westlie stepped up to the bars, raising a polite eyebrow. "My dues? My dues are paid. I came to discuss your dues."
"You dare insinuate my dues after you betrayed me-" Arthur grabbed the bars.
Westlie didn't flinch.
"-I am only here because of what you did. How low you would go to bite the hand that feeds you-"
Westlie's eyes flashed. "Maybe you should have considered that before you considered blackmailing your daughter to cover your own ass for your crimes. You're here for those crimes."
"The only thing that matters is money," Arthur snarled, "Because you use money to build your legacy. And if others are too stupid to realize-"
"And what legacy, Arthur?!" Westlie scoffed. She gestured to the cell. "This is your fucking legacy."
"Yet you come here after the Townsend Gala dressed to the nines." Arthur curled his lip. "You're wearing my legacy; you're wearing what I earned-"
"I am wearing the power you abused." Westlie laughed bitterly and leaned in close. She smelled like some kind of Reach-flower, a pleasant perfume, but esoteric enough it didn't have a name. "Let me enlighten you, Father. Nobody likes you. When I told Winchester he could have your head on a platter and I would take your place - granted, with a few concessions - he snapped at the chance."
Arthur felt his face burning, red boiling up his neck until his rage burst out.
Westlie must've noticed too. She took a step back, frown toying on her lips. "What is it you always said-? I'm not you?"
"You aren't good enough," Arthur snarled.
Westlie breathed out and he noticed her fingers were shaking. Good. It was the truth.
She met his eyes anyway, tilting up her chin in some mocking performance of courage. "Good," she said. "I don't want to be you. I hope I'm never you. I hope when I die, I am the opposite of everything you ever told me-"
Arthur felt the rage bubbling over.
"-I hope I have friends when I die. I hope if I ever did something unforgivable and stupid I would learn from my mistakes." Her voice cracked and she stepped away just as Arthur's arm burst through the bars to grab her. It rattled the bars, but he'd tried that hundreds of times and they hadn't gotten any looser. He growled fruitlessly as Westlie stepped away.
The guard stepped forward and Westlie met his eyes. They looked at each other for a long, five seconds. Long enough Arthur's gut twisted with worry. Arthur rattled the bars again.
Westlie finally stepped away, but she didn't leave like he expected; she just stepped against the far wall, arms clasped behind her back like he'd taught her. It looked out of place in a red evening gown.
The guard on the other hand stepped toward him. Arthur retracted his arms behind the bars unwillingly and the guard seemed to laugh despite herself. Before he could process the laughter, the shape of the guard changed, cracked, grew more lithe. A long red-orange braid tumbled from beneath the guard cap, and when he blinked, there were two piercingly green eyes staring back at him.
Arthur staggered backwards onto his bunk. "Y- You- The guard-"
Morgan winced a bit, like it was a prank gone awry. "I suppose the disguise was a bit much, but it was easier to sneak Westlie down here than go through all the paperwork."
"Y- Sh-"
She knelt down and began drawing something with her finger.
"S-Stop that," Arthur managed to choke out. "What are you-"
Westlie was staring at him from the far wall, face impassive, conscious onlooker.
Morgan hummed softly as she straightened up from whatever she'd done and moved to the mid-front of the cell. She started drawing the same sigil again.
"Stop that," Arthur snapped again. "You can't do that. GUARDS," he bellowed around the room. "GUARDS."
Morgan laughed and it felt like nails were suddenly dragged down Arthur's spine. She straightened up, grinning. Grinning with those sick green eyes like a cheshire cat, pinning him in place. She should have never been born. Should have died. Should have been dead. The ghosts of the past tugging at him, dragging him down to his knees. To kneel on the dirt. He was kneeling now. Westlie stood in the corner; she watched.
Morgan grinned. "I learned an ironic little tidbit about Newgate yesterday. Would you like to hear it?"
Arthur no longer had control of his neck. He nodded. His heart screamed. His mouth didn't answer.
She started drawing the sigil again. "In the Neath, Newgate was affixed to the ceiling. I didn't know that. You'd think I'd know that, growing up in London at all, but I didn't."
Arthur remembered that. He'd been young, but he'd grown up in the dark on the docks. The stalagmite with Newgate had loomed in the distance. He remembered.
"Anyway, it's ironic because now, it's- Oh-" she thought for a moment. "A hundred-fifty feet underneath London? Something like that." She finished the sigil and made an unlocking motion with her hand.
Arthur gasped for air and doubled over, panting.
It took him a few seconds to get his breath back and Morgan had started on the other corner of the cell. She was being lazy about it.
Arthur staggered to his feet again. "Y- You aren't human. You're n-not my daughter." He swallowed. "You're a fucking monster g-get the fuck away from me."
Westlie lurched forward at that, but she paused when Morgan glanced her way. Something passed between them unspoken, and that was somehow more infuriating than anything else.
Arthur paced to the side closest to Westlie. "Don't let her tell you what to do! You take orders from her?!"
Morgan snorted. "It's called listening. You should try it sometime." She kept talking before he could scream in rage. "I hoped you'd say that, you know? I remember bits and pieces of- you know- your and Otto's grand plan- and I tasted how scared you were." Morgan leaned in closer so Westlie couldn't see and she licked her lips, slow enough to show off inhumanly white teeth - and he wasn't sure if those were fake or real or he was imagining things or he'd just never seen her smile before or maybe he'd never seen Morgan smile like that. Arthur stumbled back like she'd choked him, gasping.
With a lazy wave of her hand, Morgan finished the last sigil and the air in the room grew taunt.
Arthur couldn't make his mouth form words and the words chattered in his brain. What are you going to do?
She smiled. She heard.
She ignored him.
Morgan drew up her hand in a fist and the earth cracked. The walls of the cell split from the rock around it, and dust fell from the ceiling in front of the bars. Nothing in the cell itself moved, but it had separated from the rock around it.
"I hoped you'd say that," Morgan said again, like they were continuing where she left off. Arthur couldn't rip his eyes away. "I've done a lot of thinking these past six months, because every time you said you shouldn't have had a second child- you should've just had Westlie- it never sat right, and I never understood why until I realized that it wasn't true."
The world squeezed around him. Arthur sank against his cot, but still couldn't rip his eyes away. Westlie still stood in the corner, watching.
Morgan eyed him for a moment. Her voice was surprisingly quiet. "You always used to say Westlie was the angry one, the insolent one. But that's not true. You could've just had Westlie and all this would've still happened. She still would've left because she's better than you and she cares. Despite everything and everyone, she will always care. She didn't get your temper," Morgan swallowed. "She got your stubbornness."
Westlie's eyes widened a little. This speech was new.
Morgan swallowed, fist still raised. "I'm the one that got your wrath." Morgan sucked in a breath and the air snapped. Her voice split into three, and Arthur's ears rung.
I am Morgan Faire, the voices peeled. I am the Garden Queen. I am the Keeper. I am the Builder. I am the Pruner-of-Rot.
Arthur could barely make out Westlie through the dust as she stepped forward. She softly raised her own arm to rest upright against the Queen's fist, no power, but equal judgement. Her face was impassive, but her eyes held pity. Westlie thought he was weak. And despite the instinctive protest, Arthur felt the knowledge rip through him like a sword.
Sir Captain Arthur Faire. You have committed crimes against bond, against blood, against bone. You were graced six months to consider yet view them not as crimes nor as a punishment.
I am Goddess underneath the city of London. I am the Light in the dark. I am the Judgment of all in my domain. I am the Maker of Laws that you have broken. I am the Truth.
The voices scalded the dark and the dust burned bright. Metal ground against his ears and Arthur managed to clap his hands against his head.
Sir Captain Arthur Faire. I sentence you Downward.
Everyone knew there was coal at the foot of Hawk’s Peak. Waste heaps were strewn across the valley like oversized ant-mounds and ancient cart tracks wore deep ruts back to the Marena lowlands. Drifters liked to set up camps, but they never lasted. Too dry. Too rough. And coal hadn't been valuable anyway until some boy figured out how to make iron harder. Then John Greystone came to Hawk's Peak with his wife and his shotgun and gold from the bank.
Gin Reiner was a drifter with a small pit there and his own mules. John shot Gin Reiner on a spring morning. When Gin's boys approached him after the service- Well, nobody had seen the boys after that. But rumor had it they tailed it back to the lowlands. No use staying where there wasn’t ready money.
But John Greystone stayed, and his wife Ellen. With his loan from the bank, he laid down gleaming steel rails that wound through the narrow gorges back home. Men came on the railroad; some women, but not many, and at the prime age of 28, Ellen Greystone had two boys.
The eldest son had a good head on his shoulders; went back to the lowlands to get a piece of paper for machines, and he married a girl from the hills with coal in her blood. The youngest worked the mine. He was quick with his hands and quicker with his boss’s whistle and by the time John Greystone died, there were over one thousand people in Ellenville covered in coal dust when the day-whistle blew.
Once the eldest brother had his own John – John the III – the brothers knew about the ironstone in the hills just north of Ellenville’s valley and the town bloomed. It all became John III’s empire to run.
John III took a wife from the lowlands, a sweet little thing who loved the hills and wanted to escape the flat planes. However, she found the mountains of Ellenville to be dry, heartless, and her new husband too obsessed with building the Greystone legacy to worry about homemaking, or the homemaker; so Mrs. Martha Greystone found herself with three children and a mostly-empty manor. She named them John the IV, Rachel, and Mira. When they were old enough, John was set to the ironstone shafts. Rachel and Mira were deemed nimbler on the mostly-mechanized coal slopes.
The coal pit had grown like a canker on the south side of town. The first John Greystone had called it the Pothole Mine. They dug down 1000 feet in an open pit until the miners hit 50 feet of useless slatey rock and the coal vein dove deep into the earth. John III planned to dig after it eventually, but growing the pit west and east was easier and much more profitable. They stoped the sides of the pit, steam shovels biting fifty-foot staircases from the rock walls. Stoping was more an upgrade than feature inherent to the mine since men with picks had done the initial work, but it was important to keep the walls of the pit from collapsing. John II had emphasized it before he died. He had planned the stopes the whole length of the valley; fifty-foot steps were enough to keep the walls steady.
But he’d never considered rain, because it didn’t rain much in the Ellenville valley.
It rained three days and four nights until the valley smelled like wet silt and dirt and the water poured off the crusty ground into the Pothole mine. The pumps to keep water out of the mine bottom filled with cobbles and rubbish and had to be cleaned out with half a dozen steam shovels, day and night.
“Too much water,” Mira kept hearing the men say as they struggled into their galoshes for day shift. They hissed through their teeth when they looked out the window.
Usually, Mira and Rachel went with the shovel manager and sat with him for half the day, but Mira found the new steam shovels arriving on the train much more interesting. She stayed with her father, looking at the bright steel workings and checking off the parts on the list.
She remembered feeling the rumble underneath her feet before the bone-aching crack hit her ears. She remembered the boys and men at the shop turning a sickly olive color too – her father included. But John III did not turn green after they checked their shop stability; not when the day shifters returned with hollow faces and a few pieces of the bodies. He didn’t turn green when a boy Mira knew from across the street, her age, was brought up headless. He didn’t even turn green when what was left of Rachel was brought up, crushed against mangled machinery remains.
They buried her that Saturday, sky still weeping and half the town weeping with it. Six feet, no casket, because her body was half-engine.
The rest of them were Rachel’s ghosts, floating about the house with pale faces and red eyes. In her late-night waifish wander, Mira looked in her father’s office and saw his green face looking over the quarterly profits.
So the day of the rockfall was the last time Mira remembered being dressed in color.
Elijah Fry was the sort of man to always be on time. Westlie Faire, on the other hand, was the sort of woman to mostly be on time. Which was why he was the one sitting in a London restaurant next to a bottle of slowly-warming champagne.
Her last letter, sent two weeks before, had mentioned something about Hour tariffs and Fairweather. Elijah had skimmed over the specifics because she’d prefaced that section with, ‘The new tariffs are awful! I’m headed straight to London after this and you’ll get my full opinions then; but I have some spare time and Andy is absolutely up my ass; I’m writing anyway.’
So now Elijah was at their usual restaurant, watching the champagne sweat and occasionally glancing at his watch.
He occasionally looked out the window too, although the chandeliers shone too brightly for him to see her through the glass. He spotted his reflection instead; still tall, face still angular – maybe even more so now his hair had begun taking on a greyish, middle-aged sheen. He shouldn’t be shocked because he saw himself every morning in the mirror, but he’d been so busy carving out a life in London that it didn’t feel like ten years after the Clockwork Sun had been destroyed. He certainly didn’t feel ten years older; looking like it felt like a subtle betrayal.
He’d been so sure, so many times that he was doomed along with the rest of his crews. But no, he’d lived; most of the Pyrrhus had lived. It was startling being reminded that time continued ticking.
Westlie swept in at a respectably late 9:12, out of breath.
Her silhouette had stayed the same over the years, if wider, even though most Londoners wore pants now regardless of gender; she still preferred simple travel skirts and a vest. She just shrugged whenever Marion questioned her. “Habit,” she said. And to Elijah, with a sly smile- “It feels more official when you’ve killed the Traitor Empress in a skirt. You can’t really go back.”
Westlie reached out her hand with a warm smile when she got close enough; Elijah met it and she squeezed tight.
“Elijah.”
“Westlie.”
Their meetings were always like that – he kicked himself for it, actually, as he pulled her chair out for her – a soft, affectionate squeeze of the hand that lingered just a second too long; moments from being something more.
She started off the usual way too, sinking into the seat and thanking him with that grateful smile.
“Has the menu changed?”
“I don’t think so.” She settled back and picked up her menu. Elijah skimmed the list. “Oh, they added… bouillabaisse.”
“Bouillabaisse… bouillabaisse… Is that French?”
Elijah shrugged.
“… ‘moray, fluke, and megalops in a pungent jillyfleur broth, topped with cinnamon and slices of caramel.’ They use the word pungent like I’m supposed to be enticed.”
“We had jillyfleur at a dinner recently,” Elijah admitted. “It wasn’t bad.”
She eyed him with suspicion. “Was it pungent?”
“A bit sweet, actually.”
They spent a few minutes going back and forth until the waiter came – a prim man in a neatly oiled mustache – who took their order and poured the champagne. Westlie decided on the bouillabaisse and Elijah settled for the veal, which he’d had four times at this point and knew it was a fairly safe option.
Westlie settled into her chair when the interaction finished, taking a deep breath and letting the stiffness drop from her shoulders.
Elijah smiled. “So. Six months.”
“Six months.” She took a sip of champagne. “I did not plan on being six months.”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be a Lustrum hours run?”
“It was! It’s never just a Lustrum hours run!” He loved the way her eyes lit up with indignation, like she couldn’t have just said ‘no’ to Rear Admiral Ainsley and not spent four months flying reconnaissance through the Belt of Midnight. Elijah definitely, definitely did not miss the Belt of Midnight. He wasn’t even sure how Westlie could be excited about it, as she began to break down their arrival in Achlys and the delivery of building materials.
The Dowsers had built a new base for their outlaw insanity- still near Pan, but farther than before, tucked away under a precipice that bulged and distorted gravity. Unsuspecting locomotives were snatched up while navigating the route, and knowledgeable locomotives had to go out of their way to avoid the horde. The Cogsworth had spotted an unfortunate locomotive lurching away from a boarding party and Westlie – ‘Of course,’ he thought, pretending to sip his champagne – dived after it.
“So that took a week,” Westlie said. “And it was another week before we got to the Empyrean.”
There were dicey bits in the Belt of Midnight. She was avoiding them.
“Did you see Mallory?”
“I did!” She brightened more, then her face darkened; she leaned in. “He has a beard.”
“I can’t imagine Mallory in a beard.”
“It’s hideous. He said it’s for Hamlet, and I don’t believe him. I saw a poster from eight months before and it was still on.”
“How long has Hamlet been running? There are only so many times the whole Empyrean can see Hamlet and that facial fuzz.”
“Exactly,” she dropped back in her chair. “You understand.”
It was the kind of motion that insinuated someone else close to her did not. Elijah politely raised an eyebrow.
“Andy and the rest of the Empyrean do not. It’s apparently ‘dignified’, ‘sophisticated’-” Westlie grimaced. “-‘sexy’.”
“Andy’s only twenty-two. Give him a few years.”
“He started trying to grow out his own beard.”
“Westlie, you didn’t-”
She scowled. “Oh, have more faith in me. I thought about it. I thought about telling him I’d shave it off his face myself. But I didn’t.”
Elijah rolled his eyes. “Commendable.”
“Thank you.”
There was a moment of silence as a waiter approached and they sat back. It wasn’t their food. Westlie gave Elijah an awkward grin.
The crow’s feet wrinkles on her right eye deepened, and she smiled deeper, personably, like it was a joke only he could understand. He knew that look, and he did understand the joke because he knew all her mishaps; but Westlie’s smile was still different: less apologetic, wiser, with an assuredness at her own mistakes that she’d never had when she was younger. Once again, he felt nagged by the past- the selves they had been and the selves they were now.
He opened his mouth to say… something, but her eyes were avoiding him now, fleeing her imagined awkwardness. He shut it when the waiter reappeared and they both leaned back so he could uncork the champagne. The waiter raised Westlie’s glass, refilled it, bowed, and left.
Westlie didn’t comment that Elijah’s glass stayed mostly-full; she never had. Throughout the years she must have noticed because she never said anything, but his only hint was the occasional warmth in her eyes after one of his polite sips, and that was just Westlie’s look of friendly affection.
She realized something and refocused on him, leaning forward in her seat.
“Whatever happened to your bid for a seat in the House of Commons?”
He flushed immediately. His fault for not telling her sooner though; he’d been deliberately evasive in his last letter. “I… did win the seat.”
“Congratulations Elijah!”
“But-”
“But?”
“That kid-”
“Oh god, Elijah, this again-”
“That kid,” he hissed. “Is junior member of the opposition!”
“Elijahh.”
“No, you don’t understand! He is deliberately following me around, getting in my way, trying to strike down all my bills! Westlie, he lives on the same street now.”
She was laughing. His nemesis lived on the same street and she was laughing. “The same street?! You’re telling me you ran for Commons and- was his name Artie? Not only ran for a seat as well, but moved onto the street. All in six months.”
“I saw him walking into a house on the opposite end, twice.”
“Elijah, you barely know him!”
“I know him well enough! He’s a liar and a thief and apparently the ruffians of 9th quarter have adopted him as their little spokesman even though he is unqualified-”
“You saw him walking into a house twice! Maybe he was visiting. People do visit you know.”
“He has to be staying there! Why else would I see him twice?!”
Westlie kept trying to stifle her laughter and it became a series of unladylike half-snorts into her champagne. There were glances from a few other tables and she finally had to bite her tongue.
As much as he hated Artie, he loved she could still laugh. He loved that shoving a cart to the white-hot of the Clockwork Sun and the glassy patches of skin on her arms and the ring of her wrist where the skin was wizened, hour-touched, and patched with forty years of Correspondence had not darkened the joyful glitter in her eyes.
He was still salty though.
“… Otherwise-” Elijah said. “Otherwise, it’s fine, you know. It’s nice to be able to help. … Not Artie though. I hope an aeginae eats him.”
“Oh, Elijah.” She looked like she was about to say something, shook her head with a smile, and traced her silverware.
They didn’t have to think of anything to say after that since the waiter conveniently swept in with their dishes.
Elijah was still impressed by the veal every time he got it; he preferred the umami glaze seared into the meat, but the flank was never too well-done. Westlie’s bouillabaisse on the other hand, came with an extra bowl for shells and smelled like sweetness and nostalgia. The soup itself was a sort of iridescent purple with bits of shellfish bobbing through the film.
Westlie sipped it cautiously once the waiter left and cocked her head. “… I don’t like it. But I don’t know why.”
Elijah’s veal was excellent. He felt superior. “Is it too pungent?”
She sipped again. “No… I think…” Another sip. “… I think it’s just bittersweet. Pungent is how strong the mood hits you.” She thoughtfully trailed her spoon through the soup and sampled the fish. “It’s good. Acquired taste, I guess.”
“Have you had Neathfish before?”
“Once? Once or twice, maybe, but I don’t know where.” She glanced at the soup. “The fish is good. … Oh, I think that bit’s crab.”
They ate in companionate silence with Westlie occasionally gazing out the window. Her hair looked lighter, Elijah realized, as she kept turning. Not grey, but a little more orange? A slightly different texture. He still remembered a deep auburn from when she was 28 and scared shitless to join the crew. But that was… 16 years ago? And she was 44 now. God, they’d both aged.
The thought of time overwhelmed him again and he almost asked her. The words lodged in his throat.
“Oh!” She glanced up from cracking a portion of crab shell. “I forgot about the tariffs!”
Elijah breathed out. “You mentioned them briefly.”
“You could do something about it, actually.” Westlie’s eyes flashed and she settled back in her chair. “But it’s all Lustrum’s fault really. The new governor decided to relax the restrictions on Hour smelting, so there are two new factories in the city. Which is good for refined Hour supply of course, you would think, but they didn’t plan for the influx from Albion.”
“So they increased tariffs.”
“Throughout the Reach,” Westlie huffed. “As if Hours from Lustrum are any different from Hours anywhere else. I could ground the Cogsworth and make more money throwing the shiny things in the boiler.”
Elijah took a sip of his champagne and had to remind himself not to hold it like a teacup. “You’re not in it for the money.”
Westlie attacked a crab leg shell with a fork. “I’m not in it for the money. Thank you, Elijah. Which is what I keep reminding Andy, and then he tells me-” she waved the fork around, mockingly “-‘But Fairweather’s margins, Westlie.’ And I have to go, ‘Fuck margins, Andy, I like flying to Lustrum.’ And he goes, ‘You’re not supposed to be here in the first place.’ And then I tell him I’m going to dock his pay or leave him at the next port.”
“But you don’t.”
“But I don’t.”
Elijah hid a smile behind his champagne. “… Truly generous of you.”
“Oh, don’t be facetious with me, Elijah.” She circled the fork at his face, which would have been more terrifying if she weren’t a pretty, middle-aged woman in a white blouse. “I know when you’re poking fun.”
“I’m not being facetious.”
She went back to attacking the crab leg, grumbling. “This is why I didn’t tell you in a letter.”
“You just don’t like hearing the truth.”
Eating. Unladylike fork waving. “I don’t like having the truth shoved down my throat when it doesn’t matter. So what if we don’t make as much money doing Lustrum runs? It’s still a net profit.”
“True.” The waiter brought them both a cup of tea and Elijah sipped his gratefully. “It’s your ship, Captain.”
“You only call me Captain when you’re making a point,” Westlie grumbled again. She finished the soup and leaned back with her own cup of tea. She sipped it. “I hate it when you do that.”
“You hate when I’m right.”
She eyed him. “I do hate when you’re right.” They were both quiet for a minute until she puffed out a breath in defeat. “Tariffs are still bad for business though.”
“… Your business or ‘business’?”
“’Business’. If it’s too expensive to do Hour runs to Lustrum, the only people who will be able to do it will be people like me- established Captains who can take a profit hit, you know.”
“There are more than enough Hours in Albion and the Reach for research projects and whatever else they’re used for now.”
“That’s the point though. Tariffs will cripple Lustrum and Albion will be the only Hours exporter.”
Elijah vaguely realized that they hadn’t seen each other in years and they were using this opportunity over tea and – Ah, apple fritter – to talk about work; the fact wasn’t disappointing so much as frustrating that if they didn’t talk about work, they would have to talk about feelings. He sipped his tea. “That would be bad.”
“Talk the governor into shutting down one of the new smelters, or raising restrictions; either one really. And try to get them to lower tariffs.”
“I’ve been in office six months you know.”
“You’re persuasive.”
“Not that persuasive.”
“I have faith.”
Well. He couldn’t argue with that.
They sat in silence for another minute. Restaurant patrons had begun to trickle out. Elijah and Westlie were left to their tea and fritter amongst pastel wallpaper and dimmed gas lights – the old crystal kind. The whispered voices of servers seemed louder as they listened, and somewhere in the back of the room, a grandfather clock chimed.
Westlie sipped her tea again and glanced down at it with a little smile. “It doesn’t taste as good as yours, you know.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. However you and Sebastian made your tea… it’s not the same.”
“Would you like the last bite?”
“Sure.”
They finished the fritter slowly, savoring it. Elijah wasn’t sure if they were savoring taste or time more, neither of them meeting the others’ eyes. He felt the clock in the corner pressing on him as the night drew to a close. His mind so preoccupied he wasn’t even sure if they kept up mindless chatter while finishing tea, he just felt himself drink and pay, declining Westlie’s offer to pick up her end.
He extended his arm as she rose from the table and they walked to the door together. Westlie neatly slipped on a wool coat from the rack by the door. It was one of the modern skyfarer coats, he realized, with woolen leather lining; although usually they cut off at the waist. Westlie’s extended to her knees to accommodate her skirt.
They stood on the sidewalk while she fastened the buttons and belt, and she gave him a little apologetic smile when she was done.
“I like it.”
“Oh, thank you. It’s new.” He knew. “I got it last year in Lustrum.” Her cheeks flushed a little. “The sky nips a bit harder now, you know?”
He knew. It was time, chasing both of them. He couldn’t think of anything to say though.
“Where next?”
“Elutheria again. Khanate business. It might be a while.” She sighed, shoving her hands in her pockets and turning to look over London. The city was still bustling at night – maybe even because it was night. “It’s so quiet here now. I miss it, honestly.”
It was going to be another year and a half before he saw her again and he was going to grow more grey hairs above his ears and Elijah’s heart hammered in his throat. He wasn’t sure if she cared, but he cared. Maybe this dinner was the last time they talked face to face. Maybe next year would never come. And he had to say- had to say something. He closed his eye, let out a breath, and looked at her again.
He’d thought for a long time about words that wouldn’t make her feel obligated to stay; he refused to drag her out of the sky. He’d settled on reassurance, because she’d already stayed with him several times over the years. Mallory, Marion, Morgan- they all knew Elijah’s home in London had an open door. But a reminder was the best way to restart that conversation. Elijah swallowed as the words stuck in his throat. “You… you know you always have a home here in London.”
“I know.” Her eyes searched his face. “London is my home.” Westlie opened her mouth like she was going to say something else, and shut it. She opened it again. “It… still feels strange when I walk into the cab and you aren’t there.”
Elijah swallowed. “I’m sure Andy does an excellent job. As… odd as that is to say.”
She half-smiled. “He does, but it’s not that.”
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated again. She wasn’t good at hiding it. Say it, Elijah realized he was begging. Say what you mean. “Well, you don’t sing opera in the cab, for one.”
Elijah chuckled and he closed his eye while Westlie was distracted. Her port stops were always quick. This would likely be the last time to talk before she left. Too many years. Say it now. Elijah took a deep breath and swallowed, hands in his pockets. “Westlie…”
“Yes?”
Last chance. “Do you still… have feelings for- for me?”
Westlie immediately flushed red and her eyes flickered down. Her hands came out of her pockets to tuck hair behind her ears as she panicked, which made Elijah lean toward ‘no’. His heart clenched. She regained her composure a few seconds later and half-met his eyes, cheeks scarlet. “… I do.”
Relief washed over Elijah. He felt the muscles in the back of his shoulders undo knots he didn’t know existed; he still, somehow, didn’t know what to say. “I’m… glad.”
“I miss you,” Westlie suddenly whispered. He realized that was the thing she’d wanted to say when she hesitated. “I miss your tea and I miss you and every time I come back to London, I remember it’s my home because you’re here.”
Elijah reached out a hand and she took it, fingers wrapping softly around his like their greeting at the beginning of the evening. But this time he felt the fingers linger in his own, something weighty; something more. He blushed as he raised her hand and gently kissed it, half-expecting Westlie to pull away, but she didn’t. She was bright red though. “You know,” he managed. “You could just… stay.”
She closed her eyes and she considered it.
He still knew the furrowed brow of her stare into the future, weighing options. There was a sudden urge to kiss her forehead and he restrained himself.
She opened her eyes and he already knew the answer. “I still want to fly.”
Her hand slipped out of his, and Elijah was surprised how much it stung. He smiled through his disappointment. “… And you have a crew. I’m sorry- for suggesting it.”
“Well, but- I think-” Westlie hesitated again. “I didn’t- I wasn’t sure how you still felt. And Elijah, when I’m done, I’ll stay.”
Her eyes were soft and brown, nose pink from the nip of the winds. She meant every word. Elijah felt his heart melt and he wanted to kiss her hand again, tell her she was a brilliant stupid captain and he would not follow her into the stars again because two glass fingers were enough for him, but he loved her and he loved her smile and he loved that she would come home. So Elijah just… smiled. “I’ll be waiting, Westlie.”
He hesitated for a moment, then turned to fix his cuff and leave her when his sleeves were grabbed – those were wool! – and Westlie turned him roughly back to face her. “Wha-”
She grabbed his collar and kissed him.
She tasted like tea and nostalgia and something sweet he couldn’t place. He felt twenty years younger, and ageless, and he loved her with the fear of loss he tried to hide because it really wasn’t healthy. It ended too soon when they were both out of breath. Westlie’s face was hot with glee when he could finally see it. Elijah managed a lopsided grin. He awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. “Are you and the Cogsworth staying in London tonight?”
“Elijah! Sixteen years to kiss you and that’s the first thing you say?”
Elijah blushed furiously, half-afraid that was a terrible thing to say since his brain was stuck replaying the kiss. But she smiled and gently straightened his lapel. “We are- I am. Why do you ask?”
“Well- Well, ah-”
Westlie kissed his cheek and Elijah knew he was the most brilliant shade of red anyone could get. Somehow Westlie wrapped her arm through his to start walking and she squeezed it gently. “Where did you want to take me tonight, Elijah?”
That was the thing that knocked some sense into him. Elijah stared down at her with happiness and it was returned with soft affection. He swallowed to get the words out, but it was far easier than before. “Let’s… let’s go home.”
Sunless-Albion tasted like gunpowder and cinnamon.
If Westlie opened her mouth and breathed deep, she could ever-so-faintly taste hours on her tongue. A muted, earthy tang, like truffles stored in ice.
The sky was a deep pitch.
She hadn't gotten used to it, even after five years; even after near-death blowing up the sun; even after landing the Queen's final blow with her own two hands. None of it felt real.
Elijah's footsteps sounded on the stairwell and she turned as he made the final step. One mug was more carefully balanced than the other, lest it slip on his glass fingers. She took that one. They both settled against the railing.
She sipped. Elijah had made an Achlys blend of tea; dark, earthy, very familiar. She savored it. "... The sky's darker than I remember."
She couldn't see his smile behind the mug, but the skin behind his eyepatch wrinkled. "The Khanate has helped. There have been contributions."
"Contributions from you I hear."
His nose wrinkled. "Family contributions."
"Your contributions."
He ignored that, and Westlie dismissed it for another day.
"... How's Andy?"
"Brilliant." She smiled. "Still rough around the edges, but he learns quickly."
"You have an inordinate amount of patience for the most inexplicable things."
"Thank you," she sipped again. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"He needs it."
"He does."
"What about Arthur? Are you going to visit him?"
Westlie hesitated. "... Probably. At some point. I should."
Elijah hesitated, and Westlie could see the question on his face. She took another sip so she could hide behind her mug.
"Why haven't you come to London for two years?"
'Busy' was true, but it was also a lie. Westlie squinted at the stars like they would hold an answer and Elijah waited.
She admired that about him, as much as she hated it. That deep-sunken silence as she tried to reconcile her actions with words. She let her breath spiral in soft blotted clouds from the chill. "I... I don't know."
Elijah waited.
"Nothing's finished," she whispered. It sounded loud despite the noise of London. "There's so much to do- so many runs to make- we didn't finish."
"There's no sun in the sky. No throne of hours."
"Achlys-" Westlie's voice cracked; for a second she hated herself for sounding half her age. "New Winchester, Port Prosper- They took the brunt of London's invasion so we could have that chance. There isn't enough to repay them-"
She stayed quiet for a moment, hoping he'd read her mind- that she didn't want to sit. She had to do. Had to keep doing. She could help, she could fly, she was free, it was purpose, and whenever she was still there was that itch to keep pushing.
She wasn't Morgan- Gods knew where Marion and Sally and Morgan were off now to kill more Judgements- but she wanted to make things safe in the mess they were leaving. Which words said that?
"I- I just... I want to finish the job; and right now, it's not in London."
"I know." Elijah hesitated. He cleared his throat. "I mean, you have a ho- place here, if you want it. Somewhere to stay that isn't Arthur's."
"O-oh."
"I hoped you weren't staying away because of that." His voice softened a little. "I know you're not done."
"... how?"
"Your letters were happy." They'd finished their tea, so he couldn't hide the way his visible eye softened with understanding and the separation that lingered between them sometimes.
They stood there on the roof of the Fry mansion as gas lights shone through the mist and locomotives steamed to the docks.
"I missed you," Westlie blurted out. "It's not the same."
Elijah's face flushed a violent pink.
Her cheeks burned.
"I- fuck-"
"Yo- you have a home here, whenever you need-" Elijah's words were a little strangled but he managed. "I- I mean that."
oh fucking hell
In the middle of the night Elijah was still wearing his goddamn tie under his waistcoat and Westlie had parked in Wolfstack station and signed 29 pages of paperwork and after two years Elijah was still going to play dignified even though it was very, very attractive- and she dragged him into a kiss.
It was fierce and crushed and hurt, kinda, but she wanted it to hurt because she couldn't stop flying, and there was a hole at her side where he once stood and that hole hurt, and she missed him and that hurt, and they were both gasping and red when she finally let go.
"... Ow."
"I love you." The words choked in her throat. "I love you- I will come home."
"You could have said that."
"I am- did."
"Gentler next time." But he was teasing now in his dry manner with the subtle up-quirk of the lip.
"Fine." Westlie waited for him to collect the mugs and face her again before she grabbed his tie.
She
gently
with
emphasized slowness
-pulled him down into another kiss that she did make softer that time because she was almost crying with relief. She didn't pull away at the end, and he rested his forehead on hers.
"I'm sorry," Westlie whispered, "for making you worry."
Summary: Those who die do not die alone. The Waste Waif watches. What happens when a ship loses its crew. My submission for the @neath-to-reach-zine
-=-
Organized chaos ruled the skies for who navigated the Reach. Paths between islands looped like a rat’s nest, or Her Majesty’s Palace; shards of ice and deadly pockets of high-gravity could send a locomotive spiraling. An analogous mountain range dotted the sky en route to Lustrum, full of massive, gaping peaks with jagged sides and caverns cut into the rock; echoes of something larger that carved the rock into islands in the first place. If one had enough time, and skill, and strength, the range could likely be the realms’ trickiest jigsaw puzzle. But for now, the mountains floated in silence through the winds and snow and ice that covered them, blessed with a soft smattering of starlight above.
These winds – fickle, aloof – cycled like the tides of the Surface. The patterns were still debated by the realms’ navigators, but there were patterns. Storms clouded the skies, blew islands off course; occasionally great sky beasts quit the islands with such force they crashed into each other. The lands strayed, but the steady winds tugged them back into orbit. Even in death, the Garden King willed Order.
Throughout the mountain range, bioluminescent lichen and fungi fed on the exposed rock. Frosted marble columns twenty feet in diameter drifted through the wilderness like long-forgotten trees. Besides the wind and the occasional spider, it was still.
The hiss of a flare and flash of red against the blues of Lustrum broke the serenity of the Reach. The light glinted off a locomotive floating in the darkness. It was London-built, steel weathered. No steam hissed from its boiler. The vessel rotated slowly in the realm’s bioluminescent glow. Ice had crept over the cab, frosting the widows.
Inside the engine room, in the unnatural tranquility, Eileen Declan huddled in the engineer’s old cot. She made her last trip out six hours earlier to set the flare up. She rigged a timer for it to go at the darkest part of the day – maybe someone would see then. The chances were higher at least. But now it shone and went and still each of her footsteps in the empty ship echoed through the wilderness.
Her toes were frigid after the expedition and the fact her body no longer had enough heat for her to stay outside the engine room where she burned bedlinens and crate frames lingered in her mind. Her cheeks were gaunt, fingers bony. She’d never been a large woman, but her frame was clearly meant to hold more. Her hands weakly tugged the captain’s quilt – gods rest his soul – around her. Eileen could feel the room growing colder, but the strength to find something else to burn was unobtainable. Best to conserve what warmth she had.
She coughed weakly in the frozen air.
Would she last the night? Her body felt too empty to ponder the question and she let resignation settle in her stomach instead. She was a practical sort of woman and this end was unavoidable for a skyfarer, wasn’t it? But she wondered if her sisters were alright. Sad, she thought, that she would die before her mother. Maybe this would be sad for them. Maybe the news would reach them someday.
The emotions gave her heart some weight – made her feel a little less hungry. Years ago she’d had a full belly – months ago, even – and now she could barely remember it. The crew left New Winchester on half-rations since they couldn’t sell parcels of tea for full price. The war-ravaged Winchesters couldn’t afford it, whether or not they wanted any. It was the last of several bad deals the captain had made, even though Eileen had joined for the last two. They left Winchester for Lustrum with a half-hold full of tea, low on fuel. Her friend, the first mate, grumbled bitterly to her, but she kept her voice hopeful. “Lustrum has the money and mining camps always want tea. We’ll manage. We’ll get there.”
The mountains of Lustrum entangled them halfway, burning out their fuel after a vicious storm blew them off-course. The shortcut turned into a long-cut. The regular fuel ran out, then the accessible flammables. Then the crew died, one by one, from frostbite and starvation. The captain held out hope of rescue until he died, writing letter after letter meant for the families of those who died first and letters of recommendation for those who might live. He wasn’t a bad man; maybe a bit of a gambler, maybe not the keenest merchant, but not a bad man. Eileen felt for him. They wrapped him in his bedsheet and gifted him to the wastes.
The first mate died soon after giving up her crackers to Eileen. She was like an elder sister. Maybe brusque sometimes, but with a gentle tenderness. She told her where there was a pistol hidden in the gunnery.
Eileen shot the cook when he came after her with a cleaver.
And then she was alone.
She considered eating the cook – nobody would have judged her. He was a thin man with a broken nose, mealy hair, and teeth that were too straight to be natural. Unpleasant to the eye with a unpleasanter demeanor – but he cooked well. Probably would have cooked her thighs well too, she could imagine. The day before this, she had raised the knife to cut him, but she couldn’t do it. The wilderness was too still. It felt appropriate, in some way, that she leave the dead to an unbroken slumber. That slumber would be the only burial she was gifted.
The locomotive grew colder as the hours ticked by and the twisted linen fabric burned to ashes. Frost crystallized under the doorway and in the corners of the room, dusting it to a milky-grey. The color echoed in Eileen’s mind as her eyelids drooped. It had been a long day working to fire the last flare. She was exhausted and it was cold. The quilt caught what little heat her body produced. The quilt was warm.
Several hours passed. The room pulsed imperceptibly as if responding to the rhythm of Eileen’s breaths, the ice ebbing and flowing as her warmth pressed back against it. Slowly, the ice replaced the space her breaths no longer filled. The warmth of the room grew smaller and smaller, like a candle’s flame shrinking in on itself.
Eileen’s breath shuddered in her sleep and the ashes smoked their last warmth as ice frosted over the remains. White dendrites crept over the floorboard, over the roof, down the walls closer to her cot. The metal walls of the engine crackled; ice tightening its hold on the ship like a crystal leviathan. Eileen’s breath deepened, forming cotton clouds in front of her face. She shivered. Hours passed. Her breathing shallowed; her pale cheeks took on a bluish hue and her lips turned blue. Each breath rasped in the silence of the engine room; her skin stretched taunt over her fingers curled to her chest, blackened and numb.
Her skin darkened over the next hour and each breath rattled more in the silence than the last. Icy tendrils crackled over the metal plating, up the cot supports. Ever so gently the ice coated her toes, silver on black in miniscule hexagonal crystals, inanimate encroaching on the animate. Eileen’s breath shook. Her lips darkened from blue to purple, eyes frosted shut – she was too weak to open them, even if she wasn’t sunk deep in dreamless sleep.
Ice thickened over the room as the minutes passed. It crept slowly up her shins, over her coat: darkening her extremities in black blotches. Her hollow, half-exposed cheek darkened and ice formed in the cavity. Frost dusted her eyelids and nose. She breathed in one last time, lungs laboring against the chill. In the tomb of an engine room with its lingering odor of coal dust and hallowed metal walls, sheets of tin with its polished bronze boiler; the silence of the pipes that no longer hissed, frozen shut weeks past; Frosty icicle ornaments strung along the mezzanine and tools that led to the cab; in this sepulcher of hubris, of man’s audacity and bravery, Eileen gave up the ghost.
Her last breath rattled through her blue lips into the small hands of a child that materialized before her. The waif was blue, coated with ice in the grotesque manner of a death forgotten and unclean. Eileen’s last breath fogged the child’s grasp, crystallizing into a stone – ice? No, diamond – a rough octahedron with jagged edges, flawed in the way humans are flawed; unpolished, unshaped, but shining. The waif’s hands let it hover in the air, soft and free while she opened a bag formed from thousands of the same diamonds, held together by silky invisible thread. Those were the special ones who knew this end and prayed to not be forgotten. They stayed close. The child blew downward and the new diamond clinked softly against a dozen others.
The waif looked at the ice-filled engine room for a while. Hours? Days? Time was immaterial. There were no windows and there was no light. Nothing moved and the stillness stood eternal. The child sensed it and stayed in reverence. After a time, the waif passed up to the cab. Frost crystalized over the engine windows as she approached. The navigator was frozen solid, head on his arms, arms on the paneling. A diamond materialized near his closed, frozen eyes as she walked close and it drew to her like a magnet. She guided it to her bag with the same gentle reverence and passed to the cargo hold. Empty piles of tea lay on the floor, crates pulled apart and burned. A pile of bones lay in the corner. Fragments of moisture gathered from the pile as she stepped close, crystalizing in the air. The waif opened her bag.
Ice crackled under her bare feet in the stairwell. The mess hall held a single large table, a stove, sink, and pantry. All the dishes were put away. The pantry door hung ajar, empty. It was oddly clean except for one wall, where ice sparkled red over a blood splatter. It smeared down to the body of the cook slouched against the wall. His diamond was rough, jagged, but crystal-clear. A convert of the Borrower. Pity there were no hours to give here except his own.
The waif left icy footprints as she traveled to each cabin, slipping through the doorways and collecting the breaths of the dead. The first mate had several books spread out on her desk. Frost had crystallized up the woman’s bedsheets and over her hair, but she looked peaceful. The waif blew a small but shiny stone into her bag.
Eventually she passed through the hull and into the wastes. The only sound around the engine was the wind, whistling softly through the mountains. Snow tinkled quietly against the metal hull, and occasionally the metal of the engine cracked as it tightened. The waif reveled in the quiet; the sanctity of The Garnet painted lovingly on the hull. Space stretched endlessly around the engine; floating mountains, wind, ice, and bioluminescent lichen amassing itself to light the scene.
There was little ‘up’ in the Reach, except on islands large enough to have their own gravitational signatures. The old, dead King had picked those islands out long ago with little rhyme or reason and the Lustrum route was particularly arbitrary once the mountains had been broken apart. The breath of the captain called to her though. It had called to her for the past week, but the waif tended to others, wandering the empty halls of The Garnet until it was truly lost. There was both sadness and possessiveness of the ship once it happened and its void called louder. She found the captain’s body wrapped in a shroud in a snow bank; a cold burial for a good man. His diamond floated to her willingly, cold, even in her frozen palm. The waif added it to her bag and struck out again.
She stretched from empty place to empty place; they were a part of her, and she of them, frosty and beloved. Travel was easiest in the places she inhabited, which was simple around Lustrum: she brushed the edges of the mountains untouched by man or beast; the snow blown into the wastes off the mountaintops. She stepped into a mined-out hours pocket underground, littered with broken picks, cast-off signs, several cans, and a once-beloved lantern. The waif made her way into the true wastes – the edges of the realm where the mountains were no longer coherent mountains but chunks of rock the size of cities floating in the wind. There were diamonds strewn between them. Everything was untouched here and the waif moved freely.
Reverent, she emptied her bag to the wind and let her connection to each death shift inside her, their memories and their names and their lives recorded eternally. When the jagged boulders shifted on the winds they exposed more diamonds; thousands of them. Each one unforgotten, all remembered, all sacred; a hallowed space between the realms for the memories of the lonely dead. Their breaths would stay here suspended forever, untouched by time and surrounding those they had loved within the traversable universe. The waif would protect their memory. The promise was unspoken, but assured. She would protect their legacy and the legacies of the spaces she inhabited: when people loved but lost. Such was her gift.
The waif took a seat on a nearby craig and watched the precious stones float past. Her form was, at best, ethereal to the human eye, although it grew stronger here, where there were no eyes to see her. There was no heat in her existence, no nerves; she embodied dying breath and breath wielded no soul. But despite that, a type of love whistled on the winds around her, buoying the new diamonds through the wastes. It blew on her desire to express her presence and their connection; an unspoken extension of herself. The gods were simple creatures. If a connection was harmed, the winds and ice shifted in swift, angry retribution.
Time passed. The waif flitted through the expanse. It was too cold to snow on the edges of the world; ice crackled where she moved. Time passed. Within the realms, hunger raked its way through a crew. An ache; a sorrow. Someone abandoned a morsel to the wastes. Shared hunger was a kindness. The sacrificed biscuit froze, frosted over, shattered to crumbs in a moment or a minute or an eternity and the winds shifted. Love. Attention. Reciprocation. Time Passed. The wind whistled amongst the diamonds.
They locked eyes for a short eternity. Elijah, five inches taller than Westlie; her head tilted ever so slightly up to meet his gaze. He was tantilizingly close. They were in port and the Pyrrhus was achingly quiet, so quiet she could feel his breathing- the slow rise and fall of his lapel. Westlie’s fingertips stretched forward, pulled by invisible strings. ‘Elijah,’ she wanted to whisper. Her lips formed the sound, but it didn’t escape. His eyes still softened like he heard it, and his head dipped ever so slightly. His pink lips looked soft, and there was the sudden rush of nerves that sent her heart racing, and she could feel the flush run up her cheeks and down her fingertips where their hands suddenly brushed. Her fingers burned and she felt a heat in her stomach like she downed three shots of whiskey but in a good way because she craved more. She instinctively drew her fingertips up his palm, over his angular wrist bones, traced over his tendons. And it felt so natural when she felt his fingertips trace over her arm, just three of his fingers, ever so slightly brushing over her veins, sending jolt after jolt of electricity through her.
The urge to continue tracing her fingers over his arm overwhelmed Newton’s law of inertia and they shifted ever so slightly closer together so her hand was on his elbow. They were so close. She felt his breathing, his blood rushing in the pulse against his wrist. His lips were like a lure. ‘I want you,’ she wanted to say, but it didn’t come out again. ‘Elijah, you’re around me and I can’t breathe.’
They were so painfully close. Westlie felt her eyes unfocus as they slipped closer, even though she tried to keep them open - tried to retain some control of her body. Elijah’s nose ever so slightly brushed against her cheek and a shock ran down Westlie’s spine. He was breathing, he was alive; and he wanted her. Desire formed a whine that stuck in her throat. Westlie felt her fingers tighten on his arm in anticipation and just that small movement pulled their lips together, pulled them from two people to one, and suddenly she was grasping his shirt tighter and he was pressing back.
‘Westlie,’ she could imaging him whispering, like her name was an honorific, a reverent, something tender. No- it wasn’t her imagination. He whispered it; his eyes closed, forehead leaned softly against hers, lips brushing. She couldn’t control herself; she kissed him again. It took everything she had to ignore the greedy lean of her body, her desire to continue kissing him until her lips were raw and sore and they were both out of breath and still if they broke apart, Westlie knew she’d have the same desperate, hungry look for him. She needed his touch now, couldn’t live without it. That hand softly curled about her elbow, fingertips tracing her veins, caressing her like she could break from his grasp any moment. She needed his lips, needed the aristocratic curve of his chin, needed his love.
“I love you.”
The words came out of her easily because the emotion was undeniable, unmistakable, and it felt real. The nights in the cab when he made her tea, and she wondered, or when they sat in silence for hours while her happiness overflowed and she wanted to break the stillness and say it. She’d loved him then. She’d loved him for years then. But this was real. This was in front of her, now, she’d acted- they’d acted, and it felt dangerously, deliciously honest.
Elijah melted and his other hand softly slid down her shoulder, tender. “I love you too.”
They both knew, but it was good to say it. They stood there, foreheads leaned together, noses gently touching the other’s cheek.
- My Daughter Now, I Guess. (1)
- I Have Codependency Issues (2)
- I Don’t Have Codependency Issues (Yet) (3)
- Westlie’s an Idiot (4)
- Thanks, Arthur. You Gave Us Codependency Issues (5)
- How The Fuck Did You Kill A Starstoat? (6)
- Actually The Starstoat Wasn’t A Big Deal (7)
The problem wasn’t even the house, it was the chill. The entrance was bright and airy with little cream fleur-de-lis on the walls. Relia had placed a little semi-circle of bronzewood chairs with green upholstery in a semi-circle around the parlor, off the entranceway. There were wood bookshelves on the wall and a fireplace that the maids lit at precisely 6pm. It was bright from the light of the Clockwork Sun and the whole airy place stank like a dead rat rolled in lavender. It was a cesspit of lies and deceit and Stars- just the fucking arrogance of those goddamn lace curtains curling over the fucking windows like little haunting ghosts. Chilly.
Morgan shrank from the parlor and absentmindedly tossed her carpetbag into her other hand. There were light footsteps in the hall. Unfamiliar. Morgan scanned the face of a maid with short white hair who was probably a year older than her. The maid smiled cheerfully, like a little puppy. “Oh! You must be Miss Morgan!” Wow. I hate you. “Captain Faire mentioned you’d be arriving today. I can take your bag, miss. You must be tired.” I’m not tired. “If you pardon me, miss, where’s Miss Westlie?”
“On the trellis outside.” Morgan said, completely serious.
The maid blinked in confusion.
Morgan grinned back and winked. It was a predatory grin and a predatory wink. The chill of the house had infected her face. She wasn’t good at hiding her emotions when she didn’t want them hidden and indignation bubbled just under the surface.
The maid laughed nervously. “Right then.” She took her bag and started up the staircase. She shot a look over her shoulder to see if Morgan was following- she was- and then seemed to shrink into herself. She didn’t chatter again.
How long had the maid worked here? She seemed to know Westlie, but Morgan would’ve remembered her ashy hair, so she must have been hired in the past four months. There were little tells too. If you stepped on the fifth or seventh step on the stairs, the painting of Captain Faire tilted ten degrees to the left. Captain Faire always wanted the portraits level. The maid stepped on them both.
There was a hallway at the top of the stairs. To the right was the master wing. At the top of the stairs was a little sitting room, and then directly to the left of the sitting room was Morgan’s godawful lilac-smelling shithole. The maid opened the door respectively with a little of her initial pep, like Morgan was supposed to enjoy coming home, and stood there while she walked in.
I really need to put some old books under the bed to make it smell better, was Morgan’s first thought, like it always was, and I really need to make the walls more interesting, was the second, like it always was. There were still nails and blemishes in the wallpaper from her and Arthur’s cold war as a teenager. Nothing interesting was allowed to spice it up, although Morgan had managed to drag in several more “acceptable” bookshelves than Westlie’s room and arrange the thicker ones near the door, so the corners of the room were shrouded. This was permissible chaos.
There was a bed with its headboard against the wall. Boring. (Again, Morgan had tried repeatedly to angle it but it always ended up in the same position as before.) Along with a desk in the corner. She had managed to get the desk closer to the bed so her favorite reference materials were in the bookshelf by the window right against it, there was her desk, and then the bed was adjacent in the middle. It made the corner cozier. But that in itself had been an arduous process, inching the bed against the side of the desk so slowly nobody had questioned why it wasn’t in the middle of the room. She had a dresser by the closet.
The whole room was covered in the same fleur-de-lis wallpaper as the rest of the house, although there were several patches in the corners of Morgan’s room that had clearly been sliced and the same wallpaper had been matched against it.
“Thank you.”
The maid bobbed a curtsey and shut the door. And Morgan was left alone.
The loneliness from the house sparked boredom and the boredom hit her like a pound of bricks to the face. It never got any easier. It was an itch that started in her extremities and slowly moved inward until her whole body was screaming that it needed something (the desire was never named) and it needed it now. The boredom, like it always did, brought memories of trying to fix it because there was nothing in the room but the fucking wallpaper to stare at. Morgan hissed and threw open the window, trying to ignore it and inexplicably unable to.
Five years ago, she had been fifteen and adorable and not hellishly jaded. She’d wandered one of the museums and seen a series of cute shelves placed about two feet from the ceiling - about 6ft up, still grabbing distance – wrapping around the whole room supported by well-placed supports nailed into the wall. It was brilliant. A bookshelf you could reach from anywhere.
She scrounged all night for the proper wood at the docks, snuck it into the room in the morning with some definitely-not-stolen tools and got to work bright and early at 6am. She had to give Arthur credit for not caring enough about her he waited 3 full hours to slam the door open. At that point she’d had the supports attached and she was fucking around with the shelf placement, trying to see if she could make them fit without too much sawing. She could still remember his red face and the way he stopped dead in the doorway trying to take in the boards she was sawing in half on top of the footpost and a bookshelf she’d dragged into the center of the room. Morgan couldn’t help the grin on her face. “Good morning.”
“What.” He blustered. “What. Is this.”
“Bookshelves! They’re going to be lovely.” Morgan had stopped sawing and swiveled to look at the supports with pride, hands on her hips. “Look, they wrap all the way around the room. I put a break there for the other bookshelf. It is kinda tall, isn’t it?”
“Get them off. What the fuck are they doing here? You’ve fucking ruined the wallpaper.”
The wallpaper? He was worried about the wallpaper? He’d said more words to her now than all year and it was about the fucking wallpaper? Morgan actually cocked her head to count what he’d said to her in the last two years. 1) He’d caught Westlie embezzling again and he decided to go to the source of the problem. 2) She was a leech and a problem to be endured and she should be grateful. 3) She should be grateful he didn’t ship her off to Leadbeater for good- which was the most recent jab about six months ago when she ran into him in the hall. She didn’t actually bother to retort that one, just raise an eyebrow, walk away, and book her spot to Leadbeater that evening (ironically). She’d left Westlie a short note. And then she’d traveled until Arthur had demanded – through Westlie in an equally commandeering manner – that she come home and Westlie was going to make sure she did it by meeting her in Port Prosper. (Which was rich, Morgan realized, because all she had to do was not show up, and then Westlie would ask where she was twice, and then Westlie would go back to London to get chewed out by Arthur, and Morgan would stay safely away. But that would require Westlie to be chewed out.)
Speaking of Westlie, she deserved to get chewed out right now because Morgan was sitting on the bed staring at this motherfucking godawful cream-ass wallpaper. FUCK.
The itch to move roared back and Morgan flung her carpetbag over to the dresser and scrambled at the window latch. They had to be inside at this point, unless Westlie had gotten too soft in the months she’d been gone. Lizzie seemed more than capable of climbing in. Morgan finally got the window unlocked – it tended to stick, which was why she went and climbed out of Westlie’s more than she should – and she looked at the garden. There was a small indent in the gravel where they’d jumped over the wall and Westlie’s window had been shut. Fine. They were in. Was it seven yet?
Morgan glanced at the clock on the wall – 6:35, fuck – and her eye was drawn back to the wallpaper that was ever so slightly misaligned so you could see where it’d been cut. That had all happened after Arthur confronted her. She refused to take it down. He fumed and left. When she left for the day, it had all been torn down when she got back. At the time Morgan had the energy to be furious and she wanted those shelves. She cut it all out again and put them back up when he was out on a weekend business trip. They got torn down again. Up and down, up and down, until she was red in the face and the docks started putting locks on their fucking wood – which wasn’t a problem really, it was just annoying that they needed to because her fucking father couldn’t fucking stand to have shelves in her room. After a year and a half of trying, Morgan bitterly gave it up. It was futile. The maids were relentless, and they flocked to Arthur’s beck and call. All she could do was sit there, rearrange her bookshelves, and be bitter as the maids rolled out new wallpaper to cover the blemishes of the wood and the nails. A constant reminder of failure.
Twenty minutes.
Morgan snatched up the newspaper and aimlessly flipped through it. It didn’t scratch the itch but it helped.
She slipped into the hallway at exactly 6:59 and cracked open Westlie’s door to see- Oh. Great. Lizzie was crying. Westlie had completely forgotten about dinner. Morgan could already see it. Westlie stood at attention, always; it was her way of being prepared, and she hated stooping because it felt vulnerable. Morgan was generally good at making the facade crumble. She couldn’t always manage it in the house but when they were walking in the street, at the pub, in quiet places, when they were sitting and swinging their feet and Westlie’s shoulders drooped; her eyes got softer and she looked human. When she felt something intensely it shone through too and she would lean, or soften, or some change so she wasn’t ramrod straight. Lizzie however, had done a great job of getting Westlie to bow the knee even though the woman clearly didn’t know what the everloving fuck she was doing. She was not good at comforting.
Ire burst in Morgan’s stomach. “It’s seven.”
… oh, she’d definitely forgotten. Westlie offered Lizzie her handkerchief and glanced up. “I-”
You can’t make it. I know. Another burst of anger. Morgan bit her tongue that time.
“Morgan… she’s scared.” Yes. She’s extremely frightened by the lilac-smelling shithole you brought her to. “I’m not leaving her like this.”
She hadn’t asked her to leave Lizzie like that, although, Morgan guessed, she had insinuated it- That was unfair, saying that though, because she should be happy her sister had a fucking soul, right? So kind and benevolent for no reason- for no goddamn reason to a stranger. Anger nearly burst out of her mouth and Morgan swallowed hard. The ball of fury settled in her stomach and she tried to speak again. Lizzie was staring at her with wide tearful eyes now; Morgan wasn’t hiding the struggle well. “Of course.”
It dripped sarcasm. She didn’t intend for that. She did, but she didn’t.
Westlie caught the undertone and her eyes flashed as her body shifted ever so slightly in front of Lizzie. It was the same predictable physical block she used when Morgan, Arthur, and her were trapped in the same room, but this time Morgan wasn’t the one being protected. “I’ll come out when I’m ready. Where are the blankets?”
I hate you. Morgan’s anger bubbled over. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate your face. I hate that look. I hate how stupid you are. I hate your fucking skirt. I hate your hair. Take your hair down. I hate your shoulders. I hate your eyes. I hate your face. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
But she didn’t, not really, and Morgan hated that most of all.
“Don’t bother. I’m going out.”
“Morgan-”
She spun on her heel and stalked past the two of them to the window. The rope was in a pile on the floor. Morgan flipped open the window and tied it with an expert knot. “Attic. Top shelf. Under the pile of maps. I hope you choke on the mothballs.”
-=-
It took a while for Morgan Faire to get good and properly drunk, so she rarely tried. She was fourteen when she had her first drink of mushroom wine; it was fine. The drink had a nice after-tang. She didn’t realize you were supposed to feel something until a year later when the world of pubs opened to her and three glasses of the stuff had most skyfarers reeling. After a good amount of experimentation, Morgan found she could get buzzed after four glasses of wine, drunk after seven, and fucking sloshed after nine. It varied a bit, especially with whiskey, which was more expensive but worked faster with the high alcohol content.
Which was why she was full bottle of whisky into the evening and starting on the second. The world was starting to spin a bit, and she had to blink at the bartender when he asked for money. The downside of getting drunk was she couldn’t smile at him, wink, and charm him into another glass. She tossed down whatever she had in her pocket after the travel fare. The bartender shoved a few coins back towards her. At least she still looked presentable enough for that.
She poured herself another glass and tossed it back, trying to ignore the room spinning when she slapped the glass back on the counter.
She could still think that was the problem. She never- she never stopped thinking. Even when she was drunk, it quieted, but she could feel the itch of boredom surrounding her, even at the bar. When you looked sulky at a bar people ignored you, and if they ignored her, she couldn’t be distracted, and she was too drunk to go bother them into entertaining her. Morgan picked at the glass indentations on the whiskey bottle. They filled the label in with black paint in thick imprudent letters. Joyce’s Choice. Fuck you, Joyce.
Morgan poured herself another glass. The bartender was eyeing her at this point, probably wondering why she wasn’t fucking dead on the floor yet. If it was John-her-regular-bartender he wouldn’t be wondering, he’d just bring her another glass and drag her into the closet when she passed out and also make her clean in the morning to pay for everything. He was fair. John was great. This guy was less great, but at least he hadn’t kicked her out.
There were other bars, Morgan guessed, but she didn’t feel like walking. Actually, she might not be able to walk at this point. Or hold a conversation? Who knew. She didn’t feel like having one now. She downed another glass and shivered at the burn. She was starting to lose coherency now. Her hands were freezing while the rest of her body tried to process the massive amount of alcohol. The bottles on the shelf looked fuzzy. Everything was floating. Westlie- Westlie- Was she angry at Westlie? Why was she angry at her sister? Westlie was everything good in the world. Westlie- Morgan’s head dropped and she nearly faceplanted on the bar. She shook herself awake. Westlie-
“There you are.”
Westlie. She was too drunk to punch her sister in the face- which didn’t really make any sense but it seemed like the right thing to do. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth; couldn’t talk, couldn’t think. Good. That was the reason she got plastered in the first place. The room swirled and Morgan vomited a little in her mouth.
“You look like shit,” but the words were soft. Morgan yelped as someone slid her – as kindly as possible – off the stool and she drooped against the counter. “Let’s go home.”
“Don- Don’t want-”
Westlie looped one arm around her waist and slid Morgan’s arm over her shoulders. “We’re going home.” It was a command, but it was gentle and even Morgan couldn’t resist. She slumped into it as they made their way out of the pub and slowly down the street. The whole world spun, but it was mostly empty. One person passed; a man with a gold pocket watch and top hat. It was late. How late was late? Was late early? Why was Westlie up? How had she found her?
They stumbled down the streets. Morgan could feel Westlie’s exhaustion the longer they walked together. A little slip of the boot here, a little stagger when the world spun and Morgan had to droop on her. She hated it, a little. She didn’t ask to be dragged home. Westlie never slept at the best of times; now she was out at stars knew when, taking her home when she didn’t need-
Home... Home-?
They made it against the brick wall of the Faire house and Morgan drooped against it. The barrier she usually vaulted over seemed fucking insurmountable. “F-f’king stupid. I can’t climb.”
Westlie’s arms tightened gently around her waist. “We’ll take the stairs this time.”
No. No, no, no, no, no. Please, no. Something inside Morgan screamed and she jerked out of Westlie’s grasp as they made their way up the front walkway. She managed two steps on her own, stumbled, tripped, and staggered into the front porch where she slid to the ground. She shoved her back against the porch steps away from Westlie so she couldn’t drag her up the stairs. “N-no- No. No.”
“Morgan-”
She was too drunk to be angry. The emotions welled up in fat tears that nearly choked her. “Pl- please. Please, I can’t. Westlie, I can’t. Please-”
“Hey, hey,” Morgan couldn't face her but she knew the look. Westlie kneeled on the ground and Morgan felt her arms wrap around her. How long had it been? How- Why-? The tears came harder.
“Please, Westlie please.”
“I love you.” Westlie smoothed her hair back; she curled around her in a protective embrace and Morgan could feel the sobs come harder. “You’ll feel better after you sleep, I promise.”
“I- I don’t want to sleep- p-please- I’ll stay here. L-leave me here.”
“I can’t leave you here.” The whisper was gentle. “I care about you.”
“You don’t! You d-don’t- you don’t- You don’t c-care about me a-at all.”
“Morgan, that’s not true.” The voice was soft and concerned and Morgan wanted to trust it so hard her stomach ached. She choked on her tears. Westlie.
“You d-don’t care- you don’t- you don’t care I c-ome back,” the sniffles turned into heaving sobs and Morgan could barely get her tongue to work. “I don’t want to- to go home- I don’t- I hate it. I h-hate it, Westlie- You c-can’t replace me- Westlie, please- I need y-you don't replace me, please- Westlie, please-”
She was twenty and drunk on whiskey and still covered in coal dust from travelling; they were in the fucking gravel in the garden, her hair was a haystack, but Westlie dragged her onto her lap without hesitating. Morgan sobbed harder against her. The embrace was temporary. It was always temporary. They were so bad at this. But it felt good anyway. Westlie dug her fingers into her hair and wrapped herself around her like a shield. “I love you,” she whispered back. “I’m here, and I love you. I love you. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Maybe it was real, maybe it wasn't. Morgan gave herself up, and she cried.
-=-
When she woke up in her room, it was mid-morning without a hangover, boots off, a glass of water on the nightstand, staring at that motherfucking fleur-de-lis wallpaper.
