Private Tales Above Deck

[Selene]

She studied Gal for a long, forlorn moment. Then obeyed, moving her stiff limbs towards it, her hair and clothe dripping salt water along the way. She shuddered at the foot of it, hesitating for a moment before she disrobed with jerky movements.

All shame left her as she quickly scrambled under the thick covers, noises of cold catching in her throat and on her teeth. She disappeared under them entirely, body clenching into a ball to conserve its heat.

 

[Gal]

Gal followed without another word, her features set into an angry scowl as she joined the smaller woman under the blanket. She drew them fast together, front to back, and focused on nothing but her breathing.

The warmth slowly began to seep back into her bones, salt and damp sticking bronze and pale skin together.

“Spirits are dangerous,” she spoke after a long while, her voice hoarse from screaming. “They will trick you when they can, suck the soul right out of you. Slurp you up like a fresh clam.”

“We are taught how to deal with them. The teachings take years.”

 

[Selene]

Selene had only just begun to relax against the woman, her tension remaining long after Gal’s arms had melted away the shivers.

She tried not to think. She tried not to linger on her thoughts, but she was so angry with herself she couldn’t stop them from spiraling down toxic paths. She blinked from her rever, considering Gal’s words once they were finally given to her.

“...It listens to you,” she whispered back. “How. How do you control a god?”

 

[Gal]

Gal snorted.

“Is that what it told you?” She rolled away and sighed at the ceiling. The ship rolled beneath them, cresting another tempestuous wave.

“Well… it lied. They do that. Tell you crap you wanna hear so you’ll do what they want.” She chuckled at the darkness. “That’s why nazrani are so good at cards. If a spirit can’t read ya, then a human sure fucking can’t.”

 

[Selene]

She shivered as their skin unstuck, her face burying into the palm of her hands.

She didn’t respond at first. Words kept bubbling up, only to be killed before they could reach her mouth.

How strange it was to yearn for her tower again.

After what felt like minutes, she spoke again. “Thank you. For not leaving me to it. --Now you don’t have to go saying it. I know I’m useless to you dead, so you can take the gratitude and shut up,” she interjected sharply.

 

[Gal]

Gal grimaced at the ceiling and stayed quiet.

Let no-one ever say she didn’t know how to obey her betters.

 

[Selene]

Silent, hot tears fell down her face, the woman glaring angrily into the darkness. Stupid. So stupid. This couldn't be it for her. This wouldn’t be all she’d keep amounting too. She wouldn’t allow it.

She briskly wiped off her face with the palms of her hands and half glanced over her shoulder in the darkness. “What was the cost?” She asked, the edge still in her tone.

 

[Gal]

The temptation to stay mum lingered longer than she’d have liked to admit. Gal wore a lot of things well, but petty wasn’t one of them.

She exhaled into the quiet and closed her eyes to the roar of the sea. Despite the storm the motion calmed her, gave her something to focus onto besides her own thoughts.

They weren’t pleasant by any stretch of the word.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, voice more clipped than she’d have liked. “I paid it a long time ago.”

 

[Selene]

Selene sniffed, knowing better than to push a tone like that.

A small shiver rippled across her and she turned to her other side, scooting a little closer to Gal’s heat. It was easy to not be embarrassed about it in the dark, her eyes open and unseeing as she did nothing short of snuggle into the space besides Gal, shivering once more before settling down.

“Do all your people do this? Or just you,” she finally asked.

 

[Gal]

“It’s not… uncommon.” She failed to mention that they didn’t often choose such malevolent spirits, nor so powerful ones. It was a thin, dangerous line to walk, and Gal had already crossed it more times than was healthy.

“Why do you care? The Great Anir doesn’t believe in spirits.”

 

[Selene]

“No. They just pray to fake gods and lock their daughters in tower for obedience. Didn’t work, by the way,” she grumbled.


She paused for a moment, then answered more carefully. “... listen… I know you don’t care. But… I do. You’re… you’re the first person I’ve spoken to that’s not in my head in … I don’t even know how long. I don’t want… Can we just… talk?”


She finished off pathetically, refusing to feel foolish.

 

[Gal]

“Clearly. You couldn’t obey a god if it appeared before you and told you to kneel.”

Not a bad mental image, that – the blonde on her knees.

Gal sighed into the darkness. Courtiers were good at reading people, weren’t they? Or they were supposed to be, anyway.

She rolled onto her back again and fixed her stare on the ceiling.

“About what.”

 

[Selene]

Selene bit back a smile, biting her lip.

"... Um... Your home," she offered, admittedly some genuine curious to be had there. "From what I've heard, It sounds ... utterly unlike any place I've heard of before. Is this your native tongue?"

 

[Gal]

Gal chuckled wearily into the darkness and threw her good arm over her eyes. “And what’ve you heard? That we’re cannibals and slavers all?”

A snort escaped her before she shook her head. “Nah. I manage a fair bit of Mantessant’ on account of sailing on Cortosi for… shit, more than a decade now. My true language’s nothing your tongue could handle, I reckon. Common’s like sawing logs compared to it.” She gave a little shiver of disgust. “It’s fucking awful, is what it is.”

 

[Selene]

Selene could be heard shifting, perking in curiosity. "You speak another tongue?" The comment was likely an insult, the fact a shock to a woman whose standing was the entire reason she had gotten the education to speak so many herself. Common people did not know more than common. ... Right?

"Try me," she implored, sitting up on her elbow. "My tongue has had more practice than your average Vel Anir."

 

[Gal]

This time her brow knitted more in confusion than anger. She’d resigned to the blissful ignorance of nobles to everything that existed beyond their arm’s reach. Still—

“Did you go deaf earlier?” Might’ve been Selene had been unconscious, though she certainly hadn’t looked it. “That bit when you near-to marched your pretty arse off the ship a league under the sea? Cause a spirit asked real nice?”

She shook her head with a light chuckle.

“That was Narra. ʻO te arero o te whaea o koʻu whaea.”

 

[Selene]

She pointedly ignored the quip.

"Narra..." She echoed, a hardness entering her tone. Not Kai. Not Ocean. Narra. She filed that away for later use, her mind spinning to the liquid sounds that had fallen from Gal's mouth.

"... 'O te arero... a tea wheaea blath-pft-" She fell off on the last sounds, dissolved to a confused noise. "That's like water on your tongue," she half exclaimed, trying the sounds again half under her breath.

"Say it again."

 

[Gal]

Her shoulders shook in silent laughter at the botched attempt. “Told you,” she said, but repeated the words with a grin all the same.

“Why do you care what language I speak, princess?”

 

[Selene]

Selene sighed.

"I don't," she answered honestly, shrugging all the same. "I am just... curious. What is wrong with that?" She bit back a further sarcastic response, not wanting to come to heads anymore with this woman. She wasn't a teenager anymore. It was becoming apparently that she'd had to learn how not to act like one, and it started with no more spats.

Years away, and the first person she encounters she spats all over again with. There was something to be said about that revelation. And she didn't like the light it put her in.

She flopped back onto her back, huffing. "Sometimes the supply trains would bring be books. I think my father stopped checking what they were, they became more and more ... exotic as time went on. The world is a larger than I thought. That's something to be curious about. Whether or not you're asking a scholar. Or a pirate." She concluded dryly, glancing Gal's way in the darkness.

 

[Gal]

“Nothin’ in the world,” Gal replied as she crossed her arms under her head. There was no mockery in her tone for once – on this, they finally seemed to agree.

“You’d be surprised,” she added at length, eyes closed to the sway of the ship, “at how much of the world you get to see. As a pirate, anyway. Dunno about scholars.” She lifted one shoulder in a faint shrug. “Met a few, liked them enough. Bit too lean for my tastes, but I ain’t too picky.”

Her lips quirked up into a devilish grin in the dark, chest already full of laughter that was sure to follow her shocked objections.

 

[Selene]

Selene gasped and sputtered, the heat that flooded to her cheeks revealed by a flickering flash of lightening through the port hole.

"Gal!"

The woman received a feather-light whap against her shoulder, which Selene pulled abruptly back when she recognized her lack of propriety.

"You don't mean to actually say- I-You-" She leaned closer, her voice a hushed whisper. "You don't actually eat them, do you?"

With teeth like that... one couldn’t be sure.

 

[Gal]

Full red lips pursed with amusement. She didn’t bother opening her eyes. “You don’t actually want an answer to that, do you?”

Food was food, and no prey was as easy as a bumbling expedition of humans from the continent. The occasional shipwreck was often hailed as a blessing from the spirits. Salted and stripped of water, the meat preserved well enough in the ground to keep them fed for months.

 

[Selene]

"Ugh!" She reeled back, shaking her head. "Pirates," she dismissed, Gal given an appropriate amount of space after that. Still, she could almost say she understood it. There had been an occasion or two when the supply train had been late and she had not properly rationed her food.

Selene had quickly learned that binging to wallow in pity would inevitably lead to an equally painful starvation session in where any meat of any kind would have been eagerly accepted.

Perhaps she shouldn't be so quick to judge. "...Was it cause you were hungry, or..." The answer she wanted coated her tone thickly, a strained look tossed Gal's way.

 

[Gal]

“Nope,” she said, knowing full well it wasn’t the answer that hopeful tone was fishing for. “It’s meat, princess. Hunting ain’t easy out on the islands. Most things can kill you right back if you ain’t careful. Humans… continental folk, anyways, they’re easy.”

There was no apology in her voice. Those were the facts of the life she was born into, even if she hadn’t lived it for more than a decade now. “You take what you can, and you’re thankful for it. Doubt you’d know anything about that.”

 

[Selene]

Selene stiffened, the dig hitting a little deeper than one might expect. "...Spoken like a judgmental noble, Lady Gal."

After all, that was what the captain was to Selene in the back of her mind. Selene didn't understand entirely where she had come from, but Gal had already proclaimed herself the daughter of the power to be over her land. Estranged daughter, sure, but his daughter nonetheless.

If Selene was raised to know only entitlement, then she was quick to accuse Gal of it too.

"What do you know about imprisonment. Solitude? Until the years blur and the food runs out the pages on the books have been read so many times you could eat them and still recite what had been there? I doubt you understand what it's like to lose your freedom. You don't know what that strips from a person."

"So pardon me as I kindly ask you to shut the fuck up. You don't know me." She shook her head, turning and flopping to her side, her back given to Gal.