by John Bierce
Godrick shook his head, then drew Hailstrike out of the water.
“Ah’ve come ta realize he’s really not that thick,” Godrick said, idly toying with the hammer. “He’s actually pretty keen-eyed fer noticin’ when one a’ us is in a bad mood, fer instance. He didn’t notice Talia’s blindingly obvious crush for a totally different reason. Ah mean, she was followin’ him around starin’ at him like a hungry dragon stares at a herd a’ aurochs.”
Sabae looked at the bow to see Talia approaching Hugh, Alustin, and the captain.
“What’s the different reason?” Sabae asked.
Godrick shrugged. “Ah’ve basically told yeh before. Hugh doesn’t think he deserves ta’ be loved.”
He squeezed the shaft of the hammer at a specific spot, and Sabae could see the spellform lines start to glow. Then the whole hammer collapsed into tiny fragments of ice, so thin that they drifted to the ground rather than fell. Godrick opened his hand to reveal the ring of ice again.
“Of course Hugh deserves to be loved,” Sabae said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Ah fully agree with yeh,” Godrick said, slipping the ring onto his finger. “But Hugh doesn’t. He honestly thinks he’s not. It’s why he gets so embarrassed when yeh say nice things about him. Part a’ him doesn’t trust the compliments. He thinks, deep down, yeh’re mockin’ him somehow, or plannin’ some cruel trick. Deep down, his awful family, and Rhodes fer that matter, has him convinced he really is worthless. He was only comfortable pursuing Avah, ah think, because yeh and Talia kept treating it as a shallow, meaningless thing early on. He could fool himself inta’ thinkin’, at some level, that Avah was only interested in him because he was such a good mage.”
He frowned and looked up. “Shouldn’t we have passed under the storm already?”
Sabae shook her head. “We’re traveling slower underwater than we were on the surface. Not much slower, but enough that it’ll take a lot longer to catch up to the storm. Are you sure about Hugh, though?”
Godrick nodded, and stuck his hand in the water. The ice ring glowed slightly on his finger, but didn’t start growing into the hammer.
Sabae ran her fingernails down the scars on her cheeks. “That is… incredibly sad, and I want to go hug Hugh immediately.”
“Yeh should probably wait a bit,” Godrick said. He turned and focused on the ring, and a lump of ice grew above his palm in the water. He made a grab for it, but it floated towards the surface.
Godrick frowned, and the ice stopped ascending, then shot down towards his hand.
“That’s really a lot harder ta’ control than other rocks,” Godrick said.
“Ice isn’t a rock,” Sabae said automatically, but her heart wasn’t in it. “But what does that have to do with Talia?”
“Ah mean, ah’ve only got her retellin’ of the story,” Godrick said. “But Hugh said he wouldn’t let himself think of her that way. He didn’t say he wouldn’t let himself think a’ any a’ his friends that way. Just Talia. And yeh don’t need ta’ force yerself not ta’ think a somethin’ if it’s not on yer mind.”
“…Huh,” Sabae said.
“Ah could be wrong,” Godrick said. “Ah’m genuinely not sure either way. But… ah suspect, that maybe Hugh had considered it before, but then he just buried the idea away, because he didn’t think he deserved Talia, or that she’d ever have even the remotest interest in him. And no offense ta’ Hugh, but ah suspect he develops romantic feelin’s pretty easily, even if he hides ‘em.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Sabae asked.
“Then ah’ll be there fer Talia ta cry on, and ah suspect ah’ll need ta’ be there fer Hugh, ‘cause ah can’t imagine anything that would make him more miserable than hurtin’ a friend. But ah hope ah’m right,” Godrick said.
Godrick let go of the piece of ice, which promptly floated back upwards. He withdrew his hand from the water, then clapped Sabae on the shoulder.
“Ah’m not gonna watch ta’ see, though,” Godrick said. “Going ta’ give them what little privacy they can get on the deck of a ship. Reckon ah’ll go swimmin’ with me da instead— looks like those kids could use some help dunkin’ him.”
He started to walk off, then looked back at Sabae. “Ah reckon yeh’ve probably got someone yeh need ta’ talk too as well.”
Sabae watched Godrick stride towards the bubbles, feeling deeply lucky to have him as a friend.
Then she started walking that general direction herself. She found herself rubbing the scars on her hands anxiously, but didn’t make herself stop.
Tollin started to say something as she approached him, but she just walked right past him.
Yarra had a slightly triumphant look on her face as Sabae approached her, but Sabae just walked past her as well.
She came to a stop in front of Dell on his barrel. He was looking a little better today, though still not great.
“I don’t suppose you’ve come to apologize?” Dell asked, glancing up at her. He scowled, then looked back at his book. “I still owe you for saving my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m not mad. I tried to help you out at the dance, and you really made a lot of drama for me. Not that my sister and Tollin don’t make enough of that on their own, but…”
“I didn’t come to apologize,” Sabae said. “Though I really should be, you’re right. I’m sorry I made trouble for you, and for Yarra and Tollin as well. I… I’ve never done any dating before, so I think I let things go to my head. I, uh… got a little greedy.”
Dell sighed. “I’m still a little grumpy, but I forgive you. And you’re not about to confess your love for me, are you? Because I’m not interested in dating or romance with anyone in the slightest.”
Sabae shook her head. “I actually kinda figured that already. No, I was actually coming over because I wanted to see if you wanted to go for a swim.”
Dell froze.
Sabae waited patiently.
Finally, Dell spoke up in a quiet voice. “I’m alright, but thank you. I’m trying to get some reading done.”
“You haven’t turned the page once since we submerged,” Sabae said.
Dell looked up at her, his expression studiously blank.
Sabae sat down on the barrel next to him. “This is awful for you, isn’t it? It has to be terrifying being underwater again, even like this. And yet, you’re staying on deck, not going below.”
Dell looked away and surreptitiously wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. Sabae waited patiently.
“I don’t want to go live on a sandship,” Dell said. “I used to love the water, and now I can hardly look at it.”
“You should go swimming with me,” Sabae said.
“In the bubbles?” Dell asked, hesitantly.
“No,” Sabae said. “Not in the bubbles.”
“I… I should go below,” Dell said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ll be safe, Dell,” Sabae said. “The ship’s mages are monitoring the waters around us carefully, and more importantly, you’ll be with me. I saved your life once, I can do it again if need be.”
She held out her hand, and Dell just stared at it.
“Why do you care so much?” he finally asked.
“Because maybe if I can help you with your fears,” Sabae said, “I can start dealing with my own.”
Dell looked her in the eyes, then hesitantly took her hand.
Hugh was watching a school of tiny, brilliant blue fish dart and play around the wings of the figurehead when Talia interrupted the quiet conversation between Alustin and Captain Grepha.
“What happens if we run out of mana?” Talia asked.
“We won’t,” Alustin said.
“If we did, though…” Talia said.
Hugh didn’t look back, just kept watching the fish.
“When the enchantment mana reservoirs are low enough, the ship will surface automatically,” the captain said.
“That seems difficult to build into an enchantment,” Talia said.
�
�I’m not an enchanter, but from what I understand,” Captain Grepha said, “it’s just a matter of linking the spellforms of the enchantment that keep us submerged to the mana reservoirs at a higher level than the enchantments that propel us or maintain the bubble. Not that up and down really exists as we understand it in the aether, but there’s some equivalent in regards to mana reservoirs. It actively takes mana to keep us submerged, so once that enchantment deactivates due to low mana levels, we’ll rise right to the top. Though, according to our enchanters, we’re supposed to avoid surfacing that way, if possible. Not good for the enchantments, the ship, or the crew, apparently.”
“While I encourage your curiosity, Talia,” Alustin said, “the captain and I are having an important discussion.”
“Sorry,” Talia said. “I, uh… was actually wanting to talk to Hugh.”
“Ah, I see,” Alustin said. “Well, Captain, shall we give my students some space so as not to bore them?”
Captain Grepha sighed loudly.
“Try to not get distracted and abandon your post, Stormward,” the captain said.
Talia didn’t say anything as they walked away, and Hugh just kept watching the little blue fish.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Talia asked. “I know I said I’d give you space, so if you’d prefer me to…”
“It’s fine,” Hugh said.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and moved to one side. After a long pause, Talia stepped up beside him.
Neither said anything for a moment.
“Those fish are nearly the same color as your tattoos,” he finally said, nodding at the fish.
“I suppose so,” Talia said.
Hugh wasn’t sure how long they stood there for. Twenty minutes, an hour, more? They watched the sea turtles that had been shadowing the ship cruise along in their stately way, and a great school of boarfish cross their path in the distance, with their distinctive jutting teeth. A school of curious squid, each no longer than his arm, spent several minutes slapping at the invisible wall around the Cormorant with their tentacles. They were known as curious squid for good reason, and it certainly wasn’t for their foul taste.
And the little blue fished danced in endless circles around the figurehead.
Not too far ahead of them, he could see the edge of the storm above the water. They were slowly catching up to it again. It looked like a wall of shadow from where the storm clouds loomed overhead.
Then, to Hugh’s surprise, something bounced off the figurehead, then slid along the wall of the bubble in slow motion.
It was a jellyfish. It was a gentle pastel orange, its body about as wide as a human head. Its tentacles hung several feet below it in a lacy fringe.
The dancing fish had vanished when he looked back, but several more jellyfish were visible floating towards the ship. In the distance, he saw several of the sea turtles moving towards the jellyfish.
“It’s like there’s something new to see every few minutes down here,” Talia said.
“Apparently some of the water mages detected a pod of leviathans yesterday,” Hugh said. “They weren’t coming anywhere near us, though.”
“What is a leviathan, exactly?” Talia asked. “They and krakens are both octopus things, right? Or… squids?”
Hugh shook his head, though he still didn’t look at Talia.
“Nope. According to Galvachren, krakens are close relatives to both octopuses, squid, and ammonites, but they’re larger than any of them get. Which is already pretty huge, so I have trouble imagining how big kraken are. Leviathans are even bigger, and they’re basically giant cuttlefish, another squid relative. They’re the biggest things in the ocean, save for a few freakish oddities and large icebergs, and they’re relatively slow, placid, and unaggressive. They host entire ecosystems on, in, and around them.”
“What do they eat?” Talia asked.
“Fish, sharks, sea serpents… whatever they want, really,” Hugh said. “Less than you’d suspect for something their size, though. But they never eat or harm anything intelligent, and Galvachren suspects that they’re highly intelligent themselves, and use their color-shifting skin to communicate with some language of color and pattern, but no one’s ever been able to translate their complex color shifts. They’re even better at altering their colors than any other tentacled creature. There’s a story in Galvachren’s Bestiary about one that used its natural camouflage to make itself effectively invisible while floating on the surface, then actually created a painting of a ship so lifelike that a nearby ship didn’t realize the other ship was false until they sailed within a ship’s length of the leviathan.”
Hugh realized he was rambling nervously, and shut up.
“I’d love to see one of those someday,” Talia said.
“Me too,” Hugh replied.
More and more jellyfish were rising in a great column from the depths ahead of them, and many were bouncing off the sides of the ship’s bubble. In the middle distance, the sea turtles were snacking on the jellyfish in surprising numbers, but it didn’t even make a dent in the rising column.
Hugh glanced over his shoulder— the one facing away from Talia— and saw the ship’s officers calling everyone away from the walls, though they didn’t seem too alarmed. One Radhan teen, apparently trying to impress his friends, appeared to have touched one of the jellyfish and gotten stung. He had a huge welt across one arm, but wasn’t otherwise hurt.
Most of the jellyfish were the pale orange ones, but there were a few that were smaller and more of a peach shade, and every now and then there was a huge one, bigger across than a person, in a much deeper orange, with brilliant yellow fringes around the edges of its body.
Hugh heard a splash, and looked back again to see Sabae and Dell crash-landing onto the deck near the stern, laughing.
“This is incredible,” Talia said.
Hugh looked back, and the rising column of jellyfish had grown so thick that Hugh couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of them. The light around them was starting to take on an orange tinge as it passed through the great undulating cloud of jellyfish swimming above the ship’s envelope.
Then, like an onrushing wave, the shadow of the storm swept over them.
For a moment, Hugh couldn’t see a thing. Then his eyes adjusted, and the jellyfish came back into view.
“Hugh?” Talia said, sounding nervous. “I can’t see anything.”
Hugh was briefly confused until he recalled his night vision. He had just opened his mouth to say something when the lightning struck.
It didn’t blind him, filtered as it was through so much water and countless jellyfish. Instead, the whole ship was lit up in a brilliant cascade of orange shades as the lightning began hammering down in the unnatural way it had in the last storm.
Talia gasped.
After a few seconds, the lightning ceased, and the ship returned to darkness. Slowly, though, it began to lift, as sailors cast light cantrips and began activating the glow crystals on the railing and in the rigging.
Around them, it looked as though they were traveling in a world made of nothing other than undulating jellyfish. They looked almost like hallucinations in the gentle light of the glow crystals.
Hugh finally turned to look at Talia. She looked at him nervously.
“You really have feelings for me?” Hugh asked. “This isn’t some weird joke?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Talia said.
Hugh sighed, and tried to assemble his thoughts.
“It’s a no, isn’t it?” Talia said. “You’re trying to think of a way to break it to me kindly, I can tell. People don’t need time to think about these sort of things if they’re really interested. You can’t talk yourself into liking someone. Just… just don’t. Tell me outright, Hugh. I’m not so fragile that I’ll break. I…”
Hugh reached out and yanked the knotted handkerchief off Talia’s scalp. She stopped talking, her mouth agape.
Her hair had already grown out a sur
prising amount— in just two weeks, it had gone from less than a finger-width in length to more than twice that. It was already thick enough that Hugh could only see her scalp tattoos at specific angles through it.
Talia’s mouth was gaping like a fish.
“You know,” Hugh said. “You look pretty tough like this. I kind of like it.”
“What?” Talia said. “I don’t…”
Hugh leaned in and kissed her.
After a moment, he leaned back. Talia just looked… shocked and baffled.
“Why…?” she finally got out.
“Why what?” Hugh asked, looking around. He’d vaguely expected a bunch of Radhan to burst out into applause or catcalls. Though, in fairness, his relationship with Avah had probably been a little unusual in that regard.
“Why did you just kiss me?” Talia asked, perplexed.
Hugh gave her a confused look. “Oh, that? I put poison on my lips to kill you.”
Talia punched him. Hard.
“Sorry,” Hugh said. His shoulder was definitely going to have a bruise from that. “I was trying to break the tension a bit, and it sounded funnier in my head? Why do you think I kissed you?”
Talia just stared at him, and Hugh rubbed the back of his head, feeling awkward and nervous all of a sudden.
“This all went much more smoothly in my head,” Hugh said.
“I’m just…” Talia said. “I honestly came up here expecting you to tell me you weren’t interested. I’ve been preparing myself since the party for you to reject me. I’m still not sure I didn’t just hallucinate that kiss.”
Hugh kissed her again. And this time he took his time about it.
“I told you I was going to think about it,” Hugh eventually said. “If there hadn’t been a chance I’d say yes, I would have just told you that.”
Talia leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I’m not complaining, I just… Why?” Talia said.
Hugh took a moment to collect his thoughts.
“Part of me was all for it the instant you said something,” he said. “And part of the reason I wanted time to think was that I thought I was just being a fickle idiot. At first, I thought that I was only seriously considering it because I was still broken up about Avah, and I didn’t want to just use you as a bandage for my hurt feelings. I dunno. I was just kind of a mess of confusion ever since you told me.”
