IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME - the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse.
The sun is high in the cloudless expanse of the mid-afternoon sky when Locust makes her way back to the docks. The Dark Strider bobs in the water, which is surprisingly clear – she can see a few feet down into it, in spite of the expansive depth. Silver fish catch in the sunlight, appearing in smudged, collective dashes, and she thinks that she catches a glimpse of the dark shape of some feeder shark, though it is gone almost as quickly as she spots it. Light catches on the choppy waves, staining the ridges golden.
When the sea is like this – not dark and imposing, but light and subtle – she likes it. She used to like it during storms, too, when the waves would rise impossibly high and the surface would grow blacker than the midnight sky, but that was before it bit her. It was easy to like frightening things, she thinks, before you realized that they could hurt you.
It isn’t a stormy day, but that almost feels worse. The water is too-still, the sun is too-still, and there is no wind – and that damned bridge, like black sea-glass, is visible even from the docks, stretching out for gods-know-how-long into the sea. The one thing that Locust knows is that you should never trust anything that comes from the sea. It is deceptive, and it is cruel, and it will turn on you in an instant no matter how much you claim to love it. She does not trust that bridge, or where it leads, and she has half a mind to collect the part of her crew that hasn’t been foolhardy enough to try crossing it and set sail for their next destination.
Pegasi can’t fly, near the bridge – nothing can. Ships can’t approach it. It’s cursed, she thinks, or divine, and she isn’t sure which option is worse.
Still, what she is actually doing is securing the Strider in its place on the dock, and locking up everything of importance. Wouldn’t keep out the most persistent thieves, she suspects, and Denocte has plenty, but, if they’re willing to pick a fight with her, she almost feels as though they’d deserve whatever they could loot for their bravery. (Perhaps even a spot on the ship – that was how they’d gotten Bird, prior to the…accident.)
She paces back and forth along the deck, re-tying ropes and testing locks; if she’s humming the tune of some shanty or another, she isn’t much aware of it. Damn fool that she is, Locust knows she’ll be heading out along that strip of dark sea-glass, and, though it pains her to leave her ship at the docks, she knows that it won’t be able to reach whatever’s on the other side of that bridge…and, even if it could, the last thing she wants is another ship gone down into the unknown.
She knows what should lie in the direction of that dark strip. She knows, somehow, that it is not there.
So, nudging a sealed crate down towards the hold, she continues to work, a solitary silver shape darting about, like the minnows in the water, on the deck.
@Charlotte|| <3 || "sea of ice," callie siskel "Speech!" ||
Mama said, fulfill the prophecy be something greater, go make a legacy, manifest destiny, back in the days we wanted everything, wanted everything. Mama said, burn your biographies, rewrite your history, light up your wildest dreams, museum victories, every day we wanted everything, wanted everything.
Charlie bounds down the beaches stretched along Denocte’s shore, her bright vermillion eyes on the bridge that looks like magic and midnight, set on crossing it and discovering where it leads. Her best mate, Indy, rides between her shoulder blades, carefully held in place by the young pegasus’ closed wings. She doesn’t think about how far from home she’s wandered or whether she should be alone. Charlie only thinks about the adventure waiting for her ahead.
But when she makes it to the bridge, where it meets the shore like a siren’s call, the filly stops, her attention landing on something far closer, and so much better in her eyes. The pirate ship is massive, its masts reaching far into the sky. Charlie has seen ships before, of course, the docks at home are full of them. But this is like the ships from her favorite stories. Like the ship she someday wants to captain herself.
“Indy… Indy look!” she says, turning away from the bridge and making her way toward the docks. Toward where that ship is docked. Her bonded ruffles her feathers and climbs to Charlie’s poll, perching in her messy black mane. “It’s the biggest ship I ever saw,” and her voice is strangely quiet in awe as she makes her way closer, eyes widening with every detail that they take in ”You’re not going to go up there. You better not go up there. We don’t know who it belongs to!”
Charlie shrugs her shoulders and extends her wings a little as she begins to climb the ramp to the ship. “I just want a look. There’s nobody around, maybe the crew is on land,” the girl whispers, creeping ever so slowly up, up, up, until she can peek over the edge and onto the deck. Indy makes an unhappy sound and Charlie lets loose a short shh!. For a few moments she watches, waiting, but can’t see the equine loading boxes into the hold. Charlie holds her breath and then darts forward, her wings flapping excitedly at her sides.
There is only one place on the ship she wants to get to, and that is the helm.
In all the stories, Charlie’s favorite parts involve (other than the battles, of course) the captain. Bravely steering their ship through a storm, standing proud and confident at the helm. That is who Charlie aspires to be, what she wants to be like when she gets older. And as she climbs the steps to the helm of this ship, reaching and reaching until she can place her hooves upon it, as if she could steer it away from the docks and out to see, the filly has never had such a spark in her eyes before.
THE DANDELIONS, GREYED AND FRAYING leaving is always delicate. tell me you would have given anything to stay. tell me, again, anyway.
A sound from the helm catches Locust’s attention.
She does not immediately bother to investigate. A ship in the water is apt to creak, to mimic the sound of movement even if nothing is actually wandering about the boat; if she jumped at every strange noise she heard at sea during the night, she’d never sleep. (Of course, the wine that she keeps in her room and often visits before she sleeps might help – she had been more restless when she was younger.) Instead, she continues to go about her business, sorting through the crates upon crates of illegitimate, stolen, and otherwise dangerous goods stowed away on the deck. Not the most dangerous ones, mind; those were kept below. However, nothing Locust rarely trafficked in anything that was entirely harmless, so even the goods in plain sight had their secrets.
Theirs were just the harder ones to unlock.
When the sound persists, however, it strikes her that it is more like the pitter-patter of little hooves against old wood and hushed whispers. She furrows her brow, frowning, and steps back from a crate that is full of vials of sleeping poison, looking about the deck. She doesn’t see anything, but the sound seems to be coming from somewhere on the opposite side of the Strider’s mast. Lowering her skull and walking as slowly – carefully – as she could, avoiding the boards that she’d learned creaked the most terribly, she drew forward.
Who would be fool enough to sneak onto the Dark Strider? She was well-known in Denocte’s underbelly; her persistent visits to the Night Kingdom and her bloody work were fodder for plenty of interesting rumors. (The crew members that she scared off at every other port were the source of most of them, and she told herself that it was a good thing. Less work for her – when she’d still been on the Sea Star, she’d made up plenty of them herself, because she didn’t want anyone thinking that she was soft. Predictably, Golden (and Snaketongue. And Patches. Practically everyone but Sheera, when she thought about it; she was too innocent to do so, in her strange way.) had made fun of her for it, as a sign that she really was soft.)
She wasn’t so soft anymore. The light weight of her knife burns against her thigh. She creeps towards the helm, creeps up the stairs – wonders if there is really someone bold enough to try to make off with the Strider, because she can’t think of another reason why they’d be up there. (The anchor is still down, though.)
Her gaze comes to rest on a small, grey form, accompanied by an osprey. Just a kid – nothing to worry about. She looked young, and Locust couldn’t help but wonder where her parents were. (An orphan? Denocte was well-known for them.) She didn’t even look like she could fly yet.
She apparently hadn’t noticed her yet; neither had that osprey of hers. A hint of an amused smile tugs at the corners of her lips, and she leans against the wooden railing, her brows arched at the young filly – her legs crooked over the handles of the wheel, pretending to steer.
(She remembers when Maribelle was this age. The small flare of her wings, still useless. She constrains the girl to a fleeting image, shakes it off.) “I hope you’re not planning on stowing away,” she remarks, raising her voice so she is sure that the girl will hear her above the wind. “We aren’t planning to leave the docks for a few weeks, at least.” She inclines her head at her, brows still raised expectantly.
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