56th Day of Spring - Morning
The Beauty
Sav
It’s been two days since the tumultuous rescue of Vanja, and a day since the loose end from that unit of Swans had been taken care of. Sav has taken care to stay out of Vanja’s way since then, but there’s only so many places one can be on a boat. The one time she’s gone near her was at night, padding in while the Jorungun tossed and turned and mumbled in her restless sleep, leaving a note in her boots: I think your brother went east into the Fading Wood, if the word I heard about the Red Bandanas straggling there was right.
Fortunately, the other girl rarely stays much below decks or high up, whereas below decks or high up is where Sav feels most comfortable, and so for at least the span of a day it’s been a feasible enough task.
As it is now, though, she’s seated on the fo’c’sle, surrounded by a pile of sails that want mending - a thing she’s well-equipped to give to them. One of her tool belts is spread out beside her, pinned in place with a dagger through one buckle to keep it from sliding across the deck with the rocking of the boat. Her fingers are a positive blur as the thick, stiletto-like needle darts in and out of the canvas, her humming seeming to vibrate through the canvas and ropey thread as they glide together with supernal ease.
Vanja
Vanja healing, by Kate QuimbyVanja has been walking the deck for what feels like hours, but when she looks up at the sky, the sun has barely moved. As if encouraged by her distraction, the deck shifts, and Vanja loses her footing. She staggers as the ship comes up to meet her foot, pressing her heel in against the slick wood, and catching herself with a sharp intake of breath as a bolt of pain moves up her shin.
Vanja takes a moment. Glances around the deck. One of the sailors, the quiet one - Pellham she reminds herself - lets a loop of rope slip from the coil in his hand as he seems to take notice of the near-fall, and takes a step in Vanja’s direction.
Vanja smiles, and waves to Pellham with her good hand.
“I’m fine,” she lies.
Pellham nods in response.
Vanja is suddenly exhausted, now, though. The shock of the missed step thrumming through her leg. She needs to sit. To rest even from this small activity.
Away from the main deck. Out of the way.
She moves to the forecastle. There’s a pile of canvas, above, and Vanja can see the shape of someone mending sails. She can’t make them out though, backlit as they are by the sky behind them, but she hails them as she takes the stairs up to the higher level. Careful with her footing, but still breathless at the top.
“Anything I can help with?” she asks, “I’m more able than I look, I swear.”
As she rounds the top of the rail, she blinks sharply, trying to force her eye to adjust to the brightness of the morning sun reflecting off the white canvas.
“Oh,” says Vanja, recognizing the figure sitting, mending sails. She offers a smile to Sav, “Can I sit? Do you mind?” She hesitates, “Wasn’t lying about the offer of help, either.”
Sav
The humming and the sewing halt, the creaking of the ship and the cries of river birds rushing in to fill the silence. Sav’s head hunches down a little before she straightens, pushing her eyes up toward Vanja and nodding once. There’s a wariness there, but that’s not unusual for her. It’s been a while since she’s evinced that when it was just her and Vanja alone, though - not since their first days of acquaintance.
“S’not ma deck, sit where ye like,” she says, then looks around at the heavy canvas. “… I’ve only the one needle thick enough for th’ task, but if ye’ve a mind to work the mended sails could use some foldin’.” She gestures at one corner of the deck, where the patched sails have been pushed into a messy pile while she pulls the one she’s currently working on closer to her. Aloysius sunbathes in the midst of the pile, stretched out in a half-crescent, his whiskers twitching sleepily.
Having said that, she goes back to fitting needle through canvas, but the pace is slower and the hum has ceased.
Vanja
Vanja nods to Sav and takes a knee, carefully. Awkwardly. A hiss of air slips through her teeth as she makes contact with the deck, but soon she is secure enough, on knees and hand. Vanja reaches out to Aloysius with an open palm, unwilling to startle the rat.
“Hei, little friend,” she says. “Thought you’d want to be a bird out here.”
She edges closer to the pile of sails, hand still held out, but she looks away from Aloysius and over to Sav.
“Are you alright?” she asks, “I didn’t get to ask you properly. After Ethan won the ship at the House of Chance and everything else went—” Vanja stops. The sun suddenly feels too warm. The sails so bright against the deck they seem to glow. In the open air they shift and twist like a thing alive.
She shakes her head. Her mind was making things to fill the empty space. The sails weren’t glowing. They weren’t even moving - the canvas too thick for the light breeze.
“I’m glad you found the others, in any case,” she says to Sav, filling the air with her voice to have something to focus on, but the sound is unfamiliar to her own ears. “And the ship and the crew, you seem to be getting on well…” she trails off, “have you done this sort of thing? On a ship like this?” She offers a smile to the other girl, “I’m realizing I don’t know much about the sort of thing you did before Northgate. But you’re from the South, right?”
Vanja’s speaking quickly, and she can feel the tension in the air growing thick with her words.
Sav
One beady eye opens as Aloysius is hailed. Sav nudges him mentally, and he grumbles, heaving himself to his feet with a dramatic chitter and ambling toward the proffered palm. He clambers up on her palm and sits expectantly for transport away, one paw bracing on one of her fingers for support.
At the question, Sav thinks back. The evening of stewing in her own impotence and the realization that all her efforts had been for a false, useless end. Fleeing the city in anger and humiliation, toward the last and almost only person who’d evinced any care for her. Long days of alternating flying and walking, stealing food invisibly from market stalls and farmers’ stocks, nights spent hidden below ground in burrows dug by magic and sheltering warm and dry in more magic, sleeping soundly in the knowledge that she’d be awoken by yet more magic if anything crossed her wards. Listening in on tavern gossip while wearing one face and dropping careful questions with another face.
It’s almost embarrassing how opposite it had been to the last time she’d traveled thus, alone and desperate and fleeing Swans. It’s definitely embarrassing in the face of Vanja’s far worse journey down. In the face of the fate that Sav had abandoned her to, and could possibly have rescued her from.
“Nothin tae signify,” she says with a shrug, eyes fixed firmly on her work and face red. “Didnae catch up to ‘Star ‘til Portsmouth, though - she traveled faster and sneakier than I anticipated. The rest came in some time later an’ we all left the same day they arrived.”
Tying off the thread at the end of the seam, Sav stares critically at the stitches she’s made to sew the sail’s rip together and nods, pulling the sail around to address another hole. This one is too large to simply pull together, so she reaches for a different pile of canvas, this one apparently mere tatters. Pulling a pair of shears out of its slot in her staked-down tool belt and a scrap of canvas from the second pile, she begins to trim it down to a size to cover the hole in the sail. “Ne’er been on a ship before. But work’s work. I can tie knots and mend things and wash decks, an’ I know a titch about gunnery. Cannae say I’m fond of all th water about, though. Never learned how tae swim.” Though she at least has ways of getting around that now. She glances around at the water and the riverbank, avoiding Vanja’s gaze.
Vanja
Vanja carefully lifts Aloysius from his nest of sailcloth and places him on the deck, watching as he skitters close to Sav. Sav herself seems occupied by the work, but she hasn’t asked Vanja to leave, and Vanja tells herself that can be good enough.
Now, Vanja settles onto her bottom, letting her legs stretch out in front of her. She’s needed to cuff the pants at the hem - whoever owned this pair before her had been significantly taller - and she can see her ankles, white and bone-thin, in the gap between the cuff and the tops of her shoes.
“I can’t swim, either,” she says. “And this ship seems like it’s trying to knock me down. Makes me feel drunk,” she lets out a sound not unlike a laugh, “it would be quite the joke of fate if I came all this way and then fell over the side and drowned from simple clumsiness.”
At this, Vanja flexes her good hand. A mist of thin, green light seeps into her hand from somewhere in her wrist. Vanja looks down at the light, and closes her eyes, squeezing them both shut against the dull pulse of pain the light seemed to bring with it.
Vanja lets out a low string of curses, but the words do nothing to increase the magic in her hand. She closes it, snuffing out the light, and reaches instead to the pile of sailcloth, finding an edge and smoothing the canvas flat.
“I used to be able to do something. Make my reactions quicker. I can’t…” more words in Jorungun. Too long without speaking has made her slower. Forgetful. “Half of the things I used to be able to do just aren’t working. I don’t know if it’s lack of practice, or because I couldn’t speak or move for so long.” Vanja shakes her head, knocking her flat fisherman’s cap askew and sending her hair falling in a tangle of red. Clean but untidy. She rakes it back, away from her face, and for a moment, the white of her blind eye is visible, with its small tributaries of scars. Vanja replaces the cap, tucking the mess of hair inside, and pulling the brim low.
“Maybe it’s atrophied,” she says. “The magic.”
“I don’t know. You know more about this thing than me, I think. The ‘stuff’ you can twist and control. Do you think I can get it back?” She chews her lip as she folds a flap of sail over itself. “You know. Be useful again?”
Sav
Sav is silent for a long span of minutes, as she unspools more thread, rethreads her needle and begins to patch the hole in the sail. Her gaze skitters over to Vanja’s legs, pausing on the folded edges of the pants, and she purses her lips. “Need ye them pants hemmed?” she asks abruptly with no preamble.
More quiet, then, before she says, “I know about my workins’, but if spending time with other witches has taught me aught, it’s that my workins dinnae work much like t’others. I’m of th’ opinion that the Stuff is the Stuff, though, an it cannae go away. I think ‘tis a part of the world as much as the dirt or the sun. An’ much like the sun, even if it cannae be seen or ‘tis covered over by clouds, ‘twill still be there. How to see it might be another matter. Could just be a matter of practice, like a muscle that ent been used in some time. Could be a matter of mindset - my method of twisting the Stuff don’t deal like that, but lots o’ ye seem to work as much on instinct as on learnin’, an’ if the instinct be shyin’ awae from the workin it could be hamperin’ everything.”
She turns a corner on the stitch and shrugs. “Not enough information, as ever. Needs more time an’ work. But absent more information comin’ up I’d be surprised an the workings never returned to ye.”
Vanja
Vanja nods in response to Sav’s theorizing, and there’s another small burst of weak green light as Vanja presses her fingers to her chest. Nothing happens but the light, which fades quickly. Vanja mutters in Jorungun, looking down to the sail in her hands. “Ye håpe dejn.” She stops. Repeats herself, more clearly, in Isendelian, “I hope so.”
She doesn’t move for some time, but every few moments a green fog seeps over the white of the sail in her lap, spreading to the edges of Vanja’s fingertips and fading.
“Thank you for the offer. With the pants,” says Vanja, finally. “They’re the only ones I’ve got, though, so I’m reluctant to part with them.” She laughs a little, “I think they used to be Imago’s. Athelia found them in her quarters, but they don’t seem her style.”
“I’m used to hand-me-downs, though. Used to wear Mikael’s old things all the time. We’re the same build. Broad in the shoulder and rump, you know.” Vanja’s gaze moves away from the folding in her lap, instead narrowing her eye to focus on Sav. “Mikael used to start fights,” Vanja says, “in my home it was…cultural. You’d fight for sport. To be strong and stay strong. But Mikael would pick fights with those that weren’t ready to fight. He’d see imagined slights, sometimes. He and I fought more than the rest of our brothers. But if someone else had hurt me, he’d rage. He was…protective of me.”
“That over-protectiveness, it was frustrating. Made me feel weak. But I know it came from a place of love. The sort of thing family does for one another, without even thinking.”
Vanja stops for a moment, then lets out a sharp breath of air.
“When there were bad feelings between us, my brothers and me, my dad used to make us stay outside and mind the goats, until we talked to each other. Until the air was clear.”
“We should talk about it,” she says, “What all happened yesterday. With the Swan.”
Sav
Sav twitches a shoulder uncomfortably, avoiding Vanja’s gaze as she focuses on the mending in her hands. “Struth I’m pure feezled as to why ye’re actin so calm, when ye were full fashed yesterday about it. I dinnae like the feelin’ o this calm before the storm, and I’m wonderin why ye’re makin wi the small talk instead o yellin.”
She looks up, then, hands pausing for a moment. “So if ye’re here t yell, then yell, an’ we can gie it over by an’ move on.”
Vanja
“What? No, I didn’t…” Vanja blinks a few times, and pushes the sail from her lap, “I thought you were avoiding me, because I wanted to hurt him. That after weeks of nothingness, trapped in that awful airless box I was wrong for wanting revenge on one of the men who did it.” Vanja’s voice catches in her throat, “And that somehow…sullied me, to all of you.”
“And I just can’t understand why it was different. Why no one had a problem with Roux beating him bloody. When they hardly said a word about you finishing the job.”
Vanja swallows, hard. Her voice is heavy. “And we’re all killers, so what did it matter? If someone had to kill him, I—” her voice breaks, “But then everyone…”
She shakes her head, and pulls her cap low, hiding even her good eye, “I’m not doing well, Sav,” she says. “I was so angry yesterday but now I just feel anxious. Like I’m falling while running, and I keep taking a step I’m not ready for, to try to catch myself. Just…waiting to hit the ground.”
“You’ve been through plenty, yourself, and you haven’t become jaded or cold or drunk from it… how do you manage it?”
Sav
“Well. It ent right, wantin’ to hurt someone,” Sav says slowly. “‘Tis understandable, but that doesnae make it right. An’ that’s true whether ‘tis you or Roux. I ‘spect that if folk are nae giein Roux chaff about it, it’s on account of Roux already bein eyed as the kinda person who’d hurt others in revenge, whereas ye are no’ seen as such - ‘tis less of a change for him than it be for ye.”
She swallows, then, and adds, “Besides, there’s a qualitative difference between bashin’ someone’s face in an’ pluckin’ out their eye, then usin’ their gifts to restore the flesh around it. That’s pure messed, no two ways about it.
“Look. I did no want t’ kill the mannie, nor t’ hurt him; I did so, as quickly and cleanly as possible, on account of figurin’ that he had naught more to say of use, his presence was curdlin’ your spirit like a lover’s sore, an’ if he stuck around he’d only be in for more pain and hurtin ‘til he was deid anyway. And once I figured that, ‘twould ha been cowardice to let someone else do the deed for me when I realized it needed done.” She has to pause here, and swallows again, closing her eyes briefly. “An’ perhaps that’s what makes the difference here, in not bein’ scolded for it,” she continues, opening her eyes again to gaze levelly at Vanja. “When ye want somethin’ too much, it twists your thinkin’ - if ye’re starvin’ ye’ll take too many risks to steal a stale crust. When what ye want is fair cruel, it twists your soul. If ye have t’ do somethin twisted - an’ killin a helpless prisoner is such - it feels less twisted t’ gie it to someone who doesnae thirst t’ do it.”
She’s silent for a time, watching Vanja speak, then impulsively goes up to her knees and reaches out to wrap her arms around the other girl’s shoulders - a silent offer of comfort balanced against the words of judgment before. The question makes her pull away in surprise, though. “I’ve nae been through so much.” Orphan, street urchin, draftee, survivor. “Hardly more than what everyone else has been through.” Many orphans among them, all of them survivors in one way or another. Such has been much of the company she’s kept in times past, too. In many respects, Vanja might be the most unusual one Sav’s met, for having a relatively whole, healthy life until very recently. “Certainly never been a target for torture or anythin like.”
She looks down at her hands, at the delicate bracer of white-plated steel traced with gold hidden inside a billowing sleeve, and stretches her right hand out in front of her. “There’s always more t’ see, though. More to discover. It’s difficult tae think overmuch about th’ past when my mind’s full up with the things I dinnae ken and tryin’ to figure out how it all works.” She turns her gaze and hand upward, stretching toward the shape of the Octurne visible in the blue sky, hanging low on the horizon. “The rest of it? The bad things, the things I cannae do naught about - it can sit off to the side an I need it.” She chuckles dryly, a quick staccato breath, and adds, “More recently, bein’ an animal’s a restful break. Hard tae feel sorry for meself when I can only cog about catchin’ bugs an’ poopin’.”
Vanja
Vanja winces at Sav’s embrace, as a shock of pain spreads from her shoulder, but returns the hug with her uninjured arm.
At Sav’s mention of transformations, though, Vanja shakes her head. “I don’t know that I could do that, even if I had that kind of magic like you and Warbler do. An arrow is bad enough for a person, let alone a bird. And what happens if you’re hunted? If some bigger thing takes you down?” Vanja gestures toward the rat, now safely with Sav, “How many times have you had to conjure Aloysius back from the…stuff?” She smiles, though, “Though I suppose you’re both alive and happy enough, now, so that’s something.”
Vanja lets out a puff of breath as she climbs, clumsy and awkward, to her feet. She tugs at the drawstring waistband of the too-large pants, taking a few slow moments to tighten the knot with one hand. That done, she nods down to Sav.
“Do you mind if I borrow some of those tools? I lost mine when—” She takes another long breath, to steady herself, “I don’t have any of my own things, anymore. And we have time, now. Long enough to shape a shield and sparring weapons if I can find the timber for it.”
Sav
“Ach, that’s no a problem - ye cannae die in a foreign form t’ ye, at least not wi’ me magics. I cannae speak for what Warbler does,” Sav says, shaking her head. “Even if it be frail and weak, if it gets hurt beyond its ability to recover from, that only pops ye back intae your true form, hale as when ye left - or near as. If the injury’s grievous ‘nough sometimes that carries through. But what’s bad t’ a sparrow ent much t’ a human, generally. There is a reason I dinnae take on the forms of food animals much, though.” She shrugs. “Well, th’ offer’s open any time ye’d like to see the world from another perspective.”
“Tools for wood? I dinnae think there’s much room for a forge on here, at least.” She eyes Vanja as she climbs stiffly to her feet. “Sure ye are that it wouldnae be better if I made ‘em for ye?”
Vanja
“Wood’s fine for most things,” Vanja says. “My wooden shield served me well, before. And it’ll be lighter, at least.” She looks down at her sling, where her shield arm is wrapped up, all but useless. “Until I find another ancient frost-forged shield, that is. You know, something that can absorb dragon’s breath,” she offers a tight smile, at her own expense. That wasn’t something that was likely to happen again, but she’d grown fond of the relic that had saved her life.
“When we get to a place where we can, I’d appreciate your help making a new axe, though. My old ones were made for me by a friend of my family, as a gift for my mother’s kindness.” Vanja stretches her right arm, testing the muscles and imitating a throw, “So well-balanced it was like an extension of my own arm.” Olev’s axes were gone, now, and his cloak too - the disguise that had allowed her to flee Linjør. “I’ll use whatever is left from the Swans, in the meantime, but an axe feels better in my hand than a sword.”
“So yes, woodworking tools,” says Vanja, “A candle, too, if you can spare it? It’s dark in the infirmary.”
Sav
“The tops of some of those barrels might make a half-decent base, then, if ‘tis a round shield ye’re wantin,” Sav muses idly, eyes going distant as she starts to think. “But aye, I can lend ye a saw an’ plane an other batchums. Perhaps one of these would be better than a candle, though, in case o’ tippin’ an’ fire.” Standing to give her bag, nestled down at her back, more room for its opening, she pulls out another bag of wire-reinforced canvas, out of which sticks the handle of a hacksaw and the lumps of other, less-recognizable tools. Using the tip of the needle, still threaded into a sail, she scratches out a quick sigil in glimmering gold that spreads over the cloth of the bag and disappears into a soft white glow that begins to emanate from the canvas of the bag.
Somewhere, possibly up in the crow’s nest, a small stone in Warbler’s pockets gives one last cricket’s chirp and falls silent.
“Here,” she says, handing over the bag of tools. “It’ll last as long as ye need, most like.” Until or unless she ends up altering enough other small objects, of course.
Then, as Vanja accepts the bag and heads away, Sav turns back toward the one remaining torn sail, her hum rising anew.
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