The Docks, Shepherd’s End
Fall, Year 1012
Salinger and Xalati
Xalati
It might have been the first time she’d come down to the sea alone since Ixtalan’s disappearance. Her father bordered on the verge of paranoia about any of them being by the shore, as though the conditions that had taken Ixtalan on the deep sea would be replicated on the quiet shores of Shepherd’s End (though the land had its own dangers, if Wesley was any testament to that). Ximal worked on the docks still, his limited knowledge of anything but the sea also limiting his options, but his children stayed fed by the Hearth and kept inland for now. Until now.
Xalati stared out at the fuzzy band of the horizon where sea and sky merged, two shades of cool gray that became slowly, imperceptibly one as the last light of the sun retreated below the horizon. The docks were quiet, most of the fishers, merchants and dockworkers that usually filled its length now retired after a long day, supping at the Hearth or drinking at one of the taverns of the End. No voices filled the air but the gulls, calling out to each other as they fought over scraps, and beneath them she imagined the ocean breathing a long, low exhale as the tide left the harbor, just below the edge of her hearing.
Suddenly it seemed only right that the ocean sounded so much like a voice speaking just out of range of comprehension. Might she hear better beneath the water, without the wind and the gulls in the way?
The icy slap of briny water closing over her head was the first moment she realized she’d stepped over the dock’s edge. Instinct born of many years among the waves twisted her around, tracking where the bubbles of her entry spiraled upward - and a second thought halted her, arms looping slowly in the water.
It wasn’t quiet, down below. The sound of boats rubbing against the docks, loud and booming nearby, soft and dim from those farther off, much farther than she’d have been able to hear in the air. The rush of waves hitting the pylons. The airy fizz of the bubbles rising around her. Her own heart, thumping loudly, the first time she could remember being so acutely aware of its presence in… months? Maybe years?
So alive, the ocean murmured in its ceaseless susurrus around her, the rush of the waves mimicking the rush of the blood in her ears. This is what she heard before her end. She knew she was alive, until she was not.
Sal
The Driftwood Inn was bombastic this evening. A cacophony of ranting, jeering and laughter all weaved together into an incomprehensible rumble that shook the very walls, while the old wood from the docks that held it together simultaneously seemed to breathe and sway with the rhythm of the patrons’ conversations.
Salinger Morel had just finished helping his parents’ set up his mother Cheralie’s harp and the ambiance that she had designed to accompany her performance this evening. Lanterns of varied sizes with cut paper stencils were positioned around her to cast shadows on the small stage with their flickering light. They were hung at specific points from the old rafters so that they would sway with the gradual rocking of the waves under the dockside inn in time with both the tides and the tempo of Cheralie’s latest compositions. These were details that the majority of the patrons would likely never notice, but Sal, his father Emauve, and the regulars did. The same folks that came to her shows at the Driftwood, the Dry Iron, and the Wanderlust every few weeks. She was brilliant … and with a single pluck of her harp every other sound in the Driftwood …
… stopped
Emauve, wearing his big broad smile leaned down to Sal and said “Time to head on home son” as he tousled the boy’s hair, and another single note drifted out from the harp to embrace the room.
Sal hated when his dad did that.
He gave his father a begrudging nod, and headed out the door as he tried to get his hair back under control using his hand and the little tin of wax he kept in his pocket. Another note rang out, and then his mother’s voice and his father’s smile slowly vanished as the door closed behind him.
“Xalati?” Sal muttered quizzically with an even more exaggerated drawl than usual as he put the tin back in his pocket and watched her step off the docks and into the water.
Xalati
Not alive. For the first time since her sister’s “funeral,” a memorial ceremony with no body nor ashes to mark it, Xalati felt the full weight of it, pressing on her mind as heavy as her cape bearing her down beneath the surface of the water. Not just gone away somewhere, perhaps swallowed alive like the tale of Jamah and the whale. Dead. A part of the after, now, to be separated and spun out into other beings, if Aureya at the temple was to be believed.
A sigh escaped her in a stream of bubbles rising to the surface. Alive, until the moment she was dead. So quick. It’s not fair–
But what was “fair” anyway? An idea built by kith. Deep in the grip of the sea, she imagined she heard the waves whispering directly into her ears, I have existed always. Nowhere in my reach can you touch a thing called fairness or justice. Only things living, and things dying. I hold millions of deaths in my depths, and few of them came willingly or in their expected time.
She didn’t. She would never give in. I… Xalati hesitated, and realized the bubbles from her nostrils were starting to thin. Her lungs had begun to ache with the familiar starvation of air. But she’s gone anyway. And I’m alone.
Sal
Sal walked towards the edge of the dock where Xalati had just plunged into the water. Slowly at first, still taking it in, plodding one step at a time.
“What’s she doin’?” he thought aloud as he slowly moved towards the water, a crisp wind whipping across his face.
“Xal never comes down to the docks anymore, not since …” He began to walk a little faster as his heartbeat quickened, and didn’t even realize that he’s now hopping on one leg and then the other as he removed his boots.
“Water’s cold this time of year … too cold for a swim.” he says a little louder, jogging now with boots in hand.
“Why was she wearing all those layers of clothes?” he says louder still. He drops his boots and tosses his coat onto the old planks of weathered wood as his pace quickens. His feet begin to act before his mind can truly tell them to run, clumsy, uncertain, and on the edge of a panic that’s already started to build.
As he reaches the dock’s end he sees the surface of the water.
A few bubbles break the surface, too few, too small.
He doesn’t stop running.
“Xalati!” he nearly shouts, but Salinger never was one to yell, as he falls, legs still kicking into the icy sea.
Xalati
Or not. A mild surprise glazed by irritation was all she could muster up as reaction to the booomph of another body violently breaking into this underwater world. Who would swim here, at this time, in this season?
Surprise intensified slightly when the body resolved into a firbolg - big enough to look like a full grown humanoid for most races, small enough by firbolg stature to be a youth still growing into their full height. Sal? What—
His grab around her waist expelled the last of the struggling air in her lungs and any further thoughts from her head, as she briefly became very interested in the burning from her lungs encountering salt water rather than air. Dimly, she acknowledged the sharp, thin sounds of the harbor at night carried through air replacing the all-encompassing sounds of the water below, the bitter cold lovingly driving spikes through every layer of sodden clothing, the docks solid and slippery beneath her knees and hands, the dull blows on her back as Sal pounded the water out of her. All of that came second to the burning prickleball of pain in her chest as she coughed up - not much water, really, not more than a cup. Hardly seemed enough to be causing the flaring tightness in her chest and the heated rasp of her throat.
After drawing in a deep breath that made her vision go white and tilted for a second, she closed her eyes, opened them, pulled herself up a little - as much as she could against her instinct to hunch in and curl up around the burn in her chest, against the cold of the air - and looked Sal in the eyes. As much as she could on hands and knees, anyway. “Salinger. Lucavian. Morel. What was that for?”
Sal
Sal let out a brief sigh of relief when he heard Xalati inhale a sizable breath of fresh air to replace the salt water she’d just coughed up, and then gave a big toothy smile so wide his eyes nearly closed when he saw her look up at him.
“I saved you!” he said through a confident and satisfied grin just as Xalati began to speak.
His face dropped, and his body involuntarily froze when he heard her start to say his middle name.
He relaxed when he heard Lucavian instead of other far more embarrassing alternatives.
She’s annoyed with me, but not furious, he thought a little confused.
He stood up to his full height, pushed his wet, now slightly wavy, but rapidly approaching curly hair back out of his face.
“So you weren’t drownin’?” the firbolg boy said with a skeptical expression on his face. “It looked to me like the ocean’s siren song had you enraptured. Like she was luring you into her watery depths the way you stepped off that pier, wearing all those layers. Who goes for a swim wearin’ wool, Xalati?!” he stated in a tone that sounded more accusatory than he’d intended.
Xalati
Her cheeks flared red, standing bright against cold-grayed skin and lips turning slightly blue, the heat an ache against the cold everywhere else. “I—” she started to say, then faltered. Was it true?
“Sort of, but–” she began again, trying to defend herself. “I wasn’t trying to drown myself, I just–wanted to–it sounded like–and th-then I f-f-felt so alive d-down there, hearing everyth-th-thing—” Her stumbling attempts to justify something she wasn’t quite sure of herself began to run afoul of the realities of cold sea water in cold night air, and she abandoned the stumbling defense to take refuge in something much simpler. “I’m s-so c-c-c-cold, I need t-to get warm—”
Laboriously, she unknotted herself, pushing herself to her feet and stumbling over numbed extremities, her face turning toward the nearest source of light—the Driftwood.
Sal
“Alright, it’s a-alright. Let’s just keep you alive up h-here.” Sal said as he moved to help her stay upright, the adrenaline beginning to leave him, and suddenly feeling the cold himself.
Teeth chattering they stumbled towards the Driftwood.
Sal would have said he was carrying her, but in truth, at this point, they were carrying each other. Each of them occasionally losing their footing as they made their way along the old wooden planks.
“This k-kinda reminds me of a story” Sal said, beaming his most convincing smile while hunched and shivering. He began to fill the air with words as they walked, spinning a tale that he said was called the deep lights, part old sailor’s story, part children’s fable, and before they knew it they were at the door to the inn.
The Docks, Shepherd's End | Fall 1017
Xalati
The door to the Driftwood banged open, spilling out Xalati, laughter and Cheralie’s harpsong in equal measure until the door swung shut behind the teen, muffling the sounds of merriment and leaving the dim sounds of the harbor in the evening.
Smiling to herself, flushed from the exertion of dance and some sly sips of liquor sneaked out from under the watchful eye of the barkeep, she danced a few extra steps down the street. A dock cat trotting by gave her a wary look, and she giggled and bent down to offer it her hand to sniff; it would have none of it and bolted, leaving her forlorn but unsurprised behind. Few cats liked her, despite her attempts over the years to befriend them. Her father and the more yuan-ti side of her family assured her that was just how it was for all of them.
Straightening, her gaze swept over the docks and to the horizon beyond, blue-gray in the watery light of the half-moon. She took a deep breath, feeling the damp salt air flooding her lungs, and stepped forward, involuntary at first. Her steps firmed, becoming more sure, until she reached the end of the longest pier – it offered the best view, untrammeled by intervening ropes and masts – and sat on a bollard there, gathering her cloak around her against the early autumn bite.
Sal
It would be at least another candle before his mom’s set was over and Sal needed to return to the Driftwood to help pack up the stage and haul it all home. He rarely stayed for her full sets anymore, just the beginning and the end. The time between was just for him. One of the few times that could really be said anymore as his life filled with more and more responsibilities.
He wandered the docks during his time looking for lost things, bits of someone or something’s story that had washed up with a storm or fallen from a pocket. He didn’t usually find anything, but over the years he’d found just enough to build up a decent sized collection. A leather bound journal so worn the text within was almost entirely illegible, an old iron lock to some unknown and long gone chest, and even a sphere of etched bronze once, though that was Doc’s now.
Tonight he found something else. One of his oldest friends was staring out from a familiar dock. Sal walked up and sat down beside her, his oversized legs hanging off the edge of the weather worn wood. He leaned and gave her a nudge with his shoulder accompanied by a big grin.
“Too cold for a swim.” the boy said in slow baritone drawl.
Xalati
She heard the footsteps coming up behind her - hard not to with his size and the age of the pier - but didn’t turn to look until he sat down and bumped her with a shoulder. The flush on her face deepened slightly, but she shook her head, pushing back against the bump with an elbow. “Nonsense. Just a little bite. Cold water is good for you, makes the blood run quick and the body remember how to work.” Contrary to the brisk tone she affected, she had a faint smile as she turned to look out toward the ocean again.
A handful of minutes passed in companionable silence, only the sloughing of the waves at low tide filling the air. “Anything interesting tonight?” she asked finally. She’d seen some of his finds before; she’d been often to Ava’s room at the physicker’s and seen the bronze sphere plenty of times, at least.
Sal
“Nah, nuthin’ beyond the regulah lazabouts. Same cranky ol’ cat, and the same cantankerous crustaceans as most nights.” he said matter of factly as one of the aforementioned crabs scrambled to hold onto the barnacle encrusted dock against the shifting water.
Sal looked down into the swirling murky brine below, and without looking up, asked in a cautious tone “Why’d you do it? Walk off the edge and into the cold back then?”
Xalati
The smile slipped and her blush spread, though it was near-indiscernible in the darkness. ”…I said then that I did not know, and I am not sure that has really changed very much,” she said slowly, testing out the words. The next came even more measured, as though it was an effort to push them past reluctant lips. “But … it just felt … right. Like I could almost hear something whispering to me from far away. And when I was under the water it seemed even closer, like I could feel her speaking to me, through the waves. Hear her in the sound of my heart, and in the pain of the cold biting at my body. I did not feel much of anything, those first few years after Ixtalan was eaten. But I felt that.”
Sal
There was a long pause as Sal stared off into the distant horizon and let Xalati’s words sink in. How many unknowns stretched across those depths … beneath them. Stories lost to time, memories transformed into legend, things known that were now … nothing at all.
They hadn’t seen as much of each other over the last few years, and he’d often wondered if she was distancing herself from him. Trying to move past difficult memories at the water’s edge … to forget the loss, to escape from it.
He now realized he had been wrong. She hadn’t been trying to lose anything. Xalati had been trying to find something.
The words spilled out before he realized that he’d figured out what he needed to say.
“Speakin’ of whispuhs. Do you remembah the time ‘Tala stahted talkin’ to that ol’ dock lobstuh at pier three.” he said as a grin spread across his face.
“Oh—yes. You started calling her—what was it—the claw queen?” Xalati said with a raised eyebrow.
“Yep, sure did, but ya know one day at that dock as I was pretendin’ to be the voice of that crusty ol’ crittuh. Respondin’ to the call of tha clawh queen.”
“Ohhh magnanimous matronly monarch! My claw queen!” he bellowed out to the night sky in a voice that was unmistakably the dock lobster from pier three. Xalati flinched slightly in surprise at the sudden shout, but a nostalgic smile flickered up.
“I swear I saw it turn to face her … and kneel.” he said in a serious tone.
For hours, the two of them sat at that dock’s edge. Sal did most of the talking, which wasn’t unusual. He told stories of Ixtalan, and every one of them was true. Not once did he speak of her as if she was gone. He didn’t shed a tear, or say how much he missed her too. He laughed and occasionally nudged his childhood friend with a shoulder or an elbow then said.
“You remembah when?”
Episode navigation
Previous
Previous:
Next
Next:
Back to: