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They pull her out of the ocean like a mermaid from legends. Bedraggled and dripping wet, she lays down, spread-eagle on the deck, and stares up at the night sky. She doesn't even move until Annabelle steps forward and nudges her in the ribs with her boot. Then she sits up, slowly, a million miles away, and looks up with wonder.
"Have I died?" Her voice is rain beating against the sails. She gives herself a moment to think, pursing cracked lips the color of strawberries, then nods. "Yes. I must have died."
"And what makes you think that?" Annabelle asks this strange woman of mint and chocolate with eyes the color of the horizon, cloudless and vast.
"Well," she says plainly, as if she was stating the weather or the time of day, "I doubt the ground beneath has angels half as lovely as the one I'm looking at now." Then, as fluid as her way of speaking, she turns her head sideways, vomits up a large amount of ocean, and coughs twice. "I retract my previous statement," the strange woman says, her glassy gaze turned back to Annabelle, as though she was the only other person in existence. "I am very much alive. Huh." Then she pitches sideways, giving in to exhaustion. Annabelle catches her and carries her below deck to rest, her crew carrying on as they do.
The first thing this woman says upon waking is soft and barely audible. "Sorry," she says, a boatswain's call, wind through the rigging, rough and worn.
Annabelle frowns. That is a learned behaviour. A defensive one. She wakes again, barely alive the last time, groggy this time, and her first words are an apology? That's something that she's been taught she owes others.
"Deck is clean," she chooses to say. Better to hold to decorum than to voice anger at someone who might shy from the harshness. "No harm done."
"Mmm," the woman hums.
The silence between them is a vast ocean—irony, sure, but nonetheless true—and it is tense and uncomfortable. Annabelle fidgets for a moment before grabbing a flagon of milk and offering it to the woman. "Drink. You're probably dehydrated."
"I can pay you." She hasn't even taken a drink when she speaks again. Annabelle just raises her eyebrow and nods her head. The woman takes a slow sip and tries again. "For passage."
"I rescue a drowning woman from the deep and she wishes to pay for passage?" It's not amusement that tints her words, but a soft incredulity. Annabelle herself has not spent so much time in the throes of royalty—or what passes for it in the Dairy Isles—to not recognize the offer as anything but self-preservation.
"You rescue a woman who does not intend any kindness to go unrewarded." The woman snaps back, a quick thunder crack. Annabelle cannot help but stare at her lips, quirked in a wry way that reveals a dimple on her left cheek.
Be still. Be quiet, she urges her heart, her mind, her voice. Be Captain of the Colby, not a young noble lass pining for your handmaiden. Those times have passed.
"Then we take labor, though it would serve you well to also give me your name. We can't keep referring to you in third person. 'Tis hardly fair." If she notices the faint slip-up, the woman doesn't say. Instead, she sips the milk again, letting Annabelle stew in the silence of her decision.
"Saccharina," she finally offers, her smile quirked by way of her dimpled cheek, "and thank you for your care, Captain—?"
Oh! Yes. "Annabelle. Of House Cheddar."
Saccharina laughs and it is rain and wind and ice on the hull of a ship at sea. "I hope I serve you well, Captain Cheddar."
"Annabelle will do." She holds her hand out for a quick handshake, her body moving without her consent. Saccharina looks at her hand, then her face, and smiles.
The sun behind clouds, a parting glimpse at light, Saccharina takes Annabelle's hand and presses her cold lips to it in a gesture of deference she has long since left behind.
Annabelle takes her leave then, a muttered apology and a soft half-bow. The place where Saccharina kissed her is chilled and smells of cherries. Her heart beats a war drum. She wishes to drown.
Behind her, Saccharina stifles a soft laugh. This is the first time of many that Annabelle hears this sound.
Gooey traces her hands across Saccharina's face, a distant look of love and reverence on her own. Gently, as if she is afraid of breaking her, she presses a kiss against her forehead, the chill of her skin lingering for minutes after the act.
"What has your thoughts so occupied?"
"Memories," Saccharina's tone is distant, soft, a cloud of candy floss. She seems like she's drowning in her past, surfacing for any affection Gooey gives her.
"Anything in particular?" Gooey presses. Her hands—wandering, calloused, tender—polish and burnish the darkness from Saccharina. She, with little motion, pulls her from the maelstrom in her own head.
"The ocean. Traveling. An angel I met once." She smiles, mouth quirked to the left. Gooey presses a kiss to the dimple in that cheek and Saccharina leans into her grasp, seeking her warmth. "Storms."
"Yours?" She asks. Saccharina shakes her head.
"No. Not that you could convince them otherwise." Saccharina laughs, a hollow huff, and Gooey cards her fingers through her hair, brushing the strawberry tips from her forehead. "Sailors."
"You command them well," Gooey thinks of lightning, a burning building, screaming priests. Of purple up her arms and a brand near her face. Of two eyes and a howling monster masquerading as a person. Of a blade and vengeance.
A moment of silence becomes a vast yawning cavern. Gooey bridges it by pressing her forehead against Saccharina's. Both of her blue eyes met Gooey's singular purple eye and, for one holy moment, she is Saccharina's everything. The only thing in her view. The only thing in her world.
Gooey kisses her gently and pulls back, a shy grin overtaking her. "Be here," she commands. "Stay with me."
"I would never leave." Saccharina says.
She is, by nature, a liar. Everyone leaves, even her.