Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time I saw you, I was lying.

I'm usually lying, so it wasn't anything special in the moment, but it's the detail that I'll never forget. It's not that I wish I wasn't lying, it's just that I wish you hadn't seen me.

I was standing in the center of a group of new recruits, all of them pristine and spineless and awful. All of them had gathered around me for some reason, and all of them were chattering and posturing. I recognized the look of it, recognized that for some reason, I had become the person to impress. They were swarming around, eyes gleaming, and as I smiled and nodded and made appreciative noises where necessary, I hoped that all of my scars were covered.

I walked and the group trailed me like a crowd of mosquitoes, swept along as if by gravity. I glanced over my shoulder to smile at a young man loudly describing his awards and accolades, and that was when I saw you.

You were sitting apart from the crowd. The uniform fit badly on you-- it was too large and you clearly hadn't bothered to knot the tie correctly-- but you were unconcerned with your appearance, with the crowd, even with me. You were reading a book, large spectacles sliding down your nose. I was, briefly, offended-- I'd gotten used to people looking up as I passed, people being drawn in by my presence. I hadn't seen very many people immune.

I passed you, and you were reading. I couldn't make out the title of the book, only that you were reading with ravenous intensity. There was a spyglass sitting on the table beside you, once copper, now tarnished and shabby.

You were young. I'd thought you were older from behind, since I'm bad at guessing, but when I got into full view of your face, I realized that you couldn't have been any older than twenty. You were thin, and even then I knew that healthy, well-fed young women shouldn't be that thin. In a way, you were pretty, with your dark skin and short black hair and very dark eyes and sharp-boned face, but it was a strange kind of pretty, the kind of pretty that was almost unsettling. I was unsettled by you, and I don't mind saying it.

For a moment, a brief moment that changed the course of everything, your eyes flickered up from your book and met my gaze. Your eyes were sharp, as if you hadn't been reading at all, as if your focus merely shifted from one thing to another.

You weren't like me. I knew this right away. I'd never met another changeling before, but I had the feeling that I'd know when I saw one. There was no sense of familiarity, no warm, terrible reminder of the Matriarch's magic. You weren't like me, but you were something, and you were something different.

As our eyes met, your sharp, focused eyes narrowed, as if appraising me, and for a moment, reflexively, my heart beat rabbit-fast with a strange, primal fear. But then one side of your mouth lifted in a crooked, sharp smile. 

For the first time in a very long time, I didn't smile back. I broke eye contact first, looked back to the people around me, and kept moving.

And that was the first time I saw you, darling. We're both ill omens, have been from birth. It only makes sense that our first meeting was so inauspicious.

...

The first time you spoke to me, I was so terrified that my heart nearly burst.

By that point, I knew your name. You were the only interesting person there, even if you weren't what I was looking for, so I made a point to inquire. It came to me, because people liked to answer my inquiries.

Your name was Magnolia Luna, and you had been at the academy for two years. In that time, you became one of the top students in several fields, namely navigation, history, and mathematics, and nearly everyone at the academy was afraid of you. No one I asked (and I asked a great many people) knew quite why, but they were afraid of you. There was something about you that frightened people, as much as you smiled, as much as you stuck to yourself and your books, as small and unassuming as you were.

There was something about you, something interesting, something unnerving. I wanted to know what it was, but not even I was immune to your reputation.

So when you sought me out, I was afraid. I was afraid because of your dark, flashing eyes and your strange, crooked smile, and I was afraid because if you could see me as clearly as I could see you, I was in quite a bit of danger.

You sought me out in a rare moment when my hangers-on were absent. I still don't know how you managed it, but I was alone in a hallway and there was one hour and thirty-seven minutes until sunset. I remember it exactly, because when I looked up and saw you walking down the hallway towards me, I felt the sudden, unusual urge to flee like prey.

I stopped, and you walked towards me and stopped, when we were at a polite conversational distance. You smiled that strange, crooked smile again, and I nearly died of a fear that I hardly understand even now.

"Hi," you said, and I hadn't heard you speak before. No one else had, either. Your voice was low and unmusical and matter-of-fact, a distinctly, reassuringly human voice, incongruous in the strangeness of you. "I don't think we've met. I'm Magnolia Luna." And you held out a hand.

It took me a moment to recover myself, and when I did, I reached out and took your hand. It was soft, much smaller than mine, and I nearly flinched away from the coldness of your skin. I managed my usual smile. "I'm Ahla."

You raised an eyebrow. "Just Ahla?"

"Just Ahla," I confirmed, widening my smile in the way that usually made people back off from that question.

You shrugged, squeezing my hand briefly before dropping it. "Well, if you're only going by one name, you can call me Noli. I'm trying out a new nickname."

This wasn't at all what I expected. Without meaning to speak, I asked, "Aren't other people usually supposed to give you nicknames?"

"I don't have any friends, so I thought I'd take the initiative." You shrugged, without self-consciousness or sadness. "Anyway, I know this is so rude, but I wanted to ask you about something."

"Oh." I said that aloud in my surprise. I always did my best never to show surprise, but you circumvented my careful defenses with unprecedented ease. Just like that, I was afraid of you again. "What is it?"

"Well..." You shifted your weight from foot to foot, and I realized belatedly that you were nervous. It was the first expression that I ever recognized on your face, and it surprised me again. "We've never met, but I've heard about you. Seen you a few times. You're a really good fighter, right?"

"I am."

"Well, I'm... not. I'm pretty bad at fighting, actually. And even though I'm really good at almost everything else, they're going to kick me out if I can't fight. So I wanted... I wanted your help. With fighting. I can tutor you in exchange, if you want. Or I can pay you."

The fear and surprise warred in me again, but I swallowed it back. This was interesting. "If you can't fight, why are you here?"

Your eyes narrowed, briefly, and focused with incredible intensity on me. I didn't retreat from your gaze. After a moment, you continued, your voice marginally harder, "Because I need something, and I'm not leaving until I get it."

That was the first time I felt kinship with you, dear heart. It wouldn't be the last, but I didn't know that, not then. All I knew was to look you in your eyes, steel my courage, and reply, "I'll help you."

...

You were a terrible fighter. You still are.

I tried everything, darling. I tried swords, and you cut yourself. I tried staffs, and you dropped them. I tried knives, and you dropped them and then cut yourself. The best I could get was guns, since you had the focus and discipline for aiming a pistol, but as soon as you pulled the trigger, you had this bad habit of jerking your arms wildly and you missed every shot, every damn shot. It was almost amazing.

After teaching you-- or trying to teach you-- for a month, I could no longer understand why everyone else was afraid of you. You were clumsy. You tripped over your own feet, tangled your stick-thin legs together, fumbled every non-book object in your hands. It was ridiculous. I was reminded of a deer from the old forest, newborn and wobbling on skinny legs, except that you were a human and somehow expected to keep yourself alive.

I was able to get you through the physical exams, if only barely. The Feathers have standards in their academy that didn't seem to translate to their officers in reality: I can't imagine most of the officers I've met having this level of training. The instructors watched you carefully (and I watched you carefully), but barely, with more determination than any skill, you managed to fire a pistol and fence well enough to pass inspection.

I was proud of you. I didn't recognize it then, but I recognize it now. Along the way, as I taught you to fight (or attempted to teach you to fight) and in exchange you taught me mathematics (or attempted to teach me mathematics), the two of us drew closer together, like frightened animals sheltering against a storm.

You didn't belong there. I knew that even then, even before I knew what you were. Your eyes were fixed on the stars, too wrapped up in your own head for the conquest and bloodshed that the academy was trying to teach you. Every time I asked why you were here, you tried to lie. You were a terrible liar even then, so I knew that your loyalties were not with those people. I didn't know where they lay, though, or why you were there at all.

The first time I saw who you were, really saw, you were trying to teach me the stars. I didn't have much of a head for them-- or, rather, I knew the stars like the back of my hand, but as a child alone in the woods, I tracked their paths backwards. I didn't know how to explain this to you, didn't know how to express that my inability to learn the patterns was because they were wrong, but you never lost patience with me.

Well, that's not true. You lost patience with me once, but very gently, very kindly. We were bent over a book together, you tracing the lines with one pointy finger, me fighting back a headache, when you snapped the book shut and sighed. "This isn't working," you said.

"I know," I replied, annoyed with myself for sounding annoyed. It wasn't your fault, not really.

You rubbed your temples. "All right. Okay. Let's try something different. Would it be easier to look at the real stars?"

My stomach lurched, and I reminded myself of the time. Three hours and fifty-six minutes until sunset. "What, at night?"

Which was a monumentally stupid question, but you were decent enough not to take the bait. Instead, your eyes widened. "Oh, right, I forgot."

I'd told you that I had a condition that prevented me from leaving my room at night. When you'd pressed, eyes wide with interest that could only have originated from stories, I explained it as an illness that affected me more heavily at night. You subsided, which was polite of you, since that was a terrible lie.

"Right," I said, averting my gaze from you

You snapped your fingers and I looked at you with begrudging interest: I knew even then what you were like when you got an idea into your strange head. "I have an idea," you declared, and before I could protest, you'd slipped your arm through mine and hauled me, with strength you never seemed to possess while training or testing, out the door.

I followed you. Even then, before I trusted you, before you guided our ship through a maelstrom with your eyes on the stars, I knew that your path would lead me forward.

You dragged me through the streets of the city, maneuvering with a strange grace through back streets and alleyways, and it occurred to me how very practiced you were in avoiding people. I realized then that however much people feared you, you feared them more.

You led me to the observatory, a building that I had never visited, one that had been pointed out to me several times but that I had ignored. You were chattering about something and I paid attention long enough to hear, "-- and they've got very good diagrams and charts, so even during the day, it'll be like looking up at the night sky!"

"You come here often?" I said, and barely managed to avoid sounding like one of my weaker pick-up lines.

"All the time," you replied earnestly. "The staff lets me stay here and study sometimes. Come on!"

And as if the observatory would go somewhere if we didn't hurry, you pulled me through the door.

I had a vague impression of someone at a desk nodding you forward, and then I was in a very dark room. I blinked to gather myself, and saw you vibrating with excitement beside me. "Look up," you said.

I looked up. Above us was the only beautiful thing in the academy. Across the ceiling of the dark, cavernous room was painted pinpricks of magically glowing silver light, familiar as my breathing, a perfect imitation of the night sky. Despite everything, I could feel a strange lump in my throat.

"The ceiling moves along with the sky, and it opens on clear nights," you said beside me. I couldn't take my eyes from the painted stars but in the corner of my eye, I could see you looking up. Your expression was still.

How long had it been, since I looked at the stars with human eyes? The question depressed me too much to answer.

"It's beautiful," I said instead.

"It's everything," you said, and in your voice was the conviction of a zealot. I turned to look at you then, really look at you, and your expression wasn't quite as peaceful as I'd thought. Your eyes roamed the painted stars as if you were counting them, as if you were calling to them.

"Everything?" I echoed.

You shook your head, slow and almost dizzy. "It's hard to explain."

"Try," I urged, driven by some strange instinct that had kept me alive countless times.

"I..." Your voice faltered, your hands flexed, as you searched for the words. "Every past and every future is written in the stars, you know? We kept our legends up there as constellations. We navigate by them, and they guide us forward. It's... I don't know, it's important. The whole world is up there, if you know where to look."

"And do you?" I asked, my heart pounding. "Know where to look, I mean?"

Your jaw hardened. Your eyes flashed fire, reflecting the light of the ceiling and the stars beyond. For the first time, I saw you-- I saw you as you were, fierce and bold and powerful, and I caught a glimpse of the woman you'd grow to be.

"I will," you vowed.

I think that, for the space of a heartbeat, I loved you then. It was too soon for anything. Neither of us were ready. But fuck, darling, looking at you then, I would have followed you anywhere.

...

The first time I saved you, I was a caracal.

It was a bit embarrassing. It would've been a lot more efficient if I'd had my fists or my knives or my pistol. Instead, I had teeth and claws and a larger-than-average, spookier-than-average feline body, and I was more afraid than I'd been in decades.

You were walking home late from the observatory. I'd taken to keeping an eye on you as you walked through the city. I didn't have a good reason for it, though I didn't think I'd ever have to justify myself to you for it. There was a strange scent clinging to you in our last days at the academy, the stink of gunpowder and incense and malice, and I knew that someone was following you, someone with intent to harm.

I didn't tell you. I should have told you, but I didn't know how to explain my certainty. Worse, though, was that I didn't fully trust you. I had no idea what you were and I didn't want you to know what I was. All I could do to keep myself safe was observe, and I had spent too long alone to put anyone else before myself.

You were walking home late from the observatory. It was a cloudy night, and your stars were covered. I'd go on to wonder, for years to come, if that was why you didn't see it coming.

A group of people approached you from behind, dark-robed but wearing the sickeningly familiar emblems of the Church of the Slain God. I tensed, in the alleyway from where I watched you, but I held my ground, watching, waiting.

I held my ground for a moment too long. The group approached you, faster, and one drew a weapon from their sleeve. That was when I ran, but if I'd reacted a moment faster, he wouldn't have had time to hit you over the head.

I'm still sorry about that.

He hit you, and you crumpled to the ground, already dazed. I knew you, knew that you didn't have a weapon because you weren't paranoid enough to walk around armed, knew that even if you had one, you couldn't have fought back. Instead, you raised one shaking hand, your mouth gaping open in a soundless cry, your eyes wide and luminous with fear.

That moment created the pattern that we still stick to today. You can't fight, so I fight for you.

I sprang from the alleyway and howled, consumed with rage by the sight of you on the ground, and even as I charged with teeth bared, I was hardly seeing you. There was Hara, a mariner's knife through his palm, staring at me, the horror and panic draining from his eyes as he rotted in the space of a moment. There was Morrow, killed in battle, his skull cracked open and draining blood into the filthy, waist-deep brine. There was Ollera, pointing a gun at me as she watched my fingers turn into feathers--

Even then, I couldn't lose anyone else.

The heads of the kidnappers turned to me, but like me, they reacted a moment too late. I sprang at one and tore out his throat, the blood metallic and disgustingly warm, but I wheeled on the next and growled, too lost in animal instinct to speak.

That one tried to shoot me, but I was faster. I got my teeth into his arm and he screamed as I tore at skin and blood and muscle, until my teeth met in the rough scrape of bone. Another lunged for you, and I wrenched my jaws free and nearly took off her hand.

They weren't getting to you, not without killing me, and she won't let me die. So they weren't getting to you.

They must have seen something of that in my eyes, because they ran. All of them ran, leaving me behind, leaving you behind.

I'm no doctor. I was even less of a doctor then, and as I turned and nudged anxiously at you and you didn't move, I thought for a panicked moment that you were dead. My fear hardly relaxed when I finally noticed the shallow rise and fall of your chest, the blood still trickling stubbornly from the gash across your head.

You're so fragile, love. I was so afraid.

I could carry you when I was human, you bundle of sticks pretending to be a person, but I didn't have my arms or my strength or my height. I spared a moment to sink my paws into the dirt and ask please, just this once, do me a solid, you gigantic asshole, but the Forest Queen was silent. She probably thought that was quite funny, in hindsight.

Instead, I gathered the fabric of your coat in my jaws and dragged you home.

...

The first time we told one another the truth was our last day at the Academy.

We left after that. Fled, really, desperate and terrified and clinging to one another, and it began after I brought you, you bleeding and me physiologically incapable of carrying you properly, to my room.

I managed to get you onto the bed, and I settled down by your feet and waited. I was afraid. I was terribly, terribly afraid, too afraid to be logical, too afraid to do anything but watch and wait. There was nothing I could do to help you. My skill set lay firmly in the realm of causing pain, and I was helpless to heal yours. So I curled at the foot of your bed, my head resting against your leg, taking solace in the sight of your breathing and the warmth of you. You were alive and I was afraid, so afraid, to lose you. It had been so long since I was afraid to lose anyone. I was terribly out of practice, and it felt like the end of everything.

I waited, waited until the sky began to lighten with the oncoming dawn. As fiercely as I wanted you to wake up, a part of me hoped that you'd be considerate enough to wait until sunrise. But as the sky above lightened to gray and the sun was set to rise in two minutes, you stirred on the bed. Your brow furrowed, eyes squeezing shut with pain, and my heart cracked in half. I was too afraid of you to stay, too afraid for you to run.

You woke, and you looked at me, and your eyes widened with fear. I had lived this moment before, and the best I could say for this situation is that you weren't armed.  I was more afraid of you than I had ever been of anyone.

I spoke then, pathetic and inadequate. "Please don't freak out?" I offered, more question than request, my heart slamming against my ribs.

Your jaw dropped. Your eyes, somehow, got even wider. I still don't know if it was my eyes or my voice that you recognized, but the moment when you realized it was me hit us both at the same time.

"Ahla," you breathed, and the lightening sky was reflected in your eyes.

Despair took hold. There was no hiding this anymore. You'd seen me. You saw me fight off the kidnappers, and you saw me as soon as you woke up. I couldn't lie to you, not even then, but the idea of your fear and hatred destroyed me.

I couldn't speak, so I nodded.

One of your hands rose, shakily, to cover your mouth. "Okay," you said slowly. "All right, this is... wow. Holy shit. Hi. You're a... a caracal."

And for some reason, my first thought was, She got it right. I've rarely been recognized in this form for what I am.

I nodded again.

You laughed. I hadn't heard you laugh much before and the sound shocked me. I listened with fierce attention for any notes of bitterness or hatred.

But I knew you, even then. There was nothing in your laugh but pure, shocked delight.

"Lumin's eye," you gasped, and you lowered your hand. You were smiling. You were smiling, with astonishment and wonder.

You didn't hate me.

I was so caught in amazement that the sun crept up behind me. I didn't notice it, didn't notice anything, until I felt the warmth on my back. It was nice, until something cracked in my chest.

Panic set in. I scrambled off of the bed, my paws tangling in your blankets, and I crashed heavily to the ground. You sat up and in hindsight I recognize worry in your eyes, but I was so consumed with fear that I couldn't even think. There wasn't time for either of us to flee, I could already feel the pain--

"Look away," I gasped, wincing as another bone cracked. "Noli, please, look away and don't look back until I tell you."

You started to push off the blankets I'd tossed haphazardly onto you, wincing with pain, but my spine rippled and cracked and I managed, half cry and half growl, "Noli, please!"

You flinched and turned your back, and it was oddly satisfying to see that fear in your eyes, the satisfaction of expectations fulfilled. I tucked that agony close to my heart as my body contorted under the spreading dawn, and the pain of the transformation paled in comparison.

After everything was finished, I knelt on the floor, human, shaking, exhausted, the echoes of pain slowly fading. Your back was to me, still resolutely facing the wall, your arms wrapped around your torso, your shoulders trembling.

I pulled my coat tighter around myself, despising myself, and said weakly, "Thank you."

You turned, and that was the first time you broke my heart, darling, because you turned and your face was wet with tears. "Ahla?" you asked, and your voice was shaking. I had never heard your voice shake before. The sound nearly killed me.

It was harder to look at you as a human. I looked at the floor. My hands trembled. "I'm sorry."

"Are you okay?" The words tumbled out of you in a rush. You tried to get up again, but you subsided with another grimace of pain. Still, though, you looked at me with an unfamiliar, frantic look in your eyes.

I shook my head. "I'm fine."

"That didn't sound fine, it sounded-- Ahla, you were screaming, I could hear... your bones..."

"It's..." My hands shook. I hid them in my pockets. "It's something that happens. I'm used to it."

You shook your head in disbelief. "Used to it, I don't... how long--"

"How long?" My voice shook bitterly. "You really want to know?"

You hesitated, but your scholar's mind won out, the curiosity in your eyes as you looked up. "How long has this been happening to you?" you asked.

I couldn't lie to you, not then, and I certainly can't now. Still, though, I hesitated. No one in the world besides me knew this part, not even the one person who had seen me transform. She'd shot my wing off before I could explain.

"Sixty years," I admitted, the words like ash in my mouth. "Every sunset and every sunrise for sixty years. Since I was cursed."

Your jaw dropped again. This time, no words emerged.

"I'm immortal," I continued.  You deserved the truth that I had denied from you, from everyone. "A changeling. I've been alive for... I'm almost eighty years old. I was cursed by the Forest Queen when I was eighteen and I've been like this ever since."

"Why are you..." Your breath caught in your throat. "Ahla, why are you here?"

The question makes sense in hindsight, but it wasn't fun to hear you say that, darling. It gutted me. I had prepared myself for pain but the reality of it was different.

You must have seen something of it in my eyes, because you forced yourself up from the bed. Despite everything, I almost went to you, but I held myself back. With uncharacteristic strength (really, sweetheart, where was that when you were being kidnapped?), you pushed yourself to your feet and gripped the bed for stability, ashen and sweating with the effort. I watched you anxiously until you managed, "That's not what I-- look, I know enough stories to know that this is a very dangerous place for you to be. If the Church finds out what you are, who knows what they'll do to you?"

The question was rhetorical, but I answered, because I'm an asshole. "I know. I've been alive long enough for that, if nothing else." The heartbreak built to a bitter crescendo and I stood. "I'm glad I could help you, Noli, but you're right. You should distance yourself from me."

Pain crossed your face, different from the pain of standing with your half-cracked skull, something raw and deep in your endless eyes. That was the first time I hurt you. I'm still sorry.

"That's not what I meant," you pleaded. "The Church, they're-- those people, they were with the Church and they're after me too--"

"All the more reason to get as far away from me as possible." I turned away from you, tucked my coat tighter. I'd spent several decades cultivating a prickly, self-protective cruelty, and I never should have tried it out on you, but I was terrified. The tears in your eyes scared me so badly that I tried with all my heart to hate you for it.

"Ahla, wait." You sounded afraid, so I stopped. It was that easy. I turned back, and you were looking at me with frightened, desperate eyes. Your eyes spilled over with tears again as I turned back to you. "Please don't go. Please."

My heart shook in my chest. I hadn't cried in years, through deliberate effort and the careful distance that I cultivated, but I could feel my eyes burning. "You don't understand."

"I do." You took a shaky step forward. Instinctively, I retreated. "I understand that you're scared and... and alone, and that you feel like the only person you can count on is yourself, but it's not like that, Ahla, I swear."

I blinked, hard. This wasn't the first time you had cracked me open and read me like one of your maps, but it was the first time you had done it in full knowledge of what I was. I wanted to fight. "You're not like me, Noli. I'm a monster."

You set your jaw, stubborn, unyielding. "You're not a monster. I know you."

"I've been lying to you this entire time."

"I know you.  I've seen who you are and you can't lie about that, not to me. No one can. And I know, because I'm strange, too."

My heart pounded hard. "Show me."

"Look out the window," you told me, and I looked.

The stars were invisible. I hadn't noticed it before but I noticed then, that even with the rising sun, the sky was dark behind gray clouds and fog. But I saw you narrow your eyes, saw your chin lift, saw you reach down for the spyglass on your belt. "Watch," you said, and your voice rang like thunder.

And the sky lit up.

You called your stars forth from daylight, from behind clouds and the rising sun, and for a moment, the unfiltered light of the universe shone down from the dawning sky. My jaw dropped as I stared at the sky, at your sky, and then I stared at you.

You leaned against the wall near the window, teeth still gritted with pain, gash on your head still leaking blood, small and vulnerable and frightened, tears barely dried on your face. You raised one shaking hand and I watched as the divine threads of the universe wove around your fingers.

With one flick of your wrist, every star in the heavens brightened, blinding, thousands of wheeling moons hanging in the sky. Sixty years of the unbelievable was the only thing that kept me on my feet.

And then, all at once, the light faded. Breath escaped you like a sigh, and your legs gave out.

That time, I ran to you. I ran to you and I caught you and you were impossibly light in my arms. I held you before I could talk myself out of it. You were tiny. I could crush you if I held you too tightly, but you felt so insubstantial that you could slip away if I didn't hold on tight enough.

"Noli?" I asked, shaking.

Your eyes fluttered open and you looked at me. You looked at me, and you smiled that crooked smile. "Told you," you croaked.

And you fainted again.

The first time we ran away together, we were on the back of a cart.

It was fantastically, characteristically inelegant. I had become eminently practical at fleeing places and you had low standards, so the two of us didn't care. It didn't make for a great beginning to our story, though.

Both of us traveled light. We carried everything we needed in our pockets. Neither of us had a destination, but you told me where we should go and I trusted you.

We found a merchant's caravan heading towards the coast, and we made our way onboard. There was just enough room in one cart for the two of us to huddle between the crates, where no one would notice us if we were quieter than the rumble of the wheels on the road.

I'd been in worse circumstances than being cramped and bored for a while (and even then, I had the novelty of getting significantly smaller after sunset), but you were restless. You could only bring your most important books, and there was only so many times that you could reread the small storybook you'd brought from your hometown.

Curious and desperately bored, you asked me for stories. I was full of stories that I'd never told anyone but more importantly, I was just as bored as you were. I leaned my head towards yours (and physically, too, we were closer than I'd been with anyone in half a century and closer than you'd probably been with anyone) and in a low voice, I told you stories.

I didn't tell you everything, not then. Everything was too raw, too strange, and I was terrified to break whatever fragile thing existed between us. I told you the smaller stories, the strange things I'd seen in decades of wandering. I told you a little about her, even then, about how she saved me, about how she damned me.

"I'm not criticizing your methods," you interrupted one story, your chin on my shoulder so that you could speak quietly into my ear. "You're smart-- well, smart enough." I elbowed you and you muffled a giggle behind your hand, then went on, "I just mean that you know what you're doing. But if you've had all this bad experience with the Red Feathers, why did you go to the academy? Why wouldn't you get as far away as possible?"

"I could say the same for you."

"Not really. I made a bad choice, but I was a kid. I didn't know any different and I thought this was my only way forward. You've got decades on me, and you know exactly why these people would've been dangerous for you. Why'd you go?"

I hadn't answered that question yet. You'd asked, more indirectly, but I hadn't known how to answer. Now, though, now that you knew more about me than any living person, I tried to put a shape to it. "I don't know," I admitted. "I had a feeling. Not a good or a bad feeling, just a feeling, and it's not like I had anything else to do but follow it. And I..."

My voice trailed off, and you looked at me curiously. "What?" you prompted gently.

The next part was more difficult. "Ever since I was cursed, I've been looking for people like me."

"Other changelings?"

"Yes. Maybe. I'm not sure. I don't think... maybe changelings aren't the only immortals out there. I've heard lots of stories. There could be more. They could be anything. I thought... I'd hoped that I could find someone else. Someone like me."

I could feel your jaw tense. "Am I like you?"

"No," I replied honestly.

You deflated. "Oh."

"You're like nothing I've ever seen in my entire life."

"Oh."

"And I've been alive for a while, so those aren't empty words."

You summoned a smile, though I could all but feel that it was an effort. "Well, there's no need to brag."

I didn't want to say the words out loud. It was the first time that this particular fear took hold of me, but it sure wasn't the last, dear one. I forced myself to say, "You'd know if you were immortal. I don't have any magic at all and I knew the moment it happened. It's a visceral kind of thing, having some impossible power tear out and rearrange the threads of your life. You'd be able to see it even better than I can."

You inhaled, shakily, and smiled. "Well. Worth a shot."

"It isn't. Believe me."

"What do you mean?"

"Can we please talk about something else?"

"Oh." You shifted quietly beside me, somehow not moving your chin from my shoulder. "Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Can you tell me more about Burza Nyth?"

I smiled. "What, you've never been?"

...

The two of us found our home together.

Well, to give you full credit, you led us there. To give me full credit, I got us there. You followed your instincts and the path of your stars. I kept my eyes forward, found us transport and food and lodging, kept you out of trouble.

That was the first I learned of your absurd inclinations towards trouble. If only it had been the last. There was only so much danger you could run into at the academy. They kept you on a short leash until they decided to have you kidnapped, so you had spent your entire life enclosed in either the walls or the school or the walls of the library where you had grown up. This was your first real chance to run into trouble, and you did it at every possible opportunity.

Of course, you called it intellectual curiosity, and you tried to make it seem noble. I didn't buy it, even as early as then. You'd run into a leviathan's mouth if you saw something interesting between its teeth, heedless to any danger, knowing that I'd pull you out.

I saved you quite a bit back then. The fear of it never faded, since you never became any less fragile. More powerful, perhaps, but no less breakable. As it became more habit than aberration, though, I found a note of fond exasperation in it.

I stopped being afraid of you then. Everyone at the academy had been afraid of you, most likely because they sensed and trembled at the full extent of your strangeness. After I worked past that, I was afraid of you hating me, afraid of you leaving me. You made it clear very early on that that wasn't happening, and I wanted to believe you so badly.

Still, though, I never let you see me change. You lost every bit of your mystique and frightening aura the moment I had to physically pull you out of a tree because you had climbed too high and were too scared to climb down. I trusted you to lead me through the unfamiliar roads and the wild, strange world, trusted you with your eyes to the stars and your bright, crooked smile, but I couldn't bear to show you that piece of me.

I had the feeling that my transformations were unpleasant to watch, given how unpleasant they were to experience. I knew even then that you cared for my well-being, enough to find the sight of my skeleton liquefying and reforming upsetting. But besides that, darling, only one person had ever watched me change, one of the few people I'd ever loved as much as I love you. I had loved her and she had loved me and when she saw me turn into a monster, she tried to kill me.

You tended to sleep through the sunrise, so I always managed to slip out of earshot with relative ease. You tried to follow me every sunset, though, even after weeks. I didn't understand why. You'd tell me later that the sound of me screaming was like a knife in your chest, that you didn't want me to be alone while I suffered, but for a long, skittish while, I worried that the sight of me turning into a monster would be enough to make you hate me.

After I transformed, though, things were easier. You tended to keep close to me, and I realized then just how starved we had both been of physical affection. You reached for my hand often; it took me a while to stop flinching away from it, to allow it. I'll never forget the first time our hands wove together, like an exhale, like two pieces always meant to fit together. We held hands often after that.

On bad nights (nights when the transformation had been especially rough, when I heard the echo of her laughter in the ground under my feet, when the stars were hidden, when strange, unsettling nightmares haunted you), the two of us slept close together. It was easier to curl into your arms as an animal, like it wouldn't be held against me. Besides, you were small. When I was a frog, I could burrow under your chin: when I was a snake, I could wrap around your arm; when I was a bird, I could shelter against your hip; when I was a cat, I could curl up in your arms. These weren't exactly an option when I was human and much larger than you.

During the day, we held hands. We walked arm in arm sometimes, companionable and familiar. Sometimes, you would wrap your skinny arms around my torso in something that was almost a hug but that ended too quickly to count. Sometimes, when you were tired of walking, I pulled you onto my back, your chin digging into my shoulder as you murmured exhausted observations into my ear, as you pointed the way forward.

The way forward led to the coast. You had never seen the coast before, and I had avoided it for a good long while. Even then, the sight of the water rippling out to the distant horizon, an implacable darkness just beyond my vision, turned my stomach. I wanted to get you out of there, get you as far away as possible, but you insisted that this was the right way and I trusted you.

I don't remember the name of the city. I'm terrible with city names anyway, but it feels like a betrayal that I can't remember where the two of us met our fate. I remember that it was small, cramped, and dirty. It was a very utilitarian port, one that sold the necessities to the people passing through. The importance of the city made itself clear fairly early on, because their business was trade with skyships. The city traded with the Red Feathers, like everyone else. The city was a frequent stop for courier ships. The city was also, rumor had it, safe port for any corsairs who could pay the bribes.

I didn't have many stories about corsairs, and the few I knew were secondhand. I had spent my entire life with my feet on the ground, following instincts that might not even have been mine. But even after I admitted this gap in my knowledge, you kept pressing me for stories. The small, awful town that had raised you (and yes, darling, I'm using the word "raised" very generously) was full of Red Feather loyalists, ones that had welcomed  a Syndicate ship descending, bringing them trade, and taking away the annoying, unsettling orphan that haunted the library. For obvious reasons, they didn't have many stories about skyjacks.

You, though. You were desperate for the skies. You told me about your singular ride on a skyship so often that I can recite the details now. You wanted to be up there, as close as possible to your stars, the wind on your face, freedom in your veins.

You talked about the latter point often. Freedom, you said, and your voice was the sigh of a precious dream you'd kept safe within you. Freedom, the freedom to be who you were, the freedom to voice your thoughts without fear, the freedom to go anywhere you wanted.

You had never been free in your entire life, my dear. I knew the type. My freedom had been stolen from me when I was a teenager. The idea of it, the thought of just leaving, of being so far from the ground and anything familiar, of being about as far away from her as I could possibly get, took hold of me. It intoxicated me like a good wine, took hold of me and grew in my chest like a sapling.

Freedom. Freedom, calling from the skies.

I don't remember the name of the city. Characteristically, I still remember the name of the bar where we met our destiny.

It was a shitty dive called the Martyr's Rest. If I was alone, I would have a fantastic time there: there were just enough loose purses, enough incompetent gamblers, enough pretty girls sitting at the bar. With you, though, I was too nervous to leave you alone. You were eyeing the Illimat game happening in the corner, and I just knew that you'd learned the rules to the game in a book, that you wanted to play, and that you would lose every last bit of our hard-earned money if you did.

So instead, the two of us found a table and a few plates of warm food. I kept a wary eye around as you watched the crowd. "So many people," you said quietly, hardly audible over the din of shouting and drunken carousing.

I wanted very badly to carouse. Instead, I managed responsibility. "Keep an eye on your pockets," I warned you. I was carrying the purse, just to be safe. You'd never had money before, and you loved spending it.

"What's happening over there?" you asked, pointing towards a corner where a group of burly, weathered people sat around a table and set out Luminary cards in intricate patterns.

I followed your gaze. "They're doing airiner's readings."

"Oh." Your eyes widened. "I didn't know you could do readings with Luminaries. I thought they were just for the game."

"Trust me, you can do plenty with the Luminaries if they favor you right," came an unfamiliar voice from our table.

I turned, one hand at my pistol, and you flinched and shrank towards me. We saw them in the same moment.

The stranger sat in a third, empty chair drawn up to our table, their booted feet kicked up onto the fourth chair, one elbow on the table as they reclined, with the indolent, regal stature of an ancient king. Their eyes blazed, smoldering green and gold and brown in the flickering candlelight and the weak sunlight filtered through the grimy window. I was transfixed by their eyes, and the rest of them came a moment later than I should have noticed it. They were fairly short but lean and muscular, their brown skin weathered and scarred. A cascade of bone-white curls fell to their waist, wild and loose, falling into their smug, grinning face. They wore a brilliantly green coat, trimmed with gold, over a white shirt unbuttoned to their navel and tucked into their high-waisted black trousers. Their smile-- I mentioned it before, but it's worth repeating. Their smile was like the wicked curve of a scimitar, sharp and brilliant and promising danger, as they glanced between the two of us.

I knew enough to be on my guard. I'd never seen anyone who was more stereotypically a corsair, never seen anyone with that glint of arrogant certainty in their eyes. Their smirk said that they were in control, and their careful, steady hands backed up that certainty. Something about them was strange, incredibly strange in a way that reminded me, oddly, of you.

Still, though, I couldn't look away from them.

"Hi?" you said uncertainly, and both of us reached for each other's hands in the same moment.

"Afternoon." They nodded to us both, their smirk sharpening. "You're newcomers, aren't you?"

My tongue caught up to my brain, belatedly. "Hard not to be, in a port town," I replied evenly.

"Well, all the normal newcomers here have at least been to a port town before. You're doubly new." Their accent was sharp, unrefined, unfamiliar. This was odd. I knew most accents.

"How did you know that?" you asked, before I could stop you.

"It's my business to know things, kid."

"You're a corsair," I said, as I watched you puff up indignantly at the word kid. You didn't take kindly to condescension, didn't take kindly to anyone treating you as less than you were. I admired you fiercely for it. I still do.

The corsair nodded in acknowledgement. "Good, you're observant. I'll tell you my name once we conclude our business, and I will extend the courtesy of that anonymity to you."

"What business?" you asked, controlling your temper with an effort that impressed me.

They shrugged. "You're new here. New everywhere. Either of you ever been on a skyship before?"

"No," I admitted, as you replied, self-importantly, "Once."

The corsair smiled. This was a truer smile than their smirk and fool that I was, I think I was captivated by them in that moment. Don't tell them, love-- they'll never let me live it down. "How'd you like to be on one?"

Your eyes ignited. I watched as it happened, with the same resigned anxiety that I'd felt through all your escapades. You sat forward in your chair, your expression set and blazing, and I knew then, knew with a certainty I'd never felt, that we would be in the sky come morning.

"A corsair ship?" I asked, because one of us should.

"Aye," they replied. "An extremely illegal corsair ship, wanted by the Feathers and a few other corporations and local governments that I've pissed off."

"Then you're the captain," I replied. "Either that, or you're exceptionally bold."

They shrugged. "Right on both counts. I'm the captain of my ship, and I happen to know that we're recruiting."

"We haven't heard anything about corsair ships recruiting," you said, because the two of us had kept a careful eye out for those postings.

They scoffed. "We haven't evaded the Feathers for so long because we openly advertise when we're recruiting. We're subtle. We rely a good deal on my instinct. And I have a good instinct about the two of you."

"You'd be the first," you muttered, and I smiled.

They smiled too. "Are you interested?"

You drew breath to reply, and I saw you then, saw you taking that step towards the leviathan's open jaws. I interjected. "We don't know anything about you, and you don't know anything about us."

"I know what I see. But you're right. There's more to learn." And with one elegant hand, they reached into their coat and withdrew a battered deck of Luminaries, bound with a small leather cord. "May I offer you both a reading?"

"Yes," you said immediately, and I couldn't do anything in your wake but nod.

With one flick of their wrist, the corsair unbound their cards-- with another, the cards cascaded into their free hand, an elegant spiral of a completely unnecessary and pretentious card trick. The cards twirled into their hand and they fanned them between dexterous fingers and extended the deck to us. "Take a card," they announced, with the fanfare and aplomb of a performer.

I didn't know it then, am only recognizing it now, but that was when I realized that this motherfucker was going to become my best friend.

You and I reached forward and drew a card in the same moment. I was caught with a sudden anxiety as soon as the card was between my fingers, so you turned yours over first.

"The Boat," you read, and your brow furrowed as you looked back up at me. "Is that good?"

For a vivid moment, I heard Morrow's voice in my ear. Fortune awaits those who seek it, he'd told me, his voice creaky as he spread the cards before me and Hara, as he taught us both how to play Illimat, but only with blood and sweat.

"Hm." The corsair frowned, staring at the card in your hand. "It's certainly interesting. You're seeking your fortune?"

You considered. "Yes, but not in gold."

The corsair laughed, delighted, their frown melting away. "Excellent! You're a hard worker?"

"Yes," you replied firmly, and if I hadn't been so concerned with the card in my hand, I'd have pointed out the lie, that you hadn't really had a chance to work hard at anything other than school and following the divine paths of the stars.

The corsair nodded, seemingly satisfied. "What can you do?"

You hesitated, your hands flexing in a way I recognized, as you tried to put a name to it. "I'm a starwatcher," you said finally, voice ironic with understatement. "A very good starwatcher."

Their eyes narrowed slightly. "You said you've only been on a ship once?"

Your eyes narrowed back. "I can read the stars just as well from land, can't I?"

The corsair leaned back in their chair. I could tell, from the light in your eyes, that they respected you even then. "I suppose you can. But looking at the stars from the ground, knowing how they move from books, is one thing. When you're in the sky and a maelstrom is raging, the sky is black and thundering, the ship is bowing before the might of the storm and even the Morningstar is invisible, that's one hell of another. Could you do it then?"

Your lips thinned at the word maelstrom. You'd never seen one before, having lived your entire life inland. I knew them, and the idea of you matching your wits against the might of the broken world shook me to my core with fear. Still, though, out of ignorance or confidence or a certainty that you could see woven before you, you met the corsair's eyes. "I could do it," you answered, "or die trying."

One of their eyebrows raised. I squeezed your hand tightly.

"You scare people, don't you?" the corsair broke in, and for the first time, your eyes narrowed, caught off guard. "You unsettle them, for reasons they can't explain."

"It's a bad habit of mine," you admitted after a moment's hesitation. "How did you know?"

"It almost worked on me, kid, but I don't scare easy." They leaned forward again, their boot sliding off the chair as they rested their forearms on the table. "I think I like you. And my ship hasn't had a starwatcher in a long time. Our helmsman does the starwatching for us, but-- and don't tell him I told you this-- his eyes are going a bit. You might've learned a lot in books and schools and whatever fancy shit, but you'll learn more from him than anyone or anything on land can teach you."

Your eyes lit up at the thought of a teacher, at the invitation that hung, implied but unspoken, in the air between the two of you. But you hesitated. Your grip tightened around my hand. "I'd be glad to help, but you've got to hire her, too. I don't go anywhere without her."

The corsair's gaze shifted to me in surprise, while I tried very much not to look like you'd just handed me my own heart on a plate. "Well, I can certainly respect loyalty. Show me your card, lass."

I knew what it was before I looked, before I turned over the card in my fingers and placed it on the table.

Her face stared up at me, eyes veiled, smile mocking. The Forest Queen.

The corsair snatched the card up from the table and put it back into their pocket. They held out the deck to me. "Draw again."

"What?"

They smiled, a bit strained. "I draw her all the time, she tends to haunt my deck. It's not an accurate reading. Draw again."

My hands shook with relief as an expression of bitter irony crossed the corsair's face. It was brief, like a scrap of cloud crossing the sun, but I would remember it for a long time afterwards. In hindsight, it's astonishing that I didn't notice then.

I drew again. You were watching curiously over my shoulder, and you unsubtly pressed a fist to your mouth to stifle a laugh as I flipped the card.

The Changeling.

The corsair smiled, broader than made sense, and again, so many things are painfully obvious in hindsight. "Interesting. How long have you been traveling?"

I pressed my lips together as I considered my answer. "A while," I replied finally. "A decade or so."

"Well, the Changeling is as its name implies. Its presence indicates change. Transition. The end of one journey and the beginning of another. Tell me, what journey have you concluded?"

I didn't need to think about that. I nodded towards you. "I found her."

You smiled, touched, as the corsair continued, "And where are you going now?"

I met their eyes for the first time. Their gaze was electric, like lightning crashing overhead, but I stood my ground. "I'm considering my options."

"Good." They kept their gaze on me. "And what are your skills?"

I shrugged. "I'm strong. I can fight. I learn quickly."

"You'll have to, if you've never been on a ship before." Their chin tilted thoughtfully. "Now, the Changeling is also about will. The will to transform. The impetus of forward motion. The Changeling hates to be still, it yearns for movement, yearns for adventure. Is that why you're here?"

"It is." I didn't even need to consider it. It had hurt, to hear the Luminary's description the first time, but the ache softened with time. I had a long time to get used to irony.

"Interesting." The corsair leaned back in their chair. They broke eye contact with me first, to shift their discerning gaze over us both, but they didn't make it seem like a concession. "If I were to offer you both employment on my ship, for a fortnight's consideration until we reach our next port and are able to draw up a contract of more permanent employment, would you be interested?"

I could see you drawing breath, could see you stepping into the leviathan's mouth, but for the first time in our shared life, I moved first. "Yes," I replied, beating your affirmative by a breath.

The corsair grinned, bright and bold and fearless. "What are your names?"

"Magnolia Luna." You offered your hand. "I've only got one friend and she calls me Noli, so you're free to as well."

The corsair bowed their head as they shook your hand briefly. "A pleasure." Their gaze shifted expectantly to me. "And you?"

"Ahla." I extended a hand. "Just Ahla."

"A pleasure." They took my hand. The contact was brief, but even then, there was a strange warmth to their flesh, a warmth that struck me to my core. Their expression didn't change as they pulled back their hand, but I knew that they felt it too.

"Where can we find you?" you asked, your voice hungrily eager.

"At the docks." In one smooth motion, the corsair stood, their coat rippling. For a moment, the light filtered through the dirty window caught in their white hair like fire. Their gaze on us both was sharp and warm. "We're at the end, behind the last large cargo ship. We leave five minutes after dawn and if you're not there, we'll leave without you. My name is Tamsa Sidhe. Look for me, and look for the Audacity."

Your jaw dropped. I tried to say something, but my voice caught in a squeak.

Captain Tamsa Sidhe laughed, their voice like the ringing of a bell, their eyes bright with amusement. "See you then."

And our destiny walked out of the bar.

...

The first time we stood on the deck of our ship, you were trembling with excitement so hard that I thought you'd fall off.

We both knew the Audacity, of course. I ran in the right circles to hear the right whispers. You, of course, knew the name of the ship and its captain from books.

The Audacity was a legend among corsairs, a legend among legends, but a legend spoken in whispers and shrouded in rumor. Even as the two of us swapped stories the night before we were set to meet the Audacity, we couldn't unpick the truth from mythology.

They said that the Audacity was a stolen Red Feather ship, one of the first, before it was a Syndicate, when it was simply a Company. The few sightings that made their way into the stories say that the Audacity was small, more of a landing vessel than a full-size corsair ship, crewed by about twenty-five fearless rebels and led by the indomitable Captain Tamsa Sidhe.

The captain, too, was impossible to pick out from fiction. The stories claimed that Tamsa Sidhe was five hundred years old and had sailed the seas before the stars fell, that Tamsa Sidhe had the strength of ten men and could withstand cannon fire with nothing more than a wink and a laugh, that Tamsa Sidhe had left a string of broken hearts wherever their ship made port, that they'd killed enough Feathers to paint the Audacity's hull crimson, that the Syndicate and the Church have a bounty on Captain Sidhe's head that would bankrupt them both.

No one knew how the Audacity recruited its crew. I wondered what all these storytellers would think if they knew that Tamsa Sidhe found people they liked in random bars, that they had a fiery smile and a loud, joyful laugh.

"It's worth the risk," you said that night. We were in a room above the Martyr's Rest, and the walls were so thin that the cold leaked through. I couldn't keep you warm as a snake, but you'd insisted on wearing me like a scarf. No one had ever worn me like a scarf before. It was weird. I had an especially close view of your face, alight with excitement, as we talked it over. "It's the Audacity, Ahla! This is where everything's been leading!"

I hesitated, but not because I doubted you. I never doubted you for a second, love, never doubted that the path you followed was straight and true. I should have disbelieved that the stranger in the bar was really who they claimed to be, but you said they were and so they were. Your word was more gospel than anything I had ever heard in my life.

"I just don't know how much more wanted by the law we want to be," I replied finally. "The Church is already after you. The Feathers have a bounty on us."

You gaped. "They do?"

I gave you the best incredulous stare that I could manage as a snake. "Noli, I've told you this. I've told you this several times."

"No, you haven't!"

"Yes, I-- ugh. Never mind. What I'm saying is that being on a ship this actively wanted by the law could put us in danger, and our presence there might put them in more danger. If they knew about the bounty, let alone what we actually are, do you think they'd let us stay?"

Your jaw jutted out stubbornly. "Then they won't find out. I've been keeping this secret for my entire life. I can keep doing it."

"You couldn't even keep it from me!"

"I revealed it to you by choice, Ahla, and you're different. You know that you're different."

"I'm special." I rested my head on your shoulder and you ran a finger thoughtfully along my back. I allowed it. "Are you sure that this is what you want?"

"It is." You looked at me, pleading. "But if it's not what you want, we won't go."

And that was the problem, wasn't it, darling? It had been a very long time since I had done something I wanted. The first good thing that I chose in long, lonely decades was you. I didn't know if I was ready for another. Still, though, I couldn't lie to you, and the truth found its way from my mouth.

"I want this," I admitted. "And I don't want to leave you alone. I just want to be careful."

You smiled. This smile was crooked too, but it was one that I hadn't seen before, small and sad and oddly fragile. "I won't leave you alone either," you replied, your voice quiet with the force of a vow, and that was the first time I realized, truly realized, the truth that I had been carefully ignoring.

You were going to leave me alone. I wasn't going to die unless I was killed, and I was very difficult to kill. You, though, were going to die. No matter how hard I fought to protect you, you were going to die someday and I wasn't.

You were going to leave me.

I nestled into your shoulder, suppressing every urge to flee. "Then we'll go," I replied, the words bitter in my mouth. I couldn't deny you anything after that revelation. "We'll go, and we'll be careful."

You squealed-- yes, sweetheart, you squealed-- and did your best to give me a hug while I was a snake draped around your neck. I nestled my head against yours and ignored the deep, distinct pain of my heart breaking.

You slept. I didn't.

As the sky lightened with dawn, the two of us found our way to the docks. We stopped in an alleyway for my transformation (you turned your back at the mouth of the alleyway, hugging yourself tightly, while I tried to muffle my screaming). It wasn't any faster, no matter how hard I willed it, but once I had human hands, you took one of them and led me through winding back roads and side streets.

Five minutes after dawn, the two of us found our ship.

Oh, darling, the Audacity. It was the only love at first sight that I've ever experienced (don't be offended, I explained in great detail how our circumstances were more like love at third or fourth sight). The Audacity rose into the weak morning sunlight, the featherweave envelope glittering, the hull painted midnight black, the entire ship gleaming like opportunity itself. It was small, objectively, but as the two of us stared up in astonishment, it felt enormous. We reached for one another's hands in the same moment as you gasped, as my jaw dropped.

"It's beautiful," you breathed. I couldn't speak through the lump in my throat, so I nodded wordlessly.

"Luna! Ahla!" A voice shouted from the gangplank of the ship, a familiar voice, and the two of us hurried our pace. You hurried your pace, really, and pulled me in your wake. I watched with wide eyes as, regal and elegant, their hair glittering like silver in the sunlight, Tamsa Sidhe descended the gangplank like they owned the entire dock.

"Captain Sidhe," you said breathlessly, as we came to the gangplank. We were so close to the ship that my heart shook in my chest.

The captain's smile was blinding and genuine, and I noticed a deep dimple in their left cheek. "You made it."

"We did." You grinned too, crooked and brilliant. "Worried we'd been scared off?"

"Thought you might've changed your minds," they admitted, their smile fading. "I've looked into the two of you, by the way. There's a bounty on your heads."

Your smile faltered. My hand tightened around yours as the familiar instincts of prey crept back in, as I prepared to run.

"There is," I replied, because there was no point in denying it, because I didn't want you to have to say it.

One of the captain's eyebrows raised. "You're fugitives?"

"We are," you answered uncertainly. "Are you going to turn us in?"

Tamsa Sidhe scoffed, shaking their head. "Bounty's not that high, kid. Stick around a while longer, and maybe it'll get high enough to tempt me. Besides, there's not a one of us on this ship who isn't running from something."

Your eyes widened. "Really?"

The captain smiled again. "I've made up my mind, and the Audacity has room for you. Have you made up your minds?"

You opened your mouth to reply, but you hesitated and glanced towards me, a question in your eyes.

"We're with you," I answered for both of us, and your answering smile would have melted stone.

The captain beamed with joy that I recognized even then as completely genuine. They clapped us both on the shoulder companionably and turned back towards the gangplank. "Then let's get aboard."

As soon as we were aboard the ship, you dragged me to the rail. You were shivering with excitement and wonder, your eyes darting in astonishment around the deck, at the crew pulling ropes and calling orders, at the captain striding the length of the deck like a conquering hero, at the unfurling of the sails and the rumble of the furnace.

I was looking at the sky, brilliant with the newly dawned day, your stars fading with the oncoming light. I was holding your hand.

And the Audacity lifted into the morning sun.