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On this beach, the coast seemed to span for miles. To its credit, it likely did.
The crescent arc of the sand curved protectively around the lagoon. Strips of patchy sandbar spotted the outer edges of the bay, disappearing like a trail from skipping stones into the horizon line. Rocky shelves shyly drew themselves out of the water as the night dragged on, pulling the tide out with it to reveal more and more dimples in the stony surface, full of kelp scraps and stubborn crabs.
The tiptoed splashes of the most daring shorebirds were the only signs of life nearby. They raced the white foam with disappearing footprints, toying closer and closer but never getting swept away. Chip watched as a few of the larger birds took off in pinwheeling spirals, coasting on the ocean breeze with wide strokes. The smaller ones were left to scurry among themselves.
“Do you know what those birds are?”
“Hm?” Chip said dumbly, dragging his attention back to the woman at his side.
“The birds.” Lizzie repeated. She turned her head back towards the coast. Her tanned skin was muted by the overcast shade of gray that lay like a heavy blanket over the island.The golden beads woven in her braids rattled together, clinking against each other with a sound that wasn’t unpleasant, but certainly stood out against the crashing ambiance of the waves.
Chip leaned forward over his knees and planted his arms at his sides. “No- I mean, I know a few! I know my birds, what pirate captain doesn’t -”
“Alright then,” Lizzie said, the hint of a smile tugging at her cheeks. “What’s that one?”
She pointed towards one of the smaller birds, with a brilliant white belly and a splotchy brown top. Two white rings framed its neck as it pecked at the thick sand, grains sticking to a polished black beak and around its beady eyes. It flared out its wing and abruptly hooked a turn, rushing away from the swelling wave.
“Can’t see it well enough, sorry.” Chip shrugged and watched the bird race back towards the water. Lizzie reached into her jacket pocket- the long red coat folded up and left in a neat square among the long grass, on the edge of the sand, as well as two pairs of boots, Chip’s dirtied shirt, and the partly empty bottle of booze that always lived on Lizzie’s person.
Lizzie snorted and handed him an extendable spyglass. Worn metal and brass, cool against his sandy hands.“Have a go at it, then.”
Chip tossed it back and, with a sigh, collapsed back onto his elbows, digging his fingers into the sand. It was still warm from the sun. “Spare me the embarrassment. You win, but now you’ve gotta tell me.”
Lizzie snorted. “It’s a killdeer. Little buggers always end up on your ship if you’re close enough to land.”
“Killdeer, huh? That’s a bit morbid.”
“Arlin sure didn’t think so. Called ‘em his fucking doves . One day he woke up with a twig on his doorstep, a killdeer on the taffrail, and we made landfall by sunset.”
She chuckled. “Couldn’t be talked out of his little superstition after that.”
Chip smiled to himself. “Yeah that sounds like him alright. He always did that, didn't he?”
“Did what?”
Chip dug his hands deeper into the sand. The phantom weight of Arlin’s coin tugged at his chest, the absence- however brief- heavy in his gut. “Y’know- just- made something out of nothing. Not in a bad way, he just… found the good in the ugly.”
Lizzie was still for a while. She stared back out towards the sea, hair tossed back and windswept. It wasn’t artistic or beautiful, not in the traditional sense. Her hair clung in chunks to her forehead and whipped the back of her neck, but the scene was undoubtedly her. The faded pink waves on her arm, covered by freckles and slight scars, seemed to come alive as muscle rippled beneath the tattoo. The birds on her other bicep likely did the same. She rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her arms.
Chip couldn't see her unobscured eye- she liked him in her blind spot- but he could imagine. Half lidded and tired. Or maybe alert, simply still. Both, equally like her.
“Why do you talk about him like that?” Lizzie said, after a while.
Chip frowned. “Like what?”
“Like he’s gone.” Lizzie said blankly. “I know- I think he’s dead. I think he died in that godforsaken whirlpool like everyone else, but you don’t. You believe he’s still out there, by whatever absurd fuckin’ optimism you’ve managed to cling to over the years.”
She stopped. Chip watched the few remaining shorebirds skitter along towards the outcropping of rocks, kicking up sand and bits of rocky debris as they go.
Chip inhaled softly. “I know he’s alive.”
(Niklaus’ taloned hand reaching out towards his own, the tiefling's toothy grin)
“And you can’t ask how I know. But I do. He’s alive, and I mean... so is Drey."
Lizzie was silent, but her mouth twisted into a grimace.
Chip didn’t say the unspoken, instead, he played the coying dance around honesty, like he always did. Gillion’s half truths were growing on him a bit. “I know Arlin
is alive, in the most technical sense of the term.”
“But he likely won't be the Arlin we knew.”
“Mmhm.” Chip murmured. He closed his eyes and focused on the textures, the wind whipping his pants, the slight warmth radiating from the woman beside him and the way the rough sand rubbed on his scar tissue. He knew lightning marks- (Jay called them Lichtenberg figures, if he remembered right)- split down his spine from Gillion’s old serrated whalebone sword, from the arcing electricity that went straight to his nerves. He’d never seen them and didn’t intend to. His loving ignorance make them itch any less though, and his new tattoos didn’t help, however absolutely badass they were.
He sat up and brushed the grime from the tender tissue, shaking his head like a dog to banish the sand in his hair. He gestured towards the shyly ebbing tide. “Mind if we head in before the sun sets?”
“Not at all.” Lizzie said. She pulled off her ruffled blouse- despite everything, it was still a pristine white, and if anything was like the Captain Lafayette he knew, that was it. Red coat for the bloody battles, clean white shirt to keep her dignity.
Kneeling topless in the sand, she folded the shirt up and tucked it inside the thick fabric of her jacket, along with the collapsing spyglass.
Chip sidled up next to her, wincing as the wind bit at his back. Gooseflesh ran along his arms. “Lizzie? Leaving her stuff out in the open?” He comically rubbed his eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“Cram it.” Lizzie muttered, taking the beads and braids out of her hair. “We’re far enough from anything. If I’m fine with having my fuckin’ tits out, I’m not having an issue leaving my coat on the grass.”
“Well said.” Chip rolled his eyes. She flipped him the bird back, depositing the last of her beads into a jacket pocket. While she undid the few stubborn braids, Chip breathed in the tangy air. It tasted like salt and seaweed brine- obviously, but hints of ozone crackled at the edges. The wheat grass beside them swayed and folded in a particularly aggressive bout of wind, hissing through its teeth and pressing flat against the sand dunes.
Lizzie stood up, and together they walked towards the water. The sand squished and molded beneath their feet, slowly turning to pebbles and kelp as they walked further out to sea. When the waves lapped at their thighs, pushing and pulling their trousers with the fluxing tide, they stopped.
Chip wasted no time rubbing the salty water along his aching burns. He dug his toes into the pebbly ground and braced himself to dunk under the frigid water, starting work on the accumulated grime out of his hair.
Lizzie, however, she just…stared. She stared towards the shore and let the water wash over her back, showing little visible resistance; yet still, she stood like an immovable colossus in the water. From this angle the extent of her tattoos were obvious, stretching and curling around her rib cage and down the hemline of her trousers. The waves foam, however, settled around her bicep. Like Chip’s. Like Arlin’s. A warm sense of kinship stirred in his gut.
Chip spat the saltwater from his chapped lips. “Liz?”
She jumped. “Ah- fuck- what?”
“You were just…spacing out a bit.” He said simply, staring at her. She ran a hand through the water. Her fingers spaced out and dragged foam against her palm with little resistance, tiny bubbles captured from their path towards the shore. It curled in slow circles on the surface before fizzling out, washed away by the next wave.
“Do you know what else they do?”
Chip blinked. “What?”
“The killdeer.” She said, still not looking up at him. “Those fuckin’ birds.”
Chip mutely shook his head as another wave crashed against him, prickling like tiny needles.
Lizzie Lafayette stared off for a second more before seeming to recollect herself. “When they feel like their kids are threatened- or chicks, or whatever they’re called- they fake an injury. They limp along the ground until the threat is away from their nest, and more often than not, that’s what gets ‘em killed.”
“Not quite sure what you’re getting at here Liz.”
“It’s an instinct.” She said quietly, as if that made any more sense. “Nobody tells ‘em that’s how they play their cards. They just do.”
Chip frowned. “Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day they’re just birds.”
“Fuck’s sake, you’re dense. ” Lizzie said abruptly.
“What?”
“ The Black Rose . Could they… do you think they could’ve gotten out if- if we hadn’t? If they hadn’t held those things- ” She spit the word like venom into the water. “ -off as long as they did? Hadn’t been such fucking martyrs? ”
The ocean spray gathered on her cheeks like tears, running down the tense creases in her face. “Arlin and Fin- Shay- Drey’s alive, but-”
(Arms, bruised and broken beyond repair laying limply at his side. A blank face without a hint of recognition. A sharpshooter. A Ferin. Completely ruined.)
There’s an intensity in her eyes that’s almost terrifyingly bright. It’s not directed at Chip, but he remembers the bottle of whiskey left half-drunk in her coat anyways. He’s seen that gaze before, in the crazy eyes of drunkards on the streets, stumbling into lamp posts and buildings. That’s not Lizzy, he thinks. (He prays.)
“But?” Chip prompts quietly.
“I still feel like I should’ve gone down with ‘em sometimes.”
Chip whistled lowly. “Damn. Yeah, I mean… sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d gone down with that ship too. For a while, when I was just on the streets, I thought I was meant to.”
“You don’t anymore? Think you should’ve gone down with the Midnight Rose, that is.”
Chip shrugged, hands sliding down his arms to cross over his chest. “Got bored of waiting for something to kill me.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Lizzie stared at the shorebirds again, skittering and running to and fro as if that was all life had to offer. Making footprints that would surely be erased by the wave rolling towards them, already between their legs. “I still wonder why he bothered saving us from- that
thing
.”
“Same, unexplainable reasons he probably picked us strays up in the first place.”
“Arlin was the captain so by all means it was his fuckin’ ship to go down with, but it’s his ship to try and save. Not two scrappy kids who managed to cling their way to life.” Lizzie’s hand curled into a fist at her side. A familiar gesture, although now it lacked much of the anger- limp, defeated, swaying in the water.
“Say he did.” Chip said. “Say he left us to die on that night-”
( The slick rosewood deck of the ship sliding away under his bare heels, the railing splintering away as he dangled over the open ocean)
“-what then?”
“He fucking lives.” Lizzie said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
He gazed out towards the flat stormy sky brewing over the beach behind them. Not angry, but certainly stirring. A wave crashed on both of them, nearly upending Chip’s feeble stance in the sand. The foam dissipated into white horses, into sea caps and spindrift around them. “He lives, and then? There’s no Captain Lizzie, is there? Nobody rallying against the navy forces? There’d be no one stopping the war. Or starting it.”
He stepped forward and intertwined his hand with hers. Her palm was warm compared to his, damp, from the spray, but strong nonetheless. His mechanical finger hummed with hints of the arcane, the feeling thrumming in his veins as he twined it together with the flesh and blood of Lizzie’s hand. He stared her in the eye, two pairs of rich almond eyes meeting with equal exhaustion. “Lizzie Lafayatte, the world needs you as much as the world needed Arlin.”
“Fuck.” Lizzie said eloquently, a damp tinge to her words. If Chip didn’t value all of his limbs remaining intact, he would’ve said it sounded like crying. “Now why can’t you believe the same thing for yourself?”
“Give me a break!”
“Only when we stop being two dramatic bastards.”
“Yeah. bastards.” Chip agreed distantly. Lizzie’s hand slipped out of his and she dunked under the water, flipping her hair out of her face. She ran a hand through the thick curls, and though a smile still tinged her lips, the strange tightness still lingered.
Even the birds on the shore had seemed to calm, some standing while the wind buffeted their feathers, others taking flight and setting out for locations unknown.
“Chip?”
“Mhm?”
Lizzie stared down into the water at their waists. Her hair was flat against her scalp, making her look small against the wide backdrop of the horizon. Or at least human, not the terrifying idol of a persona she usually wore. “While we’re being- fuckin’- while it’s just us. I really do appreciate you. Bastard and all.”
“Oh my god. You sap !”
Lizzie’s face flushed and she turned away and started to walk back towards shore. “Ah fuck it nevermind-”
“No, it's cute! Come back! ” Chip shouted, grabbing at her shoulder. She whirled around and twisted his elbow into a painful armbar with a single fluid motion. “AH! Jeez! Message received, loud and clear.”
He rubbed his sore elbow. “But- Liz?”
She didn’t turn around.
“I’m glad we’ve met up again, I’m glad you survived that crash. Even if we’re both a bit-” Chip waved a hand vaguely.
“-fucked up?”
Chip clicked his tongue. “Yup. That’s the one.”
He waded over to Lizzie. They were both shivering a bit, from the cold beads of water or maybe the even colder wind. “I’m just happy I’ve got you again.”
The pirate captain closed her eyes and chuckled. Her hand found its way to Chip’s shoulder with her eyes still on the horizon. No- just below it. On the birds.
From here, the shore seemed to span for miles. The rocks jutting out from the sand drew long shadows from the few rays of light that remained. The sun, finally free from the clouds, warmed their backs as it dipped below the horizon, shyly fading into a nautical twilight.
The tall grass hissed in the breeze, stiff yet lenient like the sand beneath their feet, the sand in Lizzies jacket that she so diligently goes to shake out. And the birds, the birds toyed closer and closer to the water’s edge, to the spray and the spindrift, yet never seemed to get wet.
“Me too, bastard.”