Chapter Text
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way(Joni Mitchell)
Clouds.
The first thing that floats to mind and hovers at the edge of a dripping conscience.
Clouds had gathered so fast.
In the beginning, a silvery, silky sheet wrapped up the horizon. By the time the cross-jack had been folded in, the sky above was smothered in soft grey pillows, piling high, pressing in, spilling their sullied down across a dimming blue. The air stood still between helplessly exposed sails, frozen in expectation; a silence so deep it swallowed all hoarsely shouted commands.
Frantic hands pulled at Mobius' shoulders, trying to guide him below deck. But he, too, was glued to the spot in breathless inaction, bumped this way and that by shipmates scrambling to furl the courses.
It did not take an old salt to know that it was already too late. The storm sails remained uselessly stowed away. A heavy blanket of clotted black put the rest of the light to rest, and there was little left to do but stare up at it in a mindless awe. To wait until the sky gaped wide open, a darkly rumbling yawn around the burnt hiss of lightning.
The first whiplash of rain hurled Mobius out of his shock-shell. He turned to run, through the jagged curtains of wind sweeping in, down to his stateroom, the mess, anywhere. Stumbled over a fallen boom, lit up like a match by a second flash of blinding heat. Crashed face-first against the taffrail and held onto it for a life that had never seemed so dear—
One foam-soaked moment later, he found himself spread flat across a stretch of gunwale, still gripping a piece of the exquisitely carved woodwork. Or rather, it was gripping him. His hand was caught in something, a torn shroud, perhaps, a piece of ratline attached to the railing.
Yet no longer attached to the ship.
Mobius had a splinter of a moment at his disposal to try and wrench a single thought out of the debris of deafening screams: of wind, and voices, and the agony in his arm and face.
Then they all dissolved in a boiling, salty brine as a wave toppled him over and pulled him under, swirled him around in one dizzying pirouette—
Two—
Three—
And then, miraculously, he coughed and sputtered, which had to imply that he could breathe again, pulled to the surface by his accidental raft. It was sheer, dumb luck that washed him back on top of it.
Those were thoughts that Mobius would think later, after, with the spine-scraping shiver of a waking man wiping a nightmare from his eyes.
But as he was caught in the kraken coils of the storm, his mind was filled with nothing but icy froth—and the faint beat of a waltz, out of nowhere, a melody he recalled from a few nights before they set sail. The lavish ball that was held to wish him good fortune on his voyage. It broke like a ray of sunshine through the clouds behind his burning eyelids, forcing him to fill his lungs with air before the next wave took him.
And so it went.
Mobius knew precious little about sailing, and what he knew he despised with a passion that now seemed thoroughly justified. But waltzing, oh, yes, that he could do, and what else was there but to breathe, and count, and spin around; to shift his weight, staying close to his wooden partner—hardly the stiffest one that he’d ever had to dance with…then breathe again. To let himself be led, not his preferred role, but there was barely a point in putting up a fight for dominance.
Each time that he swallowed a gulp of salty and impossibly sweet air, he was ready for his luck to run out. And each time—it didn’t.
The waves seemed to tire of their own break-neck rhythm after a while, slowing, lightening. Or, perhaps, the icy numbness in Mobius’ own muscles was to blame. He was losing all feeling in his body, which, given the circumstances, didn’t strike him as such a bad thing.
Just before he allowed himself to sink into that enticingly dark depth, there were hands on his shoulders once again.
He might have imagined.