[AW] all this and heaven too

[Sabine]

S A B I N E

flowers will grow from my bones

J

ude Addlestone did not want to get out of bed. He pulls a reluctant glance at the clockface across the wall and stifles a groan that he knows won't get him far; it is 4.15AM and if his father bursts in to find his youngest son tucked still beneath his wool sheets, he'll be handing out fifteen belt-licks across the knee like presents at a party. 

He rises, blinking sleep from the crook of his eye, bothering not to run a comb through his unruly auburn curls. Dock labourers were hardly known for their polished fashion and Jude, even at the keen age of two, was no different. His father always said the harbour left a mark on its men: they did not need to make their own. 

Awake now and resigned to the day ahead, Jude grabs an apple (bruised from the games of catch it had endured) before weaving through the disarray that was the Addlestone kitchen come morning. He flies out the door before a hand could twist his ear or worse: burden him with errands -- out and on he disappears into the blue dawn. 

It is 4.35AM by the time he reaches the docks and the sun is knocking with knuckles too wide for the water to hold. The waves dip and shiver; they rage against a light that seeks to steal the secrets they keep. Denocte has always held the southernmost tip of the isle as her treasure and it is not hard to see why. When the sun meets the sea, when each giant must lose something of itself, the clouds seem to hold their breath. Jude does not think he will ever tire of the sight of it. 

----

The first ship of the day comes into port at 7.00AM sharp and by now Jude is sweating. As he swings the last case of freight down onto the loading bay, he steals a glance at the vessel as his comrades guide her in. He has seen it before, once, perhaps at the beginning of last winter when the leaves underfoot had finally turned grey. Tarin, a big bull of a stallion, bellows into the morning air and slowly the ramp begins to lower. And that is when he sees her. 

A girl -- no, a woman -- standing against the plum-red sky with hair that reaches her hip. A woman with glasshewn horns and forget-me-not eyes and a face that opened something in his chest. He swallows. She moves. Why does he recognise her skin? The curve of her cheek? The way the world sinks as she steps onto Denoctian soil, as though it had been waiting for her all this time. 

Tarin thrusts a chideful shoulder into Jude's flank, urging him to crack on, and for a moment the boy glances away. That was all it took. When he turns back, yearning and hungry, she is gone. Lost to the crowd and the life of the court he loved. His heart sinks, and he wonders softly, if she had ever been there at all. 
   

[Vercingtorix]

vercingtorix

—

V

ercingtorix, too, has been awake since the blue of first-light transformed into the pastels of the blinking day. He has been awake to watch the tide change upon the southern shore, and to listen to the markets as they awoke, pre-dawn. The smell of bread gives the illusion of warmth to the cool winter air; with the rising light, smoke from chimneys begins to choke the dock and Vercingtorix walks through the chaos as if searching for something.

He does not recognise the ships, nor the languages, as they collide upon Denocte’s shores. The entire world to him is an abstract painting of what could have been. 

His mouth tastes like salt. 

But Vercingtorix recognises the travellers on a basis that he, too, does not belong; they step from ships to enter a new country, free of burdens. Vercingtorix comes to Denocte’s docks, sometimes, to wonder (and this is why he is here now, wondering, hoping to belong to the foreigners in a way he does not to Novus itself)—

What if I had decided to leave, before the end of the war? What if I—if we—had left together?

The idea came to him one day when he stood on the shore, at a distance, but close enough to see the bustling patrons of the docks. The ships as the drifted gently in, sails billowing. There were not many passenger ships that arrived to Novus; but, on occasion—and this is why he still came to the docks, to watch irregularly the goings-ons of his fellow foreigners—there were newcomers.  This one had had blue sails. Vercingtorix had never seen anything like it. Equines filed off—there couldn’t have been more than ten, but it seemed like hundreds—and the last pair to leave were clearly entranced with one another. Even from a distance, Vercingtorix had seen their wide-eyed awe, their open hope for a better life. 

He wonders if he had Bondike could have been like that. If they could have been escapees rather than outcasts; if things had played out differently, perhaps they could have made Novus their home.

Except, he thinks, that would require Bondike being real. 

Today, watching from a distance hadn’t been enough of a fantasy.

Today, Vercingtorix walks through the bustling crowd as if, by walking through it, he might walk his way straight into another destiny.

He feels Damascus above, in the clouds. When Vercingtorix closes his eyes, he almost feels as if he is flying as well; but that bond lengthens and he knows Damascus is flying out above the sea, hunting for dolphins, sharks, whales. The dragon’s hunger knows no bounds, and, anyways—

Someone else weaving through the crowd’s catches his eye. He had seen, down the length of the dock, when she had left the ship. When Vercingtorix sees her, something hooks him; he is drawn immediately in.

Vercingtorix trots, so as to not lose sight of her; but he makes his intention different, after one of Denocte’s small, pygmy dragons skimming just above the crowd. Just moments ago, he had watched the dragon snatch a jewelled locket from another newcomer, a stallion, who had been none the wiser for it. In Vercingtorix’s feigned pursuit of the creature, he collides directly with Sabine.

He feigns reeling well. And then contrite. Vercingtorix’s face softens and he looks worriedly after the amethyst dragon. “I—I’m so sorry. I hope you aren’t hurt—I just… that dragon just stole my locket, and—well, it’s a really important locket. I’m so sorry—are you okay?” Despite his distraction, Vercingtorix measures her with a steady, concerned gaze. 

Damascus is out at sea, bellowing.

Damascus is out at sea, where the horizon tips off the end of the world, and there is nothing but blue (a little, perhaps, like the blue of this girl's eyes)--

Damascus is out at sea, and his longing search seems an echo of Vercingtorix's own soul. 

§

tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine
meanwhile the world goes on

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