wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2023-02-14 09:42 pm
wintersday) wrote2023-02-14 09:42 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: As the Ocean Courts the Strand
Title: As the Ocean Courts the Strand
Fandom: Fallen London
Major Characters/Pairings: Hephaesta/the Pirate Poet
Wordcount: 333
Rating: Teen
POV: Second person
Summary: An anchor, a compass, a map.
Notes: Originally written as a giftfic for APgeeksout on AO3.
Most nights you can’t sleep without inhabiting dreams within dreams, like nesting boxes, of being adrift in a structure more galleon than cabin, with sails sprouting from chimney and weathervane. Sometimes you wake salt-drenched, and you’re afraid - or hopeful - that you’ll come unmoored and float away in the Parabolan night.
When the Pirate Poet stays, you’ve got an anchor.
She’s cool and dry, solid and heavy at your back; her broad hand on your stomach defines the boundaries of your body like the tides define the shore. When she first let you touch the chiseled poetry of her clay, it felt like leaping headlong into fathomless black waters.
.
You tell her once, when you wake in the hushed darkness with dream-moonlight spilling across your face, “It feels like waves are wearing me away.”
She nods, and offers her arm for you to inspect: a verse about a chain, worn through by wind and salt. She tells you writing makes things real, and not just those that exist already. That’s how she unfinished herself, made herself anew - but there’s a patch of pitted roughness near the bend of her elbow, some old injury marring the script. When you move to run your fingers over it, she doesn't stop you.
“The difference between us,” she says. “I’ll endure, but you’ll grow back.”
That isn’t true, you think. She could have written over it, but maybe she wanted to remember.
What you want is different: a path forward, a chart to point you back to the lights of London or just a way to keep from drowning. Perhaps you’ll take up cartography, and make the world real again. But first, you’ll kiss the spiral of words around her wrist, the compass graven into the nape of her neck. She’ll lay you down, and you’ll forget for a time your yearning.
.
The stars are false - at zee, in dreams - but she’s a navigator true. If there’s a way back home, it’s in her arms you’ll find it.
Fandom: Fallen London
Major Characters/Pairings: Hephaesta/the Pirate Poet
Wordcount: 333
Rating: Teen
POV: Second person
Summary: An anchor, a compass, a map.
Notes: Originally written as a giftfic for APgeeksout on AO3.
Most nights you can’t sleep without inhabiting dreams within dreams, like nesting boxes, of being adrift in a structure more galleon than cabin, with sails sprouting from chimney and weathervane. Sometimes you wake salt-drenched, and you’re afraid - or hopeful - that you’ll come unmoored and float away in the Parabolan night.
When the Pirate Poet stays, you’ve got an anchor.
She’s cool and dry, solid and heavy at your back; her broad hand on your stomach defines the boundaries of your body like the tides define the shore. When she first let you touch the chiseled poetry of her clay, it felt like leaping headlong into fathomless black waters.
.
You tell her once, when you wake in the hushed darkness with dream-moonlight spilling across your face, “It feels like waves are wearing me away.”
She nods, and offers her arm for you to inspect: a verse about a chain, worn through by wind and salt. She tells you writing makes things real, and not just those that exist already. That’s how she unfinished herself, made herself anew - but there’s a patch of pitted roughness near the bend of her elbow, some old injury marring the script. When you move to run your fingers over it, she doesn't stop you.
“The difference between us,” she says. “I’ll endure, but you’ll grow back.”
That isn’t true, you think. She could have written over it, but maybe she wanted to remember.
What you want is different: a path forward, a chart to point you back to the lights of London or just a way to keep from drowning. Perhaps you’ll take up cartography, and make the world real again. But first, you’ll kiss the spiral of words around her wrist, the compass graven into the nape of her neck. She’ll lay you down, and you’ll forget for a time your yearning.
.
The stars are false - at zee, in dreams - but she’s a navigator true. If there’s a way back home, it’s in her arms you’ll find it.