wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2021-05-17 10:35 pm
wintersday) wrote2021-05-17 10:35 pm
Fic: Trajectories
Title: Trajectories
Fandom: Sunless Sea
Major Characters/Pairings: Maybe's Daughter, the Carnelian Exile
Wordcount: 300
Rating: PG
POV: Third person
Summary: While the captain ventures into Frostfound, two officers share a moment in the cold outside.
Notes: Originally written as giftfic for Silvereye on AO3.
On the docks at Frostfound, where riddlefishers cast their nets, Maybe’s Rival watches light dance behind ice. The Carnelian Exile waits with her, smoky gaze fixed upon the spires. She’ll go no closer, with her eyes all dawn-touched. She hasn’t once looked away.
“What’s in there?” Maybe’s Rival asks.
“A road that doesn’t intersect with yours,” the Exile says. “Though yours might not be a road at all.”
“It’s not,” says Maybe’s Rival. No roads run through trackless jungle, beneath Parabolan stars. You make your own way, there. “Do you pity that? Or envy it?”
An elliptical smile. No answer.
Ask the Exile about her own road, she’ll say it’s only got one ending. Maybe that’s true. Maybe not. Maybe it won’t become true until she makes it so.
Maybe’s Rival doesn’t care, except by way of curiosity, but she understands: sometimes the truth burns, but walking away would hurt you more. She doesn’t regret the things she saw in lacre, though she wonders if she should. She’s been changed. She’ll change again. She’s not alone in that.
The Exile holds her secrets close, but she dreams of a horizon. Light waits there, and stranger waters, a parting of ways.
Maybe’s Rival knows enough of dreams to know they offer no warmth. She swipes two mugs from a Whithern camp, and a pot of fragrant tea from the Iremi. She will, she says, have paid for it already.
The Exile takes the cup she pours, and holds it, breathing steam.
“Salt’s law,” she says, “is the law of distance ever increasing.”
A riddle for every question, as is Frostfound’s way. An answer too: they follow different trajectories — but here, in the cold, their orbits cross.
Briefly only, but no regrets. Maybe’s Rival never meant to travel this way for long.
Fandom: Sunless Sea
Major Characters/Pairings: Maybe's Daughter, the Carnelian Exile
Wordcount: 300
Rating: PG
POV: Third person
Summary: While the captain ventures into Frostfound, two officers share a moment in the cold outside.
Notes: Originally written as giftfic for Silvereye on AO3.
On the docks at Frostfound, where riddlefishers cast their nets, Maybe’s Rival watches light dance behind ice. The Carnelian Exile waits with her, smoky gaze fixed upon the spires. She’ll go no closer, with her eyes all dawn-touched. She hasn’t once looked away.
“What’s in there?” Maybe’s Rival asks.
“A road that doesn’t intersect with yours,” the Exile says. “Though yours might not be a road at all.”
“It’s not,” says Maybe’s Rival. No roads run through trackless jungle, beneath Parabolan stars. You make your own way, there. “Do you pity that? Or envy it?”
An elliptical smile. No answer.
Ask the Exile about her own road, she’ll say it’s only got one ending. Maybe that’s true. Maybe not. Maybe it won’t become true until she makes it so.
Maybe’s Rival doesn’t care, except by way of curiosity, but she understands: sometimes the truth burns, but walking away would hurt you more. She doesn’t regret the things she saw in lacre, though she wonders if she should. She’s been changed. She’ll change again. She’s not alone in that.
The Exile holds her secrets close, but she dreams of a horizon. Light waits there, and stranger waters, a parting of ways.
Maybe’s Rival knows enough of dreams to know they offer no warmth. She swipes two mugs from a Whithern camp, and a pot of fragrant tea from the Iremi. She will, she says, have paid for it already.
The Exile takes the cup she pours, and holds it, breathing steam.
“Salt’s law,” she says, “is the law of distance ever increasing.”
A riddle for every question, as is Frostfound’s way. An answer too: they follow different trajectories — but here, in the cold, their orbits cross.
Briefly only, but no regrets. Maybe’s Rival never meant to travel this way for long.