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His papers are forged. Of fucking course they are.
Oh, they’re good forgeries alright. Every stamp is perfect, the signatures are legit, even the color and quality of the ink is right, but enough of these have passed through your hands, and you can feel the difference.
“Bound for the Summerlands, eh?” you say conversationally while paging through the documents, “what be takin’ ya to the ass end a frozen hell, boy?”
“Meeting someone. Clade.” He turns and muffles another cough into his thick gray cloak, while you give a noncommittal grunt. Sketchy as he be, his credits are authentic, and it ain’t like he’d be going much farther than your brig if he turns out to be a fugitive of the empire.
“You’re to understandin’ I ain’t runnin’ a cushy merchant ship here. I got work to be doin’ and you’ll be pitchin’ in or keepin’ out from under my boots, heed?”
“That’s fine,” he says after clearing his throat, “I can work. Cushy merchant ships don’t go where I’m needed, just supply drops and Orphaner ships.”
You smirk. “Surin ya can.”
Welp, his choice if he wants to take that cough into the tumble of frozen seas and skies. Ain’t nothing in this writ what says you have to refund credits to a corpse or next of kin. You hand the papers back to him and clap him roughly on the shoulder. To his credit, he doesn’t even flinch.
“Welcome aboard the Vodnar!”
He introduced himself under the name of Maryam which is a riot. That’s a solid jade line through and through, and this guy ain’t a jade, you’d swear by it. Can’t tell by the eyes, strangely silver even though his skin is perfect pitch black like a proper adult. Maybe something to do with his stunted growth; the troll barely comes up past your elbows. Even his horns are small, blunt nubs half lost in a mess of black curls.
He doesn’t wear any color or sign out in the open. Says that he’d rather be known by his works than his breeding, which you think is a pretty piss poor way a saying he’s a lowblood what thinks higher of himself. Right pompous if you’re giving your opinion, but he is good on his word to towing his weight, so you keep it to yourself ‘less you start some unneeded dissent in your ranks.
Actually, you’re surprised at how well he takes to the daily routine, getting his sea legs in only a few nights. The salt sea air even works a trick on the cough that’s been trailing him. You can still hear him during the day, shuffling about the crew decks, trying to muffle the sound of clearing his throat when he should be sleeping, but during his shifts on deck he’s quick, light on his feet, and a right good size to be getting up and down the rigging as sure as Spin’s old bitch of a lusus scurried on her webbing.
The crew seems taken with him too. He smiles, always, and jokes, and laughs with them from the first night. Doesn’t treat a one of them different from the other, from rustblood swabby to your boatswain, Benney, a brutally efficient, hoary old cerulean that worked on this ship under your mentor before you were even properly pupated. Even yourself he gives no special accord good or bad. You have a feeling you should be angrier than you are about it, but he slots himself into your good graces like he was one of your own from the start.
One late dawn you descend the stairs to the galley to find him sitting with his legs tucked up on the short table, and a full audience ringing him, attention rapt.
“We are all of us born of the same slurry, the same mother, each a part of a whole. A body divided can not survive, nor will trolls at war- Ah, Captain!” and he turns that gentle smile on you, like he’s greeting an old friend. It makes the collar of your cloak feel hot, and tight, and you can’t rightly say why, only that you wouldn’t mind him smiling at you like that in a more private setting. “Come to join us for some dinner?” he asks, and you have to shake the feeling off before you make a fool of yourself in front of your crew.
Painting on your best scowl you sweep the lot of them with a stern taskmaster's gaze. They huddle, forms hunched and eyes wary, watching you the way one might watch a passing shark. Good.
“Come to find where my lay about crew’s scuttled off to. Ain’t one of ya not supposed to be on deck or in your bunks restin’ up for next shift!”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n,” someone says from the back and stands- Gl'bgolyb’s tits, Benney? Even Benney’s been caught up in the orbit of this strange troll you’ve taken into your fold. “Ye heard your Cap’n, heave off!” he snaps, and just like that they scatter and the room empties of all but you and your mysterious passenger.
He unfolds from his perch on the table, settling his cloak around him, but gives no sign of proper fear for having you there and displeased. You study each other for the length of two breaths, you simmering a temper, and him poised and thoughtfully (temptingly) pouting. He breaks the silent standoff first.
“Please do not be cross with your crew. It was my fault for keeping them. I sometimes lose track of time when engaged in conversation.”
You bark a surprised laugh. Boy has a peeved off seadweller breathing down his neck, and he’s got the temerity to be bartering kindness on behalf of the ragged dregs a the ocean he hasn’t any ties to! Must’ve dropped any sense of self preservation he had getting on your rig over the side at some point, because he hardly bats an eye, even when you grab the front of his cloak and haul him up face to face.
“Ye got a talent at bending ears, have you? But bent ears come with stooped backs. If my men are too burdened by your over abundant verbosity, they ain’t runnin’ the ship. Now I ain’t the sort to be holdin’ grudges. If you make my job difficult, I can simply dump you at the nearest port. Or failing that, overboard.”
He holds your gaze for a moment too long, enough to maybe be thinking you should be the one squirming, before nodding acquiescence.
“I understand. I would certainly never have retained your men if I had realized what a burden it would put the rest of the ship under. Please, accept my sincerest apologies.”
His tone says he means it, but the words... stiff, removed. It’s as cold as any politician’s talk as you’ve heard. Not for the first time do you wonder what the story is behind this lowblood drifter who wears a middle-high name, and talks like he’s in the bluest courts. Less than a minute ago he was getting on chummy with the scrubbiest of your ship hands. Of course you can’t fault him getting a might chilly when you just threatened him with the drink, but the speed and ease of the change is something else. Practiced.
“Well,” you draw the word out slow, “seein’ as we’re at an understandin’, ain’t no need for hurt feelin’s.” You ease your grip, and settle him back down to the floor, smooth his garments out with a gentle pat. See? No sore mood here, just a couple of friendly trolls having a friendly conversation.
“No, of course not,” he says, then that warm and open troll slides right back into place where the cold, distant one had just been standing when he smiles at you. You think you really like it when he smiles at you. “If you’re sure you wouldn’t like to have some dinner?”
He leaves it hanging in the air as a question, so you give it some consideration this time, and conclude that you might be a bit peckish after all. When you say as much, he shuffles over to the cauldron, and spoons out a lump of chowder without you so much as asking. It’s still steaming when he brings it over to you, and your stomach rumbles its appreciation. Only after the third heaping bite do you noticed he’s not scuttled off to hide. Instead, he takes a seat across from you with his own bowl, and delicately blows on a chunk of what you’re relatively certain at this point is some kind of marlin.
“So,” you broach after a few moments of eating in silence, “What exactly were ye talkin’ about before?”
“You’re... interested in that?” He looks at you, doe-eyed and hopeful.
“Aye, sure I’m interested,” you bite your tongue before you can add ‘in you’ to the end of that sentence. He smiles like the pink moon, all soft corners.
You will not admit to a person, even under threat of pain or torture, that the reason you’re hiding yawns in your cape collar the next evening is because you stayed awake with him for more hours than healthy. The brat has the audacity to be as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as any nutcreature when you see him on deck for his shift. Asshole.
You’re polishing off a daycap in your stateroom when there’s a knock.
“Enter,” you command, and set the glass down as you turn to find your passenger softly shutting the door behind him. Surprised, you blink.
“Mister Maryam, is there something ye need?”
“Ah,” he says, then hesitates just long enough for your heart rate to hike a tick. “I’m sorry to impose on you so late, but I was wondering if you had any reading material?”
“Reading material?” you echo dumbly, too thrown by the question to process it properly.
“Yes. You see,” he looks down briefly, stifles the start of some nervous fidget by squaring his shoulders and looks back up at you directly. “You see, I loaned mine to my beloved before we parted ways, but as you may have noticed, I am a bit prone to insomnia, and I’m afraid my mid-day wondering is beginning to have a negative effect on the crew. I thought a distraction might help.”
“A distraction,” you say. “Might be I can find one.” You only leer a little.
You swear he leers right back when he says, “I certainly hope so.”
You are definitely-probably-maybe not thinking about bending him over the broad oak table in the middle of the room, and getting better acquainted with your guest. You are not imagining him chirping encouragement, and sweetly, breathlessly begging for more of your bulge while you grind your hips against his ass. You will be thinking about it later in your ‘coon when you’re half way to sleeping and lazily thrusting into your fist until you spill, moaning his name. You will be picturing his hooded eyes coyly looking up at you through his lashes with half-daring challenge for days.
“I’ll see what I can find,” you say turning away from the taunt before a line gets crossed. You should be ashamed of yourself for backing down from a lowblood, but it isn’t as if you’ve never misread signals before, and he’s not a slave or a whore to do with as you please.
Although, there’s an idea to help take the edge off later.
Instead, you haul a medium size trunk out of a storage cubby and start shuffling through some of the tomes you’ve stashed there over the sweeps. You haven’t the foggiest clue what his tastes run to, but you haven’t much selection anyway. These are all for your personal enjoyment. In the end you hand him a modest stack of assorted literature; some historical texts, a couple books of poetry and-
“Oh!” he exclaims suddenly with that bright little smile of his. He plucks a smallish book with a discreetly blank binding off the top of the stack while balancing it against his chest. You’d picked that one up the last time you hit a major port and had completely forgotten about it until now. He thumbs it open, grin growing larger. “Excellent, I haven’t read this one yet.”
‘This one,’ is your guilty pleasure, a high fantasy series that’s honestly only half a step removed from trashy pail fodder. Some would maintain that it didn’t even have the half step. You would dump them in the drink if they ever set foot on your ship.
“You read ‘The Barony’ series?” you ask him nonchalantly while you tidy the rest of the books away.
“When I can. Did Bianca and Ferdus hook up pale yet? They were still dancing around the subject when the Archdragon showed up last I read.”
“To be honest, I haven’t even gotten’ ‘round to findin’ out myself. Gave my mind a slip completely.”
“Oh, then perhaps-” He holds the book out to you, offering it back, but you wave the gesture off.
“Nah, you read it. S’long as you’re to be keepin’ spoilers to yourself, I’ll have it back when you’re done.”
“Perish the thought. Thank you, Dualscar, that is quite generous of you.”
That’s the first time he’s called you anything but captain since he came aboard the ship. You emphatically do not wiggle your fins like a lovestruck wiggler.
“Whatever be keepin’ ye from hecklin’ my crew at all hours a tha day,” you sniff dismissively. He gives you that look again, all playful mischief. Then he’s gone, leaving your thoughts in a right tumble. Seems he’s to be turning that into a habit.
Night has been growing ever fleeting as you keep sailing north, making navigation a right terror. Soon there will nothing left but a raw red line of a sun set that never comes. You break out the sun cloaks, and the crew passes them around now that there’s work to be done on deck without darkness to cover. By the end of the week, five sailors have sun chapped noses anyway, yourself included. Hoods be a fucking bother sometimes.
As if the sun wasn’t bad enough by itself, a few days later there’s a call from the crows nest, “Ocean’s Teeth, Captain!”
You lean out over the railing and pull your hood low, squinting through the glare coming off the water. Sure enough, you can spot them, camouflaged by light and waves, but definitely there.
“What are Ocean’s Teeth?” Maryam asks, appearing at your elbow sudden enough to make you start. That troll’s a sneaky spawn of a barkbeast when he aims to be. You wonder where he learned it. He’s squinting too, scrunch nosed, and looking slightly off in the wrong direction. You doubt he’d be able to spot them- you’ve had sweeps of experience trained into you by the best sailors for it- but you nudge him into a better facing anyway.
“Another gift of the sun. Icebergs.”
“I thought the sun would melt the ice.”
You smirk. “It does. But first it spawns them by breaking up the glacier fields. The ones this far south are just babies. Closer we get to land, the bigger and nastier the bastards’ll be.”
“Are they dangerous?” he asks, completely sincere. You can’t help the belly laugh that has you bent over the railing.
“Might be a little,” you say, grinning at his flustered pout, “There be a reason they call this the Ship Eater passage, anyhow.”
“Oh.” He swallows and tugs on his cloak as if to ward off some evil. “Well.”
“Ye surin you want ta be keepin’ on this way? We could swing east for a week and drop ya at Last Candle port.”
“No. I need to go north.” He’s unwavering in his conviction, and that impresses you enough. You’ve had trolls on your roster with less shameglobes jump ship at a cozy port before. That deserters are caught later and lashed the the sides of your ship for a week never seems to deter the most gutless of them. His firm frown softens a moment later, and he sneaks you that challenging look. “Besides, rumor holds the captain is quite the capable fellow. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“Oh, aye,” you chuckle. “Mastered the choppy waves. On his back.”
The sputtering laugh that earns you is the best thing about the whole day.
Alternia’s north most provinces are hell incarnate if ever there was such a place. For roughly half the sweep, alternating in quarters, day will stretch on for weeks, never ending. The sun never sets, it only circles restlessly, like a living curse awoken from a dayterror, and set to stalk the waking world. Yet in a fit of bitter irony, the land denies its power to burn. The ice retreats, but never leaves completely, and in its wake there’s only freezing cold wind and rock, so far as you can tell.
This unholy coupling creates the worst affliction you’ve known on the ocean, and that’s including having seen the myriad venereal maladies a sailor with too much time at port can acquire. In short: you can freeze your fucking shame globes off while your skin cooks to a crisp.
Not many trolls willingly make a permanent hive here; usually the ones whose personalities or lusii are ill suited for even the smallest of proper social contact. But even here do the hands of Her Imperial Condescension- long may She reign- reach, for she’s not one to leave untapped potential to languish. Borrowing into the very backbone of the continent, like power ports on a psionic hauler, are mines. They dot along the mountains where ever rich veins of deposits can be found.
The work is brutal, and burns through a troll fast, but the weather and working conditions eats drones faster, so encampments of lowblood workers- slaves mostly, though some free trolls end up here by bad fate or of their own volition- and their midblood supervisors spring up like a fungus where ever one of these holes plunges into the rock. Some places find a particularly rich haul, and spawn something close to actual frost crusted cities.
If you had to hazard a guess, it would be that your new acquaintance’s business is linked with the mines somehow. He’s not a servant troll, for certain, doesn’t act a thing like he could properly wait his way out of a paper sack. He still maintains he has some sort of prearranged meeting with quadrant mates. Them he’s candid about. Sometimes he’ll drop a tantalizing hint, a crumb of knowledge that lets you piece together a blurry and incomplete image of who these people might be.
Frustratingly, he never says exactly who relates to him how. He only refers to them collectively as ‘my family,’ and talks wistfully of their reunion. They could all be ash mates for all you know. You don’t know why the not knowing bothers you so much. It isn’t as if you’re interested in leaving behind your ship and your crew to scrape a frozen existence out in the ass end of the world, and neither are you thrilled with the idea of taking on anymore extra bodies to blunder in the way of your work. Alright, that’s uncharitable. With a few notable exceptions, Mr. Maryam’s mostly been a boon, but that doesn’t mean you want his whole damn clade tromping about the deck.
The best you could hope for would be port calls every few sweeps. Sooner or later he’d be nothing more than another dock-side hook up; a body to warm your ‘coon and wet your bulge every once in a while. He’d be a flash in the pan besides, fading out to nothing before you see another century. That’s why you have to be a mature troll about the whole thing, and put this bubbling, building crush in the dirt where it belongs.
It would be so much easier if he could stop being so fuckin’ good at making you laugh, or smile, or think.
If only he would stop making you feel.
You aren’t a stranger to the way the emptiness of the ocean can awaken an emptiness in a troll’s heart. There’s a reason the taverns and brothels will make or break in a season depending on how many ships land at port. Sailors what aren’t slaves earn their keep, but they hardly hold it when there’s food, wine, and pretty things with sweet smiles beckoning.
When there ain’t those things in abundance, it’s easy to think the desert is endless. That’s why, you tell yourself. That’s why the crinkles in the corners of his eyes are so endearing. Why his voice is so quieting to your soul. You’re a madman stranded in the vastness of nothing, and he’s an oasis. It’s a fleeting thing, no more, and you deal with it the way any rational troll should.
The little rustblood galley wench is warm around your waist, all soft curves and skin pressed up to your chest, with a tight, hot nook that devours your bulge. She’s got big, soulful eyes and returns your kisses shyly at first, then more boldly, darting her tongue after yours in a sigh. You fuck her three times that day, and it never takes the edge off the frustration, or the painful, aching need.
You are so fucked.
Pailing your way through the indentured lowbloods aboard the ship doesn’t stop you from wanting him, but it exhausts you, and distracts you enough that talking doesn’t leave you tongue-tied, or trying to discreetly adjust your seating. He finishes the first book you loaned him, and when he returns it you rush to read it as well, so you’ll have more to talk about. It becomes a daily thing for the two of you to sit and enjoy some conversation and a glass of wine together in the lull between shifts. When one morning you wax poetic about the tumultuous flushed love of Armqid and his tealblood squire, Maryam laughs out loud.
“It’s fun to read about, but that’s not really what love is like. All flowery prose and overwrought declarations of loyalty and longing. The real thing is... it’s so much simpler, and so much more complicated.”
“Oh, and you would know,” you prod jokingly.
“Actually, yeah.”
You’re suddenly, seethingly jealous of whoever it is that can make him smile like that.
The next night you excuse yourself from your chat. The morning finds you with a bronzeblood gun monkey bowed over your desk instead. You snap your hips into his firm ass so hard the wood beneath him is sure to be bruising. There’s already stains of blood where the edge scraped his skin. He muffles the sound of his orgasm by biting into his arm, but the sudden clench of his nook takes you hard. You spill right into him, with curses pouring off your lips the same as your colors pour down your thighs.
Maryam finds you early in the evening, for all that it can be called evening any more with the sun still riding low on the horizon. You haven’t finished plotting course corrections for the upcoming shift, and his normally welcome presence makes you tense, agitated with the interruption to your work.
“What is it ye want,” you snap without looking up from the charts and maps sprawled across the same desk you pailed a shitblood over a few hours ago.
“To apologize,” he says, and the cool tone sends a shiver down your spine. You snap your gaze up to see the distant politician returned. “ And to amend an error. I feel have overstepped the boundaries of shipmaster and passenger.”
His words leave nauseous unease churning around in your guts. “I’m not sure I’m followin’ here, Mr. Maryam. We’ve not done a thing weren’t what two trolls a relative acquaintance free to be doin’.”
“No,” he draws the end out like a sigh, “but, I am... aware of certain activities for which I should have no concern, but trouble my thoughts anyway.”
Oh, it’s that then, is it? Now you draw up in a snarl, coming around you desk to face him properly. “You don’t approve of who I be pailin’ on my own ship?” you growl. Finally some emotion breaks through his mask, but it isn’t anger, or disapproval. If you had to pin a name, you would say it’s guilt.
“Who you pail and when is your business. Only, it was my name that made its way out of your mouth.”
The shock of embarrassment smacks you like a hammer and you’re left stammering, “You- did I- oh, fuck.” You press your hand over your face and groan as your blood heats your fins. Your butt finds the edge of your desk as you slump. “Was I really that loud?”
He makes a sound like a cough. “No, but I... uh, you seemed out of sorts and I wanted to check up on you. I may have heard some things I shouldn’t have. And seen them.”
He sounds as mortified as you feel, but you can’t see his face when you peek over your hand. It’s shadowed by his hood and curtained by those riotous curls.
“Which,” he presses on, “is why I need to apologize. I have assumed a familiarity that is not actually there, and endangered our professional relationship.”
“Hell’s fuckin’ teeth, Maryam.” You sigh, finally free your hand from your face to rub the back of your neck. “Ain’t like you did anyfin wrong just bein’ of a friendly way. I’m the one what oughta been gettin’ less... familiar. What with you havin’ quadrants you’re pretty fuckin’ keen on.”
“Okay, if we’re going to be completely honest with each other right now, I... maybe wouldn’t mind more familiarity.” His confession leaves you momentarily poleaxed. He steps up into your space, and you still haven’t said anything when he peers up at you from behind his mess of hair. “You just never said anything, and I know such things are normally considered a taboo.”
“But, your clade,” is the only thing you manage to articulate.
He shrugs. “You could say we’re not very traditional quadrantmates.”
“No fuckin’ shit.”
“If that’s something you’re uncomfortable with, of course I would never impose on you to- mhn!”
Cutting someone off with a kiss might be one of the more cliched things you’ve done romantically, but he doesn’t seem to have any objections. He’s warmer than you guessed, hot tongue moving languidly against yours when you push past pliant lips. The points of skin-to-skin contact where you cup his face in your hands leeches your coolness away. He leans in, going up on his toes to save your back, and winds his arms behind your neck, pressing against you from chest to groin and causing a different heat entirely to bloom in you.
You’re burning with him by the time he pulls away. Either the chill air or your hungry lust makes you shiver, you can’t well be sure, but you don’t care either way. He’s yours, a fiery little sun in miniature, bursting into a chain reaction that can’t stop. He sighs as you thumb the line of his jaw and smiles, just the way you imagined, eyes dark with desire, and lips flushed from your attention.
“So that,” you venture, “was alright?”
“I don’t think alright is the word you’re looking for there,” he chuckles.
You snort. Cheeky asshole. “No, I mean with your, ah, previous arrangements.”
“Oh! Yes. We’re very fond of sharing.” The look he gives you when he says that does even more interesting things to you libido. You think you may have just discovered an entirely new and exciting lifestyle, and you are so. So. Very. Intrigued.
“You don’t say.”
He bursts into giggles and rests his forehead on your chest. “By the way,” he says once he regains some composure, “Since we’re being familiar and all, you should call me Kankri.”
“Kankri,” you say, testing the word on your tongue and finding it rolls quite pleasantly. “Cute. It suits you.”
For all that now you’ve opened up a new, and interesting aspect of your relationship with Kankri, not much changes. Just as well, you have a ship to run. Some things fall between you as easy as being, though.
You’ve never much been one for gratuitous displays of public affection, much as that sort of thing can set your bloodpusher a flutter on the page of a book. The realities of working a ship of the line take much of the shine out. Sailors ain’t what you’d call a polite or civilized bunch. Respect for their betters and the chain of command are what keeps them in line, and while shipboard dalliances are expected, sweeping romances are not, so you keep your private moments just that, less tongues start to wag. Oh, you don’t doubt they’ll wag any old how, but they’ll do it behind hands, and never speak a word of it in your presence, so long as you keep it out of theirs.
Instead you work in stolen moments and quiet hours. For the most part that means he greets you for your shared talks with a kiss as well as a smile now, and you end up sharing the same seat rather than face each other across the expanse of a room, usually with him sprawled back to your chest and careless of how your limbs tangle.
He does more of the talking between you. Kankri has... ideas. You wouldn’t say he’s seditious, but he thinks that things could change. He talks of kindness and love given freely, and you can’t well deny that when he’s a warm weight in your lap, under your hands, such notions are more than a fair bit appealing. He talks, and you listen, and your hands wander the plains and curves of him, finding places to settle that drives his voice low, and husky with purring.
Sometimes there isn’t much talking at all. You like those times most.
The strangest thing about him though, is by far his tendency to be shy about the most unexpected things. He has no compunctions about seeing you bare as the day you were hatched, nor does he shy away from you mapping his body with intimate touches through the least layers of his clothes, but he’ll not remove them no matter how you tempt, taunt or wheedle. Given the way he’ll flinch and wriggle when you tickle his sides, you wonder if it’s some sort of hyper sensitivity. Surely it’s not for lack of wanting you that makes him careful, if the squirm of his trapped bulge when he’s grinding in your lap is anything to go by.
He gets creative, anyway, and you don’t feel much like complaining when he’s got your legs thrown over his shoulders and his clever, hot tongue working in your nook.
His presence melds into yours and drives away the cold that’s settled into the very bones of the ship.
You have a journey to complete, and your duty to the empire to perform, but...
But.
He’s fallen asleep with his head tucked up under your chin again. The book he’d been reading has slipped from his fingers and fallen open on the floor. You used to love this book, its words penned by a poet culled nearly two centuries before you were hatched.
‘For there on goes my heart with the tide,’ the words on the page leap out at you, ‘for my love, truest and deepest, resides beneath the waves, unmoved and unliving...’
You nudge it closed with a toe.
You have a duty to perform. You have obligations to oversee. This moment will end, and so will all the others to come after, and soon he’ll be nothing more than a dark spot at the end of a pier while you sail on. You could delay. You could stretch out the journey, find an excuse to visit other ports. He’s a bright glow of a signal flare and you a slow, cold current. What harm are a few extra weeks or months? So long as things happen what are supposed to in their fashion, who’s to deny you, who but the Empress herself would stand against you?
Kankri sighs in his sleep, turns to nuzzle against your collar bone. You hush him, and push your claws through his hair, let it curl around your fingers in waves.
What good are a few extra weeks or months gained, when it will all end anyway?
You have a duty to perform.
The thing about isolation is it twists on you, body and soul. Trolls aren’t unique in this either. For those poor dumb lusii whose charges flee to the frozen plains, and jagged peaks of this part of the world only to succumb to the elements, there is nothing left but to either follow into broken oblivion after, or become as terrifyingly fucked up as the emptiness around them. Every few decades, you are summoned when the frost maddened survivors become too numerous, to cull and farm for The One Who Whispers Beneath.
A week or two is set for you to head the culls personally, then the lesser ships of the fleet will arrive and take over to clean up the work while you haul the catch back to her. You plan the trip accordingly, to drop your passenger, resupply, then start your work in earnest.
The most current reports you had received before pushing this deep into Nowhere had voiced concern over one nasty beastie in particular. It had grown larger than usual preying on supply ships, and had come to favor blood over all else. You’ve seen such before. These dumb critters are always a particular pain to deal with, but dealt with they have to be.
Sightings had put it squarely camped on the regular shipping lanes for the last several weeks. It should have been an easy thing to swing wide, coming in from the east.
Sightings and reports had failed to mention the storms. They wouldn’t have been unusual for this region in the dark season. That weeks had past, and second summer was well coming on may have been what saved you and your ship when the first spark of charging air danced over your ampullae and caused your fins to flick.
You snap to attention, and gaze out over the rolling waves. Far off the port side the wave peaks are being whipped into white foam by a wind that shouldn’t be.
“All hands on deck!” you bark, “gunners, to your stations. Deckhands secure your lines!” The commands echo down the line, and the crew bursts into motion like a well oiled machine. “Get those sails, secure! We’re about to have a bumpy ride.”
Ahab’s slides from your strifedeck smooth as a dream. A gust of wind ruffles your hair, sweeping it back. Seconds later it howls. The temperature plummets not long after that, and all of the Vodnar’s metalwork glitters with frost.
The ship groans a protest as the sudden swing of weather causes the wood to expend faster than what is healthy for her. The scrape of growing ice against her flanks sets your fangs on edge. She won’t come out of this looking pretty, but you’re sure she’ll hold. No beast or monster has sunk her yet, and you aren’t about to see that record broken.
There are sheets of ice forming in the valleys of the rising waves, and you’ve got a suspicion it intends to immobilize the ship so it can pick you off at its leisure. That tactic probably worked fine for raiding the supply lines. Too bad this is an Orphaner’s ship, and you are Orphaner fucking Dualscar, Master of the Imperial fucking Orphaner Corps! When the beast tries to bite, it will get bitten back!
Something much bigger than ice blocks scrapes the bottom of the ship. It bumps into it one, two, three times, on different sides, once fore, and twice aft. The fourth hit isn’t a bump.
It slams into the port side, causing a shudder you can feel up your boots. A second hit has the boat swaying. You’ve got a mind to what the shithead is planning. Clever, for something only a couple steps above wild animal.
“Gunners to the starboard side! Fire when it breaches!”
Sure enough, it’s taken to starboard. A broad white head breaks the surface, and wolvrus lusus big as you’ve ever seen hooks its claws over the rail of your ship when it dips in that direction. It opens its maw wide while it leans its bulk onto your deck, forcing the ship to tip farther. It means to slide your crew right down into its gullet for an easy snack.
Thunder booms below deck, and it shrieks, and turns away in a thrash, dropping back into the ocean. Neither of you are done.
The weather is growing worse by the second, dark clouds boiling in where there had been clear, gray dawnlight only minutes before. As you and your spotters work to find the feral lusus, a downpour of sleet bursts through, tapering visibility and slicking the deck with even more wet and ice. The wolvrus resumes its previous tactic, throwing its weight into the side of your boat. You don’t think it means to try just rocking this time.
You can’t kill it, not yet. It’s meant for Gl'bgolyb’s belly, and you’ll see to it that’s where it goes. You have to harpoon the monster first, or it will be lost to the ocean’s depths. The problem with that is the harpoon guns are to the bow, and it seems content to savage Vodnar’s sides. Well then, good thing you’re a problem solver! You seize the rigging, vault up onto the ice coated rail and take aim to the side of the dark shape circling in the water.
Ahab’s is too powerful to risk a direct hit, but the edge of its beam sure leaves the beast smarting. It screams again, part pain, part frustration, and rakes a trail in the hull with its claws as it makes a break for the bow. You call out the mark’s position. Information races down the line, passed by the spotters. The gunners manning the harpoons are ready when it makes another break. You know when they find their mark by the tremor in the ship as the lines snap taut and the beast’s shrill scream of agony.
You have to work fast. The spools of line are running out quick; if you don’t put the wolvrus down, it could tear the guns away from their mounting, or do much worse damage to the ship. The deck is a hazard of ice and water, but your crew know when to get clear and let you do your job.
You sprint the length of the ship in seconds and reach the harpoon mounts, see the last of the cable spools shrinking fast just when the forward spotter shouts, “It’s diving captain!”
You don’t slow down. You discard your cloak as you take two running steps up the bowsprit, then leap.
The water is a shock you’re prepared for. You don’t take in a gulp through your gills, don’t have time for all the mechanics of switching from air to water breathing to sort themselves out. There's air enough in your lungs to finish this; you kick your legs and dive. The ghostly white flippers are fading out of sight into the dark below, but it won’t have the chance to escape you. Sighting down the barrel, you squeeze the trigger.
It doesn’t scream this time so much as gurgle. You give it a moment to still its thrashing then move to tug on the nearest cable: one, two. The gunners know the signal to start reeling you and your catch in. You wrap an arm around the line and let it do most of the work of hauling your dripping ass back up to the deck.
Above, the cloud cover has already started to break. The storm’s unable to maintain its integrity without the feed of energy from the lusus. Kankri is standing at the bow, gaping at you over the railing fit to catch flies. You grin and toss him a lazy salute with the Crosshairs since its your only free hand. As soon as you’re within reach, he hooks his fingers into your armor and heaves you over onto the deck, never mind that you’re perfectly capable of the task your own self. The both of you sprawl on the deck, and you laugh when he still can’t wipe the shock off his face.
“You jumped off the boat,” he finally informs you. You can’t help it, that sends you into another fit, which he doesn’t seem to appreciate. “What the hell!? You jumped off the boat!”
“Aye, that I did,” you reply through your grin. He slaps your arm, then rests his forehead against yours.
“You’re insane. I’m in love with a mad man.”
Your breath goes out of you. The breaking sunlight couldn’t make him more beautiful, setting the drops of water clinging to his hair to glittering like jewels, framing his head in a halo of light. Forgetting the ship, the crew, the whole damn world, you cup his face and kiss his lips. Then do it again.
“Kankri.” He looks at you like you’re an alien star, strange and beautiful. His lips, and cheeks are too pale. His hair, and clothes are caked in sleet, and icemelt, and he feels too cool to your touch, yet he does not shiver. “Kankri, go get out of those clothes and get something warm in you. Do it now.”
“I’m fine,” he says even as his eyes slip closed and he sways for a moment. “You jumped off the boat.”
“And you stayed on deck and got pelted by snow. I’m cold as they come already, you ain’t built for this like I am.”
He looks to be nodding out again, and for a moment you’re terrified he’s gone too far already. There won’t be a dry dock for another few days, how would he recover if the cold is set in too deep? But then he climbs shakily to his feet, tugging his drenched and useless cloak around his shoulders out of habit. One of your officers is there, putting an arm around his shoulder and ushering him off the main deck without question. You long to follow, but there’s still work to be done.
In all there are eleven other trolls on your crew that came under the same afflictions from the weather, eight of which are bad enough to be put under extended supervision by your chief mediculler officer. He’s young, but sharp, and he’s kept your crew patched together in rougher, so you have no unease leaving him to see to Kankri as well. In addition, there’s plenty of other injuries you would expect post skirmish: two concussions, a hand full of sprains, more bumps and bruises than you have digits to count, but no fatalities. You’re well pleased with your crew’s ability to handle themselves under sudden adversity. Confident in the care of your people, you turn instead to attend the ship.
The Vodnar took a beating. The paint is stripped from one flank and chipped badly on the other, but cosmetic damage can be repaired. Below decks are where most of your concern lies. You take inventory, assess damage; your shipwright confirms she’s taking on water from a spot where the wood warped, but it’s nothing the pumps can’t keep up with after shoring. The Vodnar will make port on good time. You’re not well pleased that she’ll need heavier repairs once she gets there. It will cut into your time for hunting.
Most everything was secured proper, so there’s was little loss to your supplies, but you’re careful to track it anyway. It will need to be replenished, and reimbursed by imperial coffers. Noting every injury, damage and loss takes out hours of your night. By the time you make it back to your quarters, you are drained. You want a drink, maybe two, and Kankri wrapped warm and tight around you.
He isn’t the only one waiting for you when you return. The mediculler officer stands at attention briefly as you enter and greets you with a sharp, “Sir.”
“Chapel, what is it,” you ask, wary, a bubble of worry rising.
Kankri growls, “It’s nothing.”
At the same time, Chapel answers, “It’s Mr. Maryam’s cough, sir. Came back somethin’ fierce,” then he levels a stern look at your lover. “And I’m concerned for his temperature. It spiked when we drove the chill out of him.”
“I told you, I run hot,” he gripes, right before smothering a cough that near rattles him into the crook of his arm. He’s changed as you told him, but into your clothes apparently lacking a spare dry outfit of his own. He’s got all the cuffs rolled up and a belt around the middle to pin it all in place, and they only serve to make him look even smaller than usual. Your heart goes ‘thud’ with pity.
You cross the room to him and tenderly brush back a lock of hair sticking to his face. You think of touching stars.
“Not this hot,” you say gently. His shoulders slump in defeat.
“I’m just a little drained. Give me a couple days to sleep it off.”
“Rest is about all I can recommend until we make land,” your mediculler agrees, “but I must insist it be strictly enforced at this juncture.” He steps forward and produces a tiny bottle of amber glass, then very gently deposits in your cupped palm.
“Ochre fungus extract. This is undiluted, you’ll have to cut it with water.” He then steps back, bows curtly with a, “Sirs,” and departs.
You cradle the tiny bottle like a bomb.
“What-” Kankri tries, but has to clear his lungs before asking again. “What is it?”
“Powerful,” you say, “and dangerous if not handled right.” You look at him then, really take him in. His breathing is shallow and raspy, and his eyes are ringed by dark circles, and bright with fever. You already needed to make good time for repairs, but now you make up your mind to give it the ship a hard push. The ship and the crew can take it. They will take it. He needs them to.
You slip the little bottle into your shirt pocket and pat it. “We’ll hold off for now, but tell me if ye feel ye can’t get on with some help.”
He smiles, tired, but reassuring. “I’ll be fine, I promise. Just take me to ‘coon.”
You kiss his forehead and scoop him into your arms.
You sleep deep after a night like the one you’ve had, but not well. You dream of living suns, and tremorous explosions; fission burning you up from the inside out, the world cracking beneath your feet and swallowing you. In one dream you’re far beneath the waves, wandering the tumbled and decayed palaces of long dead royalty when earthquakes begin to crumble what’s left of the cities around you. The crust of Alternia tears, opening great vents spewing super-heated gas to cook you alive-
You awake with a start to find Kankri’s sat up and doubled over in a coughing fit. The sound of it stirs unpleasant memories of needing air but not finding it, feeling like a weight had settled onto your chest, and your lusus worriedly nuzzling at you to no avail. You do the only thing you can think of, and thump him on his back until he coughs something wet loose, and finally manages to quiet.
He’s shaking, gasping sharp and shallow for breath, and there are tears beading at the corner of his eyes. The shirt he borrowed is plastered to him with sweat, as is his hair and the nesting in your ‘coon where he was lying. You wrap around him and it’s like hugging a stove. In spite of how uncomfortable he is to hold, you do it anyway, willing your body to steal away the excess heat and give him some comfort. He burrows into you, grateful.
You hold him until he’s quiet, until his staticy breathing evens out, and he drops back into exhausted sleep. You can’t say you bring yourself to do the same for the rest of that day.
You’re reluctant to leave Kankri alone when your shift starts, so you pull your small writing desk over to the hammocoon, and work on your reports close by. He sleeps, which is a blessing, though his breathing doesn’t sound any less congested. Sometimes he wakes and watches you, and sometimes you wake him to have him take food or water. He’s quick to remind you to do the same. When a coughing fit starts, there’s little you can do but comfort him.
The tiny bottle of amber glass weighs nothing in your pocket. It still feels like a burden. If you could convince him to take it, he would sleep better, but the cure has been known to harm as well. You continue to hold off.
By the time you have to make your rounds, he’s drifted off again, so you leave him to sleep with a little less worry. You collect reports from your officers and your shipwright, see to the wounded and update your mediculler on Kankri’s condition. You check your course, your speed, give orders, take information and note it all down. Even working as quickly as you can possibly muster, it still takes a few hours to complete your walk about the ship and return to your quarters.
What greets you there makes you drop everything you’d been holding. You heart plummets with all of it because Kankri is sprawled boneless across the floor, limp as a cull.
“Kankri!" You rush to him, dropping so fast to your knees you can already feel the bruises starting to form. He’s still too warm when you roll him onto his back and scoop him up to your chest. But he’s breathing. He’s breathing, and as you pull him close he stirs and blinks at you.
His eyes are...
“Cronus?” That freezes you blood faster that any dip in ice water ever could. Hell’s fucking teeth. You never told him your hatch name!
“Cronus,” he says, small and pleading, “where’s Porrim? I don’t feel well.”
“I... I don’t rightly know, Kankri. I’ll find ‘em.” You swallow down the panic to brush his hair away, and hold him, and he chirps at that. The fever has him addled. He’s asking for someone you don’t know as if you were old friends, he knows a name you never gave him and the gray of his eyes is fractured with bright fucking red.
It would be easy to convince yourself it was coincidence, that he knew some other troll named Cronus as a wiggler, but for the next thing he asks of you.
“I never hear you sing anymore. Can you please?”
“Gl’bgolyb’s tits,” you swear. How many sweeps has it been since you did anything more than hummed a shanty under your breath? In your youth, you fancied your talents could carry you into stardom. Alternia is not a place for fancies though. Your hands were destined for bloodier work than strumming an instrument. There’s a bitter twinge in your throat when you recall the whole reason you joined your first hunter’s ship was play for the port calls.
You know all the dirty limericks and drunken bar songs a sailor can belt in a booze fueled haze by stint of your trade, but none of those would soothe as he needs. Reaching back into your past, you pull at the strings of long sleeping memory he’s awoken, and clear your throat.
“Well last night I lay all in my dreams, when a rap at the door, it startled me... And I heard those foot steps on the stairs, and I bade her please come in...”
Your voices is different than you recall. Rougher, lower, but still mellow and strong. Seems you haven’t lost the knack entirely. You gather Kankri up into your embrace and bear him back to the hammocoon as you continue to serenade him.
“Well, come in, come in, my roving friend... Come in and rest awhile, for you've been gone so very long, but it's nice to see you smile...
“Come in, come in, my wandering friend, accept my welcome home...Well, I hope you can stay a long, long while before you have to go...”
His fingers curl, and tug at the collar of your shirt. He sighs, tiredness, or satisfaction, or maybe both you can’t tell, but the subdued purr rising out of him speaks of contentment. Slowly, by inches, Kankri goes slack in your arms.
You start on the next verse, but falter and choke. “And she walked across the room to me, and then she sat right down with me, and told me that she had to leave, she could not stay for long... Well, a child he held into his arms, a child that I knew well through time, and told me that he had to leave, he had to take him home...”
Blinking through hot tears, you croon the chorus again, ‘Well, come in, come in, my roving friend,’ as he settles into a sounder sleep than you’ve seen him have this whole journey. You get the sense that he’s someplace far and away, even when you’re still clutching his body tight. It terrifies you, the thought of him going someplace you can’t follow.
“And she crossed the floor and moved away, and my heart said, ‘Stop her, make her stay,’ but I just showered myself in tears, for I just let her-”
You can’t bring yourself to finish.
Gills. He’s got gills. You almost convince yourself you’ve taken ill as well, and in your delirium you’ve hallucinated them. As you stare, they shift and open with his constrained breath, the natural seadweller response to needing more oxygen than the lungs are providing. They’re real. They’re red as rubies and beastly blood, same as his eyes.
Carefully, you mop around them with the dampened cloth, wiping away the grime and stink of fever. Horrors fuck you for a fool. You’ve fallen in love with a mutant cull, and you know there’s not a damn thing you’re going to do not to save him.
“Kankri, sit up.”
“Hhhn...”
“Sit up. Drink this.”
“Mrrh. Whazit.”
“Tea. An’ a little somethin’ extra.”
“Hgank! Aah, Dualscar this is foul!”
“I know. Drink it, it’ll numb the pain.”
“Alright.”
“Deep breath, come on.”
He tries, and his face scrunches in pain. “Dualscar it hurts.”
“I know.” You’re rubbing soothing circles into his back, trying to relax him, get him to open up his chest. “Just try it, Kankri. You need to open up your lungs, or you’ll never get the sick out.”
He does. Blessed moons he gives it his best, and it ends in a wet, hacking cough, but he does.
“Good,” you say when he’s cleared the phlegm, “do it again."
“Dualscaaar...” his starts to whine, but you squeeze his shoulders.
“Again, Kankri.”
And he does.
When you thump his back, he coughs up something slimy, and spits into the bowl you brought over just for that purpose. After that he sounds a little better.
“So tell me where you learned my hatch name.”
He’s facing you, hands resting with palms up in yours as you circle the ligaments in his wrists with your thumbs. His breathing is still sticky with muck, but he slept through the whole day. His fever’s broke, and with it he has lucidity back, as well as a little more energy. Sighing, he looks up, looks into your eyes with bright mutant ones.
“I knew you.”
You snort a laugh. “Sweetness, I be well into my third century. Ye never knew me as a wiggler, you’d be dust by now.”
Kankri shakes his head, smiling at you with something you could mistake for sadness if you didn’t know any better.
“Not in this life. In a past one. In a dead world.” He looks down to your joined hands, turns them around so his warm palms are now flushed against yours. “We were friends, but I don’t think I was as good a friend as I should have been.”
“You?” you squeeze him briefly with your fingers, “Havin’ a hard time seein’ ya as anyfin other than moonlight and miracles.” He laughs at that, a nice big one that’s still rough from the cough. You‘re going to miss the sound of it so much.
“I was giant asshole.”
Alright, yeah, you’ve seen his stubborn streak. You can imagine him younger, more arrogant, and naive. If you’d known him then you can only imagine the trouble you’d both have caused.
“What happened then?”
“We played a game. I don’t know what kind of game it was, but it destroyed a world that wielded kindness as a weapon instead of cruelty.” He pauses then to collect his thoughts. You wait patiently, drinking his words like they’re water in a desert.
“It was no paradise but compared to Alternia... Cronus, I see it in my dreams. I’ve seen what trolls can do when they set aside petty hostilities. We lost that game because we fell to bickering and childishness, but I know what we could have built! What we can do better!” The shine of his eyes is ignited passion. It enkindles everything it touches, and it’s already touched you. You’ve basked in its light for weeks now.
“Whadya intend to do about it, love?” you ask, but you already know the answer.
“Talk. Listen. I’ll tell everyone about my visions who will hear it.”
“You could stay on with me,” you tell him, even though you already know the answer. This time his smile truly is sad.
“You know that I can’t... But, I would not mind more company on my journey.” You bring his knuckles to your lips to kiss.
“Ye know it’s not for bein’-” He places his hands on your cheeks and pulls you in for a kiss so tender it pains you.
“I know.”
He pails you slow, and sweet that day, and the day after. A last bit of tenderness you can have, and hold before you have to part ways.
Once you meet them, you are so instantly endeared to his family that you can’t begrudge his longing to be with them again for all those weeks at sea. Meulin is a chaos of hair, and jovial roughness that you think would be at home on any ship’s crew. Mituna is cool bordering to prickly at you, but he snarks at Kankri, and drops so many innuendos you think even you learned a few new ones.
Porrim is a terror. She is, of course, absolutely darling to you, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are being addressed by a walking, talking, day-treading rainbow drinker when she thanks you for looking after her son. You learn that she was the reason they fled north. Their group had been separated and scattered in an imperial strike. Kankri had holed up in a swamp for a week where he picked up that cough in the first place, and by the time he’d gotten back to their meeting spot all he’d found was a note saying that she’d sustained an injury. The unending summer sun of this place had healed her fully by the time you reached port.
You have to careen the Vodnar for repairs since there isn’t a proper drydock here, but your shipwright and her apprentice are well suited and supplied for the task. They’ll get on quick, and then you’ll be away again, but for once you feel no hurrying itch to cast off.
Especially not when Kankri, winking, says, “Dualscar, did you know my beloved is quite the able huntress?”
“Oh, aye?” you say, favoring the scruffy woman, “How be ye at overland trackin’?”
Her sly grin is all the answer you need.
Well, you must come back to me again
Accept the welcome I extend
I will not let you go this time
If only in my dreams
If only in my dreams
If only in my dreams
Well, come to me in my dreams
And yeah, though you walk ever on
May your heart be not weary but strong
And yeah, though you walk ever on
Through the valley of the shadow of death
The Valley of the Shadow of Death- The Tossers.