Elsewhere and otherwhiles…

Lord Emberbole was not, by nature, an excessively loquacious spirit. 

Broad and sturdy as a weather-bated salt-cask, with a greying, tangled beard and knitted top-knot as baroque as the limber lines of his undergalley.

His battered sea-cloak and robe, mottled and blemished. Studded with peppery black concretions, from many a year spent navigating the atrous and sluggish tides of the Great Lower Sea.

Following a brief word with his crusty bosun, Lord Emberbole had come to join Pyna and Umin upon the quarterdeck.

His presence was immediate and imposing as he rested against the rails, an unquestioned authority across this, his stygian and aqueous demesne.

Pyna, in her ever disquieting, loose-jointed rag-doll manner curtsied, silken black and cerulean skirts flaring.

My Lord

Captain

How calls

The tide

“Hrm…

Lady Pyna. Guildsman…”

As Lord Emberbole squinted out into the wavering amber cascade of a pitching sea-lamp.

Slowly, he raised his arm and pointed into the inky veil of unending dimness beyond the port bow, towards a blot of fiery, unresting orange radiance that hung in the distance. 

He then pursed his heavy, salt-cracked lips.

“There, the fire-mounts. 

We’ve crossed into the Northern Rankles. From here, the foe is steam-bores, piles of burning stone, and boiling seas.”

As if to lend immediacy to Lord Emberbole’s discourse, the watchman in the rigging above suddenly cried on.

His urgent alarum, lost in the roiling hiss of a great, reaching plume of black, saline spume which abruptly crested to starboard aft. 

Exploding in scorching proximity to the undergalley’s pitching hull, and disgorging a scalding torrent across the main deck.

Sailors called out, and scrambled to escape the boiling, salty deluge.

Umin leaped to cover behind a bulkhead, before the wash of sticky, bitumen-tainted heat rolling across the quarterdeck. 

As Pyna moved with the grace and alacrity of a swift, black-feathered sea-bird, up into the rigging.

Lord Emberbole alone stood unmoving like a leaning edifice of stained onyx, battered by the hot, wet stream, shielding his face with his salt-veil.

Following the cloud’s swift passing, he spat into the wind and roared orders, like a monstrous-bellied sea-beast, towards the straining helmsman. 

Below, as the Shir keens with urgency. Its ozone-tangy miasma rising from out the hull.

Swiftly corrected, the great broad-bosomed craft is before long, once more cutting hastily across the slick and listless surf.

Lord Emberbole draws in a few weighty breaths, then growls.

“You see there. The Carbunkled Ones are whispering. 

When Otombalm of the Black Egg speaks, we of the Tides heed.”

His brow knitted and knotty with stormy perturbation, Lord Emberbole squints once more into the surrounding obscurity.

“Too many bells South yet, for a salt-plume…

Troubling.”

Without expounding further, he lumbers off towards his cabin.

A further five bells then passed.

The undergalley slowed its pace significantly, as the infernal apricot gleam of the fire-mounts swelled to fore.

Twice more the ship had evaded scorching salt-plumes, and a churning magma-cauldron, as they drifted through a stifling shroud of sulphurous mists.

All hands aboard - excepting Pyna, who had simply wrinkled her nose - their faces wrapped in salt-veils against the odious and viperous reek. 

Pyna had been for some time, once again occupying the watch-nest, high above in the swaying rope-tangles and rigging.

Here she sat, legs folded beneath her, skirts flowing. 

Ribbons of onyx and cerulean, over the precipice of the frightfully narrow platform. 

Alone this time, having accepted this bell’s watch for her own.

With uncanny eyes languid, she studied the smouldering gloom that rolled across the Great Lower Sea’s false horizon. 

She could see the arabesque curlicues and whorls of acrid flume that flowed from the lazily approaching fire-mounts. Where any common watchman would see only a baffling and dusky opacity.

Her thoughts like brief sparks twisting against the scrim of her mind’s eye. 

Memories arose slowly like chits of smouldering paper, then fell away. There were no torrents of fearful or felicitous recollection. 

She had long ago learned how to observe her own inner landscapes. To quiet, its torrents and turmoils.

She peered down from her perch, her gaze alighting upon Umin who stood far below, sharing a word and some manner of warming concoction with one of the watch’s deckhands.

Why…

Why this one.

What do you see

Father, that is

Hidden from me…

Nimblethorne’s words from long ago arose and found purchase.

“Yet, sometimes you will find a fruit, a fig, so fair you must, hollow it out. 

Or.. Bring it in, enfold it, forevermore…”

My dear, old

Friend, where have you

Wended, to. 

In a moment of fancy, she smiles inwardly and reaches out…

She could see Umin pause, then turn as though seeking something.

Shortly, his gaze moves upwards to where she rests within her nest. 

She beckons to him then, with marble-wan fingers. And watches as the umbra of uncertainty crosses his dark eyes, like a clot of haunting fog, against a mirror-pool. 

Nonetheless, soon he is ably and adroitly navigating the spars and tackle; ropes and netting.

She reaches out and grasps his fingers at the last, pulling him into the narrow space of the watch-nest with ease. 

His hand so warm and fleshly, so full of his thrumming heart’s blood, against the singular, cold alabaster of her own.

He settles in close and squints against the inky void.

“What have you seen?” 

She studies the disquiet of his expression, the folds of nighted sleeplessness about his eyes.

Nothing

Yet but

Wet and

Dark and

Fire-mounts belching,

Spark.

“Hm…”

His lip curls in apparent vexation. 

Before he quite suddenly, and uncharacteristically grasps onto her wrist. 

Frowning into the evermore lightless abyss.

“Then what, is that…”

She follows his gaze out, across the perdurable dimness of the Great Lower Sea.

Oh…