Title: Figment
Author: Poet on the Run
Pairing: None, although Tarrant and Alice would make quite the… interesting pair.
Summary: Alice was considering things that begin with the letter 'f.'
"Miss Kingsleigh?"
Blue eyes that had previously stared sightlessly at the opposite wall of the room now turned themselves on the young cabin boy, startling him a bit with their intensity. They burned blue, overflowing with liquid flames that scorched him to the core. He swallowed and blinked thrice before she seemed to come back to herself and smiled, motioning him inside. He gingerly took a seat opposite her and pulled his hat from his head.
It felt like ages before she spoke.
"I've been considering things that begin with the letter 'f,'" she said finally. She fiddled with the papers on her desk, straightening and tidying and the boy noticed, with some alarm, that her hands were shaking. In all the time he'd sailed with Miss Kingsleigh, he hadn't known her to fear anything. "Freedom, for one. Fickleness, for another. Finances, too." She smiled wryly at him and picked up a solitary paper. "Do you know what this says?"
The boy peered at it. "No, ma'am."
"Firstly," she said, laying the paper in front of her. "It doesn't say anything. That's the problem with papers, you see. If they could tell us exactly what they were for, maybe people wouldn't argue about what the words written on them are supposed to mean. But they aren't gifted with speech, so they can't stand up for themselves, can they?"
"M-ma'am?" the boy said nervously. He'd known Miss Kingsleigh to speak oddly on occasion, but this seemed… different. "I'm not sure I understand. You wanted to speak with me about something?"
"I did, didn't I?" she murmured, letting her fingertips play with the edges of the paper. He could see now that it was some kind of contract, although he couldn't read the fine script it was printed in. If he had been able to read the writing, he had a feeling he wouldn't understand it, anyhow. Miss Kingsleigh often exchanged letters with people in languages he'd never even heard of.
"Ma'am?" the cabin boy said when she didn't speak for several minutes.
She turned her eyes on the ceiling. "Over the past two years, I've been to seven different countries, crossed three different oceans, and met countless different people. I've amassed a good deal of money—enough to keep my family quite happy and pay off some rather nasty debts my employees seem to attract. And yet…"
The woman sighed and ran a hand through wild blonde curls before bringing it down so she could rest her chin in her palm, brow furrowed and eyes clouded. She opened her mouth once, closed it, then opened it a second time and promptly closed it with a faint click of teeth as she frowned. She shook her head, brushed hair behind her ear, and looked the boy directly in his eyes.
"I'm leaving," she said. She stood from the desk then and reached for her coat, which had been thrown over the back of a chair in the corner. She ignored the gaping mouth of the cabin boy and slipped it on over her sensible frock. When she turned to look at him, she merely smirked. "Now it's no use standing there. If you don't want me to go, then you should make more of an effort to stop me."
"But… I don't understand! Why are you leaving?" the boy asked desperately. He reached for her arm but caught himself before his fingers could graze the sleeve of her jacket. She pulled her hair from under the collar and sent him a pitying smile.
"I made some promises I intend to keep," she said, and her eyes looked far away again. After a moment, she pulled something out of her pocket and pressed it into his hand. "Some people tell me that I have a very active imagination. What does that look like to you?"
The boy inspected the object he'd been handed, flicking open the top once he'd found the catch. "It's… a very unusual vial."
Miss Kingsleigh smiled and smoothed some of his hair away from his forehead. "Jolly good," she said softly, reaching down and closing his fingers around it. "You're learning."
And with that, she turned and reached for the doorknob. The cabin boy called out to her, with words she apparently didn't hear, something about how they were on a ship and she couldn't really go anywhere. But she paid him no mind and turned the handle, pulling open the door of the cabin. What the cabin boy expected, he didn't know. Blinding lights, fields of grass, or maybe a queen with hair of white and a man with a very fashionable hat. All he saw was the hall that led to Miss Kingsleigh's cabin, looking as it always did. The door shut behind her and there was silence for a solid moment before the boy raced up and wrenched open the door.
Miss Kingsleigh had gone.