They live without magic.
And still, it boils in her bones and makes her ache. She walks on dry land, on legs, breathes air and her fingers itch, her voice wants to curl around deals and curses and water.
It claws at her skin, lies soft, wrapped in blue braids, never accessible but always there. (You are magic, her mother says, when she has a good day. You are magic and they took it from you, snatched it away before you were even born.)
The tvs work, somehow.
Nothing else does, there's no electricity, no magic. But the tvs work.
And they sneer at the fairy who has lost her wings, who has made herself palatable and lovely and who refuses the magic in her blood. They curse at the fairy wearing another's skin, refusing to teach her daughter of her heritage, refusing to drop the barrier.
Uma jumps into the water.
Her necklace glows and they can feel the magic oozing off of the monitor, can almost taste it, as if the seawater had splashed them, too. Harry pulls Gil on his lap, curls his hook around his wrist. Look at our captain.
She resurfaces.
Her tentacles are the exact shade of her hair, she's as huge as a house and she laughs and she rages and oh, how lucky they are to be hers, to belong to a being so powerful, so majestic. She's beautiful, Gil says, and Harry kisses him because this is not the time, the crew is here, do not tell them how we'd die for her, how we'd walk through hell for this girl. (You are a captain's son and we will not bow to any fish, his father said, when he took his hook and left, never to set foot on the Jolly Roger again)
(Women should lie at your feet, Gaston says. They are less than you. She's my everything, Gil says and straightens his back. She's my everything and I belong to her and I'm hers. Gaston makes him sleep outside.)
The plan fails.
The plan fails and she returns, small and human again, and Gil wraps her tightly in his arms and Harry cuts the ribbon that restrains her hair and it falls blue down her back, curls around Gil's strong arms. She doesn't cry. She clutches onto Gil, arches into Harry's touch but she does not cry. This is the closest we've ever come to getting out, Gil says and he kisses her forehead and she laughs.
Yes.
It is, isn't it?
