– OVERTURES –
Airship El Adrel lay in the basin of the meeting waterways at the edge of the thoroughfare behind Alexandria castle. Her beautiful but formidable iron-hulled presence had been missed in this city for nearly ten years.
Her ram-bowed hull was made of iron plate riveted together and painted true Naval White, with an immense bronze sheathed cutwater and ram plate, highly unusual for a passenger liner. Masts and ventilators of ochre painted ornamental iron and varnished wood superstructure stained in alternating patterns of light and dark. Two funnels behind her midcastle sheathed in polished brass. Three planished steel airscrew masts, two either side aft and one in the center forward, the latter protruding from an iron deckhouse sitting in the middle of a decorative compass rose on the highly varnished foredeck, their airscrews made of blued steel. A long split double bowsprit, more ornamental than practical, one towering up and one pointing right forward and bearing a head lantern. To all who beheld her lying in port, she was every bit as beautiful an airship as Prima Vista.
Thick smoke billowed from her funnels as the firemen busily got steam up.
The industrious morale of the airship's crew stood in contrast to the manifest she was taking on. Hundreds of tons of supplies of bare essentials. Flour and grain, nonperishable ingredients for bread and simple food, barrels of drinking water and lamp oil and candle wax, candle and lamp wick, anti-toxin and rubbing alcohol, a seemingly endless amount of pre cut Alexandrian quarry stone and timber and smithed lengths of strap iron, hand tools and rope and chain.
The majority of the passengers coming slowly up the gangways were the dusty white rats of Burmecia and, occasionally, Cleyra. Bedraggled and wandering War refugees who had arrived in Alexandria from parts unknown. The stream of them here to board airships was a slow but constant trickle, every single one meekly or tearfully bound for Burmecia, and the standing policy to accept them without payment or ticket. Each ship dedicated to a trip there took on as great a tonnage of relief and supply as she could safely carry.
The rats teemed up the gangways and staircases to the ship like shadows, huddled together, some lagging behind or accompanied by loved ones should they be so lucky. All slow, all discouraged, all in silence fearing what they might see on arrival at their beleaguered kingdom. Very few with any real urgency, most did not speak, even amongst themselves. Only hushed murmurs or gestures indicated any life beyond their simple heed to Home's quiet call.
Among them were passengers for Lindblum, having booked the far cheaper tickets on El Adrel due to the anticipated long stopover time in Burmecia increasing the duration of the planned trip. They grinned and chortled at the prospects of the amenities of El Adrel, small but elegant quarters each with its own washroom with a true prize, hot and cold running water.
The Burmecians and Cleyrans would quietly nod in contrast; occasionally a mother with a child would show a hint of a smile at the prospect of giving their little one a much-needed hot bath.
El Adrel's stout Captain presided over the scene. An immense man in personality and truly every other way except height, Bancroft Ellenroad was a man of fearsome bristling sideburns, a gigantic ram-bow of a nose similar but less well defined than that of his ship, a broad forehead with a hardened brow, a pair of eyebrows perpetually in a skeptical and frustrated vee and a wide straight mouth all placed upon a gigantic, heavy head.
An old friend of Regent Cid, he had seen much in his years of service aboard and commanding airships, but this was somehow without parallel.
As the procession made its way aboard the airship, he towered ominously over it from the running deck and despite the first mate standing beside him awaiting orders, he remarked more to the air around him;
"The last "short" trip this ship embarked upon had turned into a circuitous voyage and was that of the duties of a tender supporting an armada and then of cleaning up the death and damage done by the mad Queen Brahne. By burning lands or the moons falling from the sky, this voyage shall be an uneventful one, according to plan and free of distractions." He emphasized this statement with a firm stomp of his right foot.
El Adrel's great steam whistle cleared its throat of condensed water, and the airship's deep and throaty voice boomed announcement of its departure across the city.
"Get us out of here, mister Bannister! I wish to see the spires of Lindblum over this bow as soon as is aerodynamically possible." Bancroft bellowed as the gangways began to come up.
The first mate swept the flight engine telegraphs from end to end, and then to the customary seventy revolutions for slow ascent. They shortly rang back from their hefty brass housings as their painted hands darted across their glass faces in response.
As the lift airscrews of the ship began to turn, Adelbert Steiner stepped shakily and unevenly up the last remaining gangway as two crewmen ensured it was not pulled away with him on it. He walked wide eyed and sleepless, the heavy satchel on his back wriggling every so often, its awful, pitiful contents constantly shifting in excruciating pain and misery.
"I will find the one who did this to you, and I will see he puts it right, or pays for it with his nothing less than his life. If need be, I will chase him over the rim of the Sky."
"Ticket, sir?"
One look from Steiner and the man fell silent.
The white airship lifted herself over the spires of the outer castle turrets and armories and into a purple morning sky. Further telegraph clangs from deep inside her hull and then the bridge, her drive airscrews began to churn the air and over the rooftops of Alexandria she went, slowly gaining speed toward the mountains.
Freya had awoken after an unrestful sleep of tossing and turning.
Her code of honor demanded that she throw herself at the work of rebuilding Burmecia as sir Fratley and all the rest did, but she could not bring herself to leave bed. She tried in vain to return to sleep, but her head churned so with thoughts and emotions she could not even have this small blessing.
She never normally touched coffee, but after a small cup of some of that given to her as a gift by someone she had saved, the gray blurry ache of the morning turned into a stabbing energetic pain that forced her into motion.
The rain had subsided to a drizzle and this made her outward journey far more bearable, but it only remained so until she went past the home of Wei and Kal.
The house was not yet quite fully repaired but was so very beautiful as was everything that surrounded this couple. They had by some means, either Wei's green thumb or potions or both, encouraged the most beautiful colorful flowers and blossoming ivy to grow up their walls and trellises. They had made a proper home for their children, who she caught sight of playing in the streets. Four of them darted about beyond a neighboring courtyard, one trying to hide a brightly colored paper-mache ball from the other three. It took her slightly longer to find the fifth, hiding in plain sight in the flowery front yard of the house, asleep under the natural umbrella of a tree, evidently having worn herself out.
There was something more. As she let what was around her drown out her own inner mess, her sensitive ears became aware of something beautiful, something that pained her greatly and something that had been long unfamiliar to her.
Warm, needy Passion.
She could hear Kal and Wei making love deep in the confines of the house. She could hear it was the kind of absolute and desperate love she once knew.
Maybe that was why the flowers bloomed with such color and vibrance and with such numbers here.
The mess returned and she instantly hurt again. She suddenly found her forepaws were against her mouth. She also found she could not stop herself from weeping. She would poorly stitch her wound at home. Avoiding waking up the sleeping child at any cost, she ran back the way she had come. Until returning home her life had been ceaseless motion with no time for tears, now she barely had time for anything else.
"…I love you, Freya."
"I meant it when I said I love you, Freya."
His warmth worked its way into her heart in spite of herself. He had even found ways to make her laugh again, beyond the empty ironic laughter of her misery. And her laughter filled him with greater warmth. And so, slowly, the rhythm of their lost romance insistently re-asserted itself over the deafening silence that had ruled their lives for so long. The tempo was slightly changed, but the notes, although less of them, were still the same.
With the joys came challenges. Often, repeats of those they had already gone through, to her thrill and chagrin, and his patience. The dynamic of Freya being a war orphan who had to work doubly hard to even stay practiced at her knightly skillset versus Fratley who was in every way the effortlessly shining hope of his Kingdom was not directly present, but echoes of it remained and seemed to still drag on them like an anchor. It even remained in the way others treated them.
Freya often began openly criticizing herself harshly and he comforting her just as had happened so often and so intensely before she had lost him, but the familiarity of this only drew them closer.
Their need for each other was just the same, but their lack of ability to ask for what they themselves needed over the needs of their people and their Kingdom due to the principles of their knighthood slowed their reconnection and frustrated them both. It sent Freya further into depression and often she did not leave the house, getting as much restless sleep during the day as in the night. And Fratley, after awakening under the eaves of her cistern shed and working the pain and chill out of his body, often had to gently coax her out and encourage her in order for her to begin a day of service to the rebuild effort.
His touch was just the same, but truncated due to his reticence to take advantage of or scare her away just as things between them were beginning to blossom again, and this brought them both a hollow sadness.
Fratley may have been quiet and reserved around Freya for fear of jarring her away from him, but he was as brazen and outspoken and proactive as he had ever been and moreso, around others. He often talked to Wei and Kal, who by fortuitous circumstance were now close enough to be considered neighbors. Wei was sweet in nature and always listened to what he had to say, and all he talked about was Freya, his concerns for her, his devotion to her. When he mentioned Freya's trouble sleeping, Wei had given him a potion to give to her.
She had cautiously downed it one evening some time after Fratley had presented it to her, as she was never one for potions. But it knocked her out cold and on the morning after the first restful night she could remember in years, she happened to awaken before he did. On her way trudging out of her small yard, she caught him sleeping under the eaves of the cistern shed.
She stopped cold. Her first instinct was to laugh, but that vanished when she saw he had been using her washtub and washboard.
"Fratley – "
He awoke with a start. Disaster, he had not considered all the potential consequences of giving her the sleeping potion.
He sat bolt upright. "Good morning, Freya!"
"Fratley…" She felt tears. "How long?" She asked insistently.
"I know not what you mean." He attempted to brush off the question. He had always been a terrible liar.
"How long?" She attempted to look at him sternly, and knew she was failing.
"Just last night, I wanted to make sure that the shed roof…."
She began to cry.
He began again, correcting himself shakily. "The last few nights, but no more than that. I was trying to make sure that…"
"Stop it, Fratley."
He looked up at her sheepishly.
"This isn't funny." She sobbed. "It's been so cold. How Long."
He stayed silent until she opened her mouth to speak again, and then cut her off.
"Since you have blessed this place again with your presence, as a matter of fact. And I shall not leave, for it is my sworn duty to never leave you again, and to protect you, and ensure you are healthy and well and have whatever you wish for close at hand, and I quite doubt I would leave this place even if you demanded I do so, for I shall never again repeat the mistake that I do not remember making."
Freya fell to her knees.
He had never done this before. In fact he had never done anything remotely like this before, not even at the height of their lost love.
It had somehow grown, even while absent.
"For I mean it when I say I love you, Freya."
She shuffled to him on her knees, cradled his head in her forepaws quite to his surprise, parted his hair with her muzzle and placed a long kiss on his forehead. She refused to break it for a long time. When she did, he immediately raised his head and kissed back, and looked at her.
"And I will tell you something else." He said with a newfound confidence that surprised even he. "I love your rare blue eyes. They are as rare and as beautiful as the times our skies clear."
He had said this exact thing to her long ago, and she responded in the way she had originally, with a long wet kiss that made him gasp with joy.
"I shall continue the rebuild with renewed vigor today, you beautiful creature." He smiled unrestrainedly at her.
She brimmed with intense happiness and sadness simultaneously. All her life had been spent asking what she could do for others, not once asking for what she needed. The same could be said for him. She felt that had to end here and now.
"Fratley, I need you even more than Burmecia does, just as I did when you vanished away."
He remained silent, but she knew that expression on his face too well.
"Please come home with me." She begged.
"I shall. And it would be my greatest pleasure, and you need never ask again." His face beamed at her all the rest he could not say.
And for the first time since she had lost him, he followed her in through the door, and it shut behind both of them.
She prepared for him a proper breakfast, and for the first time since he had left her, she ate a proper breakfast. And she began fawning over him as she had used to, pointing out every blemish and stain and scar and wrinkle and mark of fatigue he bore, and how it was probably from sleeping outside in the rain. And she instantly noticed his lingering shivers that he vehemently denied the presence of. She responded by wrapping around him in a blanket, and sharing her warmth with him. The way he clung to her gave away how deep the cold had worked its way into him. She had yearned for him to embrace her like that for so many years, and they did not disengage for hours, even after they had both begun to sweat, as whole and intense warmth was now something as precious as gold to them.
And after they left the blankets they talked, and talked for hours, and she stroked his forepaws and he constantly remarked at how much he loved the closeness and homeliness of her little burrow. As it grew dark outside, they both lit candles and stoked a fire in her fireplace for the first time since her return to Burmecia, and made the inside of that burrow awash in welcoming firelight and life-giving heat. The iron pipes over the fireplace gave the house hot running water again, and they joyfully poured it into her meager assortment of copper pots and pans to make broths and boil vegetables from her stores. They ate a small but wonderful dinner together, their first in many years, and ate it leaning against each other.
"Fratley."
"Freya." He fed her a grape.
"There's hot water. Will you bathe with me?"
He locked up, and her heart sank.
"F-forgive me." He stuttered, looking intently forward at the glass in his hand, feverishly trying to think of what to say. All of the ease and calmness that had come to him since that morning evaporated. "Forgive me, for I do not wish to take advantage of you as I am just getting to know…." He stopped and realized how horribly untrue and cockeyed what he said had sounded. He frustratedly brought his fist down on the table. "Dammit."
Damn this hole in his head.
In an instant, Freya was heartbroken again.
The first time they had made love, it had been his idea with her only dropping hints. Brazen Fratley, confident Fratley. Passionate, adventurous, loving Fratley. Where had he gone? The same place the rest of him had gone, into nothingness. When they were a new couple, he had always been the one to pursue her despite her developing feelings first.
This new Fratley was timid because of her, because he did not want to lose or offend her, and she loved him for it, but she grieved at the damage done to their relationship.
If only she had never let him leave.
He took her forepaw in his. "But I shall draw your bath."
She remained sitting and gently pulled at him as he got up, and he began stoking the fire and arranging the bath almost too eagerly to try and make up for his mistake. It was adorable to her, but so saddening.
He folded freshly laundered towels into neat stacks, he arranged soaps and soapstone, he ran the hot tap into the porcelain tub as hard as it would go and warm steam filled the little washroom. When he had finished, with the water still running he bowed to her and extended his arm.
She shook her head and gave him a sad smile, kissed his hand and closed the door.
She sank into the tub in the absolute darkness. The hot water embraced her and the heat instantly began to work its way into her tired joints and aching feet.
She turned that thought over in her head and whispered it out loud, under the rush of running water.
"If only I hadn't let you leave…"
One thing that did strike her, if this was indeed a new Fratley; he would most assuredly not leave her again.
But how could that bring her any peace. Through the dark and rain she would wander. The sight of him would continue to torment her. Their inability to recapture the entire life lost was unbearable. Her kingdom as it healed became somehow as unfamiliar to her as she was to him. All was crossed, backwards, twisted in knots and inside out.
Her restlessness set in and this time far more dangerously, with no destination ahead of her she set her aching feet to endless motion with no compass to follow, only the stinging thorns of misery jabbing at her back, pushing her left and right, and forward, and over the mountains, forever away from her home.
She found herself treading a wide and blank ice covered river between black, blank foothills in a country she did not recognize. The white flat plain made the world an unpainted canvas, but there was no newness in it. The frigid wind whipped at her back and sensitive ears and tail.
The setting sun of blinding unfamiliar icy winter white shimmered between ragged peaks before it set and pulled its cast light from the land as impatiently as someone drew unclean sheets from a bed.
She was alone, in the dark, upon a field of ice. Everything seemed to stop. Wholly, totally, absolutely stop.
And then it started again, with a sickening crack. How could she have been so stupid, and yet hadn't this been what she sought all along by wandering across an ice sheet of unknown thickness over a river of unknown depth.
The ice yielded under her feet like breaking glass and suddenly she churned and struggled and suffered and gasped in freezing water. All the feeling that stung inside her was suddenly reflected perfectly in physical pain that swirled around her. Her limbs stopped working in the frigid cold, she fought to keep her head above water. Freezing water penetrated her lungs. She cried against the drowning, more in catharsis and for the misery and pain to stop than for help.
They were Wordless cries of sorrow and despair. She felt herself dying, and it was not the relief she had expected. It was scary; it only made her suffering worse. She would now never have what she wanted. Any chance at this was now gone, the threshold of oblivion was made only of pain. Only one word passed her lips as her face was swallowed by the water.
"Fratley!"
And then she awoke somehow, disoriented, still splashing in cold water, still surrounded by endless darkness. This was what it felt like to leave her body, of course the way of things would be cruel enough that a lonely soul treading the void would feel as an icy river. Maybe it was only that way for her. Her curse continued even after death.
"Fratley!"
Fratley was jarred from his ponderous half-sleep in the old wicker armchair by the sound of splashing and screams. In an instant he was at the washroom door. He did not knock or stop to ask a question, it slammed into the hamper behind it with a crash such was the speed he swung it open.
Freya thrashed and treaded in the water of the tub in the total darkness save the light of the fire from the now open door. As the water went everywhere he felt that it had gone cold.
They had both fallen asleep.
She was drowning as she screamed for him. He had never heard her sound like this, he was sure not even before. He was at her side in an instant.
"Freya, calm, calm! It's a nightmare, I am here, it's only a dream!"
She latched to him and kept screaming. He pulled her from the tub.
"I don't want to leave!" She sobbed. "It hurts so much, I don't want to leave! Don't let me leave – please help me!"
Fratley wrapped her in his arms and them both in the largest of the cotton towels; giving her back the warmth she had given him before, and carried her to bed. When they reached it, she would not let go.