New record! I've been playing this game since Wednesday and I have my first fic up already! Because…I'm in love with Faris. Lovely Faris…
This is a cosmic-irony fic as much as anything – Faris, according to Faris, set maybe thirty seconds before Bartz walks into the picture. And…it does not contain a single spoiler…what a tightrope…
Warnings are for slight angst, a gratuitous reference to the Shipping Forecast, and the fact that I haven't finished the game yet so Faris might have a whole back-history I don't know about. Oh – I know about Salsa, don't worry about that. Hm, I don't own Faris though I'd love it if we could have coffee together, and I don't own the shanty, because it's an old folk song I pirated up a bit - it fits very well to the Maranda theme from FFVI, if you ever need something to hum.
And leave a note on your way out?
Umi no Uso (The Secret Of The Sea)
by AtheneMiranda
Someone tole me, when I was jest a chile, that ye can't be a great pirate unless you also be a fine actor, and I, Faris, am the best of both. None of them knows it…not me crew, not the other Lords o' the Sea – nay, don't know, never shall know. None know but the two of us; meself – and Hydra. And they'll never find out.
I was born lucky – spawned on a wave, pulled from a wreak, come by the chance I took to the highest prow on the ocean. She looked after me, the Lady o' Fate, and she still do. Maybe she hiding in the charm I always wore. There's no man on the seas who does so fine as me, and most don' live so long as me – I've been blessed this past tenyear –
– something to make up for the curse I was born with, mayhap.
I don't know when it was that I first saw I could change it. I must have been thirteen, fourteen – always washed up from another bad voyaging, sick o' bein' a cabin boy, cabin boy or worse sometime. I didn't want that – knew d'aar right I was worth better, if only I weren't… There were days, nights, when I'd lay there in my hammock and wished that I was anything but what I was. And then…I was on the dock in Tule town, swinging my toes in the shallows, with no luck, no hope, no money…no crew that would 'ave someone like me aboard. Bad luck, they said. Yer bad luck. And…I decided, right then, that I really could try at pretendin'.
It wasn't so hard, when I took a look at meself…eerie, how such little lies could hide a truth as big as the Moon. I went by a washerwoman's, took off wi' a few clothes – jest the things I needed, old, tough, patched-up stuff that looked like it fit for a boy-sailor. It fit me. And then I found a quiet corner, with a clean puddle on the street, and tried to sort meself out. Bit o' mud round my face, hide all the hints of colour I 'ad – I lost all the things I thought might show it. Practised how to 'old me face right. Killed a few locks of hair on the blade o' me knife – anything to make it look right. There was no good to me, tryin' to hold back – I knew, right there and then, that if I did it I'd have to do it forever. But I couldn't lose me old charm pendant. Not even then.
I never was so scared as I was that first morning. Joining up the line of other would-be seamen – having all those boys see me like no-one had ever seen me before. Havin' them talk to me like I was just another young laddie wi' the taste of the sea in his mouth. And then, I get to the Cap'n…and he asked me, and I tole him, how I been to sea a dozen time, faced the storms, made the plunder – tole him everything, but for that one thing. I needed me feet back on a ship again – I been so long ashore I couldn't sleep any more. And…he took me. Had me as a real sailor, like all the other real sailors – It was…the best day o' me life, the first day o' me life, really. No-one ever talk to me like that before, or give me that respect before – it was all new to me, new and golden. For the first time ever, I were treated like a man!
It was easy once it started. People see what they expect to see, and I found that every lie got smoother than the last. An' the crew got to know me, the real me, the one of them, not the place I'd been trapped in for fourteen years. Once the glory-rush wore off, I got…used to it. So much that – I think I forget sometimes, get so lost in playing the pirate lord, that I can go days and days without even feeling it. There's only the moon who ever whispers the truth to me now, the truth, aye, and the pain…
I wonder, though, if it hasn't…helped a time or two. That I'm not quite like all the others. Maybe I got somethin' deep down in me that they don't have. I got to be midshipman, mate, first mate, a lot like anyone else does (maybe tried harder – maybe had more to lose than most). But bein' a Cap'n of me very own vessel – there I go different. There I got the edge. No-one notice, but I am different, and I'm winning too. A score of brave men 'ave lost their ships while I have kept with mine – they put out in a storm, or sail into the jaws of the navy-men, or get brung down by a scarlet woman – I never done any of that. I can feel the storms before they come, aye, feel 'em in me belly. I can smell the Navy on the wind, I can – they aren't gonna sink my ship, those bastards. And I'll never suffer from no whore – I know how wicked a woman's heart can be, and no-one else at sea can say that true as I can. No, I never took a bad chance, never fell into no honey traps – matbe it was luck, maybe it was cleverness, but I'm the richest king on the waves.
And maybe it was Hydra. There's no friends, no brothers, in the world, as dear as me and Hydra. He come up from the deep, my one mistake – the day we crossed a monster's pool, near seven years ago. And he – stopped there. Didn't go for us, though he could've eaten us in one gulp if he'd had the hunger for it. He looked us all over with his big green eyes, and me men were quailing and shoutin' at the huge grey head, scaled and barnacled, and I knew, I knew…for the first time ever, someone'd caught me. That beast knew damn well I wasn't just another buccaneer – he knew it in his nose, he did – and when his eyes found me, cursin' on the deck with two cutlasses waving out and a knife between me teeth – he smiled.
They didn't like it – I didn't like it – havin' a wyrm o' the deep a-tailing us like that, but there was naught we could do but wait it out – and then, I realised, in the wailing in the dark, that Hydra liked me. Hydra knew me for what I was – knew how hard I'd had to try to get here – and he gave me respect for it. And when we next come by a fat, Southern merchant ship – he swim down ahead of us and then he come back with the rudder in his jaws. Amazin'. Me men loved it, praised it to the clouds – cheered out for 'our new mate, the Hydra'. And he stayed about ever since. They might leave, or drown, or cross me and me cutlasses – I got few left o' the men I had in those days, but Hydra, he's forever. Me help, me comrade – oh, me brother, they call him, the Cap'n's brother. They know that – me pirates and me prey. I hear them screamin' in their ships when the old white head comes up from the sea. Everyone on the waves know the Pirate Brothers, Man Faris and Beast Hydra –
– and we two, we smile, and we laugh together, because Hydra and I knows, I ain't his brother. I'm something far better, far rarer, than that.
But now, it's all changing. The wind's gone. They say, oh, we hit the lull, we're jest becalmed, the gale force days are just around that corner o' Finnistaire and Cromarty – and I shakes my head and tells them no, I smells it…the world's a-changing, the sea's a-slowing, the wind's a-dying now. And I was right. So now, I'm not just lord o' the sea – I'm the only thing on the sea, pulled over the ocean on the tail of my Hydra. I've got the credit. I've got the smile o' Fate again – but there's lean pickings now, nothing to be 'aving out on the trade streams at all. We go raid the shore now, looting around the edge of Tycoon kingdom, seeing what we can take off the ports. Better than other pirates be doing.
Shiii… Hey – a whistle, whirring to me through the caves. Hydra says it's time to go… I stand, tie off the neck o' me bottle – a good drop of Karnak rum, not something I'd be leavin' jest 'cause the tide turned – and I grate the order out of my throat. "Pirates! We leaving on the tide! Avast!" And I don't need to wave a sword or dance about over it – they know I'm in charge o' them, know I can lead 'em right, an' they'll follow me to the edge o' the world!
They drain their drinks, gather their dice up, tot up the scores and swear they'll settle up after jest one more haul… There's clutter and clatter and a-rattling of knives, pirate's chaos, pirate's theatre – and then, in the bedlam, because their my pirates and they know their due to the Lady Fate, there's a voice, one voice…gathering them up, note by note, 'til the whole cave's ringing – every mouth open in a prayer to our guardian. Every mouth but one.
May the wa-aves rise to meet you,
May the wind be ever at your back,
May the su-un shine on your face,
And the rain fall soft upon your sails,
And unti-il,
And until we me-et a-again,
Ma-ay She hold you,
In the pa-a-alm of her hand!
Now they charge off, surround me like a flock o' gulls, nodding and cursin', laughing and salutin' at me silent ways. Every cap'n needs something like – some great private mark on him, something only the crewers know, something they can call him by – and Lady's grace, they yet to find what mine is. But they do know, o' course, that the Cap'n Faris never, ever sings to them. Not one note.
And he never has done.