Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle— "Ha! Mary, good-by!"
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead—
The picket's off duty forever!
Craven was special. Not in the sense that she was some super unique one-of-a-kind ship– she was part of a four-member class, and she didn't think they really did one-off destroyers, it would ruin the point– but in the sense that she had never known what peaceful America was like before it all went to heck.
She hadn't even gotten to see the elections or anything like that! Just… poof and off you go to fight a war! Well, that was the same lot the girls from the Great War got, but that didn't mean Craven had to like it. She had exactly zero choice regarding this mess, even if some of her older comrades did. Heck, there were photos of Miss Lexington voting and everything.
Shipgirls hadn't played any real part in suffrage in these (no longer) United States, but they had done a lot in Germany. Good on them, Craven figured.
As an American, she found the whole monarchy thing a little silly. But she was also supposed to find Syndicalism silly, or perhaps more than that. A threat to the American way of life that Craven had never known, some crimson menace that lurked in the Steel Belt.
Well, maybe it was generous to assume she would even get the franchise, considering her looks. She was no Lexington, that much was certain. She was keen enough to read and write, thank you very much, but everyone took a look at her and thought empty-headed little girl.
And yeah, she'd admit she wasn't exactly the quickest torpedo of the bunch– one of her boys got a college entrance exam for her to serve as a sort of benchmark for voting-age intelligence, it was enough to make her head spin– but she was getting her boys to help her with reading and writing and histories… she knew all the presidents, she knew how her predecessor died in gallantry during the first Civil War, she even knew how to use a slide rule!
She didn't really think she needed to be college-level smart to vote, but she understood that her looks stacked the deck against her in that regard. There were things she wanted to do, but she found herself facing a lot of obstacles. The war, of course, was a big one, but her being her caused a few problems.
Like, other than the whole voting brouhaha, Craven wanted to do some cheering for her boys, in addition to making the ship more efficient. Seemed like it would be fun, you know? However, it didn't seem like cheering was a thing that girls usually did. Sure, women started doing it back in the 20s, but it was usually a boy doing the hollerin' and all that.
That had led to some funny questions, back when she was first around. Why are you carrying pom poms? What do you think you're doing wearing a skirt like that, young lady? She thought it was supposed to be a cheerleader's uniform, but no actual cheerleaders would be found in a similar outfit…
She knew it was minor, in the grand scheme of things, but it irked her. This didn't happen to normal kids, did it? Well, she supposed it kind of did. People were born and were expected, at the very least, to look after themselves in a couple of decades.
Craven had, at best, a few weeks of basic training with her crew to get ready for the one job the Navy let her have: destroyer.
(Still, they let her have a bit of fun back on base.)
At the very least, the Pacific States Navy was pretty tight-knit. There was, of course, a certain esprit de corps just due to to their shared fight, but they were also helped by a feeling that they were in the right. They were aligned with legitimate democracy, not the new Caesar or two separate flavors of demagogue.
Less generously, you might say that cohesion was caused by a shared sense of persecution. When it seemed like America was falling to pieces, wasn't it only natural that they bunched together, searching for company and friendship when the foundation of their lives, the very state that made them, dissolved?
Fortunately, Craven realized she wasn't alone in wanting to put smiles on faces and cheer in hearts. Lexington left her ambitions of singing behind as she settled into the role of leader of all Pacific State shipgirls, but Saratoga had a bit more leeway. That wasn't to say she didn't want to help her sister in leadership– she was a quick study, and anyone who underestimated her tactical mind was liable to regret it– but Saratoga could afford to be a bit more easygoing (and that was what Lexington liked her sister to be doing).
Considering how closely Craven's aspirations of cheering and dance aligned with Saratoga's enjoyment of singing and dance… She danced a very good Balboa, that was certain. Craven wondered if the Syndies did the Charleston and the Union State girls did the Collegiate Shag; there were several types of swing, but the Balboa was the type that was popular in California, so…
Craven had done several dances with Saratoga and the other destroyers– who were a bit closer to her own stature– but occasionally someone would pester their crew into joining them. Sadly, the men usually went to dance with Marblehead or Arkansas instead of girls like Craven, unless they were feeling particularly indulgent. Womp womp.
(At the very least, none of Craven's boys tagged along just in hopes of getting to chat up Arkansas. They came because she genuinely managed to convince them that it would be a good time.)
You ever get that feeling when you're either asleep or nearly there, just to suddenly feel like you're falling? Like, of course, you aren't actually feeling, but the sensation is so strong it scares you awake? Craven felt that sometimes in bed, but she also felt a strange sort of phantom sensation during battle.
What had Sara said? "Well, it's your ship, right? It's going to feel unique, you know?" Girls like Raleigh and the older destroyers could give Craven the broad strokes, but no one other than Craven herself could get a perfect understanding of her ship and all its idiosyncrasies.
She would usually feel a bit more energetic when the engine was full throttle– although buzzing with energy during a desperate situation wasn't always a good thing– and if the rudder was acting oddly, her left foot would fall asleep. Of course, she knew these things more directly, that was what a shipgirl did, but they were literal physical symptoms caused by the ship's operation.
The most notable was, of course, being hit. Apparently, it was rather like being stabbed, although few shipgirls had actually been stabbed the old-fashioned way to compare. Of course, other things could hurt too: if your ship was up somewhere cold, ice would build up on her sides, and you'd feel the phantom chill, enough to hurt. Not helped by her skirt…
Anyway, pain still did its job: telling you something is wrong. When she first collapsed to the deck, clutching at her stomach, she thought it might have been an attack. She squirmed and turned as one of her crew talked with the telegraph. There was no problem other than the burning in her gut and the way she grit her teeth.
She liked to think she had done a lot to earn her crew's respect. They smiled and laughed when she cheered, her opinions on what the ship had as much weight as the engineer's. And suddenly she was a little kid again, pressing her forehead into the deck and just hoping somebody else might take the pain away.
It did sort of ebb, but it was a good few minutes before she could even look up at her captain and murmur: "Sorry, sir."
Somebody picked her up and carried her to the sick bay– or whatever room they had repurposed as one– and laid her down. There wasn't much room, just due to her design, but it seemed like it was her, her gallant escort, and whoever happened to have the most medical experience.
"How do you feel, Craven?"
"It's better, but at first it was… like I swallowed a lit match."
"Did it travel down the throat?"
"No. Just wham and my tummy's suddenly on fire."
"Hmm," her… doctor (?) hummed. "Maybe that's how all shipgirls react to failed pipes?"
"A pipe failed?" Craven squeaked. How had she not realized? Well, she knew the exact reason why she hadn't, but it was still embarrassing. She was supposed to guide them through battle.
It wasn't even a battle! It was a perfectly normal expedition without a foe in sight. Still, seven hundred degree steam was seven hundred degree steam, and it seemed the best explanation for that fire in her gut.
"Was anybody else hurt?" Craven didn't see anyone else coming in, so she hesitantly smiled. Maybe nobody but her suffered–
"One man was hit by the steam."
Her smile vanished. "And he's…?"
"Thankfully, it was quick." He proceeded to do a few more checks on Craven, making sure she hadn't developed any other problems.
The only problem that she faced beyond a lingering ache was eating. Without the pain, she might have been capable of getting something down, but she didn't have any appetite.
Unsurprisingly, since they didn't have a real doctor, they didn't have a real chaplain either, so the captain had to do the honors. Everyone who could excuse themselves was there, lined up on the deck in rows. The captain stood to address them all, standing a little behind a body wrapped in a flag. A real genuine American flag, not one of the successor Pacific States flags.
(Her crew had blatantly refused to allow her a look at the body underneath. She was torn between being relieved and being upset.)
Craven, obviously, was not in her usual wear. Her Sunday best was inherited from the younger sister of one of the men in her crew, a simple dress of blue-and-white checkered seersucker. She suspected it had been reused from a mattress or something… but she couldn't complain about clothes, and she certainly shouldn't be getting distracted!
The captain was already a bit into his reading, whoops. Craven tried to tune back in: "... and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
Her throat clenched. The poor man… Smith, his name was. They had no time to stop, so his long home would be the sea, away from whatever corner of the country raised him. Was he from one of the Pacific States, or had he stayed with them in hopes of bringing democracy to… wherever he was from?
She didn't know. She didn't even know. Shame settled in her gut, not hot and piercing like the pain of her pipes coming apart, but heavy. Heavier than shrieking, flying steam, and colder. Something that sat in her belly, like some ballast she could never be rid of.
Craven leaned into someone's side– she wasn't quite sure who– and tried to hold back tears. She should have known this would happen, that it was a necessary part of being a sailing ship. Older, larger ships must have seen their fair share of accidents, but Craven had a sinking feeling they'd just tell her to carry on, like how the crew was just carrying on.
"We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea will give up her dead…" She felt them coming in and tried to bite back a sob. When her face wasn't buried in that mysterious somebody's coat, her tears kept her from seeing anything more than a foot past her face.
Vaguely, she heard something about their vile bodies being made glorious. She was sure there was some deep meaning behind that phrase that someone could explain to her, all she could think of was the fate of that body under the tarp. Vile, and doomed to only become viler in the sea.
The same thing would happen to a body on land, wouldn't it? Rotting, decaying? But there would be a place there. A station, somewhere to visit, a place of consolation for the family. (More tears now, and probably snot too…) The lion's share of people lived and died on earth, on the same soil that had raised them.
But what about shipgirls? Were they the inverse? Watery births and watery deaths, with no concrete place that could be called their own? For all that they were supposed to be greater, superhuman, above their crews, she couldn't help but feel they were less. They lived less, they were probably loved less.
The ceremony came to a close, and Smith left Craven for the last time. She rushed to the edge of the deck, leaning over precariously to catch one last glimpse. (Not even a glimpse of him.) For a few moments, the stars still shone, until they sank into corruption.
Raleigh always encouraged her reading, seeing her vague interest in education as something much grander than it was. Craven wanted to impress people and not look like a little kid, while Raleigh had these big ideas about pedagogy and the warrior-philosopher, or whatever.
Still, she found herself less willing to talk and certainly less willing to cheer… so if she wanted to do something other than go stir-crazy, she needed to read. So she did. Everyone had seen her sobbing during the funeral, so they were willing to indulge her, for what little that was worth.
(She had hoped to hear that he had kept a diary or something. He hadn't. There weren't any books among his personal possessions either, leaving Craven with a few vague memories and whatever she could draw from the other members of the crew.)
Craven would honestly say that reading wasn't her favorite medium. If she had to experience a story any way… the best she had probably experienced was a performance of Shakespeare arranged by Raleigh. That had been fun, even if it meant swimming through old-timey English, but part of what made it so fun was other people to bounce off of.
Her search for reading materials had led her to another piece of borderline incomprehensible old-timey English, the engagingly titled "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions".
It was funny to think about it. Of course, the book in her hands was a fairly modern printing, but the original came back in 1624. Three centuries sat between the author and Craven, four times the length of time between Craven and Craven. (Tunis Craven, that was.) And he faced some of the issues that today's Craven faced. Not all of them, sure– ships barely even had cannon at that time, she thought– but he lived near death. Wrote about it in the language of the time:
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into currant Monies, his treasure will not defray him as he travells. Tribulation is Treasure in the nature of it, but it is not currant money in the use of it, except wee get nearer and nearer our home, Heaven, by it. Another man may be sicke too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a Mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to mee if by this consideration of anothers danger, I take mine owne into contemplation, and so secure my selfe, by making my recourse to my God, who is our onely securitie.
Craven thought she understood what he meant.
Maybe.
My initial thought was that this chapter would explore, at least vaguely, the idea of Kansen interacting with suffrage in contrast/comparison with Craven's own fight for recognition but it seems my train of thought was a little derailed. One key idea I had was Craven being much more shook up about the matter than anyone else around her, and that kind of grew into a thing where I stressed both moments of keen insight and the chaotic emotions of someone who really wasn't meant for war. IDK. Hopefully, I should post a non-Kaiser Lane AL fic Soon TM.