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Interlude - Maebh Vignette

Magic Intern

Lord of Altera
Legend
Retired Staff
Nightfall in Queensport and the girl’s a spectre.

She steps through the snowy streets, stopping by some memorial stone. WOLFGANG it reads, which maybe she’d find funny if she knew the letters. Around her the snow falls, and it never stops being novel, like the sight of her own hand or the look of someone’s face or the sky, the terrible wonderful hugeness of it, like a canvas of forever.
But she knows none of it’s hers.
She looks about the street with her borrowed eye, wondering what to say farewell to next. The thought of the palace goes sour in her mind. The cathedral maybe-- but the lads will be asleep at this hour. All good and gentle souls should be. She considers her bed at the tavern briefly-- but she knows what she’ll find there, and she wants none of it. Even witches deserve a night off now and then, she reckons. She hardly ever screams, and she never ever cries. But even so.
Instead she keeps walking. It almost keeps her occupied on its own, one step, two steps, always placing each foot down with exaggerated care. She still feels precarious without a cane, she doesn’t trust her next step not to lead her into a wall, and she’ll only trust these eyes as much as she trusts the sorcerer who gave them to her. But she doesn’t hit a wall. Her footsteps carry past the charred carcasses of buildings, past the gate and out to the pier. She stands at the edge, where she’d played her lyre while Benny listened, where she set foot and where she’ll leave. It’s strange, being the one to leave. It’s always been the other way around.
Storms. She misses it, the smell of brine and shit, the bustle and the roar, the voices of strangers whose fortunes she’d tell and money she’d take. Knowing every parting might be her last, and never letting that bother her. Not even with Antone, or Foolsy. Thryss who always comes around, Aelyth who showed her trust, Aryn who should be fed up with her but never seems it. Not even her new crew, whose aura’s burn so bright.
Glenny, with his lute and fragile dreams, so loud when he’s laughing, so quiet when he’s hurt.
Kinsey, with her sword and her moxy, so fun to wind up and quick to forgive.
Gunter, with his temper and his curiosity, always ready to right his wrongs and make things square, more honest than any of them.
Bennett. The scabs and the hurt of him, how he makes them his own. The warm and the cold and his hand in hers.

The crew she’s leaving, for now. She doesn’t belong here, even if-
No. Maebh had dabbled in hope before. Every dirt-born child at Storms had. Maybe Da will come back, maybe it’s all been some terrible mistake, maybe I’ll have sight of my own.
Hope was paralysing. It encouraged you to put your determination aside and rely on somebody else's, when that energy would be much better spent being your own best chance for happiness, your own best plan for survival.
But someone did give you sight.
Shut up.
I wish she was here now.

The cold brings out old pains, makes them ache with lessons she’ll never forget. The cut above her heart that says to never let them close. The phantom pain in her fingers that says they matter to you. The prickle of her stitches, they care about you too. They argue in dull throbs of pain. The pendant feels heavy on her neck, like a finger around her throat. She wants to tear it off and throw it into the roiling cold pitch of the sea, watch it sink and vanish forever. She meant to, that first day.
But what if they need me.
She’s glad she came here, was at her Mother's side, but sorry she had to double-cross herself to do it. She can’t be herself, not here, not with borrowed eyes. Oh everything’s novel, but some things stay the same no matter where in the world you go. In this city she’s found ghosts and friends like any other. And people with an angle, pulling her this way and that.
Though he’s a world away, Cymic’s voice sounds, rough in her ear, from when she’d sat before him, dressed in her own blood.

If ye’ve got a shite hand, Maebh, ye bluff. Nev’r fold.


She doesn’t cast away the pendant, but she tosses her hopes in the sea, then and there.
She doesn’t hope to meet her crew again. She doesn’t hope to share songs with Glenny or have a rematch with Gunter or pray with Bennett like he said they could. She doesn’t hope to lead her crew oncemore.
She promises.

Next time, I’ll follow you. With sight all my own.
 
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