| 001. | oathbreaker | 002. | death is a persistent shadow |
| 003. | a kiss can be a cure | 004. | fealty |
| 005. | forever | 006. | poison |
| 007. | devil's hour | 008. | sixth sense |
| 009. | lily of the valley | 010. | writer's choice |
The ceramics class had been a last minute adjustment to Sarah’s schedule.
Sarah had considered taking the class once or twice, half-musing contemplations as she scrolled through the class catalog. There’d been something appealing about the idea of working with her hands, being able to shape and mold, to create. The idea had never borne fruit, until a need for more credits and a few empty hours landed her with the opportunity to see if the class had some merit after all.
Needless to say the first class was quite the reality check. What the teacher was able to show as a seamless process of molding and spinning the clay, was an entirely different beast once Sarah gave it a try. It was messy and frustrating and nothing she did seemed to go right. The bowl she’d been trying to make had barely made it out of the original lumpy shape, only with a slight divot at the top that wavered dramatically near the edges.
By the time she got home she was stained and tired, hair thrown up into a hasty bun and what felt like drying clay on her face of all things. It had been tempting to stamp her foot and refuse to go back, as if she could obtain any kind of mastery in the allotted time for this class. She would have if she hadn’t needed those credits, and since she couldn’t guarantee she would be able to get into another class if she dropped this one, she knew she had to stick it out.
“As you work, try to move with the clay,” the instructor said to Sarah and the rest of the students in their second class. Sarah barely refrained from rolling her eyes from her seat in the back. Clearly the advice was easier said than followed.
She did eventually improve. It became a challenge of sorts; a battle waged between her mind, her hands, and the clay. Her hands couldn’t always follow through on what she wanted and more often than not the clay would fold in unexpected moments, collapsing beneath her fingers and earning another sharp huff of frustration. But by the fourth class Sarah could not deny that she was starting to enjoy herself.
It was during the sixth when something...changed.
From the moment she sat at the wheel and put her hands on the clay, Sarah felt a strange off-key restlessness come over her. As the clay spun beneath her palms she felt an odd tension gather behind her eyes and she would have pressed her fingers to her temples in an attempt to relieve the pressure if it wouldn’t have ruined the shape she was trying to create. A cup this time, she’d decided before taking a seat, something she could drink her coffee out of or the hot cocoa her mother used to make.
She held onto that image as the pressure continued to press behind her eyes. It wasn’t painful but there was an awareness that it wasn’t quite right. By the time she finally finished throwing the cup and removed it from the wheel Sarah was gritting her teeth against the relentless pressure. The moment the clay left the wheel, the pressure vanished like a valve suddenly being released.
Sarah could not contain her gasp as the pressure suddenly vanished. Blinking she endured the confused glances of her classmates and stared at the raw clay cup with no small amount of apprehension. Very strange. Maybe she’d overdone it with the coffee that morning?
She set the cup aside to dry and a few classes later it was dry enough for her to trim the edges and work more decorative lines into the sides. Sarah let her thoughts drift while she worked, and it was only once she declared her work finished that she realized what she’d done. It was rough and there was a chance the lines she’d worked in wouldn’t survive the firing process, but she’d worked the faint lines of the Goblin King’s labyrinth along the continuous curve.
Once more unsettled she was tempted to push the partially finished cup off her work bench and let it shatter. But she stayed her hand. Curiosity pushed at her, just as it had before when faced with a strange creature’s machinations. Something was happening, and Sarah was curious and intrigued enough to let it.
The day she brought the cup home she left it sitting in the middle of her counter.
Sarah knew she was being foolish, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to use it at first. Some innate wariness had her hesitating every time she reached for it. It was hers, she knew that, but there was something else there as well.
It was late and she was moving into her fourth hour of studying for her Chemistry final when caution gave way to the pragmatic. She was too tired to wash the mugs that had collected in and around the sink and this one was bacteria free, thus available for coffee consumption. So deep into her notes and scribbling questions to follow up with the T.A. for the last meeting, Sarah didn’t notice that her coffee never got cold.
Her friend Bethany was the one to point it out to her the next time she came over. “Hey, is this one of those new heat conservation cups those ads have been shouting about?”
Sarah glanced up from her Calculus textbook, fingers threaded through her hair and giving little tugs as she debated whether she actually wanted to pull her hair out. “What?” she asked, trying to shake her thoughts back into order.
Bethany held up the mug, waggling it hard enough a bit of coffee sloshed out and onto her hand. With a yelp she quickly put it back down. “Ow! Seriously, it is right? This is the coffee you gave me two hours ago and it feels like it just came out of the pot.”
As Bethany abandoned dignity and licked the coffee off of her hand rather than grabbing the napkin that was literally right next to her, Sarah reached out and snagged the mug. “That doesn’t make any sense. Those are contained vessels, they literally have lids and are made of stainless steel. This is a clay mug I made in Ceramics.” Curling her hands around the mug she was surprised to feel the warmth radiating through the sides. Sarah smirked, “Are you sure you didn’t just refill it and forget? I wouldn’t put that past you.”
“I didn’t though. I basically forgot you even gave me the coffee once I started going over the study guide Ms. Carmichael’s gave us. Can I see yours again? I don’t understand how I’m supposed to answer number three.”
The mug and the still warm coffee was forgotten in a flurry of notes and Bethany’s dramatic exclamations of living under a bridge since being a troll was all she was good for (Sarah didn’t have the heart to tell her there might be actual trolls who would object to her encroaching on their territory). It was only later when Sarah was cleaning up when she picked up the coffee mug and was startled to find it was still hot.
“What on earth?” Sarah dipped her finger into the hot liquid and quickly pulled them back out again. Not hot enough to burn, but just enough to be uncomfortable. As she studied it, she felt some of that same awareness that had come over her while making it. It was a little like when she was little and staring at those magic eye posters. She would stare and stare until she focused her eyes just right, and then she would see it.
She tapped her finger against the mug and mused out loud, “The coffee stays hot, no matter how long it takes.” Curious she took a sip. It was the perfect temperature. Fresh coffee, but not hot enough to burn her tongue. “It stays the perfect temperature,” Sarah considered. “What I think is perfect anyway. Hmm.”
It should have been impossible. She wouldn’t have considered it if she hadn’t conquered the Goblin King’s labyrinth to get her little brother back.
Clearly she’d claimed more than her brother if she was capable of...whatever this was.
Sarah narrowed her eyes in thought and then she smiled.
By the end of the year Sarah had created quite the collection.
A small bowl she used to hold small change that gradually started to accumulate it on its own. She no longer had to check under the couch cushions or in the bottom of her purse. If she needed some quarters or nickels she only had to check the bowl near the entryway. The plaque with the small hook she used to hold her car keys. It didn’t matter where she put them down, when she was ready to leave they would always be waiting for her on the hook. The vase that had been her final project kept any flowers fresh as the day they were picked. Some experimenting revealed that she had to pick the flowers as well, but they would last until Sarah decided to replace them with new ones.
They all accumulated into small things that made life easier. But Sarah had the feeling that was only the beginning.
Each time she managed to create a new Shaped item, as she’d taken to calling them, she could feel something inside her stretching out. Getting stronger. It all made her rather curious, but not enough to go looking for answers.
Not yet anyway.
User: LeafeonWarrior
Words: Seraphic, Sly, Betrayal
Isabeau leaned against the railing, eyes closed against the brisk wind that carried the hint of salt. She ignored the way the wind combed through her hair and turned it into a tousled mess against the back of her neck and in her face. Once in a while she brushed it aside, or tried to, until giving up and letting the wind push it around some more.
With night having long since fallen it was almost brutally cold up on deck. Without her cloak she would have been freezing, and even with it her hands felt numb where she gripped the railing. It was better than the stifling confines of the berth she’d been given. Everything was too close, the walls, her memories. It was better to up on the deck where there was only the cold, and sea wind to keep her company.
She looked down at the dark waters where they lapped against the side of the ship and her shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
It hurt, a yawning ache between her ribs to realize she’d been lied to her whole life. She had so many answers now to questions she didn’t even know to ask. Why her mother had feared the ocean and why she...hadn’t.
She was still having trouble believing it. The whole mess was just too far-fetched when laid out beneath the hard light of day. An ancient pact, a sea-monster bound by magic, a prince determined to save his child from the duty passed through his blood. It should have been a fairytale, something to stay up reading until the candle burned itself out. None of the revelations from the previous day had any place in real life.
Isabeau wanted to deny it, but...even now she can feel...something.
Ever since she was first brought on board she had an awareness of the sea that didn’t seem strange at first. She’d never even seen the ocean before how could she have known.
There was something terrifying about how close she had come to falling into the trap. Three weeks at sea and two sea battles. She’d even fallen into the water during that last battle trying to repair the rigging. If her blood had touched the ocean water...the magic lying dormant would awaken a creature so terrible that even the legends themselves had tried to erase it.
If she had any common sense she would be hiding in the middle of the ship and doing her best to avoid so much as catching a splinter. Isabeau should be feeling vulnerable and frightened, but right now all she felt was a fury that left her almost breathless beneath the weight of it. Had her mother ever intended to tell her? To explain the invisible weight that had always sat heavy across her shoulders and why she would dream of an ocean she had never seen.
It had been a shock to recognize something she knew, she knew, she had never seen.
If there was anything this blasted war had taught her, it was that ignorance was no excuse. Her mother might have hoped to save her by refusing to tell her the truth, but in the end it had just placed her in more peril.
“So this is where you retreated to.”
Isabeau startled as Captain Eliza joined her at the railing. She immediately felt the fool for taking such a drastic risk with everyone’s safety by lingering by the water.
Her immediate apologies were waved away as the captain leaned on the railing, resting her weight on her elbows. “Don’t apologize. Considering what we learned yesterday I don’t think you could avoid the ocean even if you tried.” She eyed Isabeau sidelong. “That does explain things at least.”
Isabeau pressed her lips together to hold back the tirade that tried to pour out of her. Instead it sat on her tongue, heavy and bitter.
“So what are you out here brooding over?”
Isabeau stared outright in surprise. “Captain?”
The Captain’s smile was soft, not the usual sly curve of her lips. It was the look in her eyes that made Isabeau swallow hard and look back out over the water. * “Your world was basically turned upside down yesterday and judging from your reaction you had no idea it was coming. That kind of thing can cut your feet out from under you faster than any wave.” She looked out over the night-dark ocean. “It might help to talk about it.”
“I don’t think it will,” Isabeau said, the words falling sharp and furious. “My mother lied to me. She risked my life because she was afraid and let me stumble into this,” Isabeau gestured at herself and the ocean as if that was explanation enough, “without any warning. She could have given me answers any time but instead she stayed quiet even when I was -”. Biting back the words Isabeau swallowed hard. She imagined the words were an actual physical weight in the back of her throat.
“When you were what?” the captain pressed. If she had turned to look at Isabeau she would have brushed her off. But her gaze was still on the endless ocean with its churning black waves gilded in moonlight. It was as much privacy as Isabeau could expect on the ship and receiving it from the captain now gave her the courage to continue.
“I’ve always dreamed of the ocean,” she admitted, speaking barely above a whisper. Just a touch louder than the quiet shush of the waves beneath them. “When we would visit the nearby lake I could never figure out why I always felt so strange in the water. As if it was close to what I wanted, but not enough.” She remembered crying once, only the once, not even sure why. Her mother had held her close and wiped her tears away saying, it was okay, it would fade with time.
It hurt to realize what her mother meant now. “I don’t know if she was ever going to tell me. Maybe she was going to wait until whatever magic lived in me...died.”
“But then you ended up on the ocean.”
Isabeau nodded and looked down at her hands where she gripped the railing. The water danced back and forth on the edge of her vision. It was frightening to realize that a part of her belonged down there.
“I saw a Mer once.” Before Isabeau could pepper her with questions the captain continued, “It was a long time ago, back when I first started sailing. It was in the middle of a storm and the captain had me up on the mast to help tighten the sails.” She laughed, shaking her head. “It was a wonder I survived the attempt. I’m pretty sure the captain had done it hoping I would get swept away.” The captain’s smile was deliberately sweet, seraphic as the one gracing the lips of the Lady fashioned on the prow of the ship. “He didn’t like having a girl onboard. Thought it would bring bad luck. But unfortunately for him I knew what I was doing. I was fighting to keep my grip beneath the wind and driving rain and suddenly lightning slashed across the sky.”
Captain Eliza shook her head and shared a commiserating look with Isabeau. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A Mer in the water several yards off the portside. It was looking right at me.”
Enraptured by the story Isabeau whispered, “What did you do?”
“I was frozen until a crack of thunder right overhead nearly made my lose my grip. By the time I had righted myself and was no longer in danger of falling the Mer was gone.” Captain Eliza’s nails tapped against the railing, her chin braced on the heel of one hand. “I could be imagining things, but I almost think the Mer was waiting to see if I was going to fall.” Another short laugh. “Hopefully they meant to rescue me, but I don’t know. It’s been a long time since they bothered to speak with us. In fact, I think it was almost two hundred years since any have bothered to speak with the royal family.”
Isabeau pressed her lips together. “That would fit with when my supposed ancestor took his family and fled the ocean.”
Captain Eliza hummed in agreement. “That would make them a bit salty about us land-lubbers huh?”
Isabeau blinked and then looked at the captain askance. “Did you just…?”
The captain’s response wasn’t so much a laugh as an actual cackle. Isabeau was pretty sure she’d heard seagulls make the same noise. “It did the job didn’t it. Aren’t brooding anymore are you?”
“If it weren’t too dangerous now I think I would be tempted to throw myself overboard,” Isabeau muttered.
Captain elbowed Isabeau in the side, ignoring Isabeau’s yelp of complaint. “You talk big. One of the reasons I like you.” The captain didn’t move away but instead slung her arm around Isabeau’s neck. “One more thing before I leave you to your hopefully much lighter thoughts.”
Feeling a change in the air, Isabeau carefully nodded.
“What your mother did hurt you and only you can decide if you will ever forgive her for it.” Isabeau tensed but didn’t try to pull away, aware that she wouldn’t be able to escape the captain’s hold. “But if you learn anything from this, I want it to be that even the people you care about will betray you if they think they are doing it for the right reasons.”
Even with the cloak on Isabeau felt suddenly so cold. “Captain…”
Letting go, Captain Riley carefully turned her until they were standing face to face. She put both hands on Isabeau’s shoulders and leaned in, continuing just above a whisper. “Be careful, Isabeau. Whatever protection your mother tried to give you is gone now. If it were only my crew who knew what you are I could try to buy you more time, but unfortunately I wasn’t the only captain at that encounter.” She pressed her lips together hard enough to drive the blood out of them before continuing. “We are at war and there will be those who will look at you and see the key to an ancient power. They won’t stop to wonder if they can control it, or what it might do to you in the process.”
Isabeau knew the captain was right, but it hurt to hear it spoken out loud. This wasn’t something she could hide from.
Not anymore.
| WILD CARD | falsely imprisoned |
| sensory deprivation | blackmail |
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carisma_senseidancing_serpent
