#ghost pirate laudna/lighthouse keeper imogen au continues!

[mintywolf]

A Light on the Horizon - Chapter 3

Imogen knelt before the trunk pushed up under the window of her bedroom and set aside the cushions she had placed on top of it so she didn’t have to think of it as anything but a window seat. Dragging it a few inches from the wall, she lifted the lid, leaning away slightly from the mingled mustiness of cedar, camphor, old wool, and time. A bundle of brittle, yellowed letters lay on top, and she carefully set it aside before digging through the stack of folded clothing underneath. Work shirts and canvas trousers. A nightgown with sprigs of lavender embroidered on the collar. Handkerchiefs. Suspenders. A single pale yellow sundress. After some thought she took out some underthings and stockings, a linen shirt that had once been red but which time and laundering had rendered a dusty rose color, and a long skirt of grey wool. Upon contemplation of the skirt’s waist in comparison to Laudna’s, she selected a pair of suspenders, too.

Behind a folding screen on the other side of the room she could hear her humming to herself in the bathtub, her thoughts a watery burble of perfect contentment. From the accompaniment of splashing and squawking, she guessed Pâté was getting a bath, too. She put everything else back in the trunk and slid it back into place against the wall. Taking the bundle of clothes, she crossed the room and hung them on the screen that sectioned off the tub and sink from the rest of the room.

“Brought you some fresh clothes.”

“Oh! How kind of you.”

“Might be a bit big, but the height should be about right.”

She reflected that the freshness of them was dubious owing to their long sojourn in storage, but decided not to say anything. She could overhear no objection to them from Laudna’s thoughts, anyway, when she emerged dressed a few minutes later. The warmth of the bath had not lent any life to her complexion, but the stark colorlessness of her skin was strangely fetching against the faded red of the blouse. There was almost a translucency to her, like bone china, so that the net of fine purple veins in the back of her hand showed through her skin as she lifted it to hook her forefinger shyly on her lower lip. Noticing Imogen looking at her, she ducked her head and looked up at her through the damp strands of her hair hanging over her face like wet seaweed, winsome as a mermaid watching a sailor from behind a rock.

“You look — nice,” Imogen fumbled, to explain why she was still looking.

Laudna smiled. Her teeth were endearingly uneven, and her dark eyes had an aquatic bulbousness to them, like the eyes of a deep sea creature that had not seen sunlight in generations. The peculiarity of it just added to her charm. “This is a good skirt,” she replied, “It has pockets.”

“Aye,” agreed Pâté from the front pocket in which he was muffled, with just his hind feet and his tail visible. “proper cozy berth in ‘ere.”

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