#one half of an aisle for embroidery and sewing

[unstablequeerbitch]

So this quilt is based off of the Appalachian flag. Originally I wanted it to be this really cool jacket, but I haven’t hand sewed something very big in a couple years and I haven’t quilted anything I like 10 years (and never had quilted)

I think I’m running out of squares. I have more at the house, but I don’t think there is as variety as these. I could be wrong because these are scraps from people from my parents church and from single colored napkins at a thrift store. And single pillow cases. Refuse fabrics people! If there’s a hole or stain, cut around it

I’m still planning on doing the jacket at some point, but I want to get my squares down a bit better and figure out sizing a bit better. But it will be glorious.

Sewing is crazy. I took this

And it’s starting to look like this

[godmother-encanto-au]

Godmother Chapter Six-Fire and Darkness

In which everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and then goes a little bit right?

Notes: The good news is, I don't have Covid after all, just a bad chest infection. Hooray and boooo at the same time.

…..

Sewing the wedding dress was more a way for Mirabel to keep herself occupied (distracted)than anything else. The fabric was satin, possibly imported, and she'd been given several skeins of superfine wool in a range of colours for embroidery. She kept the skirt hem just above the ankle and gathered the waist so that it fanned out in layers. The embroidered parts were small, almost hidden; she had the feeling that her groom didn't want any obvious signs of her pining for home. She didn't bother with a veil.

She had never been a person that cried easily; she'd taught herself from an early age to hide her tears and put on a brave face. Even in this place, constantly threatened with rape and violence, she had managed not to shed a tear at her predicament. But once she tried on her wedding gown to check the fit in the mirror, the full enormity of what was going to happen to her hit her all at once.

My father won't be walking me down the aisle.

I won't be able to hug my mother one last time before I become a wife.

My family won't be there to celebrate my marriage.

I am marrying a monster.

I'm going to give birth to a monster's children.

He is going to hurt me.

She sank to the floor in her beautiful satin dress and sobbed her heart out. She was so consumed by her sadness that she didn't notice when the smell of smoke started wafting around her room.

…..

Vargas, true to form, was the first to notice the fire. It had spread quickly in the dry brush of the forest, no doubt helped along by some sort of accelerant, but luckily it hadn't touched the plantation yet. He knew full well that hovering just outside the plantation gates were a rival group waiting to pick them off with guns as they tried to evacuate. It was one of El Verraco's own tricks, he had taken down many of his own rivals with it. Los Brutales, even when taken by surprise, knew better than to fall for such a plot.

El Verraco was calm as he issued the orders to his men. The plantation had to be evacuated of course, but only as far as the storage bins. They could take positions behind them to shoot back at their attackers, the stone roof of the coolhouse would shelter them from the approaching fire and the rivals would soon give up. They always did.

There was the little matter of the girl, though.

Let her burn, Vargas thought, his ego still stinging from his rejection. It was unfair, he knew that, and unlikely to happen, but he really didn't feel like going back into the building when the flames were licking the roof.

“Go get the girl,” El Verraco commanded, as expected. “Find somewhere safe to tether her up.”

There was really only one place that was safe enough to do that. The cliff-face had a series of indents, shallow little shelves carved into the rockface. There was just enough space for a man to stand up, provided he didn't have big feet. Los Brutales used these indents for prisoners they needed to squeal on someone; a few hours there, looking over the drop into the valley, would make anyone talk. But the girl wouldn't be there for long, and she would fit into the floor space easier than the average prisoner.

And maybe some time over the valley would make her rethink my proposal.

She was trying on her wedding dress when he burst in on her, and he half-thought about making her get changed before he pulled her out, but decided against it. The plantation was filling up with smoke.

“What's happening?” she managed to ask between coughing fits, as he dragged her outside towards the back of the house.

“Some stupid cabrónes trying to burn us out,” he muttered back, his face covered with a bandana. “Nothing we haven't dealt with before. But you need to be out of the way.”

Silly little puta struggled with him a bit when he dragged her to the nearest indent and wrapped the chain inside around her waist. It was coupled to something that might have been a large vine or the root of a tree, embedded in the rock. It was safe as could be.

“You're going to leave me here?” she asked. The ground she was standing on crumbled a little under her feet.

“It's safer than where I'm going to be,” Vargas replied with a careless shrug. “I'd advise you to stay still until I get back.”

A few hours dangling over the cliff would do her good, he thought as he picked up his gun to fight back. It would remind her who she needed to stay on good terms with if she wanted to be safe.

…..

The group on the opposing cliff had only one set of binoculars between them, but they were just about able to see a man drag Mirabel out of the plantation house and tie her up on a ledge just over the valley, which was now completely engulfed by flames.

Isabela held the binoculars while the other three tried to find a way to get to her. Her relief at seeing her sister alive was tempered with the anger and sadness of seeing her like this; pale, far too thin and clearly terrified. Blind as she was, all she could likely see was black smoke and flames.

“None of these trees are long enough to bridge the gap,” Luisa called.

The wall of fire was blocking them off, the militia had set it behind them. The valley was the only way of getting to the plantation.

“It's all just gunfire and shouting, I can't tell who's winning,” Dolores said.

There was really only one solution; Isabela would have to make something grow from the other cliff. She handed the binoculars to Camilo.

“Keep an eye on the root she's chained to,” she commanded. “I'm going to try and make it grow.”

….

The rock ledge she was standing on was dangerously unstable, Mirabel could feel it shift with every breath. The chain that was keeping her anchored to the cliffside was obviously meant for someone much bigger; had she been anywhere else, she might have been able to slip out of it and make a run for freedom. Right now, it was the only thing that was keeping her in place.

The valley below looked like the mouth of hell. Nothing but a roaring carpet of flame with plumes of thick smoke and ash, thrashing like a living thing.

Shots rang out all around her, impossible to tell if it was Los Brutales or the attackers. Someone was strafing around the coolhouse carelessly, hoping to catch someone. A few of those shots punched into the rock above her head.

And then, the root that the chain was wrapped around started to move. It pushed against her back, she had to quickly shift to one side to avoid falling forward.

…..

Making things grow had always been so easy for Isabela, but now at the very moment she needed it most, it was a tremendous strain. She found the root her sister was tied to, tried to coax it outwards. The tree was old, sturdy, its roots ran deep into the earth and it was not yet on fire. If she could just get it to grow, it could shoot across the valley and deliver Mirabel safely to them.

The tree was old, sturdy, set in its ways. It did not want to move.

…..

Some fool on the attackers' side was setting off gelignite by tossing incendiary bottles at it, the ground shook, but Los Brutales held firm. Vargas was positioned just behind El Verraco, holding a rifle he had no intention of shooting unless he absolutely needed to.

“Is the girl safe?” El Verraco asked.

It only just occurred to Vargas then, that El Verraco didn't know the girl's name. He never even asked.

She's wasted on you.

“Safe as can be,” Vargas replied, then he ducked as another round of strafing hit the barricades.

…..

Mirabel's arms were pinned to her sides, but gingerly she managed to slide them out from under the chain. She only dared to move an inch at a time, any further sent a shower of crumbling rock down into the hellmouth of the valley.

Despite the combined racket of the fire, the shooting, the explosives and the enemies shouting at and to each other, Mirabel thought she could hear the same whispering that had been haunting her dreams. It sounded like it came from below her, in the flames.

She was wondering about it when two bullets ricocheted off of the coolhouse wall and caught her in the leg. One punched clear through her calf, the other buried itself deep into the bone of her thigh. The injured leg folded in on itself and she fell forward, dragging the chain with her.

…..

“Isabela, stop! She's falling!”

Isabela stopped instantly, and grabbed the binoculars from Camilo.

“What happened?” she asked, her heart beating so hard it felt like it was going to jump out of her body.

“I don't know, she just....dropped!”

“Someone was shooting over there,” Dolores mumbled, her hands over her ears. She was rocking on the spot. “Díos Mio, did she get shot?”

“She's hanging on,” Isabela told them. “She's still got the chain, she's hanging on...I need to get her over here...”

She threw the binoculars over her shoulder and concentrated on growing the root that was now dangling Mirabel over the fire, twice as hard as she had before. A burning sensation spread across her brain, little veins popped out on her skin, a trickle of blood started dribbling from her nose...

Grow, damn you! Grow!

The root pushed out of the rock, maybe two feet, maybe three.

Then it stopped.

…..

The attackers had given up. Three of them stayed behind to lay covering fire but one was hit by a sniper's bullet, the other two captured. El Verraco would deal with them later. All in all, the attack had been an annoyance. It was a shame about the forest, which would blaze for hours, maybe days, but they could move out of the plantation into another of the hideouts. They were cut off from the valley but they could keep walking along the river.

“Go fetch my bride,” El Verraco said. “I think we'll be moving the wedding forward, just in case.”

…..

The gunshots didn't hurt much, Mirabel's leg mostly felt numb. But she assumed she'd lost quite a lot of blood, because her head was spinning. She had just about managed to wrap the chain around her wrist before she fell, and the root she was hanging onto felt like it was bouncing around under her weight.

If I fall she thought, with a giddiness that seemed at odds with her situation, what'll kill me first? The impact or the fire?

“Shit,” she heard someone hiss from the cliff-face. “Didn't I tell you to stay still?”

“I did,” she answered, twisting in the wind. “I still am.”

She heard the tall man bark for the rest of the men to help him, she was too far down for him to reach and pull her up. These militiamen, in their khaki trousers and leather boots, they blended into the rocks. To her, they just looked like a group of vaguely dun-coloured blobs.

Not El Verraco, though. Even through her sightless eyes, he was always sharp, made of shadows and corners. He was reaching down his hand to her.

“Pull yourself up,” he commanded.

His men were holding him steady as he leaned towards her.

“Take my hand, I'll pull you up,” he commanded again.

She felt blood dripping down her leg, dangling off of her toe, before it fell away into the fire.

I don't want to die.

The whispers circled around and around in her mind.

Let go. This is not the life for you. Let go, and your suffering will be over.

El Verraco clearly knew what she was thinking, because his next command was tinged with a small bite of panic.

“Get up here NOW!” he bellowed, reaching for her with such force that he nearly brought his own men down with him.

She took a deep breath, made her peace with death, and pulled her hand out of the chain.

She let go.

…..

They watched her fall.

Isabela's arms were still outstretched, as if she could catch her.

They watched as she turned once, in the wind, like a wayward flower petal, and was swallowed up by the flames.

How long they stayed there, like that, nobody could say. They were struck dumb in the aftermath. Isabela wiped the blood from under her nose. Luisa stared at the spot in the valley where Mirabel had fallen, as if she thought time could reverse if she stared long enough.

Dolores was the only one who spoke, when words finally came back.

“She let go,” she said, over and over. “She let go. Why did she do that?”

Camilo huddled close to his sister, his arms wrapped around his legs, staring at nothing.

What am I going to tell Mama?

What am I going to tell Papa?

Isabela only had one answer to that question.

You'll tell them the truth. You'll tell them you failed her.

…..

The men thought that El Verraco had finally lost his mind completely. He insisted they put out the plantation fire and stay where they were, and have the forest searched once it was safe to go inside. Exactly what he thought he could do with the charred corpse of his child bride was anyone's guess.

They had lost much of their stored food and equipment in the fire, and many of the rooms were ruined including his own. The men muttered among themselves, the beginnings of mutiny. Truthfully many of them had felt unhappy about El Verraco keeping the girl captive, some had daughters of their own not much younger. In the old days he would have seen an attack like this coming from a mile away, but the old fool was driven mad by lust and legacy.

Vargas tried to drink his guilt away. He couldn't understand why Mirabel had chosen to let herself drop into the fire rather than live as El Verraco's wife. Sure, the old man was a monster, but she would have had her children to keep her happy, and he would have died in a few years anyway and then she could have had whatever life she wanted.

What a waste.

He had seen a glimpse of something new in El Verraco after she dropped. A strange thing, a look in his remaining eye, as if he'd seen a ghost. Perhaps it had finally hit home what a monster he had let himself become, when a girl had chosen death over being in his bed. He looked smaller, somehow, cowed.

…..

They walked home in angry, tearful silence. Luisa had wanted to stay behind, to see if they could at least bring Mirabel's body home for a proper burial, but she was coldly reminded that the fire was so hot there would have been nothing to find. It was still smouldering when they left for home.

Their parents were furious when they arrived at Casíta's door, they had been worried sick of course, but their anger faded as the whole sorry story came out, little by little, punctuated by broken sobs. Everyone shed tears then.

Except for Julieta.

On hearing how her daughter plummeted headfirst into a raging wildfire, Julieta rose from the table and went to her room. Not even Augustin was allowed in to see her.

“I'm sorry,” Isabela sobbed outside the door. “I tried to save her Mama, I really tried!”

Before, the grief had been tense, fraught with the hope that Mirabel would come back. Now it was replaced by a softer grief, no less miserable but more simple. They shared stories about Mirabel that made them chuckle, the snowdrifts around Casíta dwindled to a gentle summer rain, nobody slept alone but cuddled two or three to a bed for comfort.

Alma, as was to be expected, took the lead when it came to planning a memorial service. She brought in the villagers to take care of the food, for Julieta had stopped doing anything since she heard of her daughter's passing. The Gúzmans offered their support, arranging the decorations, sending the word out.

With no body, it would be an unusual wake, so they gathered many things that Mirabel had made over the years to host instead of the body. Alma was taken aback when many of the villagers brought blankets, shawls, children's toys, until the memorial table was piled with these tokens.

“She made this for me when I learned to read,” a little girl said proudly as she donated a small stuffed eagle.

“She helped me fix my shawl just before my wedding,” a young woman explained, adding an intricately embroidered wedding garment to the table. “I couldn't have gotten married without it.”

“She made this for my mother,” the blacksmith said, unfurling a fine wool blanket. “It's the only thing that keeps her feet warm in winter, so she says.”

It was both heartening and deeply tragic that the village loved Mirabel so much. The Madrigals would not mourn alone.

Later, when the memorial was over and everyone drifted off to bed, Alma found Julieta in the kitchen by herself, clutching a cup of coffee that she wasn't drinking.

“It was a beautiful service,” she said to her daughter. “Mirabel will stay strong in all of our hearts.”

Julieta had been stone-faced throughout the whole ceremony, no tears, no smiles, just blank. She barely said a word when the villagers offered their condolences.

“Do you remember what you said when she came back?” she asked Alma, quietly.

“I don't understand what you...”

“Yes, you do. When she came back to us.”

“...I don't remember.”

“You said, someday whatever it was that took her away would come back for her.”

“That was different, Julieta,” Alma sighed. “Please, it's late...you need to get some sleep, amore.”

“You were right,” Julieta continued, as if Alma hadn't spoken at all. “How does it feel to be so right?”

Her voice broke on the last word and she sobbed wretchedly into her coffee cup. Alma tried and failed to console her until sunrise, when her husband took her to bed.

…..

Burning was supposed to hurt, wasn't it?

And crashing headfirst into the ground was supposed to be unpleasant, at the very least.

But Mirabel's head, from what she could tell, was mostly intact. And her skin was slightly damp and decidedly not on fire. She struggled to open her eyes, expecting to see nothing but burning trees.

There were no trees in her immediate eyeline. Her body was numb, wet, a little cold but not in an unpleasant way. All she could see was an inky black expanse, a few floating orbs that glowed faintly in the darkness.

Ah, I'm in heaven. Or hell is much nicer than I expected.

Curiously though, her leg was hurting much more now than when she got shot. Were you supposed to feel pain in heaven? Or hell? Surely a dead person didn't feel pain?

She tried moving her arms, and realized that wet feeling was because she was floating in lukewarm water. Curious, she always sank like a stone whenever she tried to swim before. Just in her eyeline she could see the layers of her wedding dress float and bob in the water like a jellyfish.

Hang on...

She raised her hand out of the water to hover above her face. Amazingly, she could see the little whorls and lines on her fingertips. She hadn't been able to see them without her glasses for as long as she could remember.

Leaning forward to tread water, her feet brushed the floor. She stood on her uninjured leg and took in everything around her. The water she was in was a great lake, covered with tiny islands, each glowing multicoloured hues in the dark. And as she looked more closely at the one nearest to her, she could see that the surface of these islands, all the trees that stretched up to disappear into the dark, all the flowering bushes and sparkling rocks, were covered with butterflies and moths.

There was that familiar whisper, except now it wasn't so much the sound of rustling paper but recognizable voices, thousands of them. She could even make out a few words.

...missed you...

...don't....

...we are glad...

...she will be....

….honoured...

One of the moths, a pale green creature with dark eye spots on its wings, gently landed on her finger. As she watched, the insect carapace shifted, folded, melted into itself, and a tiny naked humanlike figure stood with its tiny arms outstretched, showing off its new body for her.

And yet, with all this strangeness going on, her mind kept going back to that one discovery.

I can see down here.

[tackyink]

Why do I do this to myself, I ask, as I post the next chapter two weeks after the first one, which took four years, thus defeating the entire point of extensive editing and risking a huge tone shift. Then again, I’ve been whining about it so much that it would be odd not to share.

Chapter 1

— — — — — — — —

Chapter 2

The sun pounds down with criminal intent as Alex and her friend run across the terrace of Mrs. Isabel’s monumental house. They are adventurers this time, or maybe pirates. It doesn’t matter. The reflection of the light on the colorful tiles and whitewashed buildings is blinding, and her friend’s blonde hair makes her glow like she’s wearing a crown woven with sunlight. They are wearing matching pendants of stone that she picked for them while she was on a trip.

Laughing, her friend turns to Alex with a toy chest between her hands, but Alex can’t hear the sounds coming from her mouth and her face is a featureless blur that she can’t make sense of. Who’s this person? The stress of not being able to focus on her face makes the image vanish into white, then black, then...

When Alex woke up, she vaguely remembered dreaming about home, so she didn’t give it much thought. She very rarely remembered dreams, and dreams related to the past were the worst because they were filled with people she hadn’t seen in years, so she wasn’t going to make an effort to recall only to feel bad.

Getting up with a lot effort, she remembered she had gone straight to bed as soon as she got home the day before and she needed a shower. She groaned as she undressed and dropped on the nightstand the seastone pendant she usually wore under her clothes. It was a small, useless thing that may have at some point been used as a bullet and repurposed, but it was a gift from a family friend, and she liked how it looked. A good luck charm of sorts that clearly wasn’t doing its job.

The shower seemed to stretch to infinity as she reviewed the events of the previous day and what she needed to do from then on. She wished that had been a dream. If only things were always that easy.

True to word, the pirates had left with the rising sun. Alex didn’t get to see their ship, even though the first thing she did that morning was go to the port to sneak a glance and contemplate the fish-shaped submarine in its entire tacky splendor. She’d always liked watching ships, ever since she was a kid and sat down at the beach or near the shipyard to see them from up close.

The following weeks were a haze of bureaucracy and preparations to leave her post at the library. She booked a ticket for a passenger ship to the city-island of St. Poplar with the intention of catching another ship from there that could sail her to the Sabaody Archipelago. Then she’d need to request permission to cross the Red Line, and once she was there, well, it wasn’t like she was in a big hurry to return home. But if she didn’t enter the New World soon, there was a chance that once the Poneglyph was be discovered and she’d be held up as soon as she set foot on holy land.

Nearly a month and a half had passed by the time she was able to get all her ducks in a row: training her replacement at work, sending letters to friends and family telling them she was moving, as well as shipping a couple of boxes to the Sabaody Archipelago. When that was done, Alex spent the longest three weeks of her life inside that passenger ship, trapped in a vessel wondering where the heck was her life going, but after several stops along the way, in a very early morning, she arrived to Saint Poplar. She had about a month to go until the renovations started and she became officially a fugitive. Probably. The fact that she wouldn’t be able to know if she was overreacting unless shit hit the fan didn’t help her feel secure in any decision she took, but hey, if she was wrong and nothing happened in the end, she could always go back to Duster Town.

The first thing she did upon arrival was consult the ship schedules at the port. Several pages with timetables were tacked to a board with a glass cover. It was better kept than most information boards she had come across, but it was to be expected, since Saint Poplar and the surrounding islands were popular tourist spots.

By the looks of it, she had missed the last direct ship to Marineford by two days, and the next one wasn’t scheduled yet because there was an Aqua Laguna alert. Joy. She had to explain her predicament to a few locals until one of the women working at the port gave her something useful to work with.

“There should still be a liner leaving Water 7 in a few days. They usually wait until the last day so as many people as possible can leave the island before the sea gets too rough.”

Alex took this information as well as one would take a knee to the solar plexus. Another trip meant more money wasted. It was becoming increasingly evident that she’d have to pick up a job somewhere before she was able to cross the Red Line, because safe passage required money. Lots of it. And unless she robbed a bank, she didn’t think she’d be able to get it before the archive renovation started. She had a gun. And she entertained the idea for the entirety of two seconds before coming back to reality.

“Okay,” she said. If nothing else, she’d be able to sightsee. That was an island she had wanted to visit for a long time. “Do you know where can I take a ship to Water 7?”

“There are no ships to Water 7,” the lady replied, amused. “There’s the Sea Train.”

“Oh! I forgot.” It was very much like her to know the Sea Train was a thing and not remember that it had an actual purpose, besides making a city famous. “Is the station far from here, or…?”

“No, it’s…” She looked below the ship schedules in front of them. There was a faded map of the city behind the glass. She pointed one spot, on the opposite side of the city. It was mostly a straight line from where she was if she followed the main streets. “Here. It’s easy to find.”

She had to resist the temptation to pull out of her backpack a fountain pen and draw the map on the back of her hand, since she didn’t trust her memory all that much, and instead she said, “Thank you very much!”

The woman smiled at her, lifted a crate bigger than Alex without breaking a sweat, and went on her merry way. Meanwhile, she spent the following minutes staring intensely at the map to make completely sure that she wasn’t going to take a wrong turn even though there were absolutely no turns to make. Anxiety was a wonderful condition.

By the time she started moving, she was looking at the next hours in a different light. As inconvenient as this detour was, Alex felt more excited than anything else at the idea of riding a Sea Train and going to the city where it originated. She’d seen the pictures, and it was supposed to be all canals that the locals navigated with little boats instead of wheeled vehicles. May as well enjoy the trip as much as she could, right? 

Humming as she went, the trek across the St. Poplar brought her through streets of stone lined with tall buildings, some made of that same stone, but most of them in a more polished classical style. The pediments she saw suggested fifteenth century, so not too old. The less ostentatious houses were brick painted in light tones, with planters hanging from balconies that added little splashes of color to the otherwise muted palette and, in the case of those that were more worn out, provided the exciting possibility of said planters falling on a passerby’s head. Better to stay away from some of those cornices, too.

The atmosphere more than made up for the stoning risk, though. The city was as lively as it could be, and she found herself wishing that she had an excuse to remain in it for a little longer, but it was not to be. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a huge carnival going on in San Faldo around those dates? That explained the people walking around in costumes and elaborate masks. If she ever got to go on vacation again, she was making this area of Paradise her priority.

But if an Aqua Laguna was approaching, she needed to be out of its range as soon as possible, or she risked getting stranded in a place highly frequented by government employees where she could be spotted without backup. Moving swiftly was a priority until she could settle down and lay low to see how the situation unfolded.

She took longer to get to her destination than if she hadn’t kept getting distracted with every little thing that caught her attention, but eventually she was greeted by a platform and a white-gray building with a sign that identified it as Spring Station. She looked out to the sea, unable to see anything at first, until she noticed a shadow beneath the water. Railways swayed back and forth with the waves, a feat of engineering that she wouldn’t have believed had the train not been functional for over ten years. It even connected directly with Enies Lobby, so it had to be reliable. The government wouldn’t be using it to routinely transport their own people otherwise.

She walked into the station and headed straight to the timetable next to the ticket window. There were people sitting inside with bags, and many of them in costume. She wished she could spare the money and the time to join in, or at least run her hands over the velvety fabrics and intricate embroidery. She had done her fair share of sewing and the construction and materials of the costumes were seamstress porn.

The train was scheduled for departure in two hours. Better not to wander too far.

❦

There were many people inside Alex’s car, some dressed in regular clothes, some in costume. She would have liked to sit next to the window, but she was stuck in an aisle seat, and though she wasn’t uncomfortable by any means, she lamented having to spend the trip looking at her feet instead of the sea.

The seats were really nice, though. She wondered how luxurious first class had to be, if her butt was already on velvet and her feet on fluffy carpet. That was where the government agents must go, since when they stopped at Enies Lobby, nobody entered her car or the adjacent ones, judging by the lack of noise.

About an hour passed without incident until she noticed a faint smell, like smoke, and soon after, someone spoke through the PA system.

“Dear passengers, we inform you that the Sea Train is going to make an unscheduled stop at Shift Station for maintenance. The new hour of arrival to Water 7 will be 12 PM. We are sorry for the inconvenience. You may leave your seats until it’s time to resume the voyage.”

Varying degrees of protests filled the car, but Alex couldn’t say she minded. The train was starting to get stuffy with so many people, and she sensed an incoming headache from the nonstop chatter of the group across the aisle.

A scarce minute later, the train reduced its speed until it came to a halt, and immediately after, a stewardess appeared to unlock the doors. Alex decided to get up, find out in what kind of place this Shift Station was, and stretch her legs, because the seat may have been velvet, but the cushion under it was long flattened. First class was hoarding the good ones for sure.

The smell of saltwater hit her in the face with the subtlety of a Buster Call. She was very confused at how much water she was seeing until she realized that the station was little more than a platform on each side of the rails, a lighthouse, and a house in the middle of the ocean.

There wasn’t much to see once the first impression wore off, though she could have easily spent hours just watching the hypnotic swaying of the waves. There had always been something drawing her to it. She thought about how terrifying it had to be getting caught there during a storm, and how solid the little house on the platform must have been to still be standing there for a decade. The station master, if there was one, had to have nerves of steel.

Since she had nothing else to do, she stretched and began to pace around the platform, watching the passengers who had also gotten off the train. Not too many, considering the amount of people that were travelling in it, but she had to admit the platform amidst the waves was not for the faint of heart. She was certainly not going to get close to the edge. She saw mostly the same types of people she had been sitting with, but from the first car appeared a group dressed in expensive clothing and another of men in black suits.

She did a double take when she saw a familiar World Government insignia on the lapels of their jackets. Embroidery work was wasted on those people. They were Cipher Pol agents, and while their presence was more than reasonable, they still put her on edge. Best not to get close. How did one try their hardest to not look guilty without looking even guiltier?

Faced with this unsolvable conundrum, she diverted her gaze to look anywhere but at them, and out of the corner of her eye she noticed one of them look in her direction for a moment before going back to their conversation. Slowly and innocently, if steps could be walked in such a way, she ducked into the building and decided to keep to the shadows until the train was ready to go. Out of sight, out of mind, they said, and in case she actually became a fugitive, she didn’t need to be remembered by a member of an intelligence agency.

The fresh air was nice, though. Definitely worth sharing her vital space with government agents for a few minutes.

“Chimney got clogged again, didn’t it?”

Alex wanted to jump out of her skin when she suddenly heard a voice behind her, but the upside of being in a constant state of mild anxiety was that she just tensed up very hard when she got spooked. Shoulders squared and butt firmly clenched, she turned around to see an old woman with a grin so wide that it dipped into the uncanny valley. She was stocky, with lime green hair tied in braids, and wore a hat with Water 7’s initials that probably meant she worked there.

This was not how Alex had expected the station master to look, and if she had had it in her to worry about complete strangers, she would have been concerned about the woman’s safety.

A small girl with lips and hair conspicuously similar to the woman’s spoke up from behind her, annoyed. “I didn’t! I’ve been going every day!”

The older woman laughed loudly. “I meant the train, not you!”

The girl huffed and left, but the older woman stayed.

Now that she was facing her, her breath hit Alex, and it reeked of alcohol. Oh dear. She hoped the woman didn’t have a terribly important job there. She didn’t get what was so funny about the exchange, but she didn’t want to ask, either.

“I don’t know,” she replied with hesitation, realizing she had been asked a question. “They just told us we were going to stop for a while.”

“It happens sometimes.” She said. The grin was perpetually etched in her face. “They made the chimney too long, but Tom always said it looked nicer that way. You’d think Iceburg would have more sense once he took over, but he says he doesn’t want to change it.”

As soon as those names were dropped, Alex’s brain began to try and make connections like a madman with a wall covered in papers trying to make sense of a conspiracy theory. She didn’t know if the woman was assuming she knew who those people were or she was so drunk that she didn’t care.

Fortunately for Alex, she did know, marginally, who she was referring to – Iceburg, Water 7’s current mayor, was famous worldwide thanks to the Galley-La Company, and by Tom she assumed she meant the man who designed the original sea train. That name would have escaped her, had not a number of coincidences engraved it in her mind.

She couldn’t say if Tom had been forgotten as a relic of a past era or forcibly ejected from public memory as a result of being connected to Gold Roger and ever-present racism. He was a genius inventor, the one who put Water 7 on the world map by building the Sea Train, and the world returned the favor by executing him.

Most executions relating to the Pirate King had happened when Alex was still very young and didn’t pay much attention to anything that went on outside of her immediate vicinity, but Tom’s happened much later, when she was twenty and being aware of the world’s geopolitics was an indispensable part of her studies. They granted him a few more years to finish the Sea Train, and everybody back then had been convinced that his service would be repaid with a pardon, but that wasn’t how the World Government worked.

Unstoppable in their mission to purge every little thing that remained of Roger, they eliminated the man who built the Oro Jackson. Alex’s friend opened a bottle of his wife’s good whiskey, and then another, and suddenly it was four in the morning with him slurring and sobbing on the table, and his wife was halfway through the second pack of cigarettes of the night and Alex was so drunk in solidarity too that it was a good thing that her chair had a sturdy back and armrests, because otherwise she was pretty sure she’d have slid to the sticky floor and stayed there listening to old stories. He had a killer hangover the next day and Alex was just sleepy because young bodies were capable of amazing things, and then everything seemed to return to normal.

That had been a bad year, and a combination of everything happening at once and managing to torpedo her own academic career meant that putting it behind wasn’t an easy thing to do. Aside from Tom’s execution bringing down the mood considerably and her own personal problems, passage through the Red Line was also shut for months after queen Otohime’s assassination, meaning that Alex couldn’t return home at the time the country was going through the worst political unrest in centuries, and even if she had been free to go, the long absence would have made her flunk the year and lose her scholarship. Alex remembered that year like one remembered a fever nightmare: fuzzy, never ending, with huge gaps in the middle, yet sinking its claws so deep within that it was just a mention or reminder away from resurfacing. Sabaody got worse around that time, too, due to Doflamingo’s rise to Shichibukai and king status. His auction house started operating in the archipelago while Marines looked the other way, and kidnapping crews grew in number and activity.

All in all, not the best time of her life. In fact, current technically-not-on-the-run Alex was still faring so much better than past Alex that the thought wrapped around from depressing to funny.

She looked at the Sea Train, trying to imagine it with a shorter chimney. Two men were at the top of the smokebox with big brushes. “I can see their point. The proportions would be off.”

The woman must have been in a very good mood, because she chuckled. “I’m not an engineer or an artist, so I can’t say. Why are you here, anyway? Do you need anything?”

“Oh, no, sorry, it’s just—” She thought about the Cipher Pol agents out there. “There’s a lot of people on the platform.”

“And it’s windy, too,” she said, looking at the sky. “People have gotten blown away before, you know.”

“…Oh. That’s good to know, thanks,” she said, timidly taking a step back into the house so she wasn’t being hit by the wind anymore. Alex still had some time to kill and was curious about the woman, and talkative as she was, she assumed she wouldn’t mind a bit of prodding. “You mentioned Iceburg and Tom. Do you know them?”

The laugh that came next didn’t sound as happy as the other ones, somehow. “Know them? I’ve known Iceburg since he was a little brat. Tom was a good friend. Did you know that Iceburg was his apprentice? Not that these people care,” she nudged her head towards the Cipher Pol agents and Alex sank even deeper into the little house. “Tom died so they could save face, but they won’t touch Iceburg because he’s useful. That’s all they mean to them.”

Alex didn’t know very well how to respond, but she felt the need to say something. “I have a friend who said the same. He sailed on one of Tom’s ships years ago.”

The woman looked at Alex, and beyond the drunken stupor, some clarity shined behind her eyes. “Oh? And what did he think about it? Was it smooth sailing?”

Alex smiled just a little bit. “Not really, but he says it was the best ship in the world.”

The woman cackled, happily this time. “Of course it was! He made the best ships! Not even Iceburg or…” She trailed off, and Alex couldn’t tell if she had forgotten where she was going or she had done it on purpose. “Say, are you headed to Water 7?”

“Yes, why?”

“I need you to do me a favor. All this talk’s gotten me nostalgic and the Aqua Laguna will be here any day, so…” The woman walked to a counter, pulled out a notebook, wrote something, tore out the page and kissed it before folding it twice. She waddled back to Alex and gave her the paper. “Give this to Iceburg.”

Alex’s hand froze with the paper already in it. “I… don’t think I can do that. Isn’t he famous? How am I supposed to meet him?”

The woman brushed her concerns off like nothing, and Alex’s nerves didn’t appreciate that. “Nah, it’s not a problem. Go to Dock 1 in the afternoon, he’s usually there avoiding official duty. Tell them Kokoro sent you. That should be enough.”

“Okay…?” She said, still unsure. “I won’t promise anything, though.”

“No need for promises, just deliver it. I need a drinking buddy.” And she added, “You should go to Blueno’s bar while you’re there. The booze is cheap and the food is good, and that isn’t something you can’t say about many places in the city.”

“Oh?” This new topic was interesting. “Is it very expensive?”

Kokoro laughed. “You’ll see when you get there.”

That sounded ominous for her budget, and Alex didn’t feel too good about this ordeal she had been roped into because the last thing she wanted to do was enable an alcoholic lady. But maybe Iceburg would look after her…? They were longtime friends, according to her.

At any rate, there wasn’t much point in refusing the errand. If delivering the note happened to be too complicated, she could pass and no one would be none the wiser. Her priority was to find a ship and get to Sabaody the sooner, the better.

And when she was there, maybe tell her friends that she had met a friend of a friend.

❦

When Alex arrived to Blue station, she had to remind herself that she had several objectives in mind and sightseeing came second. She put on her sunglasses to block out the glare of the sun and its reflection on the water, and looked up.

In front of her stood a colossal city built upwards and turned fountain, with five different levels of construction that culminated in an upwards surge of water. It was collected by a series of canalizations that crossed the city from the top to sea level and divided the second tier in smaller areas.

Water 7 was one of the many independent state-islands in the area, and though not affiliated with the World Government – it hadn’t been a notable location at all, before the Sea Train that ironically connected it to Enies Lobby was put in motion – its globally renowned shipyards often worked on Marine ships and other vessels for people with important positions in the government. It was said that nowhere else in the world could you find better shipwrights than in Water 7, and the man famously acclaimed for it was Iceburg, current mayor and owner of the aforementioned shipyards. He had founded the Galley-La company a few years ago, recruiting the best shipwrights he could find for his behemoth of an enterprise, and it worked. Alex was actually excited to see firsthand what all the fuss was about.

But first things first, and before taking the mysterious note to the mayor, she needed to find the ship that would take her to the Sabaody Archipelago.

She got unnecessarily lost several times inside the labyrinth of canals and side streets because she refused to walk up to people and ask, but eventually, she found the Grand Canal of the island and the harbor where most ships docked.

It didn’t take her long to mind a means of transport, thankfully. The passenger ship departed the next day in the morning, and with a lot of pain, Alex had to fork over a good chunk of her remaining savings to secure a ticket on such short notice. It wasn’t the end of the world, since, she already counted on having to stay in Sabaody for a while to rebuild her budget, but it stung.

After the more pressing issue was dealt with, she took a walk around the area to find somewhere to eat, maybe try some local specialty, but she felt her hunger vanish when she looked at the prices of the menus outside. Kokoro had been right. What was the place she had mentioned… Bruno’s? Blueno’s? Yeah, that sounded familiar.

Unfortunately, a cursory glance didn’t reveal its location. If it was cheaper, it was probably somewhere less central, and if that was the case, she’d have more luck crossing the bridge to Green Bit unscathed than finding it without assistance.

Face with the unavoidable fact that she had to ask someone if she had any hopes of finding the place, she took a look around and decided she might as well procrastinate on it for as long as she could. She started to walk towards the upper part of the city, the Shipbuilding Island, where the docks were located, or so multiple signposts said. It really drove home that they were the main attraction of the city, more than the canals of the amazing architecture.

Getting there was going to take a while. She could have rented one of those cute Yagara boats, but she was cheap as hell, and, not less importantly, the critters seemed a little overenthusiastic. After the trip, all the walking she had done and the lack of food, she wasn’t in the mood to be social with anybody, human or not.

Maybe she would be lucky and come across Blueno’s place as she went to the shipyards. Yeah. That was a hopeful lie she could hang onto while she forced her body to walk way more than it was used to.

She hummed on her way up, singing to herself when she went through empty streets. As it turned out, the difficulty of reaching the shipyards by foot wasn’t finding the way up, but rather being in the proper sidewalk when she happened upon the next bridge or set of stairs, and after an hour she had lost count of the amount of times she had reached a dead end and had to turn back to the nearest bridge to cross the street and ascend, from the third instance onwards accompanied by a cranky ‘GAAAAH’ as she ran in the right direction. One would have thought this wouldn’t have won her any points with the locals, but she heard a few snickering at her and saying something in a language she didn’t speak but universally translated as ‘hahaha, tourists.’

She’d be the first to admit that going up that monumental city while carrying a backpack wasn’t her brightest idea, but she was damned if she was going to cave in at that point and rent the Yagara. She’d wash downstream on the way back if it came to that, but she had to get to the top now by her own means.

The moment she set foot on Shipbuilding island, she walked a few steps away from the staircase to not block it, dropped her backpack, and then her ass next to it to catch her breath.

When she recovered enough to raise her head instead of thinking how miserably sore she was going to be in the morning, she was greeted by an even better view than when she arrived to the Blue Station, and she pushed her glasses up for a moment to better see the colors of the city.

The lowest level of Water 7 extended below her, clusters of white houses and orange roofs covering the entire expanse of the island that wasn’t occupied by the canals. The wind blew harder at that level, too, with less obstacles in its path, since that part of the city was built on a steep incline, and it carried with it the spray of the central fountain, painting a timid rainbow across the sky. She imagined the view at night being just as stunning.

She chose to view this as the reward for her efforts, and then snorted at her the consolation prize of her own making.

As nice as it was to stare at the city and the sky and sea beyond, she was there with a double mission of getting the note to Iceburg and being a little nosy, so she looked at the monumental stone door she had just crossed with the number three painted on it. She was willing to go out on a limb and assume that that wasn’t Dock 1, so she began to circle around the area to find the next one, and once again she had to go the way she had come when she saw the next door had a four. Alex would be the first to agree that the most powerful force in the universe was cosmic irony, but after the sidewalk business while she made her way up there, this seemed a little excessive.

At least the circular shape of the area and the conveniently located bridges allowed her to cross over the canals with ease, saving her from getting lost again, and in a matter of minutes door number one, wide open, came into view.

At first she didn’t know where to go, since each dock could have easily been a town on their own. She began to walk upwards, wondering how was she supposed to find Iceburg and with little intent to go out of her way to find him if she didn’t have luck. A couple of minutes later, she noticed a group of townspeople standing in a half circle and staring at something. Alex decided to approach them and see what was going on. There was a good chance that the mayor himself was attracting the crowd, if he really was as popular as the rumors said.

Standing at a safe distance from the group, she realized that it was composed mostly by women, and she looked at whatever had them so interested. A man with his torso covered in tattoos was carrying a couple of long planks over his shoulder with surprising ease, and another one, farther away, was sawing a tree trunk so big that it couldn’t be for anything but a mast. He caught Alex’s attention because for some reason he was wearing a top hat that clashed horribly with the rest of his outfit and there was a pigeon sitting on a nearby pile of crates and watching him work with surprising focus. None of them, obviously, looked like mayor material.

Alex wasn’t sure what the crowd was doing there until she heard a hushed comment about the shipwright’s arms and being able to break concrete with those. Oh, God, they were there to ogle at the shipwrights? Alex wasn’t nearly straight enough for this. How was that even allowed? She took a step away from them, but by then a cheerful man wearing a tracksuit of questionable taste had noticed the group and acknowledged them with a wave and a smile. One of the girls swooned, and Alex died a little inside, then died some more because she had worked hard on leaving behind her ‘not like the other girls phase’ but the circumstances weren’t helping matters.

The other workers were busy, but the new face seemed to be free at the moment, he looked friendly, and she had come to the conclusion that she’d have to communicate with strangers if Kokoro’s note was to be delivered. She waved back at the man with the paper in her hand and something that resembled urgency on her face. She wasn’t hopeful, but to her surprise, he started to walk towards her. At the same time, the man with the top hat finished the cut he was making and the white pigeon stood up, cooed at tracksuit guy, and flew to rest on the shoulder of his coworker.

“Hattori is so cute,” one of the women said.

Alex didn’t know anymore who of the three was Hattori. She was even more confused when top hat guy passed near his colleague and the pigeon said, “I’ll take care of it.”

“Lucci’s coming our way!” One of the younger girls said, excited.

“Do you think he’ll pick another fight with Paulie today?”

“I hope so! Did you see what his fingers did to the—”

Alright, time to unplug from the conversation. She could guess that Lucci was the name of the man, because she didn’t think a pigeon, no matter how articulate, could inspire so much passion.

The name gave her pause.

Where had she heard it before? It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Maybe she had heard someone talk about him at some point. He had to be a renowned shipwright if he was working in Dock 1 of Water 7, of all places. 

Lucci was tall, but she didn’t realize just how much until he was right in front of her, staring her down in a way that, in any other context, she’d have assumed meant that he was about to snap her neck. Was he taller than Trafalgar Law, or did the top hat made him look like he was? She only knew that if she ever had the back luck of bumping into the guy, she would likely split her forehead against his pectoral muscles. The man was built like a classical marble statue with facial hair, tattoos, and a serious case of resting bitchface. She could empathize with him on the latter.

“Can I help you?”

Alex didn’t know whether to look at the pigeon or the man, and in a panic, she settled on the man because it felt wiser to not lose sight of him than a bird.

And what a bird. That pigeon was easily the size of her head.

“I met a woman named Kokoro at Shift Station. She asked me to give this note to mayor Iceburg,” she said, showing the folded note to him.

He extended a hand for her to pass the paper, and she wasn’t sure how ethical it was to let another person read a clearly personal note with a kiss stamped on it, but to be quite frank, she didn’t care and he and the close attention his group of fans was making her anxious.

A pair of strangely-shaped eyebrows lifted when he read the message.

“Kokoro?” The bird repeated. There had to be a trick there. That was a pigeon, not a parrot, they weren’t supposed be able to enunciate like humans. It was probably unreasonable of her to revoke her suspension of disbelief due to that when she knew there were so many strange creatures living in the Grand Line, but she had to draw the line somewhere. “Mayor Iceburg is doing his rounds right now. He should be here in a few minutes. You can wait for him over there,” he said, gesturing with a wing at a pile of neatly stacked timber across from where his owner had been working, and Lucci returned the note to her. “Don’t be noisy.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she retorted with a mix of indignation and embarrassment, reflexively taking a step away from him and the group she had just been associated with. The movement telegraphed against her will that she found him intimidating, which only served to embarrass her more. “Thank you.”

There really was no way anybody with functioning eyes could mistake her for one of the group. The ladies looked nice, and Alex looked like… well, she couldn’t tell, but she was glad she didn’t have a mirror on hand, because if she looked as sweaty as she felt, she wasn’t a pretty sight. The boots and big backpack on her back were also clear signs that she wasn’t from around there.

Wordlessly, Lucci returned to his job while Alex was left with the impression that she had just been made fun of, not that anybody could tell by the shipwright’s stony face. She relaxed a little when he left her alone, not in small part due to the attention of the group being lifted from her.

That place was nothing like the shipyards she was used to. Canals ran through it, same as in the city below, and led to other slide-like canalizations that connected to the lower levels. There were a lot of those all around the city, she had noticed, acting as roads for the Yagaras, and, she guessed in the case of the larger ones, to help transport the newly built or repaired ships from the docks to sea level.

Some time had passed when she caught sight of a blue-haired man in a striped suit walking in her general direction, closely followed by a blonde woman with a strict expression, and while he was busy inspecting the work of a shipwright, she noticed Alex was away from the crowd and made a beeline for her.

“Excuse me.” The tone of the pleasantry suggested that it was actually her who was excusing Alex’s presence. “Do you have any business here?”

Alex didn’t enjoy being talked down to, so the reply came out harsher that she meant. “As a matter of fact, I do.” When she realized how snappy she had sounded, she explained quickly, “I was told by Kokoro to deliver a message to mayor Iceburg, and he,” she gestured at Lucci, who was busy with his job and not paying them any mind, with the note, “said I could wait for him here.”

“Did he, now,” she replied, sending a skeptical glance at the man, and she extended her hand towards Alex. Someone must have pissed in her coffee that morning. “Let me see.”

That note was going to places, she thought, but the woman must have found its contents acceptable, because she returned it to Alex and told her, “Wait here.”

Alex was about to start having flashbacks of all the bureaucratic mess involved with her recent move out of Duster Town. The woman went to the man in the suit and directed him towards Alex while she walked over to Lucci to tell him something she wasn’t able to hear because she now had to pay attention to the mayor of the city.

“Hello,” he said, sounding much politer than the woman. “Kalifa tells me you have a message for me.”

It was curious, comparing the old descriptions she had heard of the man with his current appearance. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in a suit twenty years ago, for instance.

“Yes, from Kokoro. Here,” she said, finally giving the note to its intended recipient and feeling like she was set free from a curse.

“Hm?” He opened he note, and after just a split second his face turned into a grimace. “Ugh, gross!”

“Uh, what?” The note had already passed two filters, so she couldn’t imagine what could warrant that reaction.

He showed her the note and Alex read it for the first time. Same place, same time? It said. The lipstick imprint of the kiss was smudged and stained the whole page. Iceburg didn’t waste any time in crumpling the paper and tossing it over his shoulder.

“Thank you for delivering the message.”

“Mr. Iceburg! No littering!” The woman from before warned, but someone else replied to her.

“Don’t speak like that to Mr. Iceburg, you wretched woman! And show some property while you’re in the docks!”

The woman didn’t reply, but she sent a death glare to the man who had spoken up, and Alex could have sworn that she pulled down the zipper of her jacket lower than it already was, drawing an even bigger reaction from him.

“Nmaa, don’t mind them,” Iceburg said, sounding bored. WYou don’t seem from around here. Are you visiting?”

“Just passing by before the Aqua Laguna comes,” she replied. “But I wish I could stay longer.”

He smiled with something akin to pride. “It’s a good city, isn’t it? What have you seen so far?”

“Oh, well, I walked around the Grand Canal and the shopping district earlier, and I saw a bit of the city while I walked up here, but—”

“You walked here?”

Oh, this was so awkward. She should have tossed that note into the sea. “I’m a historian,” she replied, because that was an excuse that always curbed people’s curiosity. “I wanted to take my time exploring.”

“If that’s the case, have you seen the maritime museum yet? It’s near the Grand Canal, and there’s a showcase about the origins of the city right now.”

She wasn’t a big fan of museums, truth be told, but professional habit compelled her to go anyway. The list of places she had to visit didn’t seem to shrink. “No, but I’ll be sure to—Oh, that reminds me!” Might as well ask while she had his attention, she thought. “Kokoro recommended going to Blueno’s bar while I was here. Where can I find it?”

“Ah, good idea!” Iceburg’s face lit up. “Let’s see, what can we do… Since you don’t have a Yagara, let me ask Kalifa if she has a map of—”

“No need, Mr. Iceburg.” Someone else piped up. “It’s time for my break, so I can show her.”

The guy in the tracksuit from before was walking up to them, showing a warm smile.

“That would be perfect,” Iceburg replied, and the said to Alex. “This is one of our foremen, Kaku.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Kaku looked young and sounded old at once. “Likewise,” Alex replied. “I’m Alex.”

“Well then, Alex,” he said in a suspiciously cheerful tone. “I don’t have long, so we’ll have to get there in a jiffy. Are you ready?”

As ready as she was ever going to be until she had a good night’s sleep. “Sure. Whenever you…”

A not so inoffensive grin spread on Kaku’s face and he broke into a sprint in Alex’s direction, so fast that she couldn’t duck from his path before he threw an arm around her, easily lifting her from the floor, extra weight from the backpack and all, and he kept running toward the edge of the level and jumped.

She thought she yelled, but she couldn’t hear her own voice against the roar of the wind in her ears and her blood pressure rising at the absolute certainty that she was going to become a pancake, the only doubt being whether she’d be dry or wet at the bottom of a canal.

On reflex, she grabbed tightly onto the only thing available, which was Kaku’s arm firmly wrapped around her torso, and her grip was met with stone hard muscle. What was up with these shipwrights?

She saw Dock 1 get smaller and smaller at breakneck speed as she fell backwards, and she braced for impact and shut her eyes as the first rooftop approached, but they didn’t crash against it because Kaku did something before he hit it. She felt it in the shift of his body, like he had bounced off the surface.

Alex paid more attention to his feet after she realized she wasn’t going to die splattered against a rooftop, and the second time she saw it: right before his shoes touched the roof tiles, he jumped again, stepping on air, effectively creating the illusion that he was jumping from building to building.

The adrenaline-fueled fear of impending doom was suddenly replaced by cold dread.

She had seen that before. She knew what that was.

A civilian couldn’t possibly know how to do that.

So who was the man carrying her right now? The only thing separating her from certain death? Could he have learned to do that anywhere else or could it be a different technique? There was always a chance that he was retired, but he was so young, and already so skilled, and she knew for a fact that the Marines didn’t like letting go of those.

…Marines?

Where… where had she heard the name Lucci, again…?

She had to be imagining things, for sure, but she also had a strong feeling that she needed to take her leave from the island as soon as possible. She was sleeping with a gun under her pillow that night.

With a few last hops, Kaku landed on firm ground and Alex thanked her lucky stars when he put her down safely. She felt lightheaded, and wasn’t sure if it was because of the sudden freefall or that her all-consuming paranoia had her doubting the intentions of one of Galley-La’s foremen, which sounded increasingly stupid the longer her feet where in contact with solid stone.

“Here we are,” he said, gesturing at something behind Alex’s back.

Her reaction was slow, but when she turned around, she saw a door with a big red sign above that said Blueno’s.

She felt a pang of guilt for being afraid of the guy when he had done her a huge favor, albeit in a kind of dickish way. Dock 1 was a good ways away, and she would have given up if she had had to walk there. She looked at him and admitted, “That was pretty cool once I got over the heart attack.”

She still sounded kind of breathless and didn’t know if asking how he had learned to extreme parkour was a good idea.

Kaku laughed with joy that rang true. “My apologies about that. I rarely ever have company on the way down.”

She tried to picture Kaku grabbing Lucci the same way he had done to her and jumping down, and her brain broke during the attempt. “Yeah, I can’t imagine that colleague of yours with the top hat jumping down the…” She trailed off, interrupted by her own thoughts and questions about that other guy, and the pause became awkward. “Anyway—”

“You can ask,” he said, smiling.

She jumped at the opportunity. “Is he a ventriloquist?”

“It’s a hobby,” Kaku replied, amused, as he pushed the door open. “Ladies first.”

Alex didn’t know what it was with every strange man he came across lately that their courtesies sounded vaguely threatening, but she entered the venue, nonetheless.

It was much nicer than she had expected. The bartender was a wide man with a circle beard and hair sticking out like horns, and he was appropriately wiping a set of glasses behind the counter, like every barman should during their first introduction.

“Good afternoon, Blueno!” Kaku greeted him before Alex could say anything, going inside after her.

“Same as always?”

“Please.” He leaned against the bar. Alex sat on a barstool near him and tried to be emotionally ready to be the third wheel in two strangers’ interaction. “Oh, and something for the others, too. Whatever it is. We’re finishing a big repair today and you know how it goes.”

“Is it the Marine warship?”

“A windjammer for a private client. Working metal is a pain, and they want it yesterday.” He sounded displeased for the first time since they had met. “You can’t rush a good job.”

“The customer is never right,” Blueno agreed.

Kaku raised an eyebrow at him. “I hope that wasn’t directed at me.”

“Of course not,” Blueno’s reply sounded paternalistic. Alex could sense the history behind these two. “It’s odd to see you with someone else.”

Kaku put aside his mild annoyance to introduce her. “She’s Alex. She was visiting the shipyards and I brought her along on my way down.”

“Hi,” she said, looking for any other words she had learned during the course of her life and drawing a blank. Someone kill her, please.

“I see. I thought the landing sounded heavier than usual,” Blueno observed.

“Attentive as always.” Kaku commended him. “But what an awful thing to say to a young lady. She’s light as a two-by-four.”

“No offense meant,” Blueno said to her in good humor. “It’s part of the job.”

“None taken, I’m at least a four-by-four.”

There was a hint of a smile, on his face when he asked, “What will you have?”

“Whatever you recommend. I haven’t eaten since I woke up.”

“Can you believe she walked all the way to Dock 1 to sightsee?” Kaku chuckled. “I didn’t think historians were the sporty types.”

“You heard that?”

“I have pretty good hearing, too.”

“I can’t imagine what type of madman wouldn’t ride a Yagara to make that trip,” Blueno replied. No doubts about who he had in mind this time. “A historian, huh? I suppose this city’s fairly old.”

“The architecture’s really interesting.” She replied, finally reaching a topic that she could talk about. Though she was a bit concerned that they knew what she was because Suspicious Foreman was suspicious, she didn’t see what harm could come of it. “It’s impressive to think this is all supported by wood pillars.”

“They keep sinking year by year, though. At this rate, there won’t be a city in a few decades,” Kaku said, surprisingly grim.

“Thanks for showing me the rooftops while they’re still visible, then,” Alex joked in a weak attempt to bring his good mood back.

It worked. He had such a cute smile. “You’re more than welcome.” He turned to the bartender. “Now then, Blueno…”

“Right away,” the man replied, going into the kitchen and leaving Alex and Kaku alone for a few minutes.

A companionable silence, until Kaku broke it and his question put Alex on edge again. “Where do historians in the making study nowadays, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Marineford, mostly. There aren’t many places left.” The same people offering the current curriculum had made sure of it.

“And what drives someone so young to be so interested in history?”

She had been asked that question so many times, and the real answer was always curiosity. To learn the truths that shaped the present. She had the folder with the Poneglyph transcript in her backpack to account for that.

But even partial truths could be dangerous given her current situation, so she replied, “I could ask the same of you. How does someone so young get so good at building ships?”

There was a flash of surprise in his face at the question being turned against him. It was quickly substituted by one of his smiles, but Alex had the impression that he was very aware that she was deflecting on purpose. “I’ve liked them since I was a kid,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you why.”

She shrugged, mirroring his smile. “There’s your answer.”

He laughed lightly and turned to look at the bottles behind the bar with an amused expression. He didn’t insist or say anything else, and the more at ease he looked, the more anxious Alex grew.

It wasn’t long until Blueno showed up again with a bag full of sandwiches wrapped in paper in one hand and a towering plate of pasta with black sauce on the other that she set in front of Alex.

“Thanks,” Kaku said, putting the money on the counter and grabbing the bag. “See you later.” And he faced Alex one last time, lifting his cap a little in a polite gesture and revealing a blonde mass of curls. “It’s been a pleasure. Good luck on your travels.”

“Thank you!”

He left the bar, and his departure added to the leaning tower of pasta made her think that her day was starting to look up until she remembered that she had only mentioned she was leaving soon to Iceburg.

How long had he been listening in?

❦

She couldn’t sleep.

Despite her misgivings, the rest of the day had passed without incident. She booked a room for the night at an inn off the beaten path that Blueno had recommended, checked out the maritime museum, and nearly fallen asleep after half an hour because that was the effect that, sadly, most museums had on her. But she did see an old picture next to a Sea Train model of Tom, his two apprentices, and the master of Shift Station.

Time didn’t wait for anybody, she thought as she flexed her aching hands.

She ended up walking around again, this time only through the lowest district, rejecting even the mere sight of stairs, and saw a cape where someone had built the weirdest and most colorful house of the city. Near it was a scrapyard, and though she had no intentions of going close to either, a couple of locals told her to watch her belongings while she was there. It was a bit nostalgic.

It was difficult to believe, she thought as she stared at the ceiling of her room, that such a vibrant city was sinking under its own weight, and that as soon as the sea swallowed it, there would be nothing but stories being told about it. Maybe that was how those legends of ancient islands that disappeared came to be. Maybe Water 7 would become a legend to, a few centuries down the line.

She fidgeted with the stone around her neck, a nervous habit had for as long as she’d been wearing it. It was better than biting her nails, at least, but it looked weird when she wore it inside her clothes and unconsciously reached for it, so she did her best to avoid it.

She was very tired and sore from all that walking, but try as she might, she couldn’t turn off her thoughts. After way too much tossing and turning, she decided she would rather see more of the city than waste her time in bed. She could catch up on sleep when she boarded the ship to Sabaody, anyway.

She picked up the same pair of jeans she had been wearing all day, the black tank top she usually wore under her sweaters, and tossed around her shoulders the same red shawl she used to wear like a scarf in Harlun. It wasn’t cold outside, but the night breeze was somewhat chilly. Better safe than sorry.

She debated whether to pick up the gun in her backpack or leave it there, and she decided on the former. A present from her father when she came of age for the sake of her safety, and one she had never liked.

It wasn’t too late yet, only a few minutes past 10 PM, and there was still a healthy flow of people on the streets. Alex made her way to one of the many Yagara rental shops still open and paid for one of the small ones. There she went, defeating her own purpose like the hypocrite she was.

“One question,” she told the shop owner as she settled on the boat, “Are the docks open at this hour?”

“They usually leave the doors open, yeah. Sometimes there’s people working at night.” He replied. “Why, you want to go now?”

“I was thinking of checking out the view from the highest part of the city.”

“That so? Then you just need to go up one of the main canals in the Shipbuilding Island.”

“Thanks!” She said, and then patted the Yagara on the head. It was cold, wet and scaly. “Can you bring me to Dock 1? There’s no hurry.” She had seen one of them speeding through a canal early and she was not ready for that.

The Yagara uttered a high-pitched guttural sound that no fishlike creature had any business doing and started to swim at a relaxed pace.

Alex didn’t know how long it took them to get to their destination, distracted as she was watching the city from a different viewpoint, but the higher they went, the less people that seemed to be out. By the time they reached Dock 1, the area was devoid of human presence, and all the ship parts and materials Alex had seen in the morning had been either moved somewhere safer or covered by tarps to protect them from the weather.

The Yagara continued its slow ascent through the canal that separated Dock 1 and 2, and the base of the fountain wasn’t too far when she heard hammering sounds. Someone was still working.

Curiosity, as was usual, got the best of her and she told the Yagara to slow down. Whoever was there also noticed her presence, because the hammering stopped.

A man stepped under the light of a streetlight, hammer in hand, to check out the canal, and Alex realized with surprise that he was none other than Water 7’s mayor, though he had shed the jacket and shirt. He was wearing only an undershirt with those awful striped pants from before and business shoes.

“Who’s there?” He asked.

Alex realized the light didn’t reach her, so he was probably just seeing a shadow, and in the deserted dock it had to be more than a little unnerving. She nudged the Yagara towards the light and replied, “It’s me from before! Sorry to interrupt, I was just passing by!”

Iceburg looked at her with interest and approached her, so she thought it was only polite to step out of the boat.

“Where are you going at this hour?” He asked, stopping at arm’s length of her.

“I was trying to get to the top of the city.” She smiled apologetically. “I’m sightseeing.”

He relaxed upon hearing the explanation, and with a smile, he said, “Glad to see that the scare from earlier didn’t kill you.”

It was official, everybody in Dock 1 had decided to pick on her. “It could have!” She replied. “Does he do that often?”

“Jumping? Yes, but most of the time he doesn’t take people with him. He did it to Paulie once and he was foaming at the mouth when they landed. Never heard the end of it for a week." The fondness with which he spoke betrayed that he hadn’t minded the aftermath as much as the words suggested.

She didn’t know who Paulie was, but he was justified in being upset. She also thought that it was nice to meet a boss that seemed to appreciate his workers. “I don’t see other shipwrights around. Are you working here alone?”

“Nmaa…” he started lazily, “I sent them home. The heavy lifting was done; I can finish it myself.”

Iceburg may have been a shipwright before becoming president of the company, but Alex hadn’t expected him to do manual labor when he had paid other people for it. “The windjammer?”

“Kaku told you?” He sounded pleased, and he answered the unspoken question from before. She assumed he got it a lot. “My day job is meetings, papers and ass kissing all day long. I prefer this.”

This was much easier to reconcile with the stories she had heard of Water 7. “I can’t say I’d mind the papers, but the rest sounds exhausting.”

“Bodies need to move. Weren’t you doing field research today?”

“By accident.” She couldn’t help the smile that appeared on her face. He was easy to talk to, and seeing this side of him, she didn’t feel like she had to watch her words so much. “I’m trying to find a way home. Train and ship schedules brought me here.”

“You chose a difficult time of the year to sail. Is it far away?”

She nodded lightly. “It’s still a ways away.” Nonetheless, she was glad for this detour. Maybe that was why she found the courage to say, “I have a friend who came to this city about twenty years ago. He said you worked on his ship.”

Maybe it was because she lost filters when she was tired.

“Is that so?” He said, curious. “I’ve worked in many ships. Things were very different back then.” He glanced away, at the district that had only taken this shape a few years ago, thanks to him. “Did the ship do its job?”

She wondered what to say. Nothing that could do it justice, for sure. “Brought them to the end of the world, in fact.”

She wished she had been there to see it.

Iceburg’s eyes widened with surprise, and after a short, contemplative silence, he said, “That ship took much from us.” There was hurt in his voice. “I think Tom knew it would be one of his last, so he put his everything in it. He would have done anything for his friends.”

It was easy to forget that every great story had real people behind it. “Sorry for bringing it up.”

He shook his head. “We never regretted it, so… don’t. It was a magnificent ship. Tom’s best work, after the Sea Train.” He paused. “Is your friend okay?”

“Doing alright for sure. He’d be all over the papers if something happened to him.”

“That’s good to hear.” A smile that reached his eyes came back only to morph into a sigh in an instant. “Well, I need to go back to…”

“Of course!” She said very quickly. “Sorry for holding you up. It was a pleasure to meet you.” And to put a face to the stories, too.

“I should say the same,” he said, and it didn’t sound like an empty pleasantry. “Fair winds on the way back home.”

“Thank you.”

As he started to walk away, Alex hopped back on the boat and pulled the shawl tighter around her. Perhaps she should have put on a jacket, after all.

The view from the top of the district was as spectacular as she had hoped.

❦

She wasn’t sure how she got up from bed the next morning. Must have been the fairies that pushed her upright, because everything hurt and she was so exhausted that she couldn’t even open her eyes after a thorough face wash. Somehow, she managed to drag her feet to the dining room and have a light breakfast. Bless the laziness that had prevented her from changing into her pajamas again before she dropped on the bed when she returned from the docks, because she didn’t think she’d have been able to stick her legs in the right holes of the jeans.

She returned to her room, triple checked to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind, and checked out of the inn.

Despite the brief but intense stay, and the uneasy feeling she had since she had met Kaku, she didn’t really want to go, but she had done the right thing booking passage for the ship to Sabaody. Imagine getting stuck in a city next to one of the government’s main islands because of a high tide. No, thanks, she hadn’t come this far to fail when she was a week away from her destination.

So it was with a bit of regret that Alex boarded the passenger ship that would carry her to the archipelago, but she had always been good at ignoring what she felt like doing in favor of what had to be done, and this was going to be no exception.

From the deck, she saw a pirate ship sail past them, black flag with a straw hat billowing in the wind.

[nowitsdarkfic]

chapter eleven - part one (the bennett sisters)

a/n: I got an alert from southern california edison saying we could undergo a third power outage on Monday--I guess this upcoming windstorm is supposed to be pretty bad this time around, but at the same time, it’s incredibly vague because there’s no red flag warning where I live so who knows. But I also low-key had a feeling this’d be the case, too, like they’d dick us around a couple of times before the real trouble hits--but if there is, enjoy this chapter for the time being. It’s extra long, too, and so I decided to split it in half.

Maya is firmly upon my mind as I’m getting dressed and slipping my boots onto my feet before heading out for the day. Apparently it had snowed little flurries last night and there are more coming for tonight; after Spence called me, I wanted to have a move on out of Oswego and over to Rochester to meet these two girls he had told me about last night. I make a mental note to ask him their names again, but then again, they might tell me their names as soon as we step through the door.

I know it’s cold so I’ve got my good gloves on and my scarf wrapped around my neck and tucked underneath the lapels of my coat. I am still in disbelief that she cleaned the place from top to bottom, even with all that time on her hands. The cleaning lady Anthrax had in the Bahamas couldn’t even get it that well in more than that time. And now she’s probably helping Barney and Billy keep the House of Grey clean in the most down to the ground way possible. All I can do now is have a good time for a good time.

I lock the door behind me, and the I head out into the snow and the gray. It’s definitely upon me, that icy feeling hanging down from the gray sky. My hope is that Spence and I find something to eat for ourselves, if not in Rochester on the way there: I am absolutely starving at the moment.

And I still haven’t found my pocket knife. Damn it.

I’ve got my head bowed and my hands stuffed in my pockets even with the gloves on. Spence is once again posted up at the curb awaiting me: I round the front end of the car and throw open the passenger door, and then I collapse into the seat next to him. I groan from the intense cold on my face before giving a toss of my hair to keep it back from my face in the wake of the wind.

“Cold?” he asks me once I yank the door closed behind me.

“Could use a cup of Joey,” I retort back to him, pulling the seat belt across the my chest.

“Cup of Joey and a dispensing of Spence?”

“I dunno about that last bit,” I confess with a shrug.

“Oh, come on,” he teases me.

“Alright, fine,” I admit with an exasperated sigh. “A cup of Joey, a dispensing of Spence, and a little bit of--what’d you say their names were again?”

“Marcia and Sonia?”

“Marcia and Sonia, that was it!”

He tugs on the parking lever and we roll forward, cautiously from the damp spots all over the pavement before us; we make the round of the complex back to the entrance, and before we pull out to the street, I peer out the window down the street. The House of Grey has a blanket of pure white snow on the rooftop, and the windows are dark but it’s still quite early: Barney and Billy probably aren’t even awake at the moment.

Spence drives us along the road winding out of Oswego, through the trees, and all along the edge of the lake, the vast sheet of inky black waters to the right of us. Even from here, the bit road right above the shoreline, I can tell the little path I like to take walks on is blanketed with snow.

At one point, the sun breaks out from behind the gray clouds and shines onto my face and my shoulders. That feeling, the one of the cold sun on my black hair and my olive skin, and the fact I’m surrounded by frigid, unforgiving lake effect snow is enough to make me feel alone. Even with Spence next to me in the driver’s seat, I feel like I’m walking this path into this new chapter of my life all alone, this new chapter without the band that had welcomed me with open arms four years ago, this new chapter that includes driving over to Rochester for a visit of these two girls at their upholstery shop.

I keep my arms folded over my stomach in hopes to keep it quiet. So hungry...

It’s a bit of a drive over to Rochester, too, through all these trees and without any place to stop. This is going to suck so much; and I usually like this drive, too, because it’s only a little more than an hour away. I keep telling myself that it’s only an hour, but it eats away at me. I have to remember to eat something before I leave the next time I plan on going anywhere because this will kill me if I don’t.

“You know,” he tells me at one point, “I’ve got some Good and Plenties in the glove compartment if you’re hungry.” It’s that moment I start missing that box of Mike n Ikes back at my place: I shake my head when I remember the trembling sensations and the fact I passed out at Black Orchid.

I have my hands stuffed right into my pockets and I have the lining pressed against my stomach. As long as it doesn’t ache and drive me up the wall, I think I’ll be alright.

In fact, once we’re ten miles out from the bridge over the inlet of pitch dark cold waters, the feeling subsides and I relax a bit. I don’t even feel it once we do reach that bend in the road.

But it returns with a vengeance once we start seeing signs for restaurants and whatnot. I knit my knees together and bow my head.

“It’s alright, man, we’re almost there,” Spence assures me. I squirm in my seat: now it’s starting to hurt me. He takes the first exit from the bridge onto the bustling side streets of the other big city I know about. It hurts me so much that I pay no attention to his pulling up to the curb of wherever we’re headed; the one time I do lift my head is when we pass the street cleaner because even from down the block I can hear its gears turning and the steam inside making those whistling noises. I bring my head back down once we pass it.

Within time, he tugs on the parking brake and kills the engine.

I lift my head for a peek out the window at the two low brick buildings on the corner: I think we’re about three blocks from the heart of downtown because these seem like the kind of buildings that would lead up to the skyline. The one on the left has a big bay window with a sign reading “Smell the Magic — coming soon” in big hot pink letters, and next to that are glass double doors behind a sheet of plastic. Meanwhile, next door, I make out a sign reading “Sew Into You” in fancy black letters over a white background over the wide bright lit windows. Even from the passenger seat, I can make out all the stuff on their shelves.

“This must be the place?” I wonder aloud, clutching at my poor stomach. I want to know about the other place, though.

“The hell it is—come on.” Spence climbs out of the car first and I unbuckle the seat belt using one hand: I stagger out into chilly late morning right as the sun breaks free from behind the low hanging gray clouds once more. I close the door with my hip before I follow him into the building there on the right. He holds the door for me and I step inside first, my legs trembling at the knees all the while like a newborn horse.

To my left stand several shelves stacked with all manner of fabrics, from fine corduroy to the sexiest looking Chinese silk I have ever seen in my life. Next to those shelves are some spools of checkerboard fabric with so many color combinations to choose from that it makes my eyes hurt. Up on the wall is a quilt: in one corner is a big orange star with the names Ashley and Olivia sewn inside with royal blue embroidery; in another corner is a red glittering heart accompanied with a black rose. The quilt itself looks as though it was put together with scrap fabric. Meanwhile, to the right are even more shelves, including two long ones carrying spools of thread. 

This whole entire place is crammed full with sewing stuff: it’s the kind of place my aunt would have a field day in at any given whim.

“Spencer!” a woman’s voice calls from near the back of the room.

“Over here, Marsh!”

I turn my head to see two girls running through the main aisle towards us.

“Marcia—” He gestures to the one on the right skidding to a stop before us first. “—and Sonia.” Then to the one on the left right behind her.

I pressed my hands to my hips even though my knees continue to shake like crazy. I never would’ve guess they’re sisters: they’re almost like the Ridgeways back at Black Orchid in that they both could’ve come from two completely different parents but shared one. Marcia has a short little bob of black hair accentuated with a bright pink headband, and she’s a little bit full figured, probably from a love of baking which I totally get. Meanwhile Sonia has a head full of kinky brown ringlets down past her shoulders and she looks as though she likes to work out with her sinewy arms showing themselves to me from underneath her black shirt. And they’re both wearing black silk shirts with low necklines and black and white checkerboard miniskirts.

“The infamous Bennett sisters,” I declare.

“That’s us,” Marcia replies with a big beaming smile.

“You must be Joseph,” Sonia adds, imitating me and putting her hands on her hips.

“That’s Joey to you.”

[inthelife-of-blog]

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