Ferrier’s terminal, docks
The shroudlights lit up the pier, flickering off the neatly laid paving. Their golden tone was warm against the darkening eve, the sunset but a latent glow of lavender and peach in the horizon. The golden spindle and its cloak of night riddled with pinprick holes. The Fiend Moon was full, sparkling with a greenish undertone, and trailed by the Sage and Beloved. The ships tied down by thick mooring lines rocked in the wind and solar waves, gently.
She stopped to eye the docks, measuring the big hulls. A whole row of them. Number eight, he’d said — right? And impressive liftballoons? Squinting, she glared at the distance.
Like trying to tell one huge rack apart from another at the village fair. Suppose she’d have to be my wife for me to know her at a glance— She drew in a deep breath of the cooling air and turned towards the Fiend, bundled up Grub held tight against the chest as she bowed her head. The borrowed green coat about her shoulders was a welcome, heavy weight.
“ Akmal, dream for me. What needs saying, what needs showing. “ She begun the prayer as gran Verna had taught her, all those times she’d taken care of her. When they’d taken care of each other. She hadn’t really thought much of the words in her earlier years, thinking it all rather silly, until the old woman had actually passed on. After she’d left.
“ Sculpt me patient, shape me just. Generous in love, tender in loss. “ She kissed the pads of her fingers and lifted them up before her forehead, palms flat. They felt warm from the breath.
“ See my next step. Will it true. But most of all— “ Where the memorized verse diverged to invention, her voice grew more insistent, tone dipping as her stare met the moon’s round face.
“ Bless my damn child. “
Bunching up the fingers of one hand, she touched the rosette of their tips to her lips and blew a kiss. The petals of the flower opening at the Fiend. Or else, you old bastard.
Determined, she begun her search down the pier, despite how stupid she felt for it. She’d even tied her hair with a paisley kerchief, the square of it folded to a headband to keep the front of her curls in check against the wind. Like she’d seen some sailors do.
Timber creaked, ropes and pulleys swayed up in the masts, gangplanks thumped underfoot. Off the ships came talking, smoking, laughing, some curious eyes keeping watch, shapes leaned against the bulwarks. Walking past all of it, she kept an eye out for a name only.
Narcisca.