It didn’t take nearly as much convincing as one might expect for people to calm down after Marisia’s reveal. With Joscur, Daniellex, and William all vouching for her identity as Joscur’s daughter, as well as her evident blindness, those that had just come through the ordeal with the reauslers and reavers were quick enough to believe that she was who she said she was. That matter settled, however, their collective attention now turned to what to do about Marisia, and on this there seemed to be no possible consensus that everyone was happy with. Everyone was shouting over one another. Joscur was yelling at them all. Daniellex was trying to calm down his friend and keep Marisia safe within his grasp.
William stood by and watched silently.
The arguments were thus: Marisia did not belong on this expedition, this much everyone agreed on. Whether that was because of her blindness or because of her lack of volunteering or otherwise having not received an invitation seemed to matter little. Some wanted to have a small detail return her back to Mirage. Others believed it would be suicide for those who went in but a wagon with a blind girl and an animunculi as company. Some thought it best they turn around altogether, drop Marisia off, resupply and depart once again with a fresher perspective on what to expect in the Wastes. They saw it as an opportunity to better prepare themselves. Others decried the very notion of turning back as cowardice, that it had taken them a week to get this far and would add another week onto the travel heading to Mirage and back here again, during which time the oleum could return and wreak havoc while the bulk of Mirage’s forces were away from the city. Those who declared this stated their belief in continuing on, stowaway onboard or not.
However in all the yelling and all the noise, not one person asked the blind girl what she thought on the matter. Frightening as it had been to be put on the spot like this, Marisia was quietly bubbling with anger at being so callously and indirectly addressed over and over again.
Joscur, naturally, was one of the voices advocating for his daughter’s return to the safety of Mirage. Whether by a small troupe or the whole caravan turning around, he cared not. He was easily the loudest and most verbal proponent of his daughter’s safety.
“I do not care how much it will set us back!” Joscur shouted to someone, yet again, in Mirage-Tongue, the dialect that nearly everyone had adopted for this particular debate. “She is my daughter and her safety is paramount to Mirage’s! If we encounter oleum in the desert instead of at the north, so be it! She will be returned home!”
“Baba! Please!” Marisia tried to speak up, pushing herself forward only to be held back by her Uncle Dani who gently, but firmly, placed his hands on her shoulders.
“No, Marisia, do not get involved with this,” he advised. His intentions were to keep her out of the crossfire of whoever wished to shout at her father next. He didn’t realize that he was advocating for her abjection of her own independence on the matter.
Finally, though, she had had enough of people speaking for her, of acting on her behalf. This had been her decision, after all, and she would stand by it. William knew all too well that the choice had been hers alone, in retrospect.
Marisia forcibly yanked herself out of her uncle’s grip, turned towards him, held a finger up in warning, her face deep set in a frown. “Uncle Dani, no. Enough. Enough!” she decreed, turning away from Daniellex and sucking in a great gout of air before shrieking at the top of her lungs, “ENOUGH!!!”
That got most of their attention. Most importantly of all her father who hadn’t heard her yell like that in years. The other yelling quieted down enough that Marisia could speak now that she was asserting herself.
“I am NOT going back to Mirage! Do you here me? I will not!”
“How could you be so foolish?” Joscur snapped back at her, stepping towards his daughter who whipped around to face him in turn with that same vitriol on her face that she’d worn for her uncle. “After all I have lost, you would have me suffer more?”
“No more than you would have me suffer, baba! No more!” she snarled. “You left me knowing you may never come back! How could you not know how that would make me feel!?”
“I left to protect you! Nothing more!” Joscur shouted, speaking honestly. The honesty is what made it hurt all the more to hear and further enraged the blind ningen.
“Always you have to protect me! Ever since I was born you have done nothing but try to keep me safe! Safe! Safe!” Marisia bellowed, throwing her arms down at her sides. “So concerned the world is going to hurt me that you fail to see – I can take care of myself, baba!”
“Marisia you are blind,” Joscur stated with all the bluntness of a baton against her skull, her head rolling with the impact of the word. “You are blind, and already people have died on this journey! We cannot afford to take time to make sure that everything is safe for a blind girl!” Joscur began to lecture, but it was words that Marisia had heard a thousand times before said in so many ways, quite a lot of them in her own head. She’d rehearsed the argument before and knew how to respond to it, and so she turned away from her father and began to push her way through the others around her as she walked towards the starboard side of the Andros. As she shoved people to one side or the other, she was demonstrating, though no one quite noticed it just yet, her spacial awareness and how much command she had over it as she effortlessly navigated her way through the passengers and left her father to call after her. Joscur and Daniellex were shoulder to shoulder as they made after her.
To the terror of both ningen, as well as many others, Marisia climbed up onto the railing of the ship and perched herself on top of it tall, her stance defiant and rigid as her father demanded she come down before she fall overboard! Still so patronizingly protective in his tone. Her arm shot up and pointed to her right.
“There is a propeller!” she declared, accurately, adjusting the angle of her arm as she made her point. “That is the engine! In front of it stands the captain of this ship at the wheel!” Her arms switched positions with one another. “The front of the ship is that way and the way below is there!” She pointed an accusing finger right at her father, then to Daniellex, then to the remaining four crew members who were directly in front of her. “There are six of you there, right in front of me, including you, baba! I know what an animunculi sounds like as it walks! I can avoid them! Yes, I am blind, and I have always been blind! And because of that I have learned to navigate the world by sound and touch and you have never wanted to accept that I was able to walk on my own! Always insisting on having others guide me where I needed to go when I could have found my way by myself!”
“Mari, sweet child, please come down…” Daniellex tried to gently urge, reaching up to take his goddaughter’s hand in an effort to coax her down, but Marisia yanked her hand away.
“No! You both need to understand that I am just as capable of being here as anyone! Move! Move!” she shouted as she jumped down. Everyone took a step back to give her space, but Joscur immediately stepped back forward and grabbed his daughter by the shoulders. By now he was just as furious as she was and he shook her to try and get his point across.
“You are all I have left! Do you not understand that!? Your mother is gone! Your brother, gone! I will not lose you, too!”
“They were every bit my brother and mother as they were your son and wife!” she spat back, trying to force her father’s hands off of her. When they would not budge, she grabbed his leather shirt by the collar and balled it in her fists as she turned her face to him and stared sightless into his eyes. “I have every right to be here as you for the exact same reasons! What right have you to keep me from here as you yourself are!?”
“I am your father!” he roared!
“You are NOT my KEEPER!” she snarled back! “You do not own me or how I feel! I have every right to be here as you! They were my family too!”
“Joscur,” William said softly, appearing at their side to try and stop the fighting.
The enraged father stared daggers into the eidolon, pointing his own accusing finger at him and spitting out through gritted teeth in Imperial, “Why did you not stop her from coming!?”
“I came here on my own, baba! William did not talk me into sneaking onboard and I did not talk to him about coming!” Marisia insisted in her native tongue. Joscur looked at her briefly before returning his burning eyes to William, torn between wanting to press the issue and lay the blame on the supernatural being who could manipulate choices and keeping that knowledge under wraps from everyone else, even if only for a moment. It was enough for William to respond.
“It’s true. She’s telling the truth. I had nothing to do with this,” William stated plainly. Joscur had little recourse but to accept him at his word and that only seemed to make him more furious. “She’s here, and she’s right. She has just as much reason to be here as you, as anyone.”
Marisia’s scowl softened only the slightest bit as she spoke up in Imperial herself, “How frustrating it must be that William understands me better than my own baba.”
Joscur turned back to his daughter and, for the first time in his entire life, thought about seriously striking her as a flash of anger boiled his blood and made fire his mind. “You are going back,” he declared quietly.
“No,” she responded stubbornly.
“Oi, you lot! How’s about you let the girl go and give her some space, kin it?” Teutna called from the wheel, who had been quietly watching this entire situation unfold and considering what the proper course of action should be in her own way as the captain of the Andros. “T’were nae clear, that was an order, kin it?”
It took a few seconds longer for Joscur to comply than anyone else, and when he did he kept closer to Marisia than anyone else.
“Girly, can ye come my way? Quick as ye like,” Teutna called, raising a hand up and bidding the blind girl over. Without any hesitation Marisia turned and effortlessly walked over to Teutna’s side, pushing past anyone who didn’t get out of her way. The short, pale ningen looked the blind girl up and down. “Ye really see nothin’, aye?”
“No,” Marisia said in a tone that almost resembled pride.
“But ye can still navigate around?”
“Easily.”
“And if it came to fightin’? What then?”
“I never intended to do any fighting,” Marisia admitted, her hands flexing in and out of fists. “I thought I would stay out of the way, help pass our rations. Tend to wounded. That sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh. And ye’ve been stealin’ food and drink for yourself I take it?”
Marisia hesitated slightly. “Only a little.”
“Why?” Teutna asked.
Marisia turned her scowl on the captain. “Because I knew no one would want a blind girl on a sandsailor with them! Same reason I snuck aboard to begin with.”
“Mhm. Well, way I see it missy, me, Cap’n Vivicetti and Cap’n Luff have final say on this matter of what to do with ye, seeing as we’re the leaders o’ this expedition and what not,” Teutna said, scanning over the many eyes looking her way, stopping specifically at both Joscur and William. She left Marisia’s side and walked over to the edge of the ship facing the Tesstess, calling out loudly, “What say ye, Vivicetti? Think she be capable of stayin’ out o’ trouble?”
“As far as I’m concerned, she’s proven that already by managing to sneak on board and stay out of sight for as long as she has,” the bloodling said mirthlessly, none to pleased to have to weigh in on this particular drama to begin with.
Joscur could see the writing on the wall and turned to William, giving the eidolon a shove. “Do something!” he hissed. William stared at him blankly.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Captain Luff?” Vivicetti called out, turning from her place at the wheel to get the final vote.
Captain Luff was a tall ningen with skin just as dark as most everyone else in the Wastes, a rectangular face and a jawline like an anvil and deep socketed blue eyes with gargoyles for eyebrows. He carried himself with a dignity of a soldier because he used to be one and dressed just as smartly for it, a habit he’d never managed to break since his days in the military. He was taking this mission as seriously as any of the assignments he’d been given during his tenure. More so, even, given what was at stake. He hardly even looked away from the forward trajectory of the Pequod as he gave his answer.
“It would be the most pragmatic to keep going. Returning to Mirage would mean a loss of time, manpower, or both, not to mention resources. We stay the course, she stays and makes herself useful however she can. Way I see it, she will not take up any more than what was already being consumed,” he called out bitterly, thinking of the two he’d lost only a few hours before.
Vivicetti turned back to Teutna, echoing his sentiment in not so many words in case she was unable to hear him.
“Rally-ho, then! The matter’s adjourned, and we’re nae turnin’ back. We carry on!” Teutna declared, making her way back over to the wheel. “As for this squabblin’ and quarrelin’, I donae care for it. Squash it! What’s done is done, and we got more important things to worry about! Let’s get some more distance behind us!”
The matter settled and pulled entirely out of Joscur’s hands, everyone got back to either working or resting as was needed or they saw fit, the crowds on each deck dispersing now that the drama had passed. Decompression from the stressful events of the day was only now truly beginning to happen. Marisia marched her way down the deck towards her father, but, rather than stopping at him, she walked past him and grabbed a hold of William’s hand, pulling him along as she made her way towards the bow of the ship.
At first, Joscur made to follow after and interrupt whatever was happening, but William put a stop to it after the first step. “Give her time. Take some yourself,” he said simply as he allowed himself to be pulled along and looked back at Joscur, who had Daniellex to pull him aside and try to help calm him down. There was no more than fifty feet between father and daughter, and yet it felt as though an entire ocean had suddenly been ripped open between them.
“Sit,” Marisia said firmly as she took a seat at the bow and pulled her knees up to her chest. William obliged, setting his sword down beside him as the hum of the ship and buzz of the propellers picked up. “Thank you, for understanding,” she said after a short pause.
“Your father will understand. Just give him time to sort it out. He’s just as damaged by what happened as you are,” William reminded her gently. Marisia sighed heavily and leaned her head against his shoulder, finding comfort in his presence. William closed his eyes and tried to rest.
***
Over the course of the next few days, Marisia only ever left William’s side when he left hers. She didn’t cling to him, hold his arm or hold his hand possessively. She stood. She sat. She ate, drank, and rested beside him while never getting in the way when he needed to say or do something that didn’t involve her. And always, when he had done these things, he returned to her side. And she appreciated that immensely, as much as she appreciated him never once reaching out to try and help her in any way that anyone else who knew she was blind ever had. The constant silent vindication was as nourishing to the spirit as water was quenching to her throat.
In those days as they gradually got closer and closer to Lucifer’s citadel, the two of them talked about much and got to know one another: she opened up about her frustrations, griefs, hopes, and worries in any way she felt was appropriate at the moment, he told her as much as he was comfortable divulging. He still kept from her what he was, but as he had become a confidant to her, he allowed her to be one for him if only in part.
Joscur was never far away from his daughter during this time either. It was impossible not to be when confined to a ship, but he did his best to make sure that she was within his sight at all times. He did not, however, approach her. The two of them were maintaining a deathly silence between one another that was one part petulant grudge, one part stubbornness, and one part refusal to admit fault or that a line had been crossed. A recipe that would dissolve over time naturally once the feud had run its course, but was none the less effective at isolating them from each other, which left William in the middle filling in the gap.
Daniellex was not so stubborn as Joscur, though. Within the first day of her reveal and subsequent being allowed to stay aboard, he’d had a private talk with her in which the two reconciled. He recognized that she was right and that he might have been treating her too delicately, she recognized that he cared about her and stated again that she wanted to do this every bit as much as her father and for all the same reasons. They had left it at that for the time being and Daniellex took his meals with Marisia and William when he wasn’t taking them with Joscur.
Then, one day, it happened.
It had been growing within Marisia for a while now, since the very first day she’d met William and listened to his soft footsteps coming down the stairs. It had been maturing all throughout his time in Mirage as he came to visit them and the two of them talked, spent time together, as he had played and entertained her brother; memories which were now too painful to recall but had been vital in developing this thing that wriggled within her each time William managed to make her laugh or forget about the pain of it all, even if for a moment. It was such a simple thing, really, to have him, a stranger, to listen to and be listened to in turn, getting to know him. He spoke much more freely here away from Mirage. Before, she had had trouble trying to figure out what sort of person he was because of how the quiet stranger had put on a vocal disguise, but she knew he was being more of his authentic self out here and she appreciated that all the more.
And then, inexplicably, it had happened like a switch being flipped and she knew full and well what it was she was feeling in the fluttering of her heart in her chest. It was a feeling that she and Kara had fantasized about many times, that she had felt the warm embrace of as she had grown up with her mother, that she had heard her father describing many times in years passed before her suta had been taken from them, that she felt the acute sting of in the loss of her mother and now her brother. That same feeling she now found blossoming anew, and the instant she recognized it for what it was, she knew that it had been forming for a long while now.
Love. Marisia knew she felt love for William, and that it was good.
The instant she realized what it was she felt she said nothing of it. She said nothing at all, in fact, for a few seconds as she silently processed the feelings she had, bouncing back into the conversation shortly there after without too much of an awkwardness. Once the realization hit her though it was all she could think about! William was not at all like how she had imagined the sort of partner she imagined she might fall for one day. Kara more fit the idea of what she had for an ‘ideal partner’ in her head than William did, and although she did feel an acute philia for Kara it was not like the eros she felt for William.
As time passed and she gestated these feelings within her, Marisia came to realize that it was okay that William wasn’t some idealized perfect match. So what if he was some stranger who was found wandering the Wastes? So what if it seemed as though she could hear him off in the distance half the time because he often chose to speak quietly, or because it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere? So what if her father didn’t approve of him or of her liking him? These feelings were hers and that was all that mattered. To her own self she would stay true because it felt good to love William!
Only part of her, a very quiet, timid part that didn’t want to raise its voice and ruin the illusion, came to the conclusion that she was so adamant about these feelings because they were a pleasant distraction from the harsh reality she faced. This tiny bit of reason opened its mouth to speak, said its peace, and then quietly dismissed itself, allowing Marisia to engulf herself in the warmth of William’s arm or the smell of his hair when it caught on a desert breeze. It had said its piece, Marisia had politely looked at it, and tucked it away for later, because, much less deep down than this polite reasoning, she needed this right now.
Her feelings didn’t even change when William told her about Cornello, something which had completely taken her by surprise! She’d thought herself to silly when she listened to him speak about this person, Cornello, with genuine tenderness and longing in his voice – new emotions from him – and realized that she hadn’t once considered that there might have been other people in his life before her father brought him into the oasis that was Mirage! Of course William had people he knew and cared about elsewhere in the world. Of course he had love for others. Of course he didn’t love her back…
That was fine, though. She didn’t need him to love her right now. All she needed was to have the ability to love him quietly, unrequited, selfishly. It was enough to keep the pain at bay so long as she could feel that warmth within her.
***
Four days after Marisia’s reveal, Joscur had had enough. Enough of waiting for the two of them to be separated from one another. Enough of the stress and anxiety he felt by constantly watching them as though he expected… what? What exactly did he expect? For William to harm her? No. To make her do something against her will? It was always a possibility, wasn’t it? He didn’t know why it was he kept such a close and harsh eye on them while also keeping as much distance from them as possible. He was having a staring contest with a blind girl and waiting for her to blink first. It was maddening! Idiotic! He was tired of being an idiot. This trip was stressful enough with its reasoning alone, never mind the constant dangers that they needed to be ever vigilant for! Dangers which only grew more likely to occur the further away from the city that they got. Dangers that were more likely to take his daughter than they were most others… He’d simply had enough.
Joscur approached the two of them as they sat just beneath the helm. Daniellex wasn’t too far behind. He stopped a few steps away from the sitting pair and their conversation came to a pause as William looked up at him. His eyes looked tired. Joscur didn’t care. “Let me talk to him alone,” he demanded gruffly.
“Why?” his daughter asked coldly, jealously. “Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of me, too!”
Joscur gave William a silent look. The Eidolon understood, placed a hand on top of Marisia’s.
“Give us a minute. Please,” he pleaded softly.
She frowned deeply. Daniellex stepped forward and held out his hand for his goddaughter. “Come, my sweet. Let us give them some space,” he said. Marisia reluctantly took his hand and used it to help herself to her feet and the two of them departed, heading for the bow of the Andros.
“Sit, if you like,” William offered with a slight flick of his wrist. Joscur debated the option for a moment before slowly sitting down where he stood. He didn’t take his eyes off of William’s for a moment.
“What do you want to talk about?”
Joscur came right out and asked it. “You swear by the Throne of the World and the Imperial Crown that you did not influence her coming here?”
William was quiet for a moment, processing the wording. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard someone say something to this effect. It was a common saying, these days, some three thousand years later. Despite the throne and crown being relics of the Imperial Family, they were also symbols that belonged to everyone and could be called upon as such. ‘By throne and crown’, he’d heard it said, or ‘by the toothed crown’ or ‘the emperor’s seat’. He wondered, not for the first time, if being a part of the Empire really meant so much to people who were so far away from it all.
“Yeah. I had nothing to do with her decision to sneak on board. I didn’t even notice her,” William admitted with a nod after his contemplative had passed.
“Then take us back. Take her back! I know you could do it! You would keep her safe by returning her home!”
William’s lips were a tight line as he sighed through his nose, leaning his shoulders back against the platform where Teutna and other crew members stood. This, too, was something he hated dealing with when people understood the truth of what he was: the demands. The expectation that, because he could, he would, or should, do this or that by way of exerting the tyranny of choice over others to make certain outcomes occur. How often they thought that they could somehow rig the system when he was the system! At least, here, he understood that what Joscur was asking was merely out of misplaced concern.
“Joscur… no. We’re nearly half way there. I need to be there, I doubt any of you would survive without me. And we can’t take the time to turn even a single ship back. We have to exterminate the oleum as quickly as possible before Lucifer can infect anything else, if he hasn’t already! Like it or not, she’s here with us. She needs this just as much as you do,” he said as gently as he could.
Joscur’s breath was shaky from rage and tears, choked back and forced down into submission. Joscur inhaled deeply to steady himself. He willed his voice to stay low and even.
“You know, my Syla, she was everything to me. I told you as such. I was a better person with her in my life. I was never this angry for this long when she was alive, and then Lucifer and his oleum took her from me…”
His hands curled into such tight fists that his knuckles popped as they paled. His shoulders rose and fell and his arms shook with restrained energy.
“My son, Vamenco,” he spoke the name quickly so as to not choke on it. “was every one of the best parts of his mother, and had no time to become his own person. Lucifer took him from me, too, with his oleum…”
“Joscur…”
“And now,” the father interrupted through hissing teeth, “my daughter… she is all I have left. Of either of them! She is all I have at all… and you have the power to keep her safe and you are refusing to! Because of… what? Pragmatism? Because it would be impractical to protect the one thing I have left!?”
William leaned forward and reached out with both hands to place them on Joscur’s shoulders. He reflexively threw his arms up to swat William’s away, but Twilight brought his hands down firmly onto his shoulders, looked him directly into his eyes.
“I need you to understand that this is bigger than you and your daughter. It’s bigger than the death of your son, the death of your wife, and of all those people who had their own funerals back at Mirage! You cannot possibly comprehend how important it is that we stay the course and get us there to deal with these things and Lucifer once and for all! I understand that you are hurting and you are scared for your daughter but she’s scared for you, too, and neither one of you can see this like I can! Do you hear me, Joscur? Our time is limited and we cannot afford to turn back now!”
William released Joscur’s shoulders and slumped back against the ship. He brought his hands up to his face and rubbed it briefly. “I’ll promise you this much at least: I’ll keep Marisia from making any choices that might get her hurt. I can, and will, do my best to make sure that she is kept alive. That you both are, so that, when this is all over, you two can go home and you can start to heal. Alright? Is that good enough for you?”
Joscur didn’t answer at first, wrestling with the reality of what William was saying and the denial of it all at once. He managed a nod. “Make sure that you do… or I will kill you myself,” he promised in return before getting up and walking away.
