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Asphyxiation
BY: Kanzeyori*** Will saw her first with sea water on his
tongue, half-drowned and
gasping. He thinks it miraculous. They grew up and her heavy perfumes carry themselves before her and seat themselves in his memory. He is forever short of breath around her and he can't label it anything but love. He is an apprentice, still. She is a governor's daughter. And though they are impossible, he forges his hopes in quavery thick air and with every finished blade he exhales and his throat catches at the light on the steel. He learns swordplay to see this light more, to be breathless and weightless and to carve out and define the wishes he'd forged. Will is resentful of his place. His father was a merchant sailor and, though not rich, they'd been passing well. That is, until a letter arrived with a gold medallion, with pages that stank of dread and regret and resignation. It spoke vaguely of a betrayal, and begged them to be wary of pirates who seek the family of his father's name. It came at a time when his mother was already unwell. And by and by Will came to Port Royal. Their streets were perhaps more breezy and warm than those of England but they both carried a dusty reek: aged piss, food rot, and dried sweat what came by honest work and dishonest both. Will moves around these streets with some sense of purpose. He was lucky to become an apprentice, and he should be grateful. He briefly thinks this as he slams his axe down into the table, when neither the new Commodore nor Governor Swann himself did anything to help save Elizabeth. And thinks it also as he later frees a criminal. But only to save Elizabeth, Will rationalizes, and mentally plugs his nose. They commandeer a ship that Will recognizes as a fine one, having waited for his father as a young boy for too long on the docks to be completely unknowledgeable. And they move out to sea. Will doesn't understand it. The air from the sea was cool and distant to him, completely different from the muffling closeness of his forge. Yet still, something in the speed of the ship and the spray from the wind whips the breath away from him just as fast. And the light sparkles on the sea. And oddly, the heavy miasma surrounding the pirate captain loosened once they'd reached open water. But Will still breathed lightly. Jack flowed like molten metal, but overheated and trickling every which way through his fingers. They burnt. In the sun, Jack glowed, burnished. The sea air was whipping past them and carrying words away, those that'd been spoken and those that hadn't yet. Everything was chilled and distant and moving too fast. Will clumsily lunged for Jack's mouth. Breathed him in. Because here Jack was the only thing that smells of home. Will doesn't register that he's breathless. (end) |
