The Starless Sea
No, something keeps building. Keeps leading me to something new and something next.
If this hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have started building my game, I wouldn’t have gotten this job, I wouldn’t be on my way to Canada right now.
It’s like I’m following a string Z left for me through a m
aze but he might not even be in this maze. Maybe it’s not my job to find him. Maybe it is my job to see where the string goes.
It felt weird to leave his scarf. I’ve had it for so long.
I hope he gets it someday.
I hope he has a really, really good story to tell me over dinner at his mom’s place and I hope he’s there with his husband and I’m there with someone or by myself and fine with that and I hope we stay up so late that late turns into early and I hope the stories and the wine go on and on and on and on.
Someday.
There is a ship upon the Starless Sea, sailing as the tides rise.
Below the deck a man whose name is now Dorian keeps his vigil over the corpse of Zachary Ezra Rawlins while the ship’s captain whose name is not and will never be Eleanor navigates the stormy seas.
There is a commotion above, a howling wind as the boat rocks, lilting to one side and then to the other. The flames on the candles falter and recover.
“What’s going on?” Dorian asks when Eleanor returns to the cabin.
“There are owls perching along the sails,” Eleanor says. One of them has followed her, a small owl who swoops through the cabin and perches on a beam. “They’re making it difficult to steer. They’re trying to stay afloat, you can’t blame them with the sea rising this fast. It’s fine, I’ll need new maps now anyway.”
She makes this remark regarding the table with the maps where they have laid out Zachary’s body, blood seeping through paper and golden ribbons and obscuring both the known paths and the unmapped territories where the dragons be, all of it now lost beneath the sea.
Dorian starts to apologize but Eleanor stops him and they stand in shared silence.
“How high will it rise?” Dorian asks to break the silence though he finds he does not care. Let it continue to rise until they crash into the surface of the earth.
“There are many caverns to sail through,” Eleanor assures him to his dismay. “I know the ways no matter how high it rises. Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you,” Dorian says.
“This is your person, isn’t it?” she asks, looking down at Zachary.
Dorian nods.
“I knew someone once who had a coat like that. What are you reading?” Eleanor gestures toward the book in his hands though Dorian is holding it as a talisman more than he is actually reading it.
He hands Sweet Sorrows to her.
Eleanor frowns at the book and then the joyful recognition of an old lost friend spreads across her features.
“Where did you find this?” she asks.
“He found it,” Dorian explains. “In a library. On the surface. It’s yours, I believe.” The look on her face almost makes him smile.
“The book was never mine,” Eleanor says. “Only the stories in it. I stole the book from the Archive. I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.”
“You should have it back.”
“No, we should keep it for sharing. There is always room for more books.”
Only then does Dorian notice the sheer volume of books around the cabin, tucked into spaces between beams and on windowsills, piled on chairs and propping up table legs.
The ship tilts, a particularly rough wave tipping the cabin on an angle before it rights itself. A pencil rolls from a table and disappears beneath an armchair.