The Storyteller: The Story of Diamond Lake

[annarti.livejournal.com]

First Birthday

True to the captain’s word, the Horizons anchored in the bay that cupped Jita almost exactly one year later. Sen sat on Sula’s hip, three fingers stuck in her mouth. Kaiji, who was marginally more steady on her feet, stood in the sand with her little fists bunched in her mother’s pants leg.

‘Bah!’ Sen cried out, waving sloppy fingers out to sea when she spotted the dinghy making its way across the waves.

‘Yeah!’ Sula agreed, jostling the one-year-old and earning a giggle for her efforts. ‘That’s Captain Tu coming ashore, just like she promised.’

Sen clapped her hands and stuck her three middle fingers back in her mouth, then began squirming to try and down. She had learned to stand several months ago and was now just making her first tottering steps. Sula let her slip to the ground and cling to her other leg. ‘Bah!’ she cried again, muffled by her fingers.

‘Bah!’ Sula agreed.

Sen quickly lost interest in watching the dinghy get slowly closer. She let go of Sula’s leg and wobbled down towards the water’s edge. She fell three times before she got there, but was determined to get up every time rather than crawling. Kaiji followed, somehow managing to stay on both feet all the way, then dropped onto her backside next to where Sen was smacking her hands with satisfying slaps into the wet sand. She liked watching her handprints form, soften and melt away all in an instant.

The little dinghy surprised her when it suddenly appeared over the crest of a wave to her left. ‘Bah!’ she squealed in excitement. She bent forwards and planted her hands in the sand, straightened her legs and lifted her backside into the air, then pulled herself shakily to her feet. ‘Bah, bah, bah!’ she babbled.

Tu smiled down at her with no small ounce of pride. ‘Nice work,’ she congratulated as the dinghy cut through the water. She shipped the oars and braced one hand on the side of the boat, then swung over the edge and used its momentum to drag it up the beach in one smooth motion.

Sen wobbled towards her, tongue poked out as she concentrated on every step.

Tu stood with hands on hips beside her dinghy, looking down indulgently at the little girl. ‘You can’t possibly remember me.’

‘Probably not,’ Sula agreed, ‘but she likes people. Especially since she’s started walking, she just runs up to everyone.’

‘Ah.’ The captain bent down to snatch Sen under the arms, swing her up and throw her into the air before catching her. The little girl laughed and squealed all through. ‘I’ve got presents for you!’ Tu told her.

‘More pearls?’ Sula asked.

Tu’s smile faltered. She shook her head as she set Sen on her hip. ‘No. Those were the last of what her parents had collected.’ She forced her smile back on as she looked back down at the little girl. ‘But I’ve got something better. Come, have a look.’

She set Sen back on the sand where she could steady herself on the boat. One hand grabbed the edge as she peered over, the other stuffed her three middle fingers back in her mouth, sand and all. It felt good against her tender gums.

Tu reached into the dinghy for a large parcel wrapped in soft, oiled leather. She walked up the beach away from the waterline and knelt down in the sand. Sen wobbled up behind her and dropped to her knees beside the package.

‘What do you think it is?’ Tu asked, pulling slowly, tantalisingly at the string holding it closed.

‘Bah!’ Sen guessed.

‘Sure.’ Tu unfolded the leather to reveal a mass of soft, grey fur.

Sen gasped and crawled forward to plunge her hands into the fur, but Sula caught her wrists just before she made contact.

‘Careful!’ she chided. ‘Your hands are all sandy, and those look… very expensive.’

Tu nodded and gave Sula a strange look, bouncing her eyebrows once before winking at Sen. ‘Very,’ she confirmed. ‘They’re possum furs from the Kazinian mountains, so soft you can hardly feel them. They’ll keep you toasty warm in winter. And that’s not the last of it. Here, look.’ She lifted the top fur and produced a shiny orange-gold stone threaded onto a leather cord.

Sen stared at it sparkling in the sunlight. Sula’s hands loosened around her wrists, but not enough that she could reach for it.

‘This is amber,’ Tu said. ‘It’s for you to chew on while your teeth are coming through. The Kazinian I got it from says it has some special oils in it that soothe your gums. Here.’ She reached for Sen’s wrist and tied the cord around it.

Sen immediately put the stone in her mouth, but the cord kept her from accidentally swallowing it. ‘Bah,’ she said around the amber.

‘Absolutely,’ Tu agreed with a nod, then she wrapped up the furs and stood to hand them to Sula. ‘Keep the oilskin, too.’

‘Thank you,’ Sula said, slightly awkward. It was a phrase a Tsaythi rarely uttered. This was payment for her services, but for a year of looking after a child that wasn’t even Tu’s, it seemed like more reward than Sula had earned. The thanks were warranted.

The captain gave that same, funny smile. It seemed to be a reminder of the power she had as a ship’s captain, power Sula could share as she wished, but not without a vague, underlying threat. The power only came while she looked after Sen.

The smile turned cheeky and beaming when Tu directed it at Sen. ‘And that’s not even the best bit,’ she said with a wink. ‘I’ve got so many stories to tell you, little one, and those are priceless.’

‘What’s the story behind the amber?’ Sula asked. ‘Was that from the same vendor as the furs?’

Tu shook her head, still cheeky. ‘Different. We spent a good long time in Kazin this year. Furs are hard to come by on the coast. Nobody wants to trade them since it’s always so warm, so we sailed the Horizons all the way up the Ssaqlen River to where the air is crisp and clean and three great rivers meet to form the Diamond Lake.’ She was talking to Sen now, grey eyes wide as she told of the wonder she saw daily in the great wide world. ‘They call it that because in winter, it gets so cold that ice crystals form around its edge, like thousands of tiny diamonds. This is where they trade furs, high up in the mountains. Nowhere in the whole continent gets colder than Diamond Lake. We got a good deal on five crates of furs, then I traded one for the amber.’

Sen was sucking and chewing at the amber, spellbound by the captain’s voice. She loved stories, especially the voice people put on while telling them.

‘Bah! Bah!’ she babbled around the precious stone.

Tu grinned proudly and sat on the edge of her dinghy, bracing her arms out beside her. ‘Where do I start?’ she asked, liking theatrically up at the sky and out to her ship anchored in the bay. ‘I’ve seen beasts you could only dream of, and yet you’ll see them, too, when you’re ready to come aboard. I’ve seen lightning fish in the biggest schools you can imagine, surrounding the Horizons in glowing white and pink and green, flashing in waves like they’re one huge organism. At night, there were enough of them that we could even see by their light on the ship. They’re like magic all on their own.

‘I’ve watched pods of dolphins leap and dance before the prow, spinning corkscrews in the air and yet still flying as fast as my ship can go, but they move so effortlessly.’ She wove and twisted an arm through the air to imitate the dolphins’ movements. Sen flapped one arm uselessly, trying to copy her. Tu laughed. ‘Their lives look like so much fun! Like it’s their sole purpose to find joy. I try to use them as my inspiration on board.

‘Way, way back, two ships ago when I was a mere crewmate on the Tranquilo, we saw a herd of hippocampi. We thought they were a strange wave to start with, their silver-white heads swishing steadily through the waves, but it was our lookout in the crow’s nest who told us what we were truly looking at. We chased them a while, just to watch them frolicking together and see if they might come to shore to turn into land horses, but they dove beneath the waves all at once and we didn’t see them pop up again.’

Sula folded her arms. ‘You don’t truly believe that, do you?’

Tu laughed aloud and shook her head. ‘No, but one of our crew—whose grandmother was from Llayad, I’ll point out—wanted to believe it, so we indulged him until we lost the herd. From then on it was his mission to prove it one way or another. I haven’t seen him since I left the Tranquilo, though, so I don’t know if he ever did find out.’

‘It sounds amazing,’ Sula said, wistfully looking out to the magnificent ship just offshore.

‘It’s everything,’ Tu said in the same reverential tone. ‘The most serene and beautiful, I think, must be the great whales. Easily twice the length of Horizons but so gentle. The move with amazing, heavy grace. They’re truly born for the open ocean. They make you feel calm just watching them. We saw one beached, once, still alive but unable to get back into the water. We rounded up half a dozen other ships, one with a wind witch, then we tied ropes around its tail and dragged it back into the sea. A year later, a whale came up beside the ship and followed alongside us for three days. I fancy it was the same whale we’d saved.’ She sighed. ‘How a creature so massive, so powerful can be so serene and gentle…’

‘So…’ Sula’s voice cracked a little on the word. ‘Will you be taking Sen back, now? She’s eating solid foods.’

Tu’s calm smile turned slightly pained, even guilty. ‘Not yet,’ she said with a regretful shake of her head. ‘Ours is a dangerous life. It’s adventure I would never give up, for certain, but not an adventure I’m ready to bring a one-year-old into. The whales fascinate me so because they’re the only creature large enough to do serious damage to my ship but doesn’t even try.’ She sighed again and folded her hands in her lap. ‘The Shōbōsho was smashed to splinters by a leviathan, and I’ve seen a kraken systematically dismantle another. It pulled each mast down, one by one, then plucked the crew off the deck, one by one, and peeled back each strip of wood of the hull, one by one. I was on shore at the time, between ships, you might say, so I could do nothing to help them. I saw a megalodon swallow a man whole.’ She looked down at Sen, who stared up with her bright blue eyes shining from her dark little face. Even she had picked up on the excited fear in the sea captain’s voice as she spoke of the dangers of the ocean. ‘I’ve even seen sea dragons. Now, say what you like about my old crewmate’s belief about hippocampi and horses, but sea dragons are truly something else. Some say they’re attracted to storms, chasing them in the hopes that some hapless ship will become lost or wrecked in them. Others believe the dragons themselves cause the storms.’

‘They cause storms?’ Sula repeated, sceptical at best.

Tu spread her hands in a shrug. ‘I haven’t seen enough of them to be able to say for certain, but I’ve heard too many stories of the storms coming out of nowhere to completely discount the notion. These are hardened sailors I’ve heard it from, too. How else would they have escaped sea dragons?’

She bent down to gently brush her callused fingers across Sen’s brow and down her pudgy little cheeks. ‘Some day, I’ll show you the world, but Horizons is no place for a child.’

STUFF

o Finally getting some time to myself! No further engagements until next Monday so I'll be able to catch up now.

o I don't know how babies work. I looked up teething and got a useful thing telling me when various teeth come through, and it also mentioned that amber is largely useless, but I liked the idea so Sen gets amber now.

o Fuck yeah megalodon. I had so much fun researching sea creatures for this story, and for Tsayth in general. Weird deep sea creatures, mythical and magical creatures, extinct and WHAT-IF creatures... 'swhy I was trying so hard to find Blue Planet II on Netflix (still not there).

o Shōbōsho is probably my favourite restaurant in Adelaide, Japanese-inspired share plates done on charcoal brazier type grills. Tranquilo is a little café/restaurant in my hometown of Stirling which I haven't actually been to in a while cos they're kinda pricey, but they do have good food and they've been around for ages.

Comments

[drazzi.livejournal.com]

I mean you say you can't write babies but idk man. Those first paragaphs are fucking ADORABLE and I love bb!Sen.

And I love that Sula is clearly caring for her. Talking to her and such.

AND LIKE. Beach babies. shoreline children. Happy to sit at the water's edge. SJfbdbf So cute


I like love this devotion and adoration that Tu just seems to display and have for Sen. If its for all her crew, or something special for the babe I'm not sure, but I love it all the same.


‘Bah!’ Sen guessed.

‘Sure.’
I mean, this is the best dialogue ever, no lie.

LIKE MAN. Tu is doing the captain thing and living life and still STILL thinking of tha baby and being like "So if say a baby was one, what would they need?" and such

Tu clearly fucking loves a captaive audience. And I like to hear the stories. Its so interesting how sensible tsythi mixes with magic like nothing at all, you know?

Megalodons scare the shit out of me and I hope this is not some like crazy foreboding XD

[annarti.livejournal.com]

I can write cute, that'll do XD Sula freaking loves her. She's so protective of her two beautiful babies.

I was a beach baby! No Australian's baby photo album is complete without a nekkid-on-the-beach photo or two.

I had a lot of fun with that exchange, not gonna lie. I talk like that with the cat. 'Whaddaya reckon, fluffy-butt?'
'Mroooooow.'
'Absolutely.'

Tyb would totally give her a run for her money, though XD Ain't no showman like Tybalt Goddamn Tyrone.

Tsayth is severely sceptical of magic until they see it in practice and it's proven to them, then they're like oh, okay, that's how it works.

Unlikely that megalodons will make an appearance, but it's a NaNo, so WHO KNOWS? Monsters are sure to show up, though.