02: A Mist
Alexandrie Aerith Vanessa Elamys Normaer Donadieu was stubborn. In any other place, at any other time, if Vee had poured water on her face, she would have used words that could turn the tips of Papa’s ears pink all the way back in Shining Capital. But she was here, near Glitter Delta Cove, further from home than she’d ever been, with Vee et La Chanson and two of Edgewater’s children. Alexandrie was stubborn in every possible way. But she was also outmatched and had missed (embarrassingly) the pirate’s unmentionables with her knee. So as Vee caught an attack aimed at her on his shield, she dove behind some fallen debris and looked around the ship in confusion, rubbing her face with one arm.
What did they want? Was this another group after her? How long had they been following? How was their ship going to reach dock now?
Alexa’s eyebrows raised slightly as Lucas shoved a gaggle of surprised pirates overboard, eyes closed briefly as she watched Spider run one through. Seeing the glint of plate mail, she called on the Song to blind them with its decadence, darken the area that they might be better hear the music that lovingly haunted her. Her eyes flickered back to Lucas: five pirates - six - crowded around him, and she saw him wipe his face between strikes. As it came away crimson, she closed her eyes again, heard that music tempt her attention.
‘He was reckless,’ she thought, ‘a reckless fool. Probably got himself into that mess.’ Then he stumbled and the words, the melody, the music was out of her mouth, floating from her fingertips, drifting into his ear like a whisper. She saw him shiver and her eyes narrowed - what he experienced when she asked La Chanson to help him, she didn’t know. What she did know, as she peeked over the fallen mast, was that he was experiencing something, and she didn’t know what. To date, he was the only person she’d helped that she could potentially ask about the effect of La Chanson, and even that seemed…strange.
“Excusez-moi,” she imagined herself saying, “what exactly are you feeling when something that I sometimes think is entirely in my head seems to affect you?”
No, the idea was absurd. Yet as pirates began to close in on him again, the teenager didn’t hesitate. Reaching out to La Chanson, she asked it to help her help him and found that despite the time that had passed, despite her own distraction with other things happening on the ship’s tilting deck, the Song had not left him.
The music Alexa heard - had heard for a year - was with her as it always had been. It lilted and drifted around her like a mist. To a certain degree it reached out to Chevalier, as though acknowledging him, or even simply following her own awareness of his presence at all times. To others, yes, Chevalier looked like a strange metal man. Imagine if they could see him as she did, wisps of sound clinging to him like an embrace.
And now she saw it, heard it, felt it faintly on Lucas. As if someone were playing the same music, the same Song with a different, separate instrument, across the deck.
Shaking her head faintly, she imagined pushing the pirates away. The Song, across the deck as it was, heard her as it always did and grew, almost like a fed flame. Nudging gently at first to feel that connection, she exhaled sharply and threw the full force of the Song at them.
With Lucas at its centre, presumably unaware of what was happening, she saw the pirates drop their weapons and clasp their heads, fleeing the young man. She didn’t think she’d hurt them, but she couldn’t entirely be sure what La Chanson did, or how it treated those she turned it against. Her head tilting to one side slightly as she watched, she began to drift into the music -
Before turning to look behind her at the loud crack of a warhammer meeting the side of another man’s head. Meeting Vee’s eye, she returned to the present.
They would definitely need to talk when this was over.
