(2023-05-28) Fire and Ice

Details

Author:	inkie
Summary:	Siamus has a nightmare, again.
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

Arc: Ringside Seats

Alsbeth stood on the dock gazing after him, her coppery hair whipped by the wind so that it shone like a banner of flame in the morning light.

(Had she stood like that? So regal, with her hands clasped? No, Alsbeth was a boisterous, laughing girl who waved furiously and threw kisses.)

The world shifted around him with a lurch like the ship cresting a trough, though the harbor was still as glass.

A woman stood regally on the dock gazing after him, her hands clasped before her. She was or was not Alsbeth; her hair was a banner of flame in the dying light. As the port sank away, as the woman sank away behind him, that lingering gleam still burned in his vision. It brightened and brightened: it blazed and was a scarlet torch, a crown of true fire.

The woman was dark and still, a held breath at the heart of it, and the inferno blazed out from behind and around her, wings of scarlet fire outspread.

The ship rolled with the sweep of a wave from nowhere, and he staggered on the deck as clod-footed as any mainlander.

The sun was rising bloody in the east, an eye of scarlet fire. The harbor opened before them.

(Which was wrong, the harbor was in the west.)

The harbor opened before them and they made for it, sailing for that blood-red eye of fire. Off the port bow a lighthouse stood vigil.

(Seventy-two feet, taller than the one at Stormwind Harbor.)

Storm Rock stood vigil over the harbor, silhouetted against the scarlet sun. There was a man atop it, dark and still at the heart of it, holding a spyglass to gaze directly into that inferno.

(No, he was higher, more than twice that high, it wasn’t a lighthouse but the mainmast.)

The mainmast was a silhouette against the fire. Not a silhouette: blackening, caught like a torch, and the man atop it with the spyglass was the heart of the flame. The mast splintered and fell, and the burning man was falling.

The ship heaved and he lost his footing.

He fell.

Something seized him by the arm, nearly wrenching his shoulder from its socket. It held him in a vise grip, ice-cold, a bitter relief from the burning. He was on his feet; he was on the ship’s deck again.

Kellan held him steady. All right, man. All right, I’ve got you. He smiled. His hands were so cold, and it was so good.

(Kellan’s hands were never cold. Kellan’s hands were warm, and his mouth, and his brown eyes.)

The man’s hands were so cold. His eyes were pale and cold as northern ice, and it was such a relief his knees nearly buckled. Steady, Fallon, said the man in a velvet voice. Perhaps we should dim the lights?

Yes. The relief was a clean wave breaking over him. Yes, ha’mercy, put it out. He wanted to step into the other man and lean on him, cling like to a shipwreck-spar.

(No, that was him. It was the other way round. The cold man clung, he was the spar. Why was that?)

The cold man took his face between cold hands and kissed him. It was cold and bitter as seawater, as drowning; it was sweet and hot as relief. When he opened his eyes again, it was dark all around them, a blessed dark.

Don’t look up, said the velvet voice in his ear, and the cold arms wrapped around him.

He looked up.

The stars were strangers to him, illegible, nonsensical.

(You have to put them back. You musn’t try to keep them. How will a sailor know how to get home?)

The stars were strangers out of season. They were red, and then they brightened to orange and gold, flowered into marigolds of flame. They ate through the charred black canvas of the sky.

I told you not to look, said the velvet voice regretfully, and the cold arms let him go.

The ship lurched.

He fell, and he kept falling and falling and never hit the water.

---

He hit the floor, and for a moment was tangled in the weeds of his blankets, couldn’t strike for the surface; nothing about his orientation made sense. He couldn’t breathe.

The world rocked and righted itself. He was on the floor in a snarl of blankets. He was ashore, in his room, on the floor. He fought back the drowning, pulled in one burning breath and then another, and then he could breathe properly again. He was going to be sick.

He was not going to be sick. He folded to put his head on his knees. He breathed. It was dark all around him and he felt a surge of absurd gratitude to the ice-eyed man — Tyrrell, that was Tyrrell — before he remembered again dizzily — it was a dream — that he was ashore, in his room, it was meant to be dark at the hour.

What was the hour? He couldn’t see the window from where he sat, and something in him lurched again at the thought of it, at the chance of looking out at the stars and finding strangers.

There was a soft knock on the door. “Shay?” called Ta’s voice quietly.

He lifted his head from his knees groggily. “I’m asleep,” he told her.

She didn’t even sigh at him. “You cried out. There was a sound. Are you all right?”

Bloody hell. “Did anyone else hear?” There were people in the house, Avrenne and her people.

A silence. “I don’t think so. No one else has come out, anyway. Most of them are on the other side.” Another silence. “May I come in?”

He took a deep breath. “Ta. Don’t take this amiss, but would ye kindly fuck off?”

The door opened a crack. “Are you decent?”

“Never,” he told her. “Go away.”

She came creeping around the edge of the bed on — also absurd — hands and knees, as though they were children playing hide-and-seek and she was trying to catch him hunkered beneath a table. “Found you,” she said.

“Fuck off,” he told her.

She got up, gathering the skirts of her nightgown, and came to sit beside him on the floor. “Are you all right?”

“Aye,” he said. “I’m fine. Only plagued by a mouse.”

She tipped her head to rest it on his shoulder. “Will you go back to sleep?”

“Can’t wi’ you sitting here, can I?”

She didn’t move.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Nearly four-thirty,” she said sleepily.

“Go back to bed,” he told her. It was too early to trouble the kitchen for tea, but in half an hour he could.

“Mm-hm,” she said, still unmoving.

She was asleep.

Siamus exhaled. After a moment, he tilted his own head to rest it against his sister’s.

He waited for the sunrise.