Chapter 53: Ch. 52 Time Alone Once More

The morning broke to drizzle and sunshine, the water falling barely noticeable with the wind whipping spray into the air, an ephemeral rainbow shimmering into existence now and then.

“It is good omen in Mahnor. Your sailors be happy,” Ma said. They had a smile, but it was tainted by last night’s drinks, squinting not because the smile was so broad. At least, that was what Ma told themself about their sensitive eyes.

Sammy and Julie stood idly under the eave of a warehouse, distant gaze on that point where something could only ever be seen, never touched, never mind heard or smelled. It was a kind of magic different to a blessing. But it wasn’t their first rainbow, Sammy long ago telling Julie how they came to be. Only, to Julie, such an explanation was no different to magic and she took away some strange lessons, thinking that those colours were all around them in the same way air was, just hiding.

How much they’d talked.

These moments of waiting always filled Sammy with nostalgia, sharp memory eager to reminisce. She had spent her childhood waiting for happier times, after all.

“I’ll bring peace, so you have many years ahead of you to find your happiness,” Sammy said.

Ma believed her. They knew how true to her word Sammy was. “Okay, I try,” Ma said.

“It’s fine if you don’t succeed. Julie and I will come comfort you, the drinks on us,” Sammy said.

Ma couldn’t help but chuckle, this wife and wife too good for this world. “Okay.”

Glancing over, Sammy saw Julie had a slight frown. So she leaned in and whispered, “Just a little drinking for you,” a knowing smile lingering.

Julie caught that smile and grew embarrassed. “I’m fine with drinking, just not in strange places and when we have to travel,” she said.

“Then, once we settle down, I cannot wait to see what sweet faces my wife makes, drunk in body and soul,” Sammy whispered, words falling hot on Julie’s sensitive ear.

After a moment of pouting, Julie’s expression softened. “Same here.”

A simple answer, yet Sammy’s smile was anything but. “I can’t wait.”

Hardly the first time wife and wife flirted in front of Ma, even if Ma couldn’t hear, Ma left them to it, heartache already setting in knowing this would be the last time. There truly was no greater love than acceptance. Tomorrow, Ma would wake up in a world where it wasn’t normal for two women to kiss, where they themself were a man, where they had no childhood. But that was okay because, no matter what, Ma knew there had been a moment where the world was full of love.

And there could come a day when their world was full of love again, even if it wasn’t with their precious Yani.

Ma had watched many ships leave before. This was the first one that she stared at until it disappeared over the horizon, no more than a speck, then stared a while longer.

On the ship, wife and wife stood on the deck, immersed in the crash of waves and splash of oars, muffled shouts keeping time. Sammy clung tightly to Julie, leaving Julie smiling at her wife’s silly habit. She didn’t hate it. Away from the port city, she breathed deeply through her nose, refreshing. The breeze felt especially cool on her skin, slightly wet like she was sweating. Some birds circled the shallow waters, cries loud, fading the farther out they went.

Sammy tugged Julie and, once she had her wife’s attention, directed it to the east. “Do you remember?” she softly asked.

Julie looked out across the endless water and there was a glittering bridge of light leading to the barely-rising sun. Of course Julie remembered. “The priory,” she muttered.

The order of things was a bit jumbled in Julie’s head by now, but she remembered kissing Sammy after seeing the setting sun reflect across the waves, those few days when their relationship really began—when she accepted being Sammy’s lover. Thinking back, she giggled to herself at how awkward her kisses had been. It wasn’t like Sammy had sat her down and taught her how to either, but, little by little, she’d learned to tell what made Sammy happy—and what made herself happy. A lot of the time, those were the same things.

Like they were two sauces slowly being mixed into one. Where her happiness ended and Sammy’s began, she couldn’t tell. Entwined.

And she loved that so, so much. She loved that she didn’t have to hesitate over making herself happy in case it hurt Sammy. That she could indulge in Sammy’s affection, knowing it made Sammy happy too. That they weren’t like husband and wife with expectations for their roles, but wife and wife, equals in everything. It was so easy to forget her wife was a princess. It was so easy to feel like she was the princess.

But all that love couldn’t push the horizon further away, the noose around her heart that Sammy had placed so early into their journey now pulling tighter by the day. From long before the start, Julie had been ready to die for the Princess, but, along the way, that had become a willingness to die alongside her wife.

The bible spoke of marriage as the joining of souls, bound by the same fate. Julie intended to live up to that.

Meanwhile, Sammy had also strayed from her thoughts of the priory. Those clumsy kisses were vivid in her mind. Childish and endearing. She hadn’t felt her age in so long, but, looking back, they truly had been children back then. If they were a boy and a girl in a village, those were the kinds of kisses they would have sneaked when perhaps as young as ten. Or, if this was a different world, the kinds of kisses they could have had after she saved Julie in that archery competition.

How nice a world that would be, she thought, where girls could kiss girls—and boys could kiss boys, lest she forget Sofia’s other books. Where she and Julie had many a secret rendezvous by the lake, their indecent acts spurred on by taboo, by the risk. Where she could have simply announced her engagement to Julie and had the whole country celebrate their marriage.

Well, Sammy knew her fantasies were just that. She had avoided pursuing Julie because of their difference in status. But, just maybe, in that world, Julie would have pursued her. Wasn’t that quite the beautiful dream.

A little after crossing the horizon, land no longer in sight, they shuffled downstairs. There were no cabins on this ship nor elsewhere on deck to hide from the sun. Below, there was a stockroom, full of barrels of fresh water and weak ales and some preserved foodstuffs, hard tack and dried meats. Sammy couldn’t speak easily with the captain without Ma around, but said enough that he ushered them in and pointed to the strapped down barrels to sit on.

“You know,” Sammy softly said, words accompanied by crashing and splashing water, “after so long on the road, even this feels comfortable.”

Despite her time training, Julie knew the difference between comfortable and tolerable, but kept that to herself. Besides, if she was to point out anything, it was that Sammy was actually sitting on top of several layers of cloth, very familiar with how her wife dressed.

The high barrel seats did make it easier to look out the pair of portholes. But all there was to see was the sea, waves growing ever bigger until they crashed against the glass, spray in the air, almost like looking out a window during heavy rain. The ship creaked, men grunted, rhythm kept by a shout, word unfamiliar to Sammy. Even in this room surrounded by food and drink, there was just a smell of sea spray and damp.

Well, until Sammy rested her head on Julie’s shoulder, turning her nose to the fabric. Julie thought nothing of it at first, then Sammy took a deep sniff. Instantly, Julie was very conscious of how she’d grown lax in washing clothes, every moment of chores a moment less with Sammy.

“You smell lovely,” Sammy whispered.

Julie’s face heated up, fidgety hands playing with the hem of her shirt’s sleeve. “I’ll wash our clothes tonight.”

“Do you not like my smell?” Sammy asked.

Being asked that, Julie couldn’t help but breathe in deep through her nose, buried in Sammy’s hair. A smell hard to describe without simply calling it Sammy’s scent. But, even though it wasn’t sweet, it was entwined with such sweet memories, a taste coming to her tongue, heat to her veins.

Laughing to herself, Julie thought it wouldn’t be long until everything reminded her of those intimate moments with her wife.

“I love it,” Julie whispered, proving it by taking another deep sniff, leaving herself heady. Drunk on her wife’s scent.

“I love yours too,” Sammy whispered back, proving it with a tender kiss on Julie’s neck, tongue lapping at the light sweat. Drunk on her wife’s taste.

But neither were drunk enough to lose control, just a tipsy state, unburdened by thoughts, emboldened to flirt, feeling like the only two in the world—and what a happy world that was.

Going against the current hardly easy, the ship was angled north northwest, but travelled northwest. Such a far distance and a heavy load, the longer days mattered not, journey taking from sunrise to a little after dusk, the thick darkness broken by a distant lighthouse. However, in that darkness, wife and wife found the stars and moons beautiful, the sight one they had come to love when camping across the Dworfen mountains.

Despite the late hour, the crew was good enough to take down Hope and Faith from their slings first, letting Julie look over them before they went to graze with the other horses. Their luck from there wasn’t so good.

“Sorry, sorry, no room,” the middle-aged woman said in Lapdosian, face scrunched up in apology.

“Do you know anywhere else?” Sammy slowly asked.

The woman shook her head. “We do’n get many ’ere,” she said.

Sammy struggling with the accent and her own weaker grasp of Lapdosian, she left it there, saying, “Thank you.”

While Sammy explained the matter to Julie, they walked through the village, packs hoisted on their shoulders.

“I suppose we’ll have to camp,” Sammy said.

“You need to wash up, right?” Julie asked, voice thick with concern.

Sammy chuckled, her fingers entwined with Julie’s squeezing for a moment. “My monthly is lighter now, so we should have time tomorrow to wash the cloths before it’s an issue,” she said, words lingering in the air as faint mist.

“It won’t be too cold for you?” Julie asked.

“Mm, the wind is blowing from the north tonight,” Sammy idly said, then said to Julie, “I can always keep a fire going.”

Before Julie could reply to that, a nearby door creaked open and an elderly voice called out, “Dears, do you have somewhere for the night?”

They stopped and looked, finding a woman with a wrinkled face and grey hair tied in a bun. Not only that, but, lurking in the twilight behind the woman’s candle, Sammy saw another woman, younger, but still heavy with age. The distance between them, Sammy’s mind began to wander until she pulled it back.

A moment to mentally switch to Lapdosian, then Sammy said, “We do not.”

The woman from behind stepped forwards, draped in shadows once she passed the candle. “There’s a room at the back. One bed will do?” she asked.

It was tricky for Sammy to follow, the woman well spoken, but casual. “Yes, it will,” she said.

Without a word, this woman led them around to a bit of a vegetable garden, some planters mutely coloured in moonlit flowers, edges lined by tall hedges. Influenced by her earlier thoughts, Sammy thought it the perfect place for secret dates. Perhaps, she thought, that even was its purpose.

A small room was attached to the house, no doubt added later. Sammy thought it likely for a maid or gardener or some other domestic helper. The woman opened the door and showed them the inside, a bed, chest of drawers, and stool squashed in. “This okay?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Sammy said. Seeing the woman hadn’t left, Sammy asked, “Can we know your names?”

The woman hesitated and Sammy caught it, but she answered nonetheless. “I’m Daru Eetor and she’s my sister, Pream.”

“Wonderful names,” Sammy said, smiling, then introduced herself and Julie. Of course, that introduction included the word sottia—wife. Sammy carefully enunciated it, watching closely, smile unwavering.

Daru did not try to correct her and left.

The silence lingered, room dark, moonlight trickling in through a thin, high window. Eventually, Julie asked in Schtish, “What were you talking about?” She had grown rather spoiled at being privy to her wife’s foreign conversations.

“I think they are our aunts,” Sammy said lightly, doubly amused by Julie’s now-confused expression. After indulging for a moment, she took a cup from their packs and lit some holy water in it for warmth and light. “Her name is Daru and the other’s is Pream. She told me they are sisters, but I think… they are lovers.”

“Ah, it wasn’t just me,” Julie said, letting out a sigh.

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For a moment, Sammy’s face scrunched up, taken aback. “Really?” she asked.

Julie nodded, her attention on the pack, going through it for something. “The way they stood, it was like they were used to being close. And I didn’t get a good look, but they don’t look that similar, do they?”

“Mm, they don’t.” Sammy’s mirthful gaze followed Julie’s little actions for a while before she spoke again. “I think you should be rewarded for paying such good attention,” she softly said.

Julie went to say it wasn’t necessary, only to catch herself, hearing the undertones to Sammy’s words. “You don’t mind…” she asked, trailing off.

“I don’t, Lia,” Sammy whispered, lips now close to Julie’s ears, finishing with a playful nibble.

The next morning, a few knocks at dawn roused them. “Breakfast?” asked Daru, voice muffled by the door.

Sammy untangled herself from Julie, leaving a kiss as she sat up. “Yes, please,” she said.

“Ready soon,” Daru replied.

After listening to the footsteps leave, Sammy returned to kissing Julie, her wife’s sleepy face too adorable to be left alone. “They offered us breakfast,” she whispered.

Julie took a moment to hear that, then sat up, waking quicker. The first thing she did was check the marks on her shoulders.

Chuckling, Sammy idly dragged her finger between the marks where Julie’s shirt collar would go. “I do try to be sensible,” she said, finger ending up on Julie’s bottom lip, still swollen from kissing.

Julie kissed Sammy’s fingertip, then got up to dress. She hoped the day wouldn’t be too hot with the top button of her shirt done up. “I know,” she said.

“You’re not annoyed with me?” Sammy asked, her gaze filtered through her eyelashes as she looked up at Julie.

But Julie just laughed and left a kiss on top of Sammy’s head. “I love you, wife,” she murmured.

“I love you too,” Sammy said, positively beaming.

It took some time to get ready with Sammy’s cumbersome outfit, but they didn’t dawdle and, in the garden, they knocked on the house’s back door. Pream opened the door shortly after, softly smiling. “Good morning, are you hungry?” she asked in Lapdosian.

“Thank you,” Sammy said, smiling back, unsure of how else to politely answer.

The kitchen wasn’t too small, but more suited to two than four. It helped that none of them were overly tall—men would have certainly found it uncomfortable, knees and elbows bumping. It also helped that the two pairs naturally sat closely together, Sammy and Julie in particular with their chairs touching.

As far as the food went, it was rustic. Thick cuts of home-made bread smothered in lard, a few slices of cold meat, and a special omelette—it wasn’t folded over and had chopped onions and tomato. If Sammy didn’t know better, she’d have thought it a Lapdosian recipe, but many littles things came to light this dawn.

Sammy knew that sisters could look remarkably different. However, for these two to be related, they definitely had a different father or mother, but she doubted they were related at all.

“This one,” Sammy said, pointing at the omelette, not knowing the Lapdosian word, “it is Alfen?”

The wrong question, a tension came to the older women. Daru said, “Many sailors stop here, ask for it.”

Picking up on the mood, Sammy didn’t pry. “We came from there and liked the food.” It wasn’t a question, wasn’t answered. She took a moment to tell Julie, but didn’t want to seem like they were gossiping, keeping her thoughts to herself for now.

By the end, the mood lightened, all the more for how Sammy asked, “We have to go soon, but is there any help we can do?”

“We can’t ask our guests to do anything,” Pream said.

After Pream’s attempt to decline, Daru said, “I’ll show,” and strode outside.

On the way out, Sammy again thanked Pream on her and Julie’s behalf. Outside, Daru went straight to the far corner where a wooden box sat, spade next to it.

When Sammy and Julie caught up, Daru said, “Mulch.” Sammy thought Daru had said that, perhaps fertiliser.

That was apparently enough instruction. However, Sammy disagreed. “Show, please?” she asked.

Daru didn’t show any irritation, instead opened the box and lifted out a pile of mulch with the spade. She spread it into a fairly thick layer on the small patch nearest to her. “Okay?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Sammy said.

Only one shovel, Sammy and Julie took turns laying out the mulch. Oh Julie tried to sneak in an extra shovelful and was reluctant to let Sammy have it, but Sammy was full of royal insistence, no hesitation to take the shovel and pitch in. Between them, the work was quickly done.

Daru had stuck around to watch and now nodded as she inspected their work. “Thanks,” she said tersely.

It wasn’t exactly planned in the way Sammy usually planned such things, but, seeing Julie with a gentle sweat, an urge to kiss sprouted. Although conscious Daru was around, her guess about Daru and Pream left her willing to indulge. So she gently pulled Julie in for a kiss. Chaste, but emphatic, her heart beating happily.

When she glanced at Daru after, there was no difference to the old woman’s face. “We will go now. Thank you for the room,” Sammy said.

Daru just waved them off, so they went to the room and picked up their packs. Back in the garden, Daru was still there, Sammy’s curiosity finally getting the better of her.

“Are you two alone here?” Sammy asked.

For a moment, Sammy thought Daru would just ignore her, then Daru turned away and said, “Her husband died a long time ago.”

Sammy understood.

Following Daru to the front of the house, they said goodbye to Pream there, then carried on to the ship. The sailors were working to get the horses all on, captain setting Sammy and Julie to the side for now.

That left Sammy time to tell Julie about the last question she’d asked Daru.

“Do you think she comforted Pream—that’s how it started?” Julie asked.

Sammy’s lips thinned, thoughts whirring until the gears stopped. “Please take this as a story, impossible to justify with the little we know, but….”

“But?” Julie said.

Letting out a sigh, Sammy squeezed Julie’s hand, then rested her head on Julie’s shoulder. “I think he was abusive and Pream killed him and Daru helped hide the body.”

A heavy silence followed, filled with the grunts and shouts of the sailors, hooves tapping along the gangplank. “That does sound like a story,” Julie muttered.

Sammy didn’t disagree.

Once the horses were loaded up, the ship set off, following the coast for the morning. They stopped at more of a small town for lunch, then carried on to an actual port for the night, plenty of room at the inns.

The first stop for them was the washing room. Though it was still awkward for Julie, she focused on washing their clothes while Sammy washed her sanitary cloths. Breaking the silence, Sammy said, “I should be fine for tomorrow night.”

“What?” Julie asked.

“My monthly,” Sammy said, then added, “I barely made a mess today if you are feeling a little brave.”

Julie heard every word, yet took a handful of seconds to understand them. Then she couldn’t help herself, breaking into laughter, so deep her ribs ached, and it wasn’t long before she was light-headed, giggling into the shirt she had been scrubbing.

Sammy took no offence, waiting for Julie to calm down before continuing. “I’m not trying to pressure you, just letting you know I am… comfortable if you are.”

“We’ll see later,” Julie said. It was all she could think to say right now.

The ambiguity followed them through dinner, a hint of playfulness to every word and touch, their gazes magnetic in how often they were drawn to the other and then repelled, leaving behind smiles.

Julie loved it. She knew it was fairly childish, but that didn’t make how she felt any less real. The way her heart beat quicker, harder, how that smile came to her, a giggle in her throat. It reminded her of the months before when Sammy’s affection had felt “ticklish”, but now she loved being tickled. The anxiety had been replaced with anticipation. What was more, this anticipation was for what she would do to Sammy.

In a moment of clarity, she thought about what she thought she knew about wives. How strange it was that, despite starting as near enough strangers nearly four months ago, she now loved this intimacy with Sammy. Yet the little she knew was that women hated this part of marriage.

Of course, people couldn’t know what they didn’t know. Julie had no way of coming to an answer.

Night came and went, another day rolling around, another day spent aboard the ship. The arid coast, covered in dry grass and woody shrubs, started to freshen up with touches of green, Sammy mentioning they were passing the “shadow of the mountains surrounding Formadgo”. That mountain range certainly had been in the distance for the last day’s travel, now disappearing below the natural rise and fall of the land.

This third day of travel brought them to a more sizeable port than the last, verging on a city. “We went south from Formadgo before, but we could have gone north and left to Alfen from here, just that I wasn’t sure if suitable ships for carrying our horses pass this way,” Sammy said.

“You can’t know everything,” Julie said lightly, then added, “Really, you’ve done amazing so far. And you’re comfortable asking for help, so it’s not like you need to know everything anyway.”

Sammy smiled sweetly, left a sweeter kiss on her life’s sweet lips. “I’ll reward you if you keep speaking so kindly,” she said, the familiar tone tickling Julie’s ears.

After holding back for a few seconds, Julie blurted out, “You’re pretty.”

Oh Sammy chuckled, but she made good on her threat and kissed Julie again, deeper, tongues and breaths entwined, her hands squeezing just where Julie liked them to. Once she felt Julie melt, Sammy broke away, but kept her arms there to support her precious wife.

“Let’s not dawdle once the ship’s moored,” Sammy whispered.

Julie eagerly nodded.

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