Come Sail Away - Snippets

[teethoftherisk]

Early Feb 2023

Siffleur hasn't really touched anything magical, or at least not obvious magic like in stories - not potions anyway, not something that comes in a vessel and swirls. He takes it with a thank you and sits with it for a few hours, just turning it over in his hands.

Erin gave it to him to use when cooking. It's meant to be fun and frivolous. He knows he'd enjoy doing that too, just changing his arm and cutting it off and grilling the octopus up. It would even be fun to play with. Maybe he could show Jack... though he's noticed Jack has been avoiding him lately. That partly because of Max, but he knows it's not entirely Max. Siffleur is broken glass, which means he's fun to hurt yourself on for a while, but eventually you get sick of sharp edges.

Siffleur has never been offered something like this before. There are two doses, so he can use one the way Erin meant for it to be used. And... he could use the other for something deeply selfish. Something embarrassing. Something... comforting.

He closes his hand around the vessel and takes it up to his nest to sleep with tonight.

--

Siffleur still isn't entirely sure it's going to work the next day, but he does his best. He takes the GoPro with him and heads up to the deck, finding a quiet place with no one around and a good view. The Tommys has more guaranteed privacy but there's already so much risk that this won't work the way he wants it to, and he knows that doing it in the Tommys will guarantee failure.

She would never be caught dead in a place like Tommy Bahamas.

So, he sits on the deck and stares out over the infinite ocean, turning the GoPro on and closing his eyes to focus. The shift is... strange. Painless. He feels it though, he feels the tissues knit together differently, taking another shape.

Siffleur clears his throat, and all his hair stands up on end as he hears that sound so much softer than his could ever be. His fingers grip the railing tight. And he thinks desperately back to all the things his mother said.

"Fleur. Fleur. Fleur- Fleur, there you are, even bigger than before. There's mommy's little monster. There you are, Fleur." He says - she says - his mother's voice coming from his mouth, from his throat. His eyes burn. He doesn't let it affect the speech. He keeps it nice and level, the way it was when she was sane, when she could look him in the eye and know him. "Been a while. Don't worry about me. You're not allowed to worry about me. I'm the mother, that means it's my job to worry about you. Tell me how you are. Tell me where you've been and what you've seen. I thought about you often. And me? Of course, I know sweetheart, I know you thought about me too. Of course you miss me. I miss you too when you're gone and I am too. But I always come back. They couldn't keep me away forever, could they?"

No, they couldn't. No matter how badly they'd tried to break her, tear her apart, kill her, she had survived. She always came back. She always had a smile for him, a laugh, a funny story. A song...

He keeps his eyes on the horizon. In his mothers voice, he sings the songs she always sang to him in the trucks and the gas stations, on the dirt roads and in the deep forests.

"Courage, my word, it didn't come, it doesn't matter. Courage, your word, it didn't come, it doesn't matter."