The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Headless Over Heels.

“Here’s what I don’t get about pirates.” Annalise prodded at her scar. “You’re a man of justice, Sunshine. No tears shed on the scaffold.”

“Sure.”

“But everyone goes away with the fairies when it’s pirates,” she said. “Even you.”

“To a point,” Tiago said. “I still would’ve killed him. Just let him do a monologue or two first.”

“We did,” Seth said.

“Piracy is a fanciful crime,” Ofelia mused. “Sky piracy doubly so. You say murder or assault, and your listener rightly frowns. But say piracy and you put stars in eyes. Who among us can’t relate to the urge to light out with a crew of vagabonds, quomodocunquizing across the United Territories in a baldrick and a ruffled shirt?”

“That’s not a word,” Tiago said.

“Shirt?”

“The quo- thing.”

“That’s absolutely a word,” Ofelia said. “When one hears of a pirate, one imagines living the life of the perpetrator, and not the victim. But the latter outnumber the former, always. And you die just the same at the hands of a rakish avatar of freedom as you do in the maw of a seraph. It’s the sense of belonging, I suppose. To an iconoclastic community.”

Belonging.

“Belonging.” Seth picked a blade of grass into pieces as he thought. “What if it’s belonging?”

Tiago lifted a brow. “What if what’s belonging?”

“When I used my Darkness up there,” Seth said. “One of them saw me and I… I told him he didn’t, I guess? Or that I was just minding my own business. And what you told me. About how a Darkness works. It’s what you long for. And I thought: what if my Darkness ends up being, I dunno. Summoning an image of Annalise’s butt.”

Tiago scoffed. Annalise tried to turn her laugh into some kind of irritated exhalation, but he’d gotten her with that one.

“And then after today, I thought, what if it’s tweaking the noses of the powerful? Or being a perfect liar? But that’s not what that was, I don’t think. It didn’t feel like I was lying, it felt like… like I was making it true.” He let the torn-up grass sprinkle to the ground. “I guess—if I really thought about it—I’ve always wanted to feel like I belong. To exist someplace, without being told to clear out or explain myself or whatever. To be accepted, I guess. Does that make any sense at all? Would it be ridiculous if my Darkness is belonging somewhere super-hard? Hard enough to fool people?”

Annalise stared at him in astonished silence.

Tiago cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. That’d make some sense, I guess.”

“I hope you don’t take this as emasculating,” Ofelia said. “But that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

“We’ll need to verify that,” Tiago said. “We’ll work out some testing. And maybe build up your endurance. First time always knocks you on your ass, but you’ll get used to it.”

“Aye, well.” Annalise started as though shook awake, and clambered off the circle cloth. “That’s for later. Need you and your sister to head down the hill to ol’ Sheepfuck. Someone has to go tell the Corregidor—the Karla, whatever—we found our man and more besides.”

“What about the stormship?” Tiago asked, helping his mother to fold the magic circle lengthwise.

“Ship’ll keep.” Annalise ruffled her son’s hair. “Don’t you worry, Sunshine. I won’t sink it without ya.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...7-darkness
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2531287/