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Lavé au Rivage – Prelude
(Blackthorn)
With torn hands fastening themselves to either side of her head, Sanguye held her breath, bracing for impact. It came, crashing into the frail, ragged walls of their piteous shelter, leaving the structure to collapse into itself. Despite having her hands clamped over her ears, the girl could still hear her sister’s wail among the retreating tide.
The seawater drew back, receding down to their knees as they wiped at their eyes and stumbled about, trying to regain footing on hidden ground.
Throat sore from screaming (possibly also from the amount of seawater that had flown in as a consequence), the younger of the two rasped as they rushed to a hole the blast had made in the cave wall, vainly hoping it would lead them to safety.
Behind them, the ocean roared with a warning of yet another barrage against them, and as she was pulling herself through the opening, Sanguye began to fear their father would not be coming after them.
“Aiyennat!” she cried out to her younger sister, whose feet were planted rather deeply into the ground in front of her, “keep going!”
The girl raised her left foot, only to stamp it back down indignantly. “I’m waiting for Father!” Her voice wasn’t much above gasps, but there was a finality in them.
Sanguye saw this and grabbed hold of Aiyennat’s hand, pulling her along while she slapped at her in desperation, weakly protesting that he would be coming to get them any time, now. “He won’t be coming, and if you stay here waiting for him, you’ll not be going anywhere again, either.”
It wounded her grievously to say that, and part of her – a large part of her – was not quite willing to believe it, but it seemed the only way to get cooperation. Regardless of her own feelings, as Aiyennat’s reluctance faded, she was sure it had been the right thing to say; that, or the child had gotten too tired to keep up with it.
They had been running about in frenzy since long before dawn, and here it was, nearing sunset. A stealth attack had been set upon their people while they were still in their beds, swords and battle cries interrupting their dreams. While that sort of thing was not too terribly unthinkable as far as war goes, it helped neither side when the storms pulled in.
Their home had become a battlefield, for the hundredth time anyone could remember, and it didn’t seem fair that now even the sea was turning against them. As the two girls tripped through a small plaza, Sanguye watched in horror as a monument split and toppled onto the corpses of fallen warriors who had strove to defend it.
It wasn’t just.
Their father, whom they both feared among the slain, had led a fleet of soldiers into battle, promising to return to them victoriously. All the time, in some fashion or another, they had been holding off their inevitable escape to wait for him; from dashing in and out of safe houses (which were proven not to be so safe, after all) to makeshift shelters in caverns, and whatever else they managed to squeeze into.
The two sisters, scurrying through the streets like mice, held on tightly to ragged food sacks stuffed with their belongings as they continued. Weary and aching, Sanguye’s eyes landed on what was left of their pier, relishing in the fact there were merely a few meters separating them from their destination. “Oh, look! Look!”
Aiyennat scrunched her eyebrows together and tried to see the space in front of her, availing to the humble feat of making out a small count of grey blobs floating in the distance. “I can’t! What is it, Sister?”
“The pier is just ahead!” Re-doubling her efforts to reach safety, her heels plowed through heaps of wet sand on the shoreline, unyielding to the stab of stones or debris. Clearing the distance in a matter of seconds, Sanguye still held fast to her sister’s hand as a pair of enormous hands clapped down onto her shoulders from the side.
To the left, another man ushered Aiyennat along to one of the remaining vessels, shouting to his partner of sorts. The girl gave a cry of surprise and attempted to squirm her way out of his grasp, to which he responded to by plucking her off the ground and hauling her over his own shoulders.
Sanguye’s charge was still pushing her towards the same boat, a small fishing vessel crawling with three to four others on deck. “Hurry, Lady; they’ll be taking off soon!”
She did not have much chance to glimpse at him, and his voice was haggard with exhaustion (which was barely audible over the roar of the waves as it was), leaving her with no particular impression of who he was or if she had even met him before.
Aiyennat’s captor flung her aboard the ship before her sister, and not without all the honour of a ‘sack of rats,’ as she later put it.
Sanguye, however, was graced with at least the opportunity to board with her feet on the ground… though in her own opinion, that wasn’t saying much. Nevertheless, she took the treatment quietly in lieu of possibly being stranded on the shore; instead, she resigned to once again set her eyes to the task of scanning her surroundings.
There wasn’t much to see; at the very most, headless fish and odd-ball sea creatures tangled in the fishing nets served as some form of interest, and of the six men on board, she knew none of them.
So much for her father already being there…
Sighing to herself, she managed a quick glance over at Aiyennat before leaning over the railing as the vessel pulled away from the beach, watching tide waters wage miniature wars against it. Somehow, it seemed so much like a game to watch it from far above…
Although the boat tossed violently back and forth between the impressions, her eyelids tugged down over her irises in a rapid fashion.
Resisting the notion, she crawled over to the mast and took up her sister’s practice of clinging to it for balance. Once her forehead rammed into the blasted thing four times or so, she unwillingly traded her weariness for one of the worst headaches she’d ever had.
It was around this time Aiyennat resorted to pestering one of the anglers as to where they were being taken.
With a great sigh, the largest towered over the two girls, “To a safe harbor, Lady.”
“And where, exactly, is that?” Aiyennat spat out dark, wet wisps of windblown hair as she questioned him further.
He replied with a dry glare, knotting his massive eyebrows together while he spoke, “You’ll know when you get there.”
“Is the principle of asking a question not to know these things…” she retorted, “before one ‘gets there?’” She stuck her chin out in indignant persistence while the man sputtered in some form of suspicious uncertainty with what to say.
If he knew where they were headed, why didn’t he just say so? Since it was ‘safe,’ there wasn’t really any need to skirt about the subject as if it was a dance… then again, she thought, they said the safe houses would be of good protection, and just look where they’ve gotten us!
Sanguye eyed the sailors now, feverishly attempting to push her migraine aside. Cautiously, she slipped into the conversation, “Is this… safe harbor… in our realms?”
Another sailor picked up where the large, bumbling one had left off, but also with certain distastefulness. “Nay, Lady.”
Aiyennat blinked in silence while Sanguye delved slightly further into the matter, “So then… might it be in an ally’s territory?” In a gesture of innocence, she placed a battered finger to her lips, “I didn’t know we had any…”
He stared at her, locking his wholly black eyes with her blue ones, “Nay, Lady.” He scratched at a spot of peeling skin on the side of his neck, though not losing eye contact with the older sibling.
Another man behind him was making a noticeable amount of glances behind them all, towards the ocean. He was tall, gangly, spider-like, and his face was all but covered in thick forests of dark facial hair; Aiyennat recognized him as the man who had carelessly tossed her aboard.
As the spider-man moved around the deck towards a tangled sea of netting, she also noted him to be making crude gestures with another sailor – undoubtedly directed towards her sister and herself. She jabbed Sanguye in the side, attempting to be subtle, though it didn’t work out so well.
The spider-man once again plucked her from the ground, scrutinizing her with a specific sense of arrogance. “Do ye not trust us, M’ladies?” There he went again, with that odd accent…
Instead of spitting in his beaten face, Aiyennat bit her tongue and resorted to merely scowling at him. She didn’t particularly want to get thrown down again, and spitting, though she would have liked to, was not the way to go about peaceful… relations.
However, as she was staring at this man, she found herself immersed in a particular detail about him, hidden under a particularly close-fitted, filthy scarf on his head – his hair was yellow.
No one had hair that colour, at least not anyone from Ciau. When one looked out into the crowds from above, there was nothing but a mass of raven heads bustling together, and maybe, maybe the occasional tanned arm poking up from the midst.
Looking closer, she noticed that beneath the dried blood and smudged grease, their skin was not all that dark, either; in fact, it was rather fair. Again, this was a nearly impossible trait to have in their country.
These men were imposters.
Sanguye, in a similar train of thought, had made the conclusions that these men had kidnapped them; this boat probably wasn’t even a Ciau vessel, and there was definitely no safe harbor. Wherever they were headed to was likely to end in a nasty hostage situation, or worse…
They had to get off the boat.
Once Aiyennat had been set down, the two girls exchanged glances, then resumed carefully observing all the sailor’s actions. At one point, a few moments later, Sanguye was sure she was hearing a conversation between three of them that had to do with some sort of bargain.
“So now, that older one’ll fetch a pretty price, eh?” said one, appearing to count on his scruffy fingers.
Another chuckled cruelly, “Yeh, but that younger’n should go for e’en higher.”
The third party member was silent, and had his back turned to the girls, but the elder sister could see him nodding in agreement.
The first man spoke up again, stroking the stubble on his chin, “How old d’ye think they be?”
The third man finally opened his mouth, “too young f’you…” he said.
Chuckling again, the second muttered something about orders regarding hands.
Man-Number-One seemed to think for a second, then replied, “Ah, what d’they know a’out, while we be out in this forsaken ocean? ‘Sides, the older one looks old ‘nuff.”
While the second man shrugged and returned to his unassuming task of untangling netting with the spider-man, the third turned to the first, persistent sailor and thrust him over to perform some task or another. “Y’know they’ll be examined; damaged goods ain’t worth bargaining for.”
Ten minutes passed with no further interaction from the busied men, and the sisters had taken the opportunity to come up with some sort of idea to get out of the situation.
Spider-man came forth again, approaching Aiyennat with a free heap of netting; she got the feeling he was holding some sort of grudge against her. As he came to a halt not even a yard away from her, she felt Sanguye’s position shift beside her, a cue to initiate their ‘plan.’
While her older sister used her new, crouching position to slide past him, Aiyennat dove at the spidery sailor, palms outstretched and latching onto his neck to form a noose of sorts. Fortunately, her hands had grown enough to reach all the way around; unfortunately, his neck was thicker than she had thought.
With a cry of shock and fury, he flung her aside with such a force that she was knocked out the instant her head struck the flooring.
With the events behind her unseen, Sanguye had taken a hold of several handfuls worth of mesh and hurriedly strung them over the other crewmembers, tangling and suffocating them at the same time. One of them had partially freed himself, lunging at her with a dagger in hand.
With all her remaining strength, she barreled into him and used the momentum to push him overboard, cutting a particularly deep gash into her arm in the process. Pausing to catch her breath, her back was met with yet another blow from the recovered spider-man.
As her face met the grungy, mildewed floorboards, she let out a pitiful war cry that was cut short by the throttling of her own throat. Choking and gasping, the rattled girl felt her forehead hit the floor several times before her vision tripled and everything burned into total darkness.
I’m still not sure what to think of it, but I think it’s time to give the story a chance to spread its wings, get out into the world, all that jazz. Anyhow…
Sanguye (Sahn-Goo-Ey) is derived from the Miwok name ‘Sanuye,’ loosely meaning ‘red sunset.’
Aiyennat (Eye-Ehn-Naht) is also derived from another Native American name, ‘Aiyanna,’ meaning ‘ever-blooming.’
Ciau (Chow) has absolutely no reference to anything other than the phonetic similarity to the Italian/Spanish ‘Ciao.’ It is a fictional domain, Lalala.
Although both these names are taken from this culture, Ciau (the sisters’ country) has nothing to do with it, nor do I pronounce them in any way other than how I have designed their names to be/sound. Another note for future reference – a good number of the names in this story (and others) are purely made up and may have only a small reference to an actual name or other culture. /disclaimer-ish
