anactoria

Title: I Came To Her For Healing
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Calypso/Elizabeth
Summary: All rivers run into the sea.
Thanks to

atraphoenix for the beta. :)

I came to her for healing, though I did not know it at the time. I knew only that something compelled me to that place – compelled me to leave my son in the care of a local woman I could trust not to let him stray too near the waves, to secure myself passage as close to my destination as any pirate was willing to travel, and to row in a small boat upriver to where I had seen her for the first time, bound and diminished.

She had been expecting me. When I entered she was waiting in her ragged mystic’s form, her back to the door. She turned and inclined her head, gravely.

“Yo’ majesty.”

Her face cracked into an ironic, blackened smile. She looked the same as ever; hair like snakes, eyes as hungry as graves.

***

I came to her for comfort, strange as it may seem. The duty with which she had charged my husband kept him from me, and yet I knew – somehow – that the love she had stolen would be returned. We had both burned for the love of men, but this was different. Now she was gentle as waves on a summer shore, gentle as cool air after a fever.

I could never know her, not really – no-one could – but I could map the contours of her body with my hands. She stopped at the silvery scars childbirth had left on my hips and kissed them as though they were beautiful. Perhaps they were, to her. After all, it was from the sea – from her – that all life came. How could they not be?

Our hair tangled together as we lay together afterwards, and with her fingertips she traced strange pictures between my shoulder blades.

***

I came to her by accident on a cool, clear morning – that morning. It had been ten years; tonight was to be the night…

I was pacing the shore, willing the daylight hours to hurry away when she stepped from the waves, foam trailing behind her like the train of a great lady or a bride. Or a queen.

Her smile was wicked. She plucked shells from the sea like flowers from a meadow and wove them into my hair. She was gone long before sunset, and when I put my hand to my head they had disappeared too.

I was sure he couldn’t have seen her, but he looked at me strangely before he left. His face was closed off.

“A strange pair of royals,” he muttered.

***

I came to seek her knowing that she would not be there. It had to happen. No-one could keep hold of her for long, though we all belong to her in the end. I had expected the hut to be empty, but I never found it at all, though I had come to know that stretch of river as well as the curve of her breast or the touch of her hand.

It does not matter. The waves still beat the shore, and one day it will crumble into the sea. The years are passing quickly now, and even pirate kings do not live forever. My hair has strands of silver in it. Soon it will all be white.

Kings and queens should be together, and will be in the end. It cannot be long before I sight the Dutchman again, and perhaps this time I may step aboard. One day I will return to her – to both my loves.

I will come to her for the last time. Soon.