"Tell him your mother was a sea witch and you can sense storms three days out."
"Peeble," I hiss under my breath. "That's ridiculous."
"Say it."
I say it.
The seaman squints at me for a very long moment. Then he shrugs. "Well, we do need extra hands swabbing the deck and in the kitchens after the last guy got eaten. You'll be in bunk room six. Stay out of the way and don't speak to the captains unless spoken to. Especially the missus." He leans down and lowers his voice. "The prince named the ship after her, and he doesn't take kindly to people messing with her."
If only he knew.
I board the Crimson Emerald, and we set sail.
My supervisor is a woman named Gretta.
She stands roughly five-foot-ten, and wears gold hoop earrings large enough to serve as bracelets. She's missing her front left tooth, which she makes up for by having the loudest voice of anyone I've met in any iteration.
"You." She jabs a finger at me within thirty seconds of me finding the kitchen. "Pots. Now. I want them scrubbed until I can see my own pretty face in them, and I'd better look gorgeous, because I am."
"I—"
"Did I ask for a speech? Pots. Now. The mop's in the corner for when you're done. Then you're scrubbing the deck from bow to stern. Then you're peeling vegetables for the evening stew. Then—are you listening, gnome?"
"Dwarf."
"Did I ask?"
She did not ask. Gretta does not ask. Gretta tells, and the universe rearranges itself accordingly.
I scrub pots. I mop floors. I peel enough root vegetables to feed an army, which is essentially what this crew is. These stubby, graceless dwarf hands, cramp and blister because thecalluses I earned over centuries apparently didn't survive the transformation.
The crew finds my presence hilarious. A deckhand named Torren makes a habit of resting his elbow on my head while talking to other sailors. A halfling with pointed ears and an unfortunate laugh keeps calling me "ground level." Gretta assigns me every task that requires climbing, reaching shelves, hanging pots, stringing drying lines, purely, I suspect, for her own entertainment.
Peeble, hidden in my collar, offers running commentary.
"You know," they whisper as I'm on my hands and knees scrubbing the deck, "maybe after this you'll be a bit more considerate of the little guys. Not everyone is blessed with your normal, freakish height and brooding jawline."
"Shut up, Peeble."
"I'm just saying. Perspective is a gift."
I catch glimpses of them throughout the day. The iteration's Kaelren and Elle.
He looks like me. The real me. Tall, dark-haired, the corruption marks visible at his collar and wrists. But he moves differently than I do. Lighter, somehow. Less burdened. He laughs at something one of the crew says, and the sound is so foreign to my own ears that it takes me a moment to recognize it. This version of me knows what it is to be happy.
And Elle. She's on the quarterdeck, red hair loose in the wind, pointing at something on a map while two officers lean in to listen. She's in her element, commanding, sharp, confident. When she looks up and catches the iteration Kaelren watching her, she grins at him, and the warmth in it hits me like a blade between the ribs.
That is what we could be, and I will burn through every iteration in existence to make it real again.
As we clear the harbor and hit open water, the iteration Kaelren calls the crew to the main deck. He stands on the raised platform at the stern, Elle beside him, and addresses the ship.
"We sail for the Starblush Sea," he says, and his voice carries the way mine should, low, sure, built to command. "Auradelle's supply fleet is running weapons to the coastal strongholds. Every crate of steel and every barrel of rot-powder that reaches shore is another village that falls. Another family scattered. Another piece of Wynmire that breaks."
The crew is silent. Listening.
"We are not a navy. We are not an army. We are a crew of people who decided that watching wasn't enough. That someone had to act." He pauses. Looks at Elle. She nods. "We do this for Wynmire. For every person who can't fight back. And we will take down Auradelle's hold on these waters once and for all."
The crew erupts. Cheering, stomping, banging weapons against the rails. It's the sound of people who believe in something, and I'd forgotten how powerful that sounds.
